The Orson Welles Cinema opened its doors on April 8, 1969. Fire closed the theater on May 24, 1986.
Ushered in with a candle-lit parade and lost 17 years later in a smokey blaze, the Orson Welles Cinema, one of Boston’s most fabled movie houses, opened its doors 50 years ago this week.
Film lovers carrying candles and sparklers paraded along Mass Avenue from Harvard Square to 1001 Mass Ave. in Cambridge, where the old Esquire Theatre was christened the Orson Welles Cinema on April 8, 1969.
The theater’s initial offerings were Luis Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert; Welles’ most recent offering, The Immortal Story; and a midnight showing of Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Its first house manager was future Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones, then a student at nearby Harvard.
“The Welles was a dynamic cultural center in the Boston/Cambridge area, consisting of three screens, two restaurants, three bars and a film school. It was a magnetic gathering place for audiences and filmmakers, who were deeply moved by the exciting movements and talents of that era of the 1970s to see and discuss and exchange,” said Larry Jackson of Amherst, who managed and programmed the theater from 1971 to 1978.
Jackson was also a production manager and cast member on the Welles-directed movie The Other Side of the Wind, which was shot during the 1970s. In the years that followed, Jackson worked with Welles on several other projects, and later was an executive for Samuel Goldwyn Company, Orion Pictures, and Miramax.
He has fond memories of the Orson Welles Cinema.
“It wasn’t only about the films that you could not see elsewhere, different from the Top 10 art house hits commonly available, but many cutting edge discoveries and experimental programs,” Jackson recalled. “We figured out how to orient the orphaned Jamaican film The Harder They Come, basically introducing reggae to the American audience, and it ran for six years! Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff both publicly credited the Welles with making them stars in America. Stephen King wrote about the theater in three of his books.”
He has noted that what made the theater unique was that it ran retrospectives with unusual themes. It dug into the archives and revived films not normally seen and brought in directors like Nicholas Ray, Francois Truffaut and others.
“The Orson Welles was not merely a destination for all things film, a rarity at the time, but it became a place of community,” Daly has said. “You could go to the Welles, learn how to make a film, see a film, find resources for a film, and then go sit and eat while talking nothing but film with people who also had a love of film.”
Welles’ visited the theater that bore his name in January 1977 as part of a Boston visit organized by Jackson. His Filming Othello was partially shot at the Orson Welles Cinema and his essay film F for Fake had its U.S. premiere there.
Sadly, it all came to an end when a fire broke out in the lobby on May 24, 1986.
The theater staff safely evacuated 60 patrons from the three-screen complex.
Manager Bill White told the Associated Press at the time that the oil in the popcorn maker in the lobby apparently caught fire. He said he quickly reached for a fire extinguisher, but ”by the time I got over there, it was out of control.”
When firefighters arrived, heavy smoke had already filled the building and the entire first floor was engulfed. “When we arrived, there was a thick plume of black smoke about eight blocks long,” Cambridge Fire Department Investigator Edward J. Fowler told United Press International.‘
The theater’s lease was cancelled in early 1987 after the landlord determined the damage was too great.
Investigators concluded the fire was caused by faulty wiring in the popcorn popper. However, a conservative Catholic group claimed that God had destroyed the theater for daring to show Jean Luc Goddard’s controversial film Hail Mary six months earlier.
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