There were 4 movie theaters in Irvington during our school years: The Castle, Sanford, Art, and Chancellor.

Here’s a look at those theaters, plus two from before our time going to the movies.

 

The Castle Theater was located at 1115 Clinton Avenue at the intersection with Springfield Avenue. It opened in 1922 and had a balcony and the theater could hold 1400 people. Like many theaters of that time, it had a Wurlitzer organ that was used at first for silent films and for occasional live shows and during intermissions. 

Of course, it was the location for the traditional senior class’ movie night fundraiser.

When it closed in 1995, it had been redone to have two screens. The building is still there but is now a beauty supply store. 

The Sanford Theatre opened on September 13, 1926 at 1269 Springfield Avenue at the intersection with Sanford Avenue. The theater was in the Spanish Renaissance style, and was originally operated by Fabian Theatres in association with RKO-Stanley Warner Theatres. It was certainly Irvington’s nicest theater and remained in good shape until it closed. Wurlitzer installed their organ opus 1301 (style 235 III/11) for the opening. It was a 1700 seat theatre. By 1941 it was operated by Warner Bros. Circuit Management Corp.

The Sanford Theater closed in the 1970s and the building was demolished in 1987. Home Liquors is on the Sanford Theater location.

The Chancellor Theater at 750 Chancellor Avenue had also been called the Rex theater in the 1930s and pre-war. It had a single screen from its opening until it closed. It held 1141 people.

According to King of Comedy, Jerry Lewis made several live appearances in town during his career including at the Rex and Chancellor, which makes sense since it was his local theater.  He worked briefly there as an usher.  He lived above the nearby Roxy Drug Store. He attended Union Avenue School which is around the corner, and  Irvington High School but left in his sophomore year. He also worked as a “soda jerk” making drinks and sundaes at Gerstein’s Drug store on Chancellor Avenue.  Jerry appeared in 1938 at a Red Cross benefit show at the Rex Theater which was not so different from the vaudeville shows he had been doing with his parents.

The theater was originally operated by RKO until the 1950s when the theater group fell apart. I recall it not having air-conditioning, which was a big draw for theaters in the 1950s and 1960s, so it closed during the summer. It was a successful operation into the 1970s when changing demographics and movie studio booking policies made business more difficult. In the end, it became a bargain theater showing second-run films. The building was demolished.

The Art Cinema at 1077 Springfield Avenue was a small, single-screen theater. It had earlier been known as the Liberty Theater. When it reopened as the Art Cinema (cinema, not theater), it actually did show “art” films in the 1960s. It was the rare place where you could see foreign films by Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, etc.

But apparently, there wasn’t a big market in the Irvington area for art films as the decade ended. The Art Cinema’s final few years found it as a pornographic theater. I actually saw when I was 13 the Truffaut film, Fahrenheit 451 at the Art Cinema. And, in their transitioning years, I saw the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow) in 1968. I didn’t even look 15 but the lady in the box office didn’t seem to care that I was seeing an “artsy porn” film.

The theater closed in the mid-70s and after being left empty for several years, it was (kind of ironically) converted into a senior citizens’ center in 1978.

The Hindenberg Theater at 346 16th Avenue was in a section of Irvington that was mostly German- American. It was across the street from Olympic Park.  When America became involved in WWII, suspicions of anything connected to Germany pushed the owners to change the name of the theater to the Grove International Theater.

It was a small theater that specialized in foreign language films still including a few German films but also catering to the mainly Polish, but also Hungarian, Lithuanian and Czech immigrants who settled in the area in the 1940’s and 50’s. 

The theater closed before our theater-going days. After the theater closed, the building became a branch of the Irvington Public Library System, and in 2015 the building housed the Irvington Neighborhood Improvement Corp.

The Roxy Theater is one that didn’t survive into our lifetimes. I couldn’t find any photos of it or even a location for it, but it opened in September 1928. The only modern mention of it I found online listed it as being “defunct and converted into a mini-mall.” But, like the Olympic Park carousel that lives on in Disneyworld, the Roxy’s Wurlitzer organ has survived in Oregon.

• From Back in the Day