Biography theater dc schedule
- The Biograph Theater was a repertory movie house, built inside the shell of an old auto dealership.
- Alan Rubin quickly rose to fame after opening the landmark Biograph Theater at 2819 M St. NW, a single-screen 270-seat repertory film house in Georgetown.
- The Biograph's printed schedule, Program No. 1, was heavy on documentaries.
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Alan Rubin (1936-2022), Founder of the Biograph Theater
A geologist who made quite the mark on the local community died November 6 at his home in Delaplane, Virginia.
Alan Rubin quickly rose to fame after opening the landmark Biograph Theater at 2819 M St. NW, a single-screen 270-seat repertory film house in Georgetown at the site of the current CVS. With the rise of VCRs and home-viewing, many local repertory movie theaters closed, as did Rubin’s Biograph Theater in 1996. Curiously, the former MacArthur Theater — another shuttered local theater on MacArthur Boulevard — is also now a CVS.
The Biograph Theater at 2819 M Street NW was a landmark repertory theater and weekend evening destination. Courtesy Peabody Room, Georgetown Public Library.
Rubin studied geology at Brooklyn College and graduated in the mid-1950s. He worked at the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Museum of Natural History. He later received his masters at George Washington University while working for the Army Map Service and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Rubin was intrigued by the conce
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At a time when all Washington movie theaters were independent and locally owned, Georgetown’s Biograph was the most independent and most local. This credit is largely due to proprietor Alan Rubin, who died on Nov. 6, at 85, from complications of Parkinson’s disease.
As a major cultural influence throughout the Biograph’s 29-year run, Rubin was one of a group of friends who opened the theater on Georgetown’s M Street in 1967, and he continued to run it until 1996, when it closed because the building was sold to a drugstore chain. During those three decades, he championed domestic and foreign repertory film, educating generations of local cinephiles by introducing them to some of the most innovative filmmakers of the time. His love for the cinema and willingness to book films more adventurous than typical theaters was appreciated by filmgoers throughout the area, and those who were lucky enough to know Rubin treasured his intelligence, affability, and encyclopedic knowledge.
Following the closure, Rubin attempted, unsuccessfully, to open a successor theater, but most
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The First Year: Over 200 Titles
Note: The second of my three bosses, while I was manager of Richmond's Biograph Theatre, died on Tuesday. Lenny Poryles drew his last breath on Feb. 6, 2018, at his home in Arbonne-La-Forêt, France. He was 81. In addition to being an insightful and reliable person to work with, Lenny was a warm and generous man. RIP, Lenny.
About six weeks before its Feb. 11, 1972, opening gala this wide-angle view of The Biograph was captured by a Richmond News Leader photographer. It was snapped late in 1971, a few days before the new building at 814 W. Grace St. received its distinctive bright yellow paint-job.
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On what I remember as a bright morning, it was in early July of 1971, I went to a construction site on the north side of the 800 block of West Grace Street. Mostly, it was a big hole in the orange dirt between two old brick houses.
A friend had tipped me off that she’d been told the owners of the movie house set to rise from that hole were looking for a manager who knew something about movies and could write
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