Proctor’s Palace Theatre

Proctor’s Palace Theatre opened in Newark, New Jersey, in November 1915, a $1 million vaudeville house built on a lot so narrow it could hold only one lobby. The architects solved the problem by stacking two theatres on top of each other: 2,800 seats below, 1,400 more on the roof. In 1930 it hosted one of the earliest television experiments, in which the audience watched conductor John Gamble lead the orchestra from a screen while he stood before a scanning disc in a studio miles away, following the music over a telephone line.

By 1966 the house had turned to burlesque, and four performers were fined under a city ordinance after the first show. The theatre closed for good in 1968. Essex County College held classes there while it waited for a campus to be built.

Proctor’s Palace Theatre opened on November 22, 1915, ² presenting vaudeville, that mixture of specialty acts embracing burlesque comedy, song, and dance. It succeeded an earlier venue, Park Place, opened in 1898 by Frederick F. Proctor, ^{3 12} a former acrobat who had risen to command a circuit of his own. ^{13 14}

The new house cost $1 million to complete ² and was designed by John W. Merrow, a nephew of Proctor. ¹ Ten stories rose on a narrow lot near what was then called the fourth busiest corner in the world. ³ The constraints of the site permitted only a single lobby, forty feet in height, hung with murals painted by William de Leftwich Dodge. ¹ Within stood two theatres. Proctor’s Palace seated 2,800 patrons before an orchestra pit and beneath two balcony levels, ^{1 2} while Proctor’s Roof Theatre above it held 1,400. ²

The RKO Years

By 1929, the house showed motion pictures exclusively. ¹ On May 14 of that year, F. F. Proctor, then in failing health, sold his company to the Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corporation. ^{4 15} The sale carried with it the Newark venue, four houses in New York City, and six others across the state. The Newark theatre was thereafter known as RKO Proctor’s Theatre. Proctor himself died of a lung infection on September 4. ⁵

The theatre served as the site of an early television experiment conducted by the General Electric Company and the Radio Corporation of America on May 22, 1930, employing a system devised by Dr. E. F. W. Alexanderson. ⁶ As the audience filed in, they beheld John Gamble, the musical director, leading the orchestra upon a moving screen. The musicians occupied their accustomed places in the pit. Gamble stood before a scanning disc in Alexanderson’s studio several miles distant, conducting by the sound of the orchestra relayed to him over telephone lines.

By 1931, seating in the lower theatre had been reduced to 2,309, a consequence of declining demand and of the poor view of the screen afforded from the upper tiers. ¹

In August 1953, the theatre received an extensive program of renovation and technical improvement. ⁷ A new marquee was raised, the lobby modernized, and a full-stage Miracle Mirror Screen installed, capable of presenting CinemaScope, three-dimensional, widescreen, and conventional pictures alike. A stereophonic sound system was fitted as well.

The upper theatre had long sat idle. In mid-1961 it was rebranded as the Penthouse Cinema and given over almost entirely to foreign films, opening with Ingmar Bergman’s Secrets of Women. ¹

Decline

On November 21, 1966, ¹⁰ Proctor’s closed as a motion picture house and reopened as a burlesque theatre, an experiment its promoters advertised as a cultural renaissance. ⁸ It was the first such venue in Newark since a 1956 ordinance had forbidden disrobing and the giving of the illusion of nudity within the city. The consequences followed the first performance. The show’s producer and four performers were charged with violating the ordinance, with performing lewd dances, and with the use of profane and lascivious language. The charges against the producer were dismissed. The performers were each fined $200, the minimum the law allowed. ⁹

The general decline of Newark, together with the racial tensions and riots of July 1967, drove attendance sharply downward. ^{1 11}

Proctor’s Theatre closed in 1968, when RKO merged with Stanley Warner, proprietor of Newark’s larger and more profitable Branford Theater.

The building found a brief second use. Essex County College occupied it while its new $30 million campus was under construction. ¹¹ An enrollment of 4,700 students had outgrown every space the college held, and classes were scattered wherever room could be found: the theatre, a former twelve-story office building, the Y.M.C.A., and an old medical clinic. The lobby was renovated to serve as a store. ¹