Anco Cinema

The Anco Cinema was a former Broadway theatre turned cinema at 254 West 42nd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues in Manhattan, New York City. It opened in 1904 and was originally named the Lew Fields Theatre. It continued to operate as a playhouse under various names until it was converted into a movie theatre in 1930. Its block was famous for its concentration of Broadway theatres turned cinemas. After World War II, the street declined and the Anco Cinema eventually became a pornography venue. It closed as a cinema in 1988 and was gutted for retail use. The building was demolished in 1997.

In 1903, producer Fred R. Hamlin and producer/director Julian Mitchell had a big Broadway hit with The Wizard of Oz, a musical staging of the L. Frank Baum story, and they had another with Babes in Toyland, a Victor Herbert operetta, later in the year. In 1904, Oscar Hammerstein I announced plans to build his eighth Manhattan theater (after the Harlem and Manhattan opera houses, the Olympia and Victoria music halls, and the Columbus, Olympia and Republic theaters), on vacant land he had recently bought at 254–58 West 42nd Street, calling it the National. It would be designed by Albert E. Westover, a Philadelphia architect who designed several theaters in that city for vaudeville operator B. F. Keith and is credited with Hammerstein's Republic. The same year, comedians Joe Weber and Lew Fields ended their decades-long partnership, giving their final show May 28, at the New Amsterdam Theatre. On May 31, the new partnership of Hamlin, Mitchell, and Fields contracted to lease Hammerstein's (not-yet-built) new house. They announced they would name it for Fields and produce musicals and burlesques.

Their first offering was a new Victor Herbert operetta, It Happened in Nordland, with libretto and lyrics by Glen MacDonough, starring Fields and Marie Cahill, together with a burlesque of The Music Master, a current hit play. The Lew Fields Theatre opened on December 5, 1904, eight days after Hamlin's unexpected death. The show was a hit; the production ran through April 29, 1905, went on a road tour, resumed on August 31 with Blanche Ring instead of Marie Cahill, and closed on November 18, for another tour.

On May 23, 1906, Fields formed a corporation with Lee Shubert of the Shubert Brothers, taking joint possession of the Herald Square Theatre. Fields and Mitchell moved there in August, and the former Lew Fields Theatre was leased by the well-known actor-manager James K. Hackett, who renamed it for himself. The Hackett Theater opened August 27 with a farce imported from London, The Little Stranger, starring Edward Garratt. Its first big success was the seven-month run of The Chorus Lady, starring Rose Stahl, from October 15, 1906, through June 1, 1907. (The play had opened at the Savoy Theatre on September 1.) In the first week of February 1907, Hammerstein sold the theater to Henry B. Harris, the theatrical producer who bought the Hudson Theatre the next year and built the Folies-Bergere in 1911. Hackett retained his lease and the playhouse its name.

Another big success at the Hackett was the Shubert production The Witching Hour, a dramatic play by Augustus Thomas, which played from November 20, 1907, to June 27, 1908, and from August 17, 1908, to September 19, 1908 (when it moved to the West End Theatre on 125th Street). From September 21 through October 10, 1908, Hackett reprised his starring role in The Prisoner of Zenda, which he had first played on February 10, 1896. (In 1913, he starred in the novel's first film adaption, which was produced by Adolph Zukor and was the first production of the Famous Players Film Company.)

In 1911, Hackett's lease expired and Henry B. Harris took over, making major interior and exterior alterations. The New York City government announced the same year that it would widen 42nd Street, requiring that the Lew Fields Theatre's lobby and marquee be modified. Harris named the playhouse the Harris Theatre in honor of his father, William Harris Sr., also a theater owner and producer, and an associate of the Theatrical Syndicate. The Harris opened on August 31 with a new play, Maggie Pepper, again starring Rose Stahl.

Henry B. Harris died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912. His estate operated the theater for the next two and a half years, and September 21, 1914, leased it to Selwyn and Company; i.e., Crosby Gaige and the Selwyn brothers. They mounted several productions at the Harris, the first on October 23: The Salamander, by Owen Johnson (adapted from his book), starring Carroll McComas.

When the Selwyn & Co. lease expired on July 1, 1920, Harris's widow sold the theater to H. H. Frazee, a producer and theater owner and owner of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, who again made renovations and opened the Frazee Theatre with a new play September 7: The Woman of Bronze, starring Margaret Anglin, which ran for 252 performances. Dulcy, a comedy by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, opened on August 13, 1921, made Lynn Fontanne a star, and ran through March 11, 1922.