HERE’S a painted ad for the Loew’s Woodside Theatre, which is actually still standing on Roosevelt Avenue and 58th Street. In one of the most unusual reuses for a theater, it became the new location of St. Sebastian’s Roman Catholic Church in 1952. Its “bones” as a theater can still be seen if you look carefully, though in mid-2024 it was shrouded in construction netting.
The two titles playing in 1938 were “Everybody Sing,” a vehicle for Judy Garland the year before “The Wizard of Oz” made her a household name. The musical also starred Fanny Brice, who inspired Broadway’s “Funny Girl,” and Allan Jones, who cut his biggest hit, “The Donkey Serenade,” the day his son Jack was born. Jack Jones racked up several top 30s in the 1960s in an easy listening mode, and was the voice of the “Love Boat” theme. It was paired, oddly, with “Mayerling,” a historical drama starring Charles Boyer as Archduke Rudolph of Austria, who killed himself and his mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera, at Mayerling, Austria during the runup to World War I.
This billboard ad was likely located on Laurel Hill Boulevard, which was soon to have the Queens Midtown Expressway constructed on it as a feeder road to the Queens Midtown Tunnel that opened in 1940.
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5/28/24