In the summer of 1963, on my tenth birthday, I was taken by my parents to see my first Broadway show, “She Loves Me,” and afterwards we walked through Times Square at night, the first time I got to see it in all its glory. What I was most impressed by were the giant billboards for two films set to open the next day, THE GREAT ESCAPE at the DeMille and JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS at the Loew’s State, two films I was eagerly anticipating. I had to wait till they came to the Bronx before I could see them, so when I found out that JASON would open at the Loew’s Paradise on September 4, I made a point of taking a walk on September 3 to find out exactly where the Paradise was (about a half-mile northwest from where I lived) and made plans to see it at the first show.
This is the image used in the billboard I saw advertising JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS.
This is the poster I believe was used on the billboard I saw advertising the movie.
This is an excerpt from an unpublished memoir I did about moviegoing in the Bronx in the 1960s and I’m including it here with only mild tweaks. There was some family history preceding and affecting this trip which explains why I was grounded for three months prior to this and unable to go to the movies (although I got a special dispensation to attend the Broadway show on my birthday). I’m omitting all that, but otherwise here’s an account of my first visit to the Loew’s Paradise and my enthusiastic reaction to JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. It was the beginning of an extraordinary season of moviegoing for me.
“…the next day, Wednesday, September 4, 1963, I set out with the three oldest of my six siblings to walk to the Loew’s Paradise for the very first show. There was actually a line when we got there, since every kid in the neighborhood had the same idea. I remember sitting in the balcony, something I was usually loath to do (I liked to sit close), probably because it was the only place we could find four seats together. The Paradise, which had opened in 1929 and sat nearly 4000 customers, was the first real movie palace I ever went to, with lush décor, huge curtains and ornamental statuary and artwork all around. We looked up at the ceiling and there were paintings of stars and clouds on it. It was a magnificent place in which to see a movie based on a tale from Greek mythology, a subject which had first spurred my interest in the third grade, over a year earlier.
The Loew’s Paradise interior, after a 21st century restoration.
JASON was on a double bill with SIEGE OF THE SAXONS, which played first. It was a low-budget British-made adventure tale set in Arthurian England, but distinguished by an energetic performance by the lead actress, Janette Scott, playing King Arthur’s daughter. She was the only memorable performer in the cast and she was somebody I knew from a film seen earlier in the year, DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS.
JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS was a spectacular film featuring special effects by Ray Harryhausen who’d done the effects for THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and THE THREE WORLDS OF GULLIVER, films I’d seen in theaters four and three years earlier, respectively. (Ironically, SIEGE OF THE SAXONS was directed by Nathan Juran, who’d also directed SEVENTH VOYAGE.) I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty positive I was aware who Harryhausen was at this point and did connect him to the earlier films. JASON was a far cry from the Italian-made mini-spectacles of the time, which relied chiefly on swordplay and muscleman antics from the likes of Hercules, Samson and Goliath tossing around foam rubber boulders and papier maché pillars. JASON was certainly far superior to the two Italian films based on Greek myths I’d seen at the Tremont Theater a year earlier, THE TROJAN HORSE and THE MINOTAUR, neither of which had much to offer in the way of real spectacle or, in the case of THE MINOTAUR, real imagination. I knew what I wanted to see in a film based on Greek mythology and those films hadn’t really delivered. I had yet to see any of the Steve Reeves made-in-Italy Hercules films, although Hercules, as it turned out, was a key character in JASON.
Michael Gwynn (as Hermes), Niall MacGinnis (as Zeus), Honor Blackman (as Hera) watch and listen as Jason (Todd Armstrong) negotiates with them
JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, in contrast to the Italian films, offered one great scene after another based on the more fantastic elements of the tale. It depicted the Gods on Mount Olympus and their role in manipulating human affairs. There was the giant robotic Talos, a bronze creation of the God of Fire, Hephaestus, and its rampage when it comes to life after the chamber of treasures it guards is broken into by two of the Argonauts, Hercules and his clever sidekick, Hylas. There is the attack on the hungry King Phineas by the ravenous winged Harpies and the Argonauts’ successful strategy to snare and trap them in order to gain King Phineas’ help on the voyage to Colchis. There’s the six-headed Hydra which must be slain in order to retrieve the Golden Fleece.
Finally, there’s the film’s most intricate setpiece, the battle with six sword-wielding skeleton warriors summoned out of the ground by King Aeetes of Colchis, after he’s planted the hydra’s teeth. All of these creatures were brought to cinematic life via movable miniature models designed and built by Harryhausen and animated one frame at a time in stop-motion fashion, exactly the same way Willis O’Brien, Harryhausen’s mentor, brought King Kong to life 30 years earlier. I would later learn that the battle with the skeletons took six months for Harryhausen to animate.
One of the key elements in enhancing the film’s drama was the full orchestral score by Bernard Herrmann and its pounding theme music, heavy on the brass and percussion, designed to capture the rhythm and motion of a ship at sea being propelled by a crew of men pulling oars. Herrmann had also scored THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and THE THREE WORLDS OF GULLIVER, the two earlier Harryhausen films I’d seen. He would go on to become my favorite film composer, and while the theme of JASON stayed in my head, I didn’t yet note the composer’s name and he would not become known to me until a TV showing a year or so later of MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, the one other film he’d scored that featured Harryhausen’s effects.
