Billed as the first movie theater built for talkies, the Paramount on Flatbush and Dekalb Avenues opened in 1928 with the movie Manhattan Cocktail. Alan Freed, who coined the term "rock and roll" in 1951, staged revues here while working for radio station WINS. Following its purchase by Long Island University, the movie house showed its last feature, Hatari, with John Wayne, in August 1962. The next year it was converted to a gym, though its famous Wurlitzer organ still played on.