Do you find the modern-day multiplex too sterile for your taste? Picture yourself at the Loew’s Paradise, considered the Taj Mahal of movie and stage show theaters, when it opened in the Bronx in 1929 at a cost of $4 million (equivalent to $57.7 million today). The 4,000 patrons entered this veritable palace under a Seth Thomas mechanical clock, where St. George slew a fire-breathing dragon each time the hour chimed. The lobby looked like an Italian palazzo with marble pillars, a goldfish pool, a marble fountain with the figure of a child on a dolphin, tapestries, and three domes with murals depicting Sound, Story, and Film. At the base of the carpeted staircase, one passed beneath an oil painting of Marie Antoinette as the Patron of the Arts. Inside the auditorium the aura was a 16th century Italian Baroque garden bathed in Mediterranean moonlight with stars twinkling in the ceiling as clouds passed by, hanging vines, cypress trees, stuffed birds, and classical statues. The theater opened with a screening of The Mysterious Dr. Fu-Manchu, accompanied by live music played on a Robert Morton “Wonder Organ.” Loew’s theater features prominently in my WWII-era story-in-progress, “Orphan Camp” (see STORIES and my blog post on 01/29/18). Now hush. The velvet curtain, a Venetian garden scene, is going up.
