The reduction in seating could be from two or three reasons. When it was planned to use the downstairs house with strippers a runway was built down the center aisle in good burlesque fashion (the lip of the stage could have been extended as well). Perhaps the seats were never replaced in that area in the orchestra. Also remember that there’s a fairly wide gap between the two upper auditoriums for the light from the center projector to hit the downstairs screen. While as I have mentioned earlier, the space should have been bigger to pass a Scope or 70mm 2.2l image that would fill the width of the proscenium, it was wide enough to accomodate 1.85 projection. That’s a really steep, long balcony, so if seats were removed from the balcony rail to the upper back wall that could probably account for over a hundred seats. As noted above, they weren’t particularly comfortable, so its possible that the balcony (or some areas) retained older narrower seats from a previous incarnation which would have upped the total number of seats. In addition the lobby wall of the orchestra was moved forward during the renovation to accomodate the stores in the former lobby area. That would also have eaten up seats. While I was in the orchestra auditorium during the renovation, I never poked my nose in when I worked there. One of the reasons was that the single entrance was a ways from the stairs to to the upper theatre and the booth, and kind of looked like a dingy alley, so much of the under balcony space had been sacrificed to the shops.
There were several reasons for Ben’s being able to veto 70mm. Most 70mm releases in those days were road shows that were too long to fit into the Music Hall policy of a stage show and movie. They had never done a show with pre-show music, intermission, entr'acte music and exit music until we did a 70mm retrospective in 1974. It wasn’t until “Molly Brown” that there was a 70mm film that was short enough to fit the policy. Ben was friends with the head of post production at MGM who told him that there weren’t going to be many 70mm releases coming up, so Ben was able to convince management that it wasn’t economically advisable to install the equipment, although at one point in time Norelco supposedly offered to give the Hall three machines for the publicity. They did consider it. I had in my files (and may have at home now) a proposal for a 70mm sound system from Ampex, complete with drawings of how it would fit in the booth. Another possible reason was that Music Hall management was more stage than film oriented (and still is). For good reason they trusted their department heads who were regarded as experts in their fields. Ben and Charlie Muller before him were expected to manage a large crew and see that the show never went down. Thus the caution about new technology. When Charlie needed technical expertise he could rely on the studio’s technical departments to supply it. Ben ran 70mm at the World’s Fair in ‘64, and understood an installation of the magnitude necessary at the Hall would very possibly interrupt the presentation, since at that time they couldn’t shut down during the installation time to work out the bugs as many theatres did. As I mentioned above there were a whole bunch of unusual problems associated with the installation that were still there when I came in as Head Projectionist in '74. I actually had a crew member try to choke me (in jest) when he heard we were going to run 70mm, and say, “We don’t want to run 70mm at the Hall.” Ben even hated the color of the ElectroSound system that was installed and which was a copy of the Ampex system originally discussed, and retired about three years after the conversion.
By the way, regarding “Molly Brown”, I mentioned to the head of post at MGM during a tour of the studio (the same one who told Ben there weren’t going to be many more 70mm releases) that I had seen the film in 70mm in Chicago. He said that they were unsure about striking any 70mm prints until they made one with a full stereo mix with surrounds and ran it for an audience. He said it was like they were watching a completly different film. Remember, most people only saw it in Scope and with a mono track. It may not be one of the great musicals, but seen on a big screen with full stereo, it has its moments.
Oops! Should have done my proof-reading more carefully! The sound delay from the SCREEN to the back row of the 3rd Mezz. is four frames. If the sound is in sync at the screen its four frames out of sync in the back row. Advancing the track two frames puts the sound in sync in the middle of the orchestra and at the front of the 1st Mezz. where the VIPs sit for premieres.
Vito, the HyCans were getting so dull, you might have seen one of them and thought it was xenon. I doubt that they would have experimented during Ben’s regime as he didn’t like anything that could disturb the booth operation (although they did try Universal’s half frame projection in which the reel was run from head to tail, and then taken out of the lower magazine and threaded back in the upper magazine with the other picture so there was no rewinding).
Inerestingly enough, when we started looking at xenon none of the major manufacturers wanted to give us a lamp to because of the angle and screen size. Finally, Al Bodouris of Eprad gave us a lamp to try. Once he broke the ice, Christie and ORC also installed lamps (in the case of ORC both their prototype console with vertical bulbs pointing into a 45 degree mirror, which we picked to counteract the angle), and horizontal lamps. Strong never did get involved. The light output with new collector mirrors and dichroic mirrors and new bulbs did equal the HyCans which did give a pure light, but were inefficient compared even to reflector carbon arc lamps. At 4500 watts for xenon we equalled or bettered the HyCans which ran at 100 volts at the generator and 180 amps or 18,000 watts. We didn’t change to save electricity but rather because we just couldn’t get parts for the arc lamps. We still needed to get lighter prints for premieres as we had with the carbon lamps, and we still got prints made with the soundtrack advanced two frames to count for the delay from the booth to the back row of the third mezzanine which is four frames. Now with 7,000 watt xenons in use in the 70mm projection in the Christmas Show they should really have a nice looking picture.
