Movie Maven

This is a little continuation of my previous post on the beleaguered Brattle theatre. I thought I'd talk a little about the theatre's founders. Alas, the 4-minute limitation of my multimedia presentation for which I began research in the first place prevents me from delving too deep into their history, so I thought perhaps I'd elaborate here.

Bryant Haliday and Cy Harvey, Jr. were the two young men who turned the scrappy stage theatre into a cinema. First of all, how AWESOME are those names? Like something out of The Magnificent Seven, though admittedly about a century too late. Nevertheless, I imagine them mustachioed and wearing bowler hats. I fantasize that Cy carried a cane and had a genteel flower in his lapel. Bryant was the violent upstart, with a 12-gauge in his hand and revenge in his mind

In reality they were Harvard grads, living in relatively civilized Cambridge, MA.

Bryant was an aspiring actor, who, as creative director Ned Hinkle put so well "starred in a couple of horrible B-movies I've never seen." You can IMDB him here. He had also acted in some of the stage productions at the Brattle, and I can imagine he probably cared deeply for the space.

Cy Harvey was another character altogether. He was the entrepreneur of the outfit, according to Hinkle, constantly shifting focus. He and Haliday started a lot of different businesses in the shape-shifting rooms of Brattle Hall. They opened two private clubs, the Casablanca and the Blue Parrot Café, both of which survived to become restaurants. They rented out a dance studio. And they had a intriguing little gift shop called Trouke, which sold imported goods and was "kind of a head shop for a while," according to Hinkle. Trouke will come into play later on in this little tale. Anyway, Harvey had been a Fulbright scholar studying in Paris during the French New Wave. He was in the thick of it- Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, the Cahiers du Cinema, and the Cinemateque Frances. It was here, says Hinkle, Harvey was inspired to bring foreign and art cinema to the states. Together their passions led them to the Brattle in 1953, and began the tradition of new, different, and outright bizarre films being shown there.

This love and passion also eventually led them to begin Janus Films in the 1950s, which was one of the few production companies that brought the most important foreign film into the states: Godard, Truffaut, as well as Ingmar Bergman, Frederico Fellini, and Akira Kurasawa, among others. In other words, half my Introduction to Film Analysis syllabus. Janus, interestingly enough became the Criterion Collection of DVDs, one of the most reputable distributers of classic masterpieces.

So here they are. Two men who effectively changed the shape and face of independent cinema. And it seems like they had a pretty swell time of it too.

A note about Cy Harvey: Among many other things, Trouke sold some fancy imported soaps that Harvey was apparently crazy about. In the early 1970's he decided to pursue the soap business, set-up a shop in Cambridge and did pretty well for himself.

He founded Crabtree and Evelyn.

Entrepreneur indeed.