Autumn Years Fall 2023

tioned in a 1928 newspaper blurb; but nothing else is known. Hackensack, home to the county’s first known movie showings, has been home to more theaters over the years than any other town, with 11 in all. In 1910, the Royal Theatre opened on Main

Criterion Theatre, Rutherford.

The Hasbrouck Heights Theater opened around 1912 and was renamed Strand Theater in 1923. Nicknamed “The Monkey House” (for reasons un known), it closed by 1935 (likely because local Blue Laws prevented Sunday show ings). In Ramsey, The Superba Theatre was opened in 1918 and would continue under different names for 102 years (more about this theater in Part II). The Fort Lee Theatre was constructed in 1919 (the second theater in town) and became the Fort Lee VFW hall in 1951. Carlstadt’s second theater, the City The atre , opened on Hackensack Street in 1916; in 1923, a man died of a heart attack while watching a movie. It is unknown what film was being shown, but movie goers were known to react strongly to what they saw on the screen. Perhaps the man’s heart attack was prompted by the terrifying antics of Harold Lloyd in Safe ty Last!, where Lloyd is shown clutching the hands of a large clock as he dangles from the outside of a skyscraper above moving traffic in the 1923 classic. In Bergenfield, it is unknown when the original Palace Theatre was built by the owners of the Casino Theatre in Dumont. However, it existed in 1918, the year the Dumont and Bergenfield War Camp Community Service committees hosted 200 soldiers from Camp Merritt

at the theater. The event featured movies, refreshments, and a dance. At this time, some theaters used folding chairs, so the building could have multiple uses. This first Palace Theatre was torn down in 1928 to build the second Palace Theater on the same site (that theater building will be covered in Part II). Very little is known about some of the county’s other early theaters. In New Milford, the Park Theater stood on the corner of River Road and Center Street. Owned by George Mack, it was sold in 1928 and a restaurant opened there. No photos or descriptions of the building are known to exist. A photo exists of the Venture Theater that opened in 1915 in Northvale, and the theater was men

Street in a former grocery store, and it closed in 1921. On Anderson Street, the Crown Theatre opened in 1912, was renamed the Empire Theatre and was sold in 1918 (becoming an auto garage). The third Casino Theatre in the county opened on Hudson Street in Hackensack in 1913. The reputation of that theater was possibly tarnished when a benefit

Palace Theatre, Bergenfield.

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AUTUMN YEARS I FALL 2023