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The Lens: Theater stars in Amsterdam

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 13, 2009 - The highlight of my recent trip to Amsterdam was seeing "Up" at the Tuchinski Theater. Disney's "Up" was charming, especially with an old man as hero. However, the real star was my true purpose in buying tickets for 13 Euros ($22!) each: the Tuschinski Theater itself.

The theater is the creation of Abraham Tuschinski, a poor self-taught tailor, a Polish Jew who was on his way to America in 1903 when -- according to legend -- he stopped in Rotterdam and fell in love with the movies. In 1911, he built a chain of four movie houses in Rotterdam, followed by a movie palace, the Grand Theater, in 1928. Though he continued to run his businesses in Rotterdam, he and his brothers moved to Amsterdam in 1917. There, in 1921, he built his crowning achievement, the Tuschinski Theater, meticulously restored in 2001-02. No matter what movie is playing in the main auditorium, the Tuschinski is a must when visiting Amsterdam.

Tuschinski and architects Christiaan Bartels and Hyman Louis De Jong must have had great fun designing the movie palace. Though predominantly Art Deco, the Tuschinski includes touches of Gothic, Moorish, Indian, Chinese and Japanese. Tuschinski said he wanted to build a theater where everyone could feel like a king or a queen. He did. The Tuschinski is a great architectural achievement that remains significant.

The facade of the Tuschinski features twin towers in gray tile with rose and turquoise accents on a three-dimensional surface. Two large Gothic lamps greet the visitor. Imposing steps lead up to the ticket windows. Then large, heavy brass doors lead to the lobby with its brass and marble bar.

In contrast with the dark and rather dour Fox Theatre in St. Louis, the Tuschinski is light and airy, with breathtaking color against a cream background. On walls and ceilings, bright peacocks and other exotic creatures dance along with green foliage. Pieter den Besten and Jaap Gidding had the joy of creating the interior design after Tuschinski fired the original architects. The lobby's plush 2-inch-thick red carpets were hand woven in Morocco; in 1984, the carpets were replaced to exact specifications. Somehow it all hangs together in beautiful harmony. Tuschinski clearly spared no expense to achieve his vision.

The main auditorium is also light and airy, with more fanciful painting on walls and very high ceilings. Its two levels of red wrap-around balconies would look at home in an opera house.

In its heyday, the Tuschinski had a stage as well as a screen and also a resident 16-piece orchestra to accompany the likes of Maurice Chevalier, Tom Mix and Jeanette McDonald. All of Tuschinski's Rotterdam theaters were destroyed during the 1940 bombing of Rotterdam. During the occupation, the Nazis renamed the theater the Tivoli. After World War II, shows included Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf, Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Domino. Abraham Tuschinski was not there to see them. He and most of his family were killed in Auschwitz in September 1942; they were among 75,000 Jews taken from Amsterdam by the Nazis, including, of course, Anne Frank. After the war, the theater was immediately renamed the Tuschinski.

The Tuschinski boasts a large Wurlitzer-Strunk theater organ (a replacement) but it is seldom used. Pathe is the company that operates the Tuschinski, and we must all thank them for the renovation, which uncovered murals hidden by its earlier conversion into a six-plex. The Tuschinski has two smaller screens, but nothing can compare with the main auditorium. (Pathe also operates a more ordinary 12-plex next door.) The Tuschinski Theater must be one of the most beautiful in the world -- reason enough to visit Amsterdam.

A footnote: For those St. Louisans lucky enough to know the work of RD Zurick, Roy has created a piece of video art based on the Tuschinski Theater. It is entitled "Tuschinski's Dream."

The Lens is provided by Cinema St. Louis.