So this is a notebook about the childhood theaters that fostered my love of going to the movies. They’re partially responsible for my desire to become a film critic; the endless amount of movie reviews I read growing up were all based on contemporaneous movies I needed to see.
In fact, this job puts me in a movie theater or screening room seat three or four times a week, on average. That’s a helluva lot of Nicole Kidman and her evil AMC ad. (Just kidding — they don’t show it at critic screenings.)
Think about the favorite cinemas of your youth as you travel back in time with me.
I grew up in Jersey City, N.J. — Chilltown JC we called it — just across the river from Manhattan. Though I was occasionally taken to a theater in Times Square — for example, I saw 1976’s “King Kong” and “Car Wash” on “The Deuce” — most of my childhood and early adolescent moviegoing was done in my hometown. Until the mid-1970s, we had five working movie theaters. Two of them still stand today, though neither serves its original purpose.
One of the defunct movie palaces, The Pix in McGinley Square, was where I was introduced to Carrie White, Pam Grier, and Bruce Lee. After closing, it became a roller skating rink before devolving into a 99-cent store. (My adventures in the era of roller disco is a notebook for another time.)
Despite the Paramount Decree (the 1948 legal decision that made it illegal for movie studios to own theaters), three of our theaters were still named after studios. They were all located in Journal Square. There was the RKO Stanley, which is now a Jehovah’s Witness Assembly Hall; the United Artists State, which fell into disrepair after closing, then collapsed into the A&P next door (no one was seriously hurt); and the Loew’s Jersey, which is about to reopen as a concert venue after decades of battles over its status. The Loew’s was named after Marcus Loew, the guy who formed MGM and the Loew’s theater chain itself.
Oddly enough, I don’t recall any MGM movies playing at the Loew’s in my youth. (Each theater played a specific studio’s movies, so I can tell you where a movie played solely by its distributor.) MGM movies played at General Cinema’s Hudson Mall Twin, which was on Route 440. That same road also had the Roosevelt Drive-In, where I saw “Grease.” If you’re old enough to remember General Cinema (they had a theater in Framingham), you’re hearing their onscreen logo’s music right now.
Jersey City moms and dads would drop their kids off at this theater while they browsed the mall. I saw “Poltergeist” there, as well as “Jaws,” “Alien,” and “The Color Purple.” Once, my cousin and I convinced my mother to buy us tickets to “Porky’s.” I told her the R rating was for cursing. Considering my mother is rated NC-45 for profanity, she had no leg to stand on. Despite the rules dictated by the MPAA, she did not accompany us, thank goodness.
Forty-five years later, I’m still hoping my mother will never see “Porky’s.” But the last movie I saw with my parents in a theater, 1988’s “Midnight Run,” played at the Hudson Mall Cinema. I was 18.
What I remember most about the Loew’s Jersey was that the biggest theater resembled Radio City Music Hall with the art deco design around the main theater’s screen. That’s because both movie palaces were built in the same era. I saw one movie there when it was the single screen theater of its heyday; everything else I saw when it became a triplex. There, I was introduced to Jason Voorhees, all the classic Disney full-length animated movies, an alien named E.T., “The Warriors,” “Flashdance,” and 3-D.
The best moviegoing experience I ever had, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” was at the Loew’s in 1981. The first date I ever went on was at the Loew’s when I was 13, and for the life of me, I can’t remember what we saw. It was a really bad date, by the way, which is why I still avoid movie dates to this day.
We “Chilltown JC” kids called the theater “the Low-ees,” which admittedly is wrong. Their famous jingle rhymed “Loew” with “show.” But to hell with being correct! Barbra Streisand called the famous Times Square theater “the Low-ees State” in the audiobook of her memoir. If it’s good enough for Babs, it’s good enough for me.
As for the UA State, my mother took me to an R-rated movie there that really WAS rated R for cursing: Billy Wilder’s atrocious 1981 film, “Buddy Buddy.” (Mom loved Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.) That I still consider Wilder my favorite director after that introduction proves just how great a filmmaker he was.
The State was the rowdiest of our theaters, and the closest we had to a Times Square grindhouse despite it being a triplex, then a quad, in my youth. So it makes sense that, as a teen, I saw every gorefest Italian zombie movie, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and the boring as hell unrated Bo Derek softcore porn movie “Bolero” there.
I also saw every Spike Lee Joint up to “Do the Right Thing” at the State. But the theater holds a most important cinematic milestone for me, because it’s where I snuck into my first R-rated movie, 1980’s “The Blues Brothers.” I was 10, and it kickstarted a career of sneaking into R-rated movies whenever I could.
If I were being truly honest, I’d admit that my love of going to the movies blossomed the day I first tasted the forbidden fruit of sneaking into an R-rated movie.
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe’s film critic.