Ahh....I ate at the automat right up until the end!
Also Chock Full Of nuts. And Tad's...until my palate become more
discriminating. (a bit)
I was very young for the World's fair but it was the bestus thing ever!
Really magical!
Being bicoastal I took a girlfriend back to NY earlier this month
and introduced hem to White Castle! A few things never change!
Also used to love the Nathan's in Times Sq.
I'm the 1986 Hot Dog eating Champ!
Nathan's have the best dogs ...and fries too!
Lastly I remember a hamburger stand on 42nd st. that was right in
front of a theater. They used to advertise 2 hamburgers for a buck.
Mark H
You're right, Rich...it was called Horn and Hardart. there was even
one on 57th Street, near 6th Avenue. I had forgotten about
Tad's...perhaps that's for the best. does anyone remember the Brass
Rail, or Mamma Leone's besides me? I used to eat there a lot
( again...a lot of food, for cheap) even though there weren't any
movie posters there.
Richard Del Belso
-----Original Message-----
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:55:46 -0700
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [MOPO] NEW YORK THEATERS
To: [email protected]
yeah there were a few of those.
One used to be right by Grand Central Station
Horn & Hardart's I want to say was the name.....
they were famous in the 1930s as places where out of work people would
go in and at the time you could get a cup of hot water without having
to pay first. Ketchup & crackers were still available on the
condiments counter & they would put ketchup in the hot water, stir it
up and make tomato soup and then crumble the crackers into it. I think
you were able to do this into the 1960s before they changed it so you
had to pay first so they would give you a cup and the crackers were
taken off the counter
I can't remember what 1930s movie showed this practice
you know what folks.. reminiscing can be fun!!!
Rich
At 12:43 PM 6/20/2009, Roland Lataille wrote:
Hey,
I remember going to a restaurant and you put coins in a slot, opened
the little glass door and took out a sandwich or a piece of cake. What
were those called?
--- On Sat, 6/20/09, Richard Halegua Comic Art [email protected]
wrote:
From: Richard Halegua Comic Art [email protected]
Subject: Re: [MOPO] NEW YORK THEATERS
To: [email protected]
Date: Saturday, June 20, 2009, 3:18 PM
Times Square was one of the most interesting places on Earth for many
years. I always liked it because it was an anachronism of life.. in
the winter a limousine could be dropping off a guy in $1000 tailored
suit with a fur-coated babe on each arm and they might have to step
over a homeless guy sleeping on the subway grating (warm air comes up
through the gratings), there would be a couple society ladies headed
up to Broadway to see a play and then a couple hookers rousting a guy
while a couple dopers would be buying from a pusher. Every kind of
person you could imagine was standing on that street trying to make
plans
One of the most obvious places was a pinball & later video game
parlor called Fascination and Melody Burlesque was down the street.
There were several theatres showing Kung-Fu flicks and to this day I
have never been able to find a copy of one of my favorites - Mad
Monkey Kung-Fu. I remember seeing it on a double bill with the 12
Drunken Masters In front of some of the theatres were hawkers trying
to get you in and there was the porno bookstore on ground level that
had the private booths upstairs. All the babes would be advertising to
get you to walk into "their booth" for a show. I remember running into
a comic book dealer friend up there once and even though he was a
buddy, he was so embarassed he left almost immediately
There was a Howard Johnsons and if I remember correctly Dempsey's too.
I think Dempseys had a sign that told you how great their pie was and
there was a Nathan's hot dogs joint. I was surprised on more than one
occasion to see Carol Channing, Walter Cronkite (Walter is about to
take his last breath folks) or other actors there. Once - and this
would be specifically be 1978 because of the girlfriend I was with -
we were having milkshakes and Will Geer sat down at our table
(Nathan's had those long 16 people tables). I asked him for his
autograph and he said "Sure. Just let me finish my hot dog".