“Airport” was the first film shown in 70mm at Radio City. My predecessor, Ben Olevsky, was against installing 70mm (perhaps because he knew it would disrupt a smooth running booth). MGM had wanted to do “Unsinkable Molly Brown” there in 70, but Ben was able to veto the idea. (A shame, since I saw it in Chicago in 70mm and it was a good transfer with a great sound mix.) Ross Hunter insisted that “Airport” be shown in 70, and since Universal was four-walling the Hall, Ben had no choice. The three projectors were commandered from the Paramount complex in the Gulf and Western Building at Columbus Circle, since there were three going into the theatre and four more into the two screening rooms upstairs, which weren’t ready to open. There are many stories to be told about that installation. The machines for a variety of reasons didn’t work well, and when I started there, we took them out to National Theatre Supply (Simplex) in Paramus and had them rebuilt.
I might quibble with Vito about the xenon installation. We couldn’t get condensers for the Hall & Connely carbon arc lamps. We even tried to get the used Ashcrafts from the Astor Theatre, and couldn’t do that. In 1974 we started experimenting with xenon, and at one point had a different lamp on each projector. We finally settled on ORC lamps, with vertical lamps for the 35/70 machines and horizontal lamps for the 1 and 5 machine, which had to remain on Simplex bases so they could be readily moved for use in film effect projection in the stage shows. We did get more light out of the xenons than we were getting out of the HyCans (in all fairness, that was in part due to the burned lenses in the lamps.) Focus did improve with the xenons although we had to change to slower Scope back-up lenses to compensate for the higher lamp speed. Scope focus was dramatically improved over the HyCans with the 4" Bausch and Lomb lenses that were being used.
By the way, we did run “Becky Sharp” in the first Art Deco Film Festival in 1974 and it was indeed beautiful.
I saw “Russian Adventure” at the McVickers and it was in 3-strip. The McVickers re-ran most of the 3 strip Cinerama travelogues in the ‘60’s, and since it was set up for the format threw in “Russian” narrated by Bing Crosby. One of my disappointments was that they didn’t show “Windjammer” in that series. It had only a limited run in Chicago originally since it had opened at the Opera House and had to make way for the opera season. At the time the McVickers was doing 3-strip, the Christian Radich, the ship in “Windjammer” docked in the Chicago River just a few blocks from the McVickers and allowed people to tour it. I waited in line for some time to do so, and thought with all of the interest in the ship it would have been a perfect time to bring the film back to the McVickers. The McVickers was also the first 70mm booth I was in. I was still in high school and was in Chicago getting clothes for school and saw a matinee of “Porgy & Bess” at the theatre. Afterwards I asked to see the booth which was at the back of the orchestra, and one of the operators was kind enough to give me a piece of 70mm film from “Oklahoma”. The last time I was in the theatre was after its legit days, and went in with an RCA service man who was setting up a video projector in the balcony for an upcoming fight. By that time the theatre was a grind house, and the 70mm projectors had been moved up to the original booth in the back of the house over another booth that had been built for spotlights during the legit days.
The first film I saw at Radio City was “High Society” in 1956, so they may have gone to a seamless screen then as I don’t remember seeing seams. I was told that the screens the Hall used were Hurley screens and Mel Hurley almost gave them to the Hall for the publicity. At that point they changed the screen every six months. They may have tried to use a gain screen when Scope came in. I do remember being told that the screens were lenticulated, and that the lenticulations were embossed in the fabric at an angle to bring the reflected light up 5 degrees or so. That was a standard practice with the “MiracleMirror” screens Fox developed for CinemaScope for houses with a sharp downward projection angle. The curvature of the screen also helped distribute the light more evenly horizontally. Since the Hall couldn’t use a curved screen because of the loss of lines for scenery in the stage shows, a gain screen would have a hot spot and any deformation where the seams were would be more obvious. We did try a gain screen once when I was there, but it really displayed the faults BoxOfficeBill mentions — obvious seams and the hot spot that shifted as you changed seats. We switched to Technikote screens which were matte white, and although they were made up of panels, the seams weren’t noticeable from the audience. Ben Olevsky always pointed out that the Hall with its 19 degree downward projection angle and block wide width wasn’t suited for a gain screen. It may have been the experience with the screens that BoxOfficeBill is commenting about that convinced management of that.
