The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Art Carduner.md

category	tags	summary	died	location	relations	created	updated
Entertainment & Arts	Person Cinema Philadelphia Germantown RCHorsch	Germantown bookseller and art-house exhibitor who ran the Bandbox Theater from 1966 to 1975 and gave R.C. Horsch's condemned film Black Mass a midnight screening in 1975.	2009-12-04	Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	type with start end fn owned Bandbox Theater 1966 1975 1	2026-09-23	2026-09-23

Art Carduner (about 1919 to December 4, 2009) was a Philadelphia bookseller, book reviewer and exhibitor of foreign and art films who owned the Bandbox Theater in Germantown, Philadelphia from 1966 to 1975. In February 1975, after the Arcadia Theatre (Philadelphia) cancelled a midnight showing of Black Mass (1975 film) by Ray Hoersch, later R.C. Horsch, following what the Inquirer called reported pressure from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Carduner gave the film a midnight screening at the Bandbox.¹²

Theaters and Books

Carduner grew up in New York City and came to Philadelphia in 1941. Before the Second World War he worked as a civilian cryptographer at the United States Army Signal Corps depot on Wissahickon Avenue, and then served in the Signal Corps; he claimed to have deciphered, three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, a message from Clark Field in the Philippines ending "Attack imminent, please rush," and said that his superiors ignored it. After the war he bought a bookstore in New York for 2,000 dollars, moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania, started a mail-order book business in Lambertville, New Jersey, and bought and restored the New Strand Theater there. He also ran the Hill in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, a book-search business, and a shop on Germantown Avenue, Germantown Bikes & Books, and reviewed books for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Distant Drummer and the Chestnut Hill Local. His programs favored esoteric foreign films and often played to nearly empty houses; he kept no popcorn machine and would run after patrons who walked out to refund their money. His political hero was Al Smith. A friend, Dave Miller, said: "He was phenomenally bighearted. He looked like Orson Welles, and had a nasal way of speaking." He died at 90 and was survived by two daughters, a son, a brother and three grandchildren.¹

Hoersch

The Bandbox's connection with Hoersch predates Black Mass. When the city's Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections closed Hoersch's Underground Cinema 16 in late 1969, the Bandbox ran the Vietnam documentary In the Year of the Pig, which Cinema 16 had under contract.³ On February 28, 1975, the Inquirer reported that Black Mass "will be shown at the Germantown Bandbox Theater this Saturday at midnight," according to "the Bandbox's Art Carduner, who gave the film a new home," as a benefit for the Friends of the Bandbox, with Hoersch attending.²

Footnotes

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1. Morrison, John F. "Art Carduner, a pioneer in exhibiting foreign films in Phila.," The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 9, 2009. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/obituaries/20091209_Art_Carduner__a_pioneer_in_exhibiting_foreign_films_in_Phila_.html ↩︎

2. [Society and nightlife column], The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 28, 1975, p. 21. https://www.newspapers.com/image/173366667/ ↩︎

3. The Distant Drummer, no. 65, December 25, 1969, p. 8, Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center. https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/collection/p16002coll34/id/473 ↩︎