Vintage Times Square / NYPL Digital Archives A week rarely goes by that doesn’t contain the death of somebody who had something to do with movie theaters. Yesterday’s New York Times carried the following headline in its obit section--the part of the paper I almost always read first to learn things about people I never knew existed. “Richard Basciano Dies at 91; Times Square Sultan of Smut.” With a headline like that, even if I hadn’t gone bust in 1976 running the St. George Theatre, a Staten Island movie palace that had some interesting connections to Times Square and porn, I’d still have plunged in to find out about Basciano, a multimillionaire and former boxer, with a pent house directly above his notorious Show World at 42nd and 8th. Basciano was apparently pretty scummy; anybody whose death is confirmed by his lawyer is likely to be. But I digress. It was on a dark and desperate Saturday night in 1976 (how many of our Saturdays were other than that, always on the brink fiscally and in every other way?); I ran down the hill, barely making the 10 o’clock ferry. On the other side of the harbor, I high-tailed it onto the Number 1 (subway), changing at Chambers for the express that would take me to Times Square.
My mission? Carbons for our movie palace’s hopelessly antiquated projectors. We had almost run out of them. Without carbons, no light, without light, no film. They happened to have a supply of carbons at the New Amsterdam, on 42nd Street, home, in the 1920’s, of the Ziegfield Follies. By then the elegant Art Nouveau palace was a soft porn/slasher establishment and getting seedier by the minute. Like other older theaters on Times Square, it hadn’t been converted to Xenon, the technology that had already mostly replaced Carbon Arc.
At that point, the New Amsterdam had less than ten years to go before total darkness settled in, involving the growth of mushrooms in the floorboards and other horrors. But the night I visited it, the lobby seemed glorious, all green and gold, and full of twining tendrils. Emannuelle 2 (light French porn) was on-screen, a movie I confess I wouldn’t have minded stopping to see, except that I had to get back to S.I. and rescue our own screen from darkness. Anyhow, this was Times Square (God only knew what the theater’s patrons were doing in the squalid darkness beneath that verdant dome). A few months earlier, two armed guards had, as a matter of fact, been tied up, shot and killed in the New Amsterdam’s office. It was in that very office that the manager gave me the precious box of carbons, which I paid him for, then stashed them into my backpack, and headed back to the subway and ferry — and distant Staten Island. Only recently, preparing this post, did I learn about the two guards. Glad I didn’t know then.
As I passed out through the lobby, the ghosts of — who knows — Fanny Brice? Florenz Ziegfield? Olive Thomas? and maybe even Basil Rathbone gazed sadly down on me and my backpack and a crew of winos huddled in the corner near a drinking fountain. It had been New York’s largest (1702 seats in 1903) and most opulent live house, once. It would slide much further before Disney and crew resurrected it in 1997. If you want to get a glimpse of some of its sorrier days, there’s a trailer of Vanya on 42nd St. (Louis Malle) which was actually shot at the New Amsterdam before Disney rescued it.
But what does all of this have to do with the death of Richard Basciano, the so-called Sultan of Smut? Nothing, directly. Indirectly, however, there is a connection. He owned a chunk of the porn world that once licked at the edges of the New Amsterdam; it radiated out from the sex shops and peep shows. In the early seventies, when Basciano’s Show World opened, there were more than 150 sex shops in Times Square, and he owned a passel of them.
While I don’t relish Times Square in its current big-box/touristland reincarnation — and while I occasionally miss the three-card-monte hustlers and other wonders of the Broadway pavement — I’m glad the New Amsterdam, the New Victory (formerly the Theatre Republic), the Lyric, the Lyceum and the Hudson still stand, as active houses. Sadly, the Morosco, Helen Hayes, Bijou, Victoria, and Astor kept their dates with a wrecker’s ball in 1982, to make way for the appallingly mediocre Marriott Marquis Hotel. And speaking of real estate, Show World, the flagship of Basciano’s empire (called “the McDonald’s of the whole sex industry”) is open for business; but the ground it stands on is more valuable than what it currently sells, which means its days are probably numbered. So goes Show Biz.
My mission? Carbons for our movie palace’s hopelessly antiquated projectors. We had almost run out of them. Without carbons, no light, without light, no film. They happened to have a supply of carbons at the New Amsterdam, on 42nd Street, home, in the 1920’s, of the Ziegfield Follies. By then the elegant Art Nouveau palace was a soft porn/slasher establishment and getting seedier by the minute. Like other older theaters on Times Square, it hadn’t been converted to Xenon, the technology that had already mostly replaced Carbon Arc.
At that point, the New Amsterdam had less than ten years to go before total darkness settled in, involving the growth of mushrooms in the floorboards and other horrors. But the night I visited it, the lobby seemed glorious, all green and gold, and full of twining tendrils. Emannuelle 2 (light French porn) was on-screen, a movie I confess I wouldn’t have minded stopping to see, except that I had to get back to S.I. and rescue our own screen from darkness. Anyhow, this was Times Square (God only knew what the theater’s patrons were doing in the squalid darkness beneath that verdant dome). A few months earlier, two armed guards had, as a matter of fact, been tied up, shot and killed in the New Amsterdam’s office. It was in that very office that the manager gave me the precious box of carbons, which I paid him for, then stashed them into my backpack, and headed back to the subway and ferry — and distant Staten Island. Only recently, preparing this post, did I learn about the two guards. Glad I didn’t know then.
As I passed out through the lobby, the ghosts of — who knows — Fanny Brice? Florenz Ziegfield? Olive Thomas? and maybe even Basil Rathbone gazed sadly down on me and my backpack and a crew of winos huddled in the corner near a drinking fountain. It had been New York’s largest (1702 seats in 1903) and most opulent live house, once. It would slide much further before Disney and crew resurrected it in 1997. If you want to get a glimpse of some of its sorrier days, there’s a trailer of Vanya on 42nd St. (Louis Malle) which was actually shot at the New Amsterdam before Disney rescued it.
But what does all of this have to do with the death of Richard Basciano, the so-called Sultan of Smut? Nothing, directly. Indirectly, however, there is a connection. He owned a chunk of the porn world that once licked at the edges of the New Amsterdam; it radiated out from the sex shops and peep shows. In the early seventies, when Basciano’s Show World opened, there were more than 150 sex shops in Times Square, and he owned a passel of them.
While I don’t relish Times Square in its current big-box/touristland reincarnation — and while I occasionally miss the three-card-monte hustlers and other wonders of the Broadway pavement — I’m glad the New Amsterdam, the New Victory (formerly the Theatre Republic), the Lyric, the Lyceum and the Hudson still stand, as active houses. Sadly, the Morosco, Helen Hayes, Bijou, Victoria, and Astor kept their dates with a wrecker’s ball in 1982, to make way for the appallingly mediocre Marriott Marquis Hotel. And speaking of real estate, Show World, the flagship of Basciano’s empire (called “the McDonald’s of the whole sex industry”) is open for business; but the ground it stands on is more valuable than what it currently sells, which means its days are probably numbered. So goes Show Biz.
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