I was in Bloomington on vacation and picked up the following additional information about the Illini from a framed copy of a newspaper article about it on the wall in Luccas Grill next door:
The theatre was originally named the Chatterdon after the owner who also had theatres in Springfield and Danville, Illinois. It was built in 1910 to replace the Grand Opera House which had burned (there are shots of that theatre after the fire in a book of photographs of early Bloomington.) The Chaatterdon was built in 1910, and among stars who appeared on stage there were Ed Wynn, Ethel Barrymore, Mae Westg and Lillian Russell. It became a film house as the Illini in 1924 adnd closed around 1933, although for a time after that it was used for Community Players productions around 1946. After that State Farm used the space for offices, and presumeably removed any vestigaes of the Illini’s theatrical past, although from the outside the building still retains much of the look of the Chatterdon.
Vito: The problem with Todd-AO that caused the double shooting was the speed on the first two pictures of 30 F.P.S. which couldn’t readily be converted to 24 frame 35mm. (The same problem exists with the orignal Cinerama 3-strip features which were shot at 26 frame. While transfers to video exist of “Brothers Grimm and "HTWWW” which were shot at 24 frames to make transfer to conventional 35mm possible, no one has transferred or made a new print of any of the orignal Cinerama material possibly because of the special equipment that would be needed.) I worked as a projectionist in Otto Preminger’s home screening room for a while, and read up on him. One of the storys was that he wanted to shoot “Porgy & Bess” in Todd-AO, but Sam Goldwyn balked, saying that they would have to shoot everyting twice. Preminger told him that was no longer necessary. (“South Pacific” was the first Todd-AO film shot at 24 frames for subsequent transfer to 35mm.) Preminger got to shoot “Porgy” in Todd-AO and went on to do “Exodus” in 70mm as well.
I was at the Hall for four years or so of the movie/stage show policy, and remember show change nights well. There are two rehearsal halls above the theatre where the cast practiced. The large hall has the three elevator lines and the turntable radius painted on the floor, and is the same length as the stage. The Rockettes practiced their routines there. There was also a complete Peter Clark built model of the stage in the production office, which at one point even had moving elevators, so minature scenery could be tried out. The picture sheet (screen) had a heavy backing applied to it which also covered the center channel movie speaker which flies out with the sheet. When stereo came in, openings were cut in the backing to make flaps which could be lowered to accomodate the extra channel speakers which rode in on top of the first border of lights. When the flaps were down, the first entrance blacks were closed to keep light and noise from leaking out into the audience. Thus the stage crew could work during the film changing drops and scenery. The scenery was hung on alternate pipes for each production, so the new show could be hung while the current one was still running. The Rockettes had their own dormitory on the 50th street side of the building, and would stay there overnignt on change nights. Lighting call (which also included film effect set up and rehearsal) was at 4 A.M., with full cast due at 6 A.M. for rehearsal until the house opened for the first movie before 10. Since we also screened each of the two prints of the new film before it opened, this meant being there after the last show until 2 A.M. or so for a couple of nights close to the change. In addition, the whole production crew was expected to be there until the last stage show on opening day was completed. In the instance of the first 70mm roadshow presentataions we did when I was there we also had to reinstall overhauled 70mm projectors and a new xenon lamp on one machine, so I just slept in my chair at my desk until the 4 A.M. lighting call even though I was living just five blocks north of the Hall at the time. As frantic as those times were, the load-ins and load-outs after the movie/stage policy ended were even more hectic. I can remember walking into the theatre at 8 A.M. after the first MTV Awards show had been done the night before, and finding stage hands sleeping in the aisles in the orchestra, since they had another large show coming in that day. The cast and crew were able to pull off the changes overnight because everyone’s life pretty much revolved around the theatre and they were used to it. Some of that crew is still there today, and in some cases their grandkids are now working on the crew too. There’s a level of devotion to that theatre that I suspect may be unmatched anywhere else in the country.
Vito, I believe they took the pipe for the Golds/Silvers traveller out for our “Snow White” presentation since they needed to hang a tree leaf piece in that position. While I think of the traveller as being “the Golds” I think the control board has the switching marked as the “Silvers” so both colors must have been used at one time or other. The curtain was acoustically transparent, so for the roadshows we did with Entre'act music we didn’t bring the contour in because it acted as a high frequency filter as it came down. The traveller was motor operated from the same panel as the contour, and could travel at four speeds. I had seen “Dr. Zhivago” in 70mm at the Palace in Chicago, and was impressed that after the intermission music as the picture started (with the train carrying Zhivago going through a tunnel) a point of light appeared on the screen and got bigger as the train approached the mouth of the tunnel. The stagehand in Chicago opened the curtain just ahead of the growing spot of light up until the train exited the tunnel and you saw the curtain a moment or so before it cleared the screen. I mentioned that to our house people, and when we ran “Zhivago” the light board and stage manager and control board operator tried the various traveller speeds and timing until they were able to recreate the effect. I think they had some fun doing it, as it wasn’t just the usual open/close cycle the traveller was used for. By the way, there was also a light set in between the contour and the proscenium at the top of the arch which mirrored the footlights below. Apparently it didn’t work all that well since I never saw it used although it was there when I started at the Hall, and I saw it from the catwalk above the proscenium. It also was removed to make way to hang other pieces.
While I don’t know about John getting a piece of scenery from Leon, I do know that Leon got a piece of scenery out of Japan. Leon did a show at the World’s Fair, and got Japan to present New York with a beautiful, HUGE Doncho drop of woven silk. The story is that Leon specified the size, and after the World’s Fair was over the only place in New York with the space to hang it was the Hall. It hung there all during the time I was there and was used in several shows including the 50th Anniversary show. It’s so heavy it takes two pipes to support it, and was too large to move to the Harlem warehouse. Several of the Music Hall souvenier programs from the ‘50’s on featured a centerfold color shot of the Rockettes with the Doncho drop in the background. If John scammed a scenic piece out of Leon it could be that he had learned from the master!
I just got an e-mail from a person I know in Bloomington who says the MARC Center has moved. There’s now a sign on the door of the Illini that says, “Studio 222” but he hasn’t poked his head in to see what they do.
I was there for what I remember as the last one they did in 1974. The most impressive thing for me was the start when a “sunrise” was created in house. Since Roxy was said to get his inspriation for the coves from a sunrise while he was on a cruise, the Easter “sunrise” was a natural with the house going dark, and then blue lights in the grilles, followed by the coves gradually coming up in blue as the grilles went to red, then red and blue lighting in the house with amber in the grilles, and then finally full amber house lighting accompanied with organ chimes. I saw it from the booth, and for anyone seated where they could see the full view of the house it looked great! I’m glad I got to see it at least once.
Cinematour lists the theatre as being demolished. It was the main theatre in LaSalle when I was growing up in Illinois, and although I was only in it once, I have one very vivid memory of the theatre. When I was a candidate for admission to the LaSalle County I.A. local which covered my hometown of Streator, I went to LaSalle to introduce myself to the projectionists there who would have a vote on my membership. I had heard that several of them were waiting for the projectionist (an old-timer)at the Majestic to retire so they could have his job. When I went to the booth, which meant going through the Men’s room, I climbed a flight of stairs and found myself up near the ceiling over a steep balcony. While the booth was fairly deep and roomy, I was shocked to see that from the viewing ports you could only see the bottom half of the screen because of a beam located just outside the booth. The light from the projection ports just cleared the bottom of the beam. The projectionists had to mark cues on the bottom of the film frames in order to be able to make changeovers. The old-timer, who may have been there since the house opened was quite proud of the booth, but couldn’t see the top half of the movies he was projecting. I had this vision of him asking, “Does Greta Garbo still make movies? Boy she had a great set of legs!” The theatre went non-union when platters came in and the projectionists waiting for the job probably never got to hold it.
The Illini is indeed next door to Lucca’s Grill. I vacation in Bloomington every year (I’m still a member of the Bloomington/Peoria Stagehand’s Local), and Lucca’s is a must place to visit. Karl Blakeny, who along with his brother was an official of the Local and grew up in Bloomington has taken me on several tours of theatre sites and introduced me to Lucca’s. From their parking lot you face the back of the Illini and it’s easily identifiable as a stage house. The only trace of the theatre from the front is the pillars above the second floor, now interspersed with windows for the MARC Center. Before it was the Illini, I think it was named something else and was an early opera house. Karl says there is no trace of the former theatre left inside, and while the MARC may still utilize the space, I’ve never seen any signs of life when I go by. I’ll be back there for vacation next month, and will try to get more information from Karl.
Vito: The 3-D projection for the Christmas Show is with two 70mm projectors, interlocked and running at 30fps. Digital projection has been done from the front of the First Mezzanine with two projectors (one for backup) and the sound routed up to the booth and run through the cinema sound system. I left the Hall in 2000 to work for the company I’m working for now, but our technicians are in for premieres and special events, and I wander over every once in a while also to say, “Hi!” to my Music Hall “family”. Boston Light & Sound supplied the lamphouses, so I’ll have to check with their rep about the 35mm wattages since I frequently have dinner with him when he’s in town.
I did get a chance to see some of Leon Leonidoff’s 16mm footage of the stage shows. After he left he wrote asking me to send it to him, but at the time the case containing his film was in a jumble with the rest of our film library in the area behind the screen in our large screening room, and I didn’t know what I was looking for. When the 50th Anniversary Show came along, I found it and sent it along with other archival footage to California where it was incorporated into the multiple screen montage sequences projected during the show. Unfortunately, the producer of those sequences returned the footage in small chunks and I was never able to piece it back together. Leon did have color footage of “Rhapsody In Blue” and “Bolero” which looked pretty good considering the limitations of the stage lighting and 16mm film at the time. I’ve always felt badly that I didn’t realize that footage was what he was looking for and return it to him before his death.
The projectors are definitely still there. Two of the three 35/70mm machines now have 7,000 watt xenon lamphouses for projection of the opening 70mm 3-D sequence in the Christmas Show, and the two 35mm machines have upgraded lamphouses installed. Most motion-picture premieres these days are done with digital projection rather than film (as they increasingly are everywhere else).
Vito: As the expession goes: “Everything old is new again”. The success of IMAX 3-D is reviving the process. Last week Disney, Dolby and ILM announced that they will be installing digital 3-D in 100 theatres for the release of “Chicken Little” in November, and Lucas has announced plans to re-release the “Star Wars” series in 3-D. Check last Sunday’s “Arts & Leisure” section of the New York Times for a front page article on some of the new 3-D projects in the works. I guess if we stick around long enough we meet our past coming back to greet us!
Vito: You’re right — we (at least those of us who have been around for a while) refer to anything non-anamorphic as “Flat” and anamorphic prints as “Scope”. That terminology has even been carried over to film cans and leaders in many cases. I did want to add to one of your comments about single strip 3-D made on one of the other theatre sites. There were two kinds of single strip 3-D films in wide release. You mentioned the “over/under” variation used for wide aspect ratio films such as “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein” and Arch Obler’s “The Bubble”. (Talk about blurring distinctions: even though those films had an aspect ratio similar to “Scope” technically they were flat.) The 3-D attachment superimposed the upper two-perf portion of the image over the bottom portion. With films made in the 1.37 ratio such as “House of Wax” and “The Stewardesses” the image, although “Flat” was actually two anamorphic images side by side with a slightly reduced frame height on the film. The 3-D attachment was in line with the anamorphic lens and put one of the images over the other. The 70mm 3-D release of “House of Wax” wouldn’t have been anamorphic since there was room on the frame to put to “Flat” images side by side. Sure gets confusing doesn’t it?
As with Meredith Rhule in the above post, my first full-time job as a projectionist was in Kankakee seven years earlier than his. I left in 1974 to go to Radio City Music Hall. When I started in Kankakee in 1967 the Majestic was closed, and the Luna was still open. In fact, I was originally told by the business agent that he wanted me for the Luna, but after the operators there saw the Meadowview, which was just about to open, they decided to stay at the Luna. A few years later, the Majestic building was converted into a mini mall, and the balcony of the Majestic was sealed and it became the Town Cinema, with the backstage space being converted to shops or offices. The theatre had a variety of projection booths. The original one, according to the B.A. was on the roof of the building next door, until the owner of the building told the Majestic management to get it off his building. Then it was moved to the roof of the Majestic, and to get to it you had to go out on the fire escape and go up a ladder. The B.A. told me that they kept a ladder in the booth, and when the weather was very bad outside, they would lower it out the spot port and climb out the window and down into the balcony. He also told me that since they were projecting through space in the ceiling beams, the theatre could never show CinemaScope films. I was in that booth once during the construction to convert the space into the Town Cinema and the equipment was still up there intact. The last booth for the Town was carved out of the former lobby access space to the balcony. The equipment was taken out of the Luna and moved over, and then the Luna was torn down.
Dave: The V-8’s at the Murray Hill came from Cinema I originally. They were installed for “Heaven’s Gate”, and then moved to the Murray Hill for the first “Superman” film. They were installed at the Murray Hill by Altec Service, and I remember one of the men on the crew telling me how they worked all night to get the projectors ready for the first show early the next morning. They started the show for a house full of kids and when they changed to the second reel there was no sound. They went crazy trying to find the problem, and finally threaded the second reel on the first projector to discover that someone on the West Coast had not sounded the reel! The showings were cancelled until another reel could be shipped in. There may have been a second set of V-8’s installed in Cinema I after that, so both theatres could have had them at the same time. I seem to remember “Oklahoma” playing there as a re-release at 30 f.p.s.
Vito: You’ve got me. I didn’t see the telecast, but they could be scenic pieces or speaker arrays. Lots of things get hung in that area including video screens for image magnification.
dave-bronx: The reason General Cinema was able to get such a sharp edge with their aperture plates was that they used special plates. The General Cinema projection package consisted of Century projector heads which had the gate rails notched out in back over the aperture area so a thicker plate could be used which put the face of the plate closer to the film. Since aperture plates can never be in the same physical space as the film, there is always some fuzz line which varies with the depth of focus of the projection lens used (that in turn is also affected by the focal length.) The disadvantage to that system is that the closer to the film the plate is, the more the danger of scratching the film if it buckles from the heat of the lamp. My predecessor as Head Projectionist at Radio City Music Hall was Bill Nafash who was a master at cinema installation and did work for Rugoff. Those masking strips may have been a solution he worked out to provide a sharp edge to the picture. I remember seeing the strips used at the Murray Hill, and I think there were two or three sets of them for 1.85, 1.66 and 1.37. They may have also used the special “thick” Century aperture plates as well.
Ron: The Music Hall did do a largely RKO Film Festival when they did their first Art Deco Festival in 1974. I don’t remember all of the films we played (Warren will probably have the list), but we did do “King Kong”, “She”, “Becky Sharp” and at least one of the Rogers/Astaire musicals. I had just started at the Hall, and that was the most film we had ever had in the booth at one time. I remember the Rogers/Astaire picture because the promoter of the Festival was going to have to pay for a print since none existed for distribution at that time. Ginger Rogers offered to loan him her personal print, but it was nitrate. By that time we no longer had nitrate fire rollers on our machines having installed 70mm, and our insurance company said “No”! The promoter went ahead and had a print struck at his personal expense. Fortunately, the festival was a success, since it combined film screenings with a lobby full of booths selling Art Deco memorabilia. The poster became a classic (I still have one), and was actually featured in a couple of movies. Our print of “She” was loaned to us by Raymond Rohauer, who also managed to save a number of Buster Keaton’s films. I was told that he virtually kept the film under his bed at night to protect it. He did come up to the booth when we inspected it (with me wearing white gloves — an impression somewhat mitigated by one of the crew looking over our shoulders with an unlit cigar in his mouth). I said he could have the print back right after the screening, but I guess he was reassured since he said, “Hang onto it. I’ll pick it up next week.”
The reduction in seating could be from two or three reasons. When it was planned to use the downstairs house with strippers a runway was built down the center aisle in good burlesque fashion (the lip of the stage could have been extended as well). Perhaps the seats were never replaced in that area in the orchestra. Also remember that there’s a fairly wide gap between the two upper auditoriums for the light from the center projector to hit the downstairs screen. While as I have mentioned earlier, the space should have been bigger to pass a Scope or 70mm 2.2l image that would fill the width of the proscenium, it was wide enough to accomodate 1.85 projection. That’s a really steep, long balcony, so if seats were removed from the balcony rail to the upper back wall that could probably account for over a hundred seats. As noted above, they weren’t particularly comfortable, so its possible that the balcony (or some areas) retained older narrower seats from a previous incarnation which would have upped the total number of seats. In addition the lobby wall of the orchestra was moved forward during the renovation to accomodate the stores in the former lobby area. That would also have eaten up seats. While I was in the orchestra auditorium during the renovation, I never poked my nose in when I worked there. One of the reasons was that the single entrance was a ways from the stairs to to the upper theatre and the booth, and kind of looked like a dingy alley, so much of the under balcony space had been sacrificed to the shops.
There were several reasons for Ben’s being able to veto 70mm. Most 70mm releases in those days were road shows that were too long to fit into the Music Hall policy of a stage show and movie. They had never done a show with pre-show music, intermission, entr'acte music and exit music until we did a 70mm retrospective in 1974. It wasn’t until “Molly Brown” that there was a 70mm film that was short enough to fit the policy. Ben was friends with the head of post production at MGM who told him that there weren’t going to be many 70mm releases coming up, so Ben was able to convince management that it wasn’t economically advisable to install the equipment, although at one point in time Norelco supposedly offered to give the Hall three machines for the publicity. They did consider it. I had in my files (and may have at home now) a proposal for a 70mm sound system from Ampex, complete with drawings of how it would fit in the booth. Another possible reason was that Music Hall management was more stage than film oriented (and still is). For good reason they trusted their department heads who were regarded as experts in their fields. Ben and Charlie Muller before him were expected to manage a large crew and see that the show never went down. Thus the caution about new technology. When Charlie needed technical expertise he could rely on the studio’s technical departments to supply it. Ben ran 70mm at the World’s Fair in ‘64, and understood an installation of the magnitude necessary at the Hall would very possibly interrupt the presentation, since at that time they couldn’t shut down during the installation time to work out the bugs as many theatres did. As I mentioned above there were a whole bunch of unusual problems associated with the installation that were still there when I came in as Head Projectionist in '74. I actually had a crew member try to choke me (in jest) when he heard we were going to run 70mm, and say, “We don’t want to run 70mm at the Hall.” Ben even hated the color of the ElectroSound system that was installed and which was a copy of the Ampex system originally discussed, and retired about three years after the conversion.
By the way, regarding “Molly Brown”, I mentioned to the head of post at MGM during a tour of the studio (the same one who told Ben there weren’t going to be many more 70mm releases) that I had seen the film in 70mm in Chicago. He said that they were unsure about striking any 70mm prints until they made one with a full stereo mix with surrounds and ran it for an audience. He said it was like they were watching a completly different film. Remember, most people only saw it in Scope and with a mono track. It may not be one of the great musicals, but seen on a big screen with full stereo, it has its moments.
Oops! Should have done my proof-reading more carefully! The sound delay from the SCREEN to the back row of the 3rd Mezz. is four frames. If the sound is in sync at the screen its four frames out of sync in the back row. Advancing the track two frames puts the sound in sync in the middle of the orchestra and at the front of the 1st Mezz. where the VIPs sit for premieres.
Vito, the HyCans were getting so dull, you might have seen one of them and thought it was xenon. I doubt that they would have experimented during Ben’s regime as he didn’t like anything that could disturb the booth operation (although they did try Universal’s half frame projection in which the reel was run from head to tail, and then taken out of the lower magazine and threaded back in the upper magazine with the other picture so there was no rewinding).
Inerestingly enough, when we started looking at xenon none of the major manufacturers wanted to give us a lamp to because of the angle and screen size. Finally, Al Bodouris of Eprad gave us a lamp to try. Once he broke the ice, Christie and ORC also installed lamps (in the case of ORC both their prototype console with vertical bulbs pointing into a 45 degree mirror, which we picked to counteract the angle), and horizontal lamps. Strong never did get involved. The light output with new collector mirrors and dichroic mirrors and new bulbs did equal the HyCans which did give a pure light, but were inefficient compared even to reflector carbon arc lamps. At 4500 watts for xenon we equalled or bettered the HyCans which ran at 100 volts at the generator and 180 amps or 18,000 watts. We didn’t change to save electricity but rather because we just couldn’t get parts for the arc lamps. We still needed to get lighter prints for premieres as we had with the carbon lamps, and we still got prints made with the soundtrack advanced two frames to count for the delay from the booth to the back row of the third mezzanine which is four frames. Now with 7,000 watt xenons in use in the 70mm projection in the Christmas Show they should really have a nice looking picture.
“Airport” was the first film shown in 70mm at Radio City. My predecessor, Ben Olevsky, was against installing 70mm (perhaps because he knew it would disrupt a smooth running booth). MGM had wanted to do “Unsinkable Molly Brown” there in 70, but Ben was able to veto the idea. (A shame, since I saw it in Chicago in 70mm and it was a good transfer with a great sound mix.) Ross Hunter insisted that “Airport” be shown in 70, and since Universal was four-walling the Hall, Ben had no choice. The three projectors were commandered from the Paramount complex in the Gulf and Western Building at Columbus Circle, since there were three going into the theatre and four more into the two screening rooms upstairs, which weren’t ready to open. There are many stories to be told about that installation. The machines for a variety of reasons didn’t work well, and when I started there, we took them out to National Theatre Supply (Simplex) in Paramus and had them rebuilt.
I might quibble with Vito about the xenon installation. We couldn’t get condensers for the Hall & Connely carbon arc lamps. We even tried to get the used Ashcrafts from the Astor Theatre, and couldn’t do that. In 1974 we started experimenting with xenon, and at one point had a different lamp on each projector. We finally settled on ORC lamps, with vertical lamps for the 35/70 machines and horizontal lamps for the 1 and 5 machine, which had to remain on Simplex bases so they could be readily moved for use in film effect projection in the stage shows. We did get more light out of the xenons than we were getting out of the HyCans (in all fairness, that was in part due to the burned lenses in the lamps.) Focus did improve with the xenons although we had to change to slower Scope back-up lenses to compensate for the higher lamp speed. Scope focus was dramatically improved over the HyCans with the 4" Bausch and Lomb lenses that were being used.
