Another New York City Theatre Is Closing

[Big Magilla]

That may have been the only time I was in the neighborhood. I had a throat doctor I went to in the East 80s, but typically never got above 61st Street on the east side.

[Damien]

Big, Long Day's was indeed the premiere attraction at the theatre. From Bosley Crowther's review of October 10, 1962:

"REGARDLESS how much torment of troubled souls is potentially packed into the dense and combustible words of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night," the final test of this great drama is in how it is presented and played. The actors and, behind them, the director, are the fallible factors.

"Scarcely could this be demonstrated more impressively than it is in the generally stunning motion picture rendering of it that was given its world première last night in the new Loew's Tower East at Third Avenue and 72d Street."
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Little piece of trivia: Art Carney lived in the apartment building that housed the Tower East, and the building used as Holly Golightly's home is just around the corner on 71st Street.

[Big Magilla]

I don't know if it was the first film that played there or not, but I remember seeing Long Day's Journey Into Night at Loew's Tower East in 1962.

[Damien]

It's so many years since I went to a movie on the East Side that I'm a little muddled. Wasn't there a Loews right about there that was a duplex? I know I've seen movies at the Tower East (Panic in Needle Park, Deliverance and Atlantic City are a few I recall), but I had it in my head the main theatre there had been split in two sometime in the 80s. Possibly just a sign my brain's disintegrating.

Tee, you're thinking of the New York Twin, a soul-less cinderblock twin in the basement of a high rise at 2nd and 66th. It's now called the Beekman Twin, named after the great art theatre which was diagonally across from it, and which has been turned into hospital offices.

The first time I went to the Loew's Tower East was to see Jeremiah Johnson. The last was A Fish Called Wanda -- there was gum all over the seat, which I couldn't get off my pants. The theatre was notable for having two separate balconies which were separated by the projection booth.

[Mister Tee]

It's so many years since I went to a movie on the East Side that I'm a little muddled. Wasn't there a Loews right about there that was a duplex? I know I've seen movies at the Tower East (Panic in Needle Park, Deliverance and Atlantic City are a few I recall), but I had it in my head the main theatre there had been split in two sometime in the 80s. Possibly just a sign my brain's disintegrating.

[flipp525]

Disgusting.

[Damien]

AMC Loews 72nd Street, a former showplace and one of Manhattan's few surviving single-screen movie theaters, is reportedly closing after tonight's showing of "Fair Game.'' The closing was first reported at the Cinema Treasures website, which said the owners of the 42-story apartment tower on Third Avenue were buying out the leases of its retail tenants, including the 585-seat theater, which had struggled to fill seats for years. The chain could not be reached for comment, but online ticket sellers list no films playing there beyond tonight's 7 o'clock show.

The tower and the theater, known for decades as Loew's Tower East, opened in 1962 on the site of a former Loews movie palace. Many major studio hits played long runs there from the '60s through the early '90s when new multiplexes began to dominate the Manhattan market. The Tower East became Loews' (the apostophe was dropped in the '70s) last single-screen theater in Manhattan after the closing of the Astor Plaza (now a concert venue known as the Best Buy Theater) in 2004.

The closing comes just a week before the 40th anniversary of one of the most popular movies ever to play the Tower East, "Love Story,'' which generated the around-the-block lines that occured at post World War II movie theaters with miniscule lobbies. The theater's marquee is on the cover of Tony Bennett's album of the same name.

According to Cinema Treasures, the theater space will probably be occupied by a Gristedes supermarket.
The three remaining single-screen theaters in Manhattan are Clearview's Ziegfeld, the Paris, and the UA 85th Street on First Avenue.