While the cast of JASON was entirely unfamiliar to me, I was impressed by a number of the British character actors, most notably Laurence Naismith as Argus, the shipbuilder; Nigel Green as Hercules; Jack Gwillim as Aeetes; Niall MacGinnis as Zeus; and Honor Blackman as Hera. The American leads, Todd Armstrong as Jason and Nancy Kovack as Medea, were adequate but didn’t quite make the same impression. (I doubt I made the comparison at the time, but Armstrong just wasn’t as effective at fighting animated skeletons as Kerwin Mathews had been in SEVENTH VOYAGE.) Both Armstrong and Kovack had their voices dubbed by British voice artists.
Laurence Naismith as Argus, with the ship’s Hera figurehead behind him and Jason (Todd Armstrong) on the right
John Cairney as Hylas and Nigel Green as Hercules when they first spot Talos
Jack Gwillim as Aeetes, ruler of Colchis and father of Medea
Niall MacGinnis as Zeus
Honor Blackman as Hera
Todd Armstrong as Jason
Nancy Kovack as Medea
I was, however, somewhat disappointed at the time by the ending of the film because it came at about the half-way point in the story, with the Argo leaving Colchis with Jason, Medea and the Golden Fleece headed back to Iolcos, with a whole host of other adventures from The Odyssey awaiting them, but as yet unfilmed. With the original epic so fresh in my mind from reading the various accounts of it in the library, I felt somewhat cheated. I wanted the movie to go on and finish the story. But I understood how adaptations and required movie lengths went and I had to admit the effects captured the splendor of the old myths in a way no other film (or TV show) had yet accomplished and arguably never would until, perhaps, Harryhausen’s final work, CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981). I was not at all disappointed with what I saw, but I left wanting more. Not a bad way to come out of a film.
So I had finally broken out of my immediate neighborhood and discovered a whole new world of theaters waiting for me. I continued to visit the Deluxe and the Fairmount but began making regular trips to the Paradise, with only a handful of trips to the Devon in the next couple of years, but many more thereafter. It was a a few months before I got to see films at the Valentine, the Fordham and the Ascot, but I eventually would, and, before too long, I’d be expanding my horizons to other theaters in the Bronx (and in a couple of years, Manhattan, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).”
And that’s what I wrote about 15 or 16 years ago. I’d like to add some more now about what I saw in theaters that season in the wake of JASON.
In the weeks and months that followed JASON, right up until the end of the year, I was treated to a succession of Hollywood epics as they finally made their way to neighborhood theaters after long runs in Manhattan, including three nominees for Best Picture of 1962, one of which was the winner.
I saw these at the Paradise in September and October:
Lewis Milestone’s MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, starring Marlon Brando:
David Lean’s LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, the 1962 Best Picture Oscar winner, starring Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif and an all-star cast:
And this one at the Deluxe closer to home in early November:
Darryl F. Zanuck’s THE LONGEST DAY, with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and an all-star cast:
And a week later at the Fairmount, the World War II escape drama whose billboard I’d so memorably seen in Times Square three months earlier:
John Sturges’s THE GREAT ESCAPE, starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson and James Coburn
Finally, also at the Deluxe, just a few days before Christmas, I saw a re-release of Anthony Mann’s EL CID, the 1961 spectacle about the war between Moors and Christians in 11th Century Spain, directed by Anthony Mann and starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren.
In between these films, I saw three double bills, which offered one A-comedy and five exemplary B-movies. (I preferred the B-movies.)
A TICKLISH AFFAIR at the Paradise, paired with HOOTENANNY HOOT.
BEACH PARTY, starring Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Robert Cummings and Dorothy Malone, at the Deluxe, paired with Roger Corman’s THE YOUNG RACERS.
Roger Corman’s X – THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, starring Ray Milland, at the Deluxe, paired with Francis Coppola’s first feature, DEMENTIA 13.
Plus, I saw WEST SIDE STORY again, on my first trip to the Devon Theater.
All in all, an exciting moviegoing season for a ten-year-old. The only films in this group I haven’t re-watched in all these years have been SIEGE OF THE SAXONS and HOOTENANNY HOOT, although I’m eager to do so.
JASON, THE LONGEST DAY, and THE GREAT ESCAPE quickly joined WEST SIDE STORY on my short, but growing list of favorite films.
Eight years after seeing JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, I showed it on 16mm film to an audience of playing customers at a church screening when I was in high school.
35 years after seeing first seeing it. I wound up taking my then five-year-old daughter to see JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS at the Film Forum in Manhattan.
Previous blog entries have been devoted to my Bronx moviegoing years and two to Ray Harryhausen, one on his death and one on his centennial. Harryhausen shared a birthday with Bernard Herrmann.
The Loew’s Paradise still stands in its location. It’s being used as a church now.
Brian Camp's Film and Anime Blog 
Great piece Brian