The RKO Boston Theatre was a movie theatre in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

, located at 616 Washington Street, near Essex Street in the

Boston Theater District The Boston Theater District is the center of Boston's theater scene. Many of its theaters are on Washington Street, Tremont Street, Boylston Street, and Huntington Avenue. History Plays were banned in Boston by the Puritans until 1792. Bost ...

. It opened as the Keith-Albee Boston Theatre on October 5, 1925.

History

The building had originally housed the Henry Siegel Co. department store. The theater section was designed by

Thomas W. Lamb Thomas White Lamb (May 5, 1870 – February 26, 1942) was a Scottish-born, American architect. He was one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas of the 20th century. Career Born in Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom, Thomas W. Lamb ca ...

Anthony J. Yudis. "Lafayette Place inspires revitalization; 5 old buildings in lower Washington Street marked for rehabilitation." Boston Globe, November 28, 1982 as part the

Keith-Albee-Orpheum The Keith-Albee-Orpheum Corporation was the owner of a chain of vaudeville and motion picture theatres. It was formed by the merger of the holdings of Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Franklin Albee II and Martin Beck (vaudeville), Martin Beck's ...

chain of vaudeville theatres. Keith-Albee-Orpheum became part of

RKO Pictures RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, is an American film production and distribution company, historically one of the major film studios, "Big Five" film studios of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood's Clas ...

in 1928, leading to the theater's renaming. During this time it featured film,

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and ...

concerts, and variety theatre performances. Musicians

Benny Goodman Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American clarinetist and bandleader, known as the "King of Swing". His orchestra did well commercially. From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing bi ...

Tommy Dorsey Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. (November 19, 1905 – November 26, 1956) was an American jazz trombone, trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the big band era. He was known as the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing" because of his smooth-to ...

Glenn Miller Alton Glen "Glenn" Miller (March 1, 1904 – December 15, 1944) was an American big band conductor, arranger, composer, trombonist, and recording artist before and during World War II, when he was an officer in the United States Army Air Forces ...

and others frequently played the theater. A typical show would be preceded by a Class

B movie A B movie, or B film, is a type of cheap, low-budget commercial motion picture. Originally, during the Classical Hollywood cinema, Golden Age of Hollywood, this term specifically referred to films meant to be shown as the lesser-known second ...

newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news, news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a Movie theater, cinema, newsreels were a source of cu ...

and coming attractions. Later, it was used for major event pictures using the latest technologies, such as

Cinerama Cinerama is a widescreen process that originally projected images simultaneously from three synchronized 35 mm movie film, 35mm projectors onto a huge, deeply curved screen, Subtended angle, subtending 146-degrees of arc. The trademarked pr ...

.After the RKO-Boston closed, "Cinerama came in Christmas week of 1953 and stayed until around 1969." (CinemaTreasures.org
RKO Boston Theatre
614 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02111. Retrieved March 6, 2012) By the 1970s the theatre was multiplexed, and was called "The Essex", an exploitation movie house.()

References

External links

* Flickr
Milton Berle, Jolly Gillette (Eileen Barton), Al Frazzini, Nat Madison, RKO-Boston Theatre
September 23, 1937. * Library of Congress
Drawing of Keith Albee New Bijou Theatre
Washington and Essex Streets, Boston, Massachusetts, 1927 (later the RKO-Boston) * Flickr
RKO Keith-Boston Theatre
Boston, MA - 1933 * Flickr
RKO Keith-Boston Theatre
Boston, MA - 1935 * Flickr
RKO Keith Boston
614 Washington Street, Boston, MA, 1944 * Flickr
Cinerama matchbook
ca.1950s (formerly the RKO-Boston) * Bostonian Society: *
Postcard of Washington Street
ca. 1930-1945, showing sign "RKO Keith Boston" *
Photo of 580-594 Washington Street
ca. 1958 (Cinerama at right; formerly the RKO-Boston) {{coord, 42, 21, 9.06, N, 71, 3, 45.27, W, type:landmark_region:US-MA, display=title 1925 establishments in Massachusetts 1970s disestablishments Cultural history of Boston 20th century in Boston Boston Theater District Former theatres in Boston Former cinemas and movie theaters in Boston Music venues in Boston

History

References

Further reading

External links