Orson Welles Cinema

The Orson Welles Cinema was a movie theater at 1001 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts that operated from 1969 to 1986. Showcasing independents, foreign films and revivals, it became a focal point of the Boston-Cambridge film community.

The Orson Welles Cinema opened April 8, 1969 with Luis Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert, Orson Welles’ The Immortal Story and a midnight movie, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Originally the Esquire Theater in the early 1960s, it became the Orson Welles Cinema under its next owner, folk musician Dean Gitter. It was programmed by then-Harvard Law student Peter Jaszi.

On September 29, 1970, the cinema was raided by Massachusetts State Police for showing Oh! Calcutta! on video. Gitter, Jaszi, and Ted Uzzle, among others, were arrested, and spent the night in the Cambridge jail. The case would later be literally laughed out of court.

When Gitter departed, the new owners were Molly and Ralph Hoagland (previously a co-founder of the CVS Corporation). From 1971 to 1978 the theater was managed and programmed by Larry Jackson, who later held positions with Miramax, Orion Pictures and the Samuel Goldwyn Company. The theater was purchased and managed by Phil Meadow through the early and mid-1980s.

In 1972–73, the Orson Welles Cinema expanded with two smaller screening rooms in addition to the main 400-seat auditorium. Jackson, who worked with Gary Graver and Welles on The Other Side of the Wind, succeeded in getting Welles to visit the cinema named in his honor. Welles and his cameraman Graver used the occasion—the premiere of F For Fake on January 7, 1977—to shoot footage inside the large auditorium for their documentary Filming Othello (1978). In March 2006, Jackson staged a showing of rare footage by Orson Welles in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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