Before
I was a teenager--back in the ice age--on Sundays, if/when my father
was in town, we would go to the Paradise Theatre on the Grand Concourse
and afterwards either go to Krum's for ice cream or a Chinese restaurant
on Fordham Road for dinner.

The
Paradise theatre was known as a movie palace which was part of the
Loew's chain. It was one of the largest movie theatres built in the
United States in a very ornate manner. The one thing I still remember 70
years later was the ceiling which duplicated an evening sky with moving
stars and clouds.

The
huge balcony was for smoking and for couples wanting 'to make out'!
Unlike movie theatres today, for the price of admission you saw an 'A'
movie and a 'B' movie, usually by either M-G-M or Paramount, separated
by a cartoon, a newsreel, coming attractions and, sometimes, a short
film. I would like to say all for 25 cents but I honestly don't remember
how much movies cost in the 40s and 50s.

Some of the following is from wikipedia and google to give you an idea what Paradise was like.

"On top of the frontage, over the entrance, is the space originally occupied by a mechanical Seth Thomas clock, where hourly St. George slayed a fire-breathing dragon. As the Bronx Paradise fell foul to
vandals in later years, the figure of St. George was stolen."
"The theater's architect, John Eberson , was famed for creating the Atmospheric theater design which recreated
the illusion of an outdoor villa courtyard under a night sky"
"The
main lobby, reached through a set of bronze doors from the outer lobby,
features three domes in the ceiling containing painted murals depicting
Sound, Story and Film . In the center of the north wall, beneath a statue of Winged Victory , was a large Carrara marble fountain featuring the figure of a child on a dolphin. At the base of the Grand Stair hung an oil painting of Marie Antoinette as Patron of the Arts and a copy of artist Holbein 's Anne of Cleves ."
"The
auditorium was designed to represent 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 and busts lined the walls. The safety curtain was
painted with a gated Venetian garden scene, which continued the garden
effect around the auditorium when it was lowered."
In my own
neighborhood, Pelham Parkway, we had the RKO Pelham which mainly showed
films produced by RKO and 20th-Century Fox and the Globe theatre which
had second runs of all the movie productions. As a rule they would
change features on Monday and Wednesday and there were many days I would
run from school to catch 3 PM showings, if I remember correctly, before
the admission price went up.
I don't know how many movies I saw
back then but I do know there are very few films mentioned today that I
am not able to reference back to the Paradise, RKO Pelham or Globe. This
was before television entered the playing field and, even after it did,
I still, and still do, preferred the movie theatres.
People will
ask me to mention my favorite films and after I have said 100 of them I
am still saying more. How do you pick one, or even ten, favorite films
after you have seen thousands of them?

The
only other two theatres--also 'palaces'--that impressed me over the
past 70 years  were Grauman's Egyptian and Chinese theatres on Hollywood
Boulevard in Hollywood, California, until last Friday when I went to
the Regal theatre on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Florida.

(to be continued)

*************************************************

FROM MARIA'S BOOK

"LIVE ALL YOU CAN: IT'S A MISTAKE NOT TO.

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU DO IN PARTICULAR,

SO LONG AS YOU HAVE HAD YOUR LIFE.

IF YOU HAVEN'T HAD THAT,

WHAT HAVE YOU HAD?"

HENRY JAMES, 1843-1916  AMERICAN NOVELIST