Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1919 - Feb 1920)

28 "East Side, West Side, All Around the Town" In Chatham Square we found Chinatown's own theater. lieve that, by attending the show, you could gather enough underworld knowledge to become a Broadway playwright. For the posters promise to "tell all" about the white-slave traffic, the drug traffic and the perils of Chinatown. One theater advertised a "vice expose" by posters showing District Attorney Whitman and his staff at work. It revived memories of the Becker case. But Whitman now is not only ex-district attorney, but ex-governor. Inside, the pictures are quite as harmless as the ones shown in the penny arcades. In being juggled about for years, they have lost their plots. The audiences wait for something to happen that will live up to the posters, and then pass out apathetically to try their luck once more at the penny arcade. Charles Chaplin is the comic spirit of Fourteenth Street. He is on every program. As Aunt Elizabeth said, if he appears in all those pictures he is certainly earning his salary. No day is complete without him. No exhibitor dares not to show his pictures. Two rival theaters vie to see which can print his name in largest letters. The films are dragged from the dim distance of Chaplin's past. We find Charlie in the Park, Charlie at the Beach, Charlie the Paperhanger, Charlie the Policeman. His adventures are epic and in many canticles, like those of Ulysses or Elsie Dinsmore. But I couldn't let Aunt Elizabeth go back home with a false impression of New York, gleaned only from Fourteenth Street. And so I took her to the Academy of Music. "Surely," she said, "this is not the famous old Academy of Music Avhere Clara Louise Kellogg used to sing?" "It is," I said. "That was when Fourteenth Street and Irving Place was the musical center of New York. Steinway Hall is just up the street and Luchow's restaurant, which wasn't a concert hall, but which was important in musical life, is just across the street." "I remember hearing," Aunt Elizabeth went on, "about the time that King Edward had a public reception there when he was the Prince of Wales. And now his grandson has been over here. When Lord Rengfrew came to the Academy of Music the floor caved in." "They've fixed it now." I assured her. And so the Academy is no ordinary theater. Aunt Elizabeth had to admit that it was more interesting than the Bijou Dream. It was once as brilliant as the Metropolitan Opera House and, although it is old now, it is not shabby. The acoustics are said to be the best in New York. Acoustics do not matter much when the drama is silent. But still, you can hear the hero fall for Theda Bara in all parts of the building. Once I met Miss Bara on a "personal visit" to the Academy and I wondered if Clara Louise Kellogg ever received such an ovation. All the amateur "vamps" in the neighborhood came to pay her tribute. I have an idea that the Academy is William Fox's favorite theater. Like most The staid father was the only person who took the plot seriously. men who came up from New York's East Side, he is loyal. Certainly he gives the Academy patrons the best. For one admission, you may see a double show. The orchestra is large and the theater is managed on "uptown" lines. And its big electric sign shines a 1 1 up and down Fou rt e e n t h Street. It is quite the glory of the neighborhood. "Surely," said Aunt Elizabeth, "this can't be a typical East Side theater !" And so I took her to see another picture palace with a past — the New Atlantic Garden on the Bowery near Canal Street. It is a large, old-fashioned building that looks more like a film "location" than a film theater. "The £.rQwery Theater, next door, is where Edwin Booth played." I explained, as we entered. "In fact, both the elder and the younger Bootn played there." The New Atlantic Garao*, recently converted into motion pictures, is now almost as luxurious as the Academy of Music. Aunt Elizabeth was thrilled to hear that it had not always been respectable. After its first days of glory it was converted into a German beer garden. All that is left now of the "garden" is one lone tree, retained by the management out of sentiment. Then when Canal Street ceased to be a German residential neighborhood the theater was taken over by various boxing and sporting clubs. And they do say it was a very dark and sinister place. On the day that Aunt Elizabeth and I made our visit, the New Atlantic Garden was showing Tom Moore in "One of the Finest." The Bowery audience watched the exploits of the policeman-hero of the story without a tremor. Once in its history, even a celluloid "cop"