Leo Goldstein

Leo Goldstein was a deputy commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections who on October 29, 1969, closed Underground Cinema 16, the 16-millimeter theater opened that month at 2021 Sansom Street by Ray Hoersch, later R.C. Horsch.¹

Underground Cinema 16

The Inquirer reported that "Philadelphia's first commercial venture into noncommercial underground theater was threatened Wednesday by the Department of Licenses and Inspections, which ordered CINEMA 16 closed because it lacked requisite licenses. Leo Goldstein, deputy commissioner of L&I posted the theater, at 2021 Sansom st., and police were instructed to keep it empty." Hoersch, then 26, called the matter a "simple confusion" over the city's requirements and said the only question was whether the theater could open that week for a preview of the Vietnam documentary In the Year of the Pig; the city would send inspectors, but Goldstein said the process might take two weeks.¹

The alternative weekly The Distant Drummer, in an article on the administration of Mayor James H. J. Tate, reported in December 1969 that the department had closed the theater for want of a statement of occupancy and five minor building-code violations, which were corrected within a day, and quoted Goldstein: "I first heard about the theatre (Cinema 16) when I read in the BULLETIN that they were going to play that Vietnam film (In the Year of the Pig)." In the same period the department closed the "Space" annex of the Theatre of the Living Arts and the Manning Street Theater. While Cinema 16 was shut, In the Year of the Pig was shown at the Bandbox Theater in Germantown.²