I know I had seen teh flea circus that Richard Del Belso mentioned,
but I was pretty young. Maybe 5-6, so I don't recall any of it sadly,
all of this is gone now.. Left in our collective memories which will
also be gone to the black hole at some point and all that will remain
will be pictures. I lived in Queens and the theatre I most often went
to as a kid & young teen was the Lefferts Theatre on Lefferts
Boulevard and 120th street. I remember seeing a double bill Hard Day's
Night & HELP! in 1965. I was with my 2 brothers (I was 8, my brothers
10 & 11). Before the movie they had the Dave Clark 5 short, Manfred
Mann and some others and outside they had scads of posters including
the billboard on the side of the building that was 120th st. The
Beatles heads were enormous. They also had freebies like a beatles wig
and stuff. It was a big weekend and the theatre was jam packed and if
I remember correctly, it was just 75 cents!! We were there all day
long. Nobody chased us out after the first feature. Not too long ago I
was able to score the Dave Clark 5 1sh that was displayed. The theatre
was great - they had stills and posters and lobby cards all over the
outside and on the inside too.
the Lefferts was a fun theatre too. Saturdays always had matinees and
they may have been just a quarter. Always a double bill, cartoons, in
the mid-60s they showed the Superman, Batman, Flash Gordon and Buck
Rogers serials - one episode of Batman and Supe or later Flash & Buck
each week and you got a little wallet card they would punch out. If
you saw episodes 1-11, you got to see episode 12 for free (I guess
that meant we got in free that week period)
across the street and down a block or so was Uncle Jack's toy shop. I
bought all the Aurora monster kits there and the old man was as nice
as anyone you could meet. If he didn't have the toy or model you
wanted, he would order it for you for a 10 cent deposit and seeing as
he didn't have the Bride of Frankenstein model kit in stock, I ordered
that one. Sometime in the late 60s I remember the shop was closed for
a few days because a couple junkies had robbed & beaten him
also, Bruce is right.. at 8-9-10-11, we used to get on the subway by
ourselves and go all the way to Manhattan. When I was 9 I took the
trains all the way up to the Bronx - by myself - with $100 cash that I
had made selling comics - to go to a guy's house who was a friend of
Gary Dolgoff so I could buy early Marvels. I came back - again, all by
myself - with 2 shopping bags full of comics. I don't think anyone
bothered me. I also used to take the trains regularly at that age to
go to the Museum of Natural History on 79th street in Manhattan
because I was in love with dinosaurs and they had the best exhibit of
fossils and the rooms with live lizards were totally kick-ass.
NYC was lots of fun back in those days, but I haven't been back since
1992 or 93, even though I've been planning on going for a visit for
some years. The first place I'm going to head to os Katz's
Delicatessen on Houston St and have some corn beef, some of their hand
made hotdogs and a potato kanish
Rich
At 08:03 AM 6/20/2009, Bruce Hershenson wrote:
Richard
One of the great disappointments of my childhood was when my uncle (a
weird guy and the highlight of my childhood) promised to take me to
HUBERT'S FLEA CIRCUS. It must have been around 1964 or 1965 when I was
around 11 or 12.
I was really excited, and I met him at Penn Station (my parents used
to let the 11 year old me go by myself to Manhattan, where strikes me
as crazy in retrospect), and we went to Times Square, and if I
remember right it was in the basement of some building, but the flea
circus was gone (although the sign was still there).
So I never did get to see those trained fleas!
Bruce
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 9:40 AM, Richard Del Belso <[email protected] >
wrote:
Bruce, claude...
The "art house" on 42nd street back in the day was called the Apollo.
I used to go there late at night, after doing my college homework, and
see double bills of old Ingmar Bergman movies, like THE NAKED NIGHT
and MONIKA. It was a "grind house'..just kept repeating the shows all
day and all night. The Theater is still there but It has been
converted into a legitimate playhouse now, under a different name,
repudiating its somewhat unsavory past. So has the theater next door,
the Victory.
Across the street is the New Amsterdam , which was originally used as
a legit theater for the Ziegfeld Follies. When I was in college, it
had fallen into disrepair and was just another grind house showing
third-run American movies and exploitation films...but signs of its
former glory were still visible. After almost falling apart, the
theater was beautifully restored and the musical version of THE LION
KING was installed there. I think disney put up a lot of the money for
the restoration, as they did in LA for the El Capitan.
