AN OLD-TIME MOVIE PALACEIS ENCHANTING FILM AGAIN

By Christine V. Baird, Star-Ledger Staff

Monday, January 27, 2003

When movie fans of the 1930s and 1940s streamed from the grit of Jersey City's Journal Square through the Loew's Jersey's gleaming brass doors, it wasn't just Bing Crosby's crooning or Cary Grant's charisma that transported them to another world: It was the movie palace itself.

Billed as the "most lavish temple of entertainment in New Jersey"-- with marble columns soaring to gold-drenched ceilings and Czechoslovakian-crystal chandeliers warming wall-to-wall tapestries and red velvet seats -- it was deemed "opulence unbound" by its architect. But, he was quick to note, "opulence with a purpose."

That purpose, clear to the movie moguls who commissioned hundreds of similar theaters in the 1920s, was to make the common man feel special.

It was like "'Yeah, you're somebody,'" said Colin Egan, a founding member of Friends of the Loew's, the not-for-profit organization restoring the once-shuttered theater.

His group hopes to take that notion one step further: By restoring the Loew's to its former magnificence, it wants to give Journal Square, a section of Jersey City largely untouched by downtown's renaissance, the same self-image boost.

Nationwide about 1,500 of the roughly 7,500 remaining old-time vaudeville houses and cinemas have been restored in a trend that has been building since the 1970s, when Carnegie Hall was saved, according to the League of Historic American Theatres. But progress on the Loews, or "Low-ees" as locals once called it, lagged.

"We were latecomers -- Jersey City has an ingrained self-doubt," said Egan, who begged for the theater's life at a city council meeting over 15 years ago. The prevailing attitude, he said, was, "Who will come? We have New York City across the river. No one will come."

But the theater had its believers, including Helene Stapinski, a Jersey City native and former Jersey Journal columnist who championed the effort. In her memoir "Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History," she writes: "Whatever decade it was, when you went to the Loew's, you felt special. It inspired you, unlike any other place in Jersey City."

In fact the nearly 3,100-seat theater, which opened just before the Wall Street crash of 1929, spanned more decades than most movie houses. Converted to a triplex in 1974, it continued to show first-run films until it was sold to a developer and closed in 1986. Its final feature: an installment of "Friday the 13th."

To stop demolition, some residents convinced the city that it was losing a treasure. There were petitions, meetings, fund-raisers, and, ultimately, success: In 1993, Jersey City took title to the building. With help from the city, the state and private donations, over $2 million was raised.

Friends of the Loew's hopes to finalize plans with the city this year to become the official fund-raising and management arm of the theater. Meanwhile, as restoration continues, the Loew's just completed its first full year of programming. Today, beneath a restored mechanical clock depicting St. George slaying the dragon -- a timepiece that tickled generations of Journal Square shoppers -- the marquee touts film festivals.

Past offerings included "Classic Comedy" weekend featuring films of Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello, and the "Halloween Horror Spooktacular" featuring new prints of "Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman" and "King Kong."

As if it were yesterday, the crowds came. "This brings back memories of what movies used to be like when I was a kid," said Luis Laplume as he settled in one of the theater's original seats -- de-gummed and spiffed up -- to watch Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest" during the MGM Classics weekend in September. There was Cary Grant outrunning the crop duster on the new 50-foot screen.

This weekend, Hitchcock returns with screenings of "Psycho," "Saboteur" and a 40th anniversary salute to "The Birds." In addition to movies, musical performers such as Patti La Belle and a host of community troupes have trod the boards where Judy Garland sang and Buddy Ebsen hoofed. Movie palaces like the Loew's had stages, dressing rooms and orchestra pits for the vaudeville shows that shared the bill with motion pictures.

Once again at the Loew's, the original 1929 lighting illuminates the stage, the orchestra lift rises and falls for the first time in half a century, and music emanates from the "Wonder Morton" theater pipe organ, a twin of the theater's original, which once accompanied silent pictures at the Loew's Paradise in the Bronx. It is being restored by the Garden State Theatre Organ Society.

"Now this theater has begun its life as an arts center," said Pattie Giordan, Friends of the Loew's president. A production of "The Vagina Monologues" will be staged on Feb. 8.

But movies will always come first. "Classic films will be its signature," said Egan, who currently runs the theater for the Jersey City Economic Development Corp. "We completely rebuilt the projection booth, which when we got here was a pigeon coop."

Two modern projectors as well as a 1929 Vitaphone sound-on-disk projector were installed, and an Oscar-winning sound engineer restored the film sound system. "We offer audiences the best prints we can, in the best condition possible in the original format," Egan said.

Recently showcased in their original formats were the only surviving 35mm Supercinecolor print of Abbott and Costello's "Jack and the Beanstalk," 35mm Casper cartoons, and, for the first time in over 30 years in the metropolitan area, "The Horror of Dracula" in its original Technicolor print, the most vividly bloody version around.

Sound treats have included the presentation of "Forbidden Planet" in its original Perspecta sound format, something few theaters today can offer.

When it comes to atmosphere, it doesn't get much better than the Loew's. "The building would not look out of place in Paris or Venice -- every surface was ornamented," said Egan. And every surface was gunked. "The first job was just to get the grime out," including nicotine, popcorn grease and petrified bubble gum, he said.

Each weekend, volunteers do the ongoing restoration work, having made more than $1 million worth of repairs using supplies bought with donations. "We've learned new trades," said volunteer Evelyn Poliseno.

At showtime, they're concessionaires and custodians, too. "It's the selling the popcorn, then the cleaning up of the popcorn," said Joy Jaworowski, but she doesn't mind. "I saw the theater in its decline, and I said, 'I gotta do something about it.'"

The Loew's was always a place to dream big. Legend has it that one teen, who'd hopped the PATH train over from Hoboken in 1933, settled in as the lights dimmed to watch Bing Crosby take the stage. The performance convinced the kid, a crooner himself, that he could do better.

Frank Sinatra walked back out onto Journal Square that day, a man with a mission.

The Hitchcock Festival takes place Friday and Saturday at the Loew's Theatre, 54 Journal Square in Jersey City. "Psycho" (1960) screens Friday at 8 p.m.; "Saboteur" (1942), Saturday at 4 p.m.; and "The Birds" (1963), Saturday at 8 p.m. Contact Friends of the Loew's Inc. at (201) 798-6055 or go to www.loewsjersey.org

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