Angelika Saleh, the daughter of a German opera conductor who left home to work as a Pan Am stewardess, married an Iraqi Jew in the United States, became a Madison Avenue grande dame and gave her name to one of New York City’s most enduring independent cinemas, died on Feb. 12 at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was 90.
The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter Eva Saleh said.
New Yorkers all know Nathan’s hot dogs, but few could name the founder of Nathan’s Famous, the Polish-born Nathan Handwerker. Now-forgotten immigrants are also embedded in the names of places like Gracie Mansion (Archibald Gracie, from Scotland) and the Bronx (Jonas Bronck, Sweden).
Angelika Film Center falls into the same category in two respects. First, it is an institution of local life so familiar that New Yorkers rarely think to consider the history of its name. Second, that history began with someone who, like so many city residents, was born an ocean away.
A phone call on Sunday to the original Angelika theater, on Houston Street in Manhattan, was answered by Lea Valls, an employee. She said she had never heard of Ms. Saleh.
“I know a whole bunch of fun facts about the Angelika, but I never knew it was named after an actual person,” Ms. Valls said.
Ms. Saleh and her husband, Joseph Saleh, who owned and operated several buildings in New York, started in the film business as producers.
He was the executive producer of “Savages” (1972), a Merchant-Ivory film, and she was an executive producer of “Streetwise” (1984), a documentary about homeless youth in Seattle that was nominated for the best documentary Academy Award.
The Salehs shared liberal politics, an interest in high culture and an immigrant background; he was born in Iran to Jews from Baghdad. Both were struck by how hard it was to distribute the independent films they worked on. That led to the birth of the Angelika, in September 1989.
“Our plan is to create an atmosphere where more mature, better educated people come to see special-interest domestic and foreign films and hang around later at the cafe to nosh and talk about Fellini,” Mr. Saleh told Newsday at the time.
The couple collaborated on that cafe, which occupied part of the 7,000-square-foot lobby. Mr. Saleh provided the baklava recipe — rose water and sugar water, no honey — and Ms. Saleh decorated, installing a chandelier.
Newer cinema chains, like Alamo Drafthouse, regularly make a point of offering quality food alongside movies. In 2001, The San Francisco Chronicle described Angelika as the first major theater to do that.
In the basement, the Salehs built six theaters. That was possible because the location — the Cable Building, designed by McKim, Mead & White in the 1890s — was at the center of New York’s short-lived cable-car network. The basement had been the maintenance area for the giant vehicles, which had hung from the ceiling during repairs. Before installing seats and screens, the Salehs had to clear out century-old trusses, cables and gears.
The Angelika’s signature became the way its seats shook from the rumbling subway, which was often audible over the sound of the movies. While some viewers felt it was “kind of like being in a bomb shelter, minus the charm,” others said it “made the experience more raw and urban.”
Ms. Saleh focused on the Angelika’s programming, which had a lasting influence on indie film.
On Aug. 2, 1991, a convenience store counterman from New Jersey spent his 21st birthday at the theater watching his first-ever indie, Richard Linklater’s “Slacker.”
“I was really just taken aback by it, like, ‘Wow, this counts as a movie? Nothing’s happening, really,’” that young man, the filmmaker Kevin Smith, later told PBS.
He continued: “I was, like, ‘Well, I could do this. I mean, if this counts as a movie, count me in.’”
Mr. Smith’s first film, “Clerks,” brought him back to the Angelika, where it screened at a festival in 1993. His career was promptly launched.
The Angelika also offered early screenings of Whit Stillman’s “Metropolitan” (1990) and Larry Clark’s “Kids” (1995). Mr. Stillman rented an office in the Cable Building and shot several scenes of his next movie, “Barcelona” (1994), there.
Angelika Maria Ohl was born on Aug. 18, 1935, in Munich. Her father, Ernst, conducted at the city’s Gärtnerplatztheater and spent some of World War II playing in a marching band. Her mother, Erika (Wildegans) Ohl, moved her three children to a rustic village outside Salzburg, in the Austrian Alps, to keep them safe from bombings during the war.
After the war, Angelika returned to Munich. As a young woman, she had a dream in which she was wearing a blue uniform and descending a staircase. Soon after, her father noticed a Pan American World Airways advertisement seeking stewardesses. She applied and was one of 30 hired from a pool of hundreds. She moved to New York in 1957.
Before long, she met Mr. Saleh at a party, and they went on a double date. He told her he could not marry her because she was not Jewish. She was surprised to hear the subject of marriage raised so quickly.
Six months later, he called and said he could not stop thinking about her. After she converted to Judaism, they married in 1959. They lived in a grand home, covered in Persian rugs, at 1261 Madison Avenue, an elegant apartment house built before World War I.
Their bond was passionate but stormy, their daughter Eva said. The Angelika succeeded, but the relationship fell apart.
In 1996, as they were divorcing, they sold the theater for about $12 million to Reading Company, now Reading International. The company’s website says it owns and operates eight Angelikas in California, Texas, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and New York City, where there are now three theaters. There are also two Australian Angelikas.
In addition to her daughter Eva, Ms. Saleh is survived by another daughter, Jessica Saleh Hunt; a granddaughter; a great-granddaughter; and a sister, Rosemarie Dauer. Mr. Saleh died in 2007.
Ms. Saleh tended not to announce to strangers that a famous indie cinema was her namesake. But whenever she called a restaurant to make a reservation, her daughter said, she always booked the table under “Angelika.”
Alex Traub is a reporter for The Times who writes obituaries.
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