Around 1960, i once went down to the penny arcade on the corner of
42nd St. and Broadway to see the flea circus. Yes, it was a real flea
circus (HUBERT'S FLEA CIRCUS) where the guy had put thin-stretched
strands of gold wire around the necks of these tiny fleas, which he
kept in a box filled with cotton wadding. he could pick them up by the
wire, and then attach them to toy chariots to stage a chariot race, or
turn them upside down and place balsa wood balls on their legs to
stage a 'who can kick the ball farthest" contest. he also had cut out
tiny paper triangular costumes in different colors and placed one over
each flea. the fleas wold then naturally start to jump, and the
costumes would wriggle, which, when set to music, became 'the dancing
fleas". The cost for this never-to-be-forgotten display of weirdness?
One quarter!
Ah, New York, New York. I'm with Claude...a total New York-o-phile.
but I had to move to LA in 1976, and I have to admit it's pretty nice
there, too...Academy screening are one of the nicest things about life
here.
ciao for now...
Richard
Richard Del Belso
-----Original Message-----
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:32:37 -0400
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [MOPO] NEW YORK THEATERS
To: [email protected]
In the 70's there were a huge amount of those theaters and peep shows
in that area. This went from 8th Ave to 6th Ave and from 40th St to
50th St. There were also a huge amount of street walkers hanging
around all the theaters and they were very dangerous if you were not
polite. I remember when one man was approached and instead of saying
"no thanks" called her a whore. She stabbed him right in broad
daylight.
In my college years I went to a theater on 86th St. where they only
showed films in German. I used to go on Fridays when classes ended
early. 86th St. was known as Germantown. We went to a famous German
restaurant there when I graduated from law school. I don't recall the
name. The real estate boom also killed the area and the developers
moved in. Today it hardly exists. This is a part of town that I
really miss.
Claude
In a message dated 6/20/2009 9:21:22 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected]
writes:
In my youth they would still show some classic movies in the falling
down Times Square theaters. I think the admission was like $1.75.
I remember once I went to some classic movie, and a scary guy was
hanging by the ticket booth. I gave $2 to the ticket taker, and was
handed a quarter back, and the scary guy said, "Give me the quarter".
I just kept walking and he said, "Give me the quarter or I'll kill you"!
I kept walking, and he said, "I am going to wait right here, and
whenever you come out, I will kill you."
I went in and watched the movie, and the whole time I kept thinking of
that guy. When it was over I went out, and he was nowhere to be seen.
If that was the present day, I would give him the quarter!
Bruce
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 7:47 AM, Claude Litton <[email protected] >
wrote:
I have seen them all since I was 17 years old. I went to college and
law school in New York City and have spent my working life there. I
have walked the streets of NYC for over 50 years and have always been
thrilled with everything. I have been involved with NYC real estate
all these years and still love it. I went to NYU in Greenwich
Village and my friends and I used to peek in at the old burlesque
theaters (before we got kicked out) and got to the movies in
virtually every theater already mentioned in other emails (so I wont
repeat them). I remember all the old decrepit Times Square theaters
before they cleaned up the area. The police used to walk 4 abreast
because the area was so dangerous and I am speaking about daylight
hours, not just at night.
I remember going to the theaters on 57th street when one of them was
an art theater and the other was showing xxx films. I remember Deep
Throat and the Devil In Miss Jones playing for many years as a double
bill. The Paris Theater showed art films for many, many years before
the real estate got too valuable and getting old movies on VHS
destroyed the market for these theaters.
My office is at 295 Fifth Avenue across from the Empire State Building
and if anyone is in NYC they are welcome to visit. I have over 50
movie posters framed in my office suite including 6 of my Chan 3
sheets. Joe Bonelli stopped in last year and we had a great time.
Just email me in advance to make certain I am in because I don't work
as many hours as I did when I was younger. I stopped going to work on
Fridays 9 years ago and leave at 2 pm.
Claude Litton
In a message dated 6/20/2009 3:06:34 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected]
writes:
I was lucky enough to be in NYC when HORROR OF DRACULA had just opened
at the Marfair Theater so I got to see the hugh Times Square wrap-
around billboard poster above the theater. I also got to see the
display of the fiends (in a hugh fish tank) from FIEND WITHOUT A FACE
located right in front of the theater in Times Square. Anybody else
in our group see these fantastic advertising displays???? Larry
Springer
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to: [email protected]
In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to: [email protected]
In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com
___________________________________________________________________
How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List
Send a message addressed to: [email protected]
In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L
The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
