Soviet Movies

In his memoir Is Curly Jewish? Trotskyist activist Paul Jacobs remembered attending screenings of Soviet films at the Cameo Theatre on 14th Street with his friends. They would sit in the balcony cracking sunflower seeds with their teeth, laughing at the more blatant examples of Stalinist propaganda, like fantasy sequences in which an expectant mother dreams of Stalin bouncing her baby on his knee. They laughed softly so that the Stalinists sitting downstairs didn't rush upstairs to start a fight. But, Jacobs added, they thrilled viscerally at some moments of agitprop plays or the films of Eisenstein.

Jacobs memory is a little faulty. The Cameo actually was on Eighth Avenue near 44th Street. The Acme a former vaudeville house, was the theater showing Soviet films on 14th Street near Union Square.; it closed in 1936. By 1946 the Stanley Theater had become the premiere venue for films from the USSR. The Irving on Irving Place north of 14th also showed Soviet movies although it went more for the classics.