Astor Theatre
 Astor Theatre in 1936 | |
| Address |
1537 Broadway Manhattan, New York City United States |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 40°45′29″N 73°59′08″W / 40.758001°N 73.98564°WCoordinates: 40°45′29″N 73°59′08″W / 40.758001°N 73.98564°W |
| Type | Broadway |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 1906 |
| Closed | 1972 |
| Demolished | 1982 |
| Years active |
1906-25 (live theater) 1925-72 (movie theater) |
| Architect | George Keister |
The Astor Theatre was a Broadway theatre from 1906 to 1925. It was located at 1537 Broadway, at West 45th Street and designed by architect George W. Keister. It was first managed by Lincoln A. Wagenhals and Collin Kemper, then by George M. Cohan and Sam Harris, and later by the Shuberts. From 1925 to 1972 it was a movie theatre. The Astor was demolished in 1982 to make way for the Marriott Marquis Hotel.
Among the plays that debuted at the Astor were Cohan's Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913) and Why Marry? (1917) by Jesse Lynch Williams, the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Big Parade (1925) was the first film shown after Loew's Incorporated converted it to a movie house. Other films to make their Times Square debuts at the Astor included Grand Hotel (1932), The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Gone With the Wind (1939) for MGM; and Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) and The Beatles in A Hard Day's Night (1964) for United Artists.
Notes
Media related to Astor Theatre at Wikimedia Commons- Astor Theatre at the Internet Broadway Database
- Morrison, Andrew Craig. Theaters, (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), ISBN 0-393-73108-1, "Astor Theatre, 1537 Broadway, New York, New York", photographs 4-039, 4-040, and 4-041, pp. 157-158. Preview online at Google Books.
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