The theatre was started by the Cambridge Social Union, cofounded in January 1871 by the Reverend
Samuel Longfellow, brother of
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In 1889, the union purchased the lot on Brattle Street for $9,000, and hired the Cambridge architectural firm headed by
Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow Jr. to draft plans for Brattle Hall. The gala opening occurred on January 27, 1890. Local and touring drama groups used the hall, which also housed a ballet school, lectures, and police calisthenics. The theatre sometimes came into conflict with the city, however. In 1928, the city attempted to ban a production of
Fiesta, a politically controversial drama performed by the
Harvard Dramatic Club, but could not close the show. The 1942 production of
Othello starring African-American actor
Paul Robeson played the Brattle, bolstering its reputation as a progressive institution. In 1948, a group of World War II veterans attending Harvard founded the
Brattle Theatre Company. The Company presented classic and contemporary serious drama with a group of repertory actors and directors.
Albert Marre, and
Robert Fletcher. The actor
Zero Mostel, who had been
blacklisted for his political affiliations, made his national stage debut in a production of Molière's
The Imaginary Invalid, and the British actress
Hermione Gingold made her American debut. In the 1950s,
Cyrus Harvey Jr., a 1947 graduate of
Harvard College, and
Bryant Haliday, a 1947 Harvard graduate, established the Brattle as one of the first
art house movie theaters. They revived forgotten American classic films and contemporary foreign films. Many of the foreign films have become classic, such as those by
Akira Kurosawa,
Ingmar Bergman,
Federico Fellini, and
François Truffaut. Harvey and Haliday built on the Brattle model to establish
Janus Films, which acquired and distributed world cinema and influenced the model used by
The Criterion Collection. == Bogie Cult ==