Orson Welles Cinema
Originally the Esquire Theater in the early 1960s,[1] it became the Orson Welles Cinema under its next owner, folk musician Dean Gitter.
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.
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 his autobiography, comedian Jay Leno notes that he performed in the Orson Welles Restaurant during his early days as a stand-up comic.
Film personalities associated with the Orson Welles Cinema include the first house manager, future actor Tommy Lee Jones, during the spring of his senior year at nearby Harvard University.
[10] The career of writer-producer Fred Barron began in 1975 when he used the history of Cambridge’s The Real Paper as the basis for a screenplay, Between the Lines.
Other filmmakers and musicians who made personal appearances or visited at the Welles Cinema included Orson Welles himself, Peter Bogdanovich, Edward Dmytryk, Ed Emshwiller, Jean Eustache, Gary Graver, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jim McBride, Vincente Minnelli, George A. Romero, Harold Russell, François Truffaut and Neil Young.
After Steven Lisberger premiered his Cosmic Cartoon (1973) at the Welles, the animated short received a Student Academy Award nomination,[11] and he went on to make Animalympics and Tron.
Rob Morris, former film intern, busboy, and waiter (for the restaurant next door) started a two-man company that created the first commercial multimedia computer system in the mid 1980s.