By the way, we did run “Becky Sharp” in the first Art Deco Film Festival in 1974 and it was indeed beautiful.
I saw “Russian Adventure” at the McVickers and it was in 3-strip. The McVickers re-ran most of the 3 strip Cinerama travelogues in the ‘60’s, and since it was set up for the format threw in “Russian” narrated by Bing Crosby. One of my disappointments was that they didn’t show “Windjammer” in that series. It had only a limited run in Chicago originally since it had opened at the Opera House and had to make way for the opera season. At the time the McVickers was doing 3-strip, the Christian Radich, the ship in “Windjammer” docked in the Chicago River just a few blocks from the McVickers and allowed people to tour it. I waited in line for some time to do so, and thought with all of the interest in the ship it would have been a perfect time to bring the film back to the McVickers. The McVickers was also the first 70mm booth I was in. I was still in high school and was in Chicago getting clothes for school and saw a matinee of “Porgy & Bess” at the theatre. Afterwards I asked to see the booth which was at the back of the orchestra, and one of the operators was kind enough to give me a piece of 70mm film from “Oklahoma”. The last time I was in the theatre was after its legit days, and went in with an RCA service man who was setting up a video projector in the balcony for an upcoming fight. By that time the theatre was a grind house, and the 70mm projectors had been moved up to the original booth in the back of the house over another booth that had been built for spotlights during the legit days.
The first film I saw at Radio City was “High Society” in 1956, so they may have gone to a seamless screen then as I don’t remember seeing seams. I was told that the screens the Hall used were Hurley screens and Mel Hurley almost gave them to the Hall for the publicity. At that point they changed the screen every six months. They may have tried to use a gain screen when Scope came in. I do remember being told that the screens were lenticulated, and that the lenticulations were embossed in the fabric at an angle to bring the reflected light up 5 degrees or so. That was a standard practice with the “MiracleMirror” screens Fox developed for CinemaScope for houses with a sharp downward projection angle. The curvature of the screen also helped distribute the light more evenly horizontally. Since the Hall couldn’t use a curved screen because of the loss of lines for scenery in the stage shows, a gain screen would have a hot spot and any deformation where the seams were would be more obvious. We did try a gain screen once when I was there, but it really displayed the faults BoxOfficeBill mentions — obvious seams and the hot spot that shifted as you changed seats. We switched to Technikote screens which were matte white, and although they were made up of panels, the seams weren’t noticeable from the audience. Ben Olevsky always pointed out that the Hall with its 19 degree downward projection angle and block wide width wasn’t suited for a gain screen. It may have been the experience with the screens that BoxOfficeBill is commenting about that convinced management of that.
I was in Bloomington on vacation and picked up the following additional information about the Illini from a framed copy of a newspaper article about it on the wall in Luccas Grill next door:
The theatre was originally named the Chatterdon after the owner who also had theatres in Springfield and Danville, Illinois. It was built in 1910 to replace the Grand Opera House which had burned (there are shots of that theatre after the fire in a book of photographs of early Bloomington.) The Chaatterdon was built in 1910, and among stars who appeared on stage there were Ed Wynn, Ethel Barrymore, Mae Westg and Lillian Russell. It became a film house as the Illini in 1924 adnd closed around 1933, although for a time after that it was used for Community Players productions around 1946. After that State Farm used the space for offices, and presumeably removed any vestigaes of the Illini’s theatrical past, although from the outside the building still retains much of the look of the Chatterdon.
Vito: The problem with Todd-AO that caused the double shooting was the speed on the first two pictures of 30 F.P.S. which couldn’t readily be converted to 24 frame 35mm. (The same problem exists with the orignal Cinerama 3-strip features which were shot at 26 frame. While transfers to video exist of “Brothers Grimm and "HTWWW” which were shot at 24 frames to make transfer to conventional 35mm possible, no one has transferred or made a new print of any of the orignal Cinerama material possibly because of the special equipment that would be needed.) I worked as a projectionist in Otto Preminger’s home screening room for a while, and read up on him. One of the storys was that he wanted to shoot “Porgy & Bess” in Todd-AO, but Sam Goldwyn balked, saying that they would have to shoot everyting twice. Preminger told him that was no longer necessary. (“South Pacific” was the first Todd-AO film shot at 24 frames for subsequent transfer to 35mm.) Preminger got to shoot “Porgy” in Todd-AO and went on to do “Exodus” in 70mm as well.
I was at the Hall for four years or so of the movie/stage show policy, and remember show change nights well. There are two rehearsal halls above the theