There were four great movie theaters in my Jackson Heights of yesteryear: The Earle, Colony, Jackson, and Boulevard. Each one of them had a distinct personality, and all of them figured in to
the way we grew up. The Earle was a perfect little art deco jewel box. It had the worst concession stand of the four, but it was only two blocks away from where I lived. On Summer Saturdays in the 1940s and 50s, the Earle and the Jackson and the Boulevard had kiddy matinees and for a quarter you got to see 15 color cartoons, a chapter of a serial, and a double feature that was likely to be a low budget western and a pirate picture. We kids were penned up in a kiddy section ruled by a grim, flashlight bearing matron in a nurse's costume. We could make all the noise we wanted, but running around and throwing things at the screen was out. The Boulevard was the most opulent of the neighborhood movie palaces. It was built in 1926 and was the only movie house that could double as a legitimate theater. Bela Lugosi played Count Dracula live on stage at the Boulevard. In the 1950s, it was the theater that ran most of the great horror and science fiction films such as The Curse of Frankenstein, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and The House On Haunted Hill. It was also the place to take your girl on a Saturday night because it had the best balcony for making out. The Jackson was a fine, big theater with a good concession stand and arena-like seating. I will always remember that it had a handsome bronze statue of Caesar Augustus in it's lobby. I saw The Third Man there, which remains my favorite movie to this day. The Colony on 82nd Street was tiny -- a little art house by today's standards. It had big framed blowups of movie stars like Clark Gable, and it was the theater we went to the least. I saw Gone With The Wind there in revival. The movie theaters in Jackson Heights witnessed our progressions from children, to teenagers, to young adults. They provided the darkness for the metamorphoses to occur, and I am grateful that they were were a backdrop for our transformations. What are your memories of these marvelous picture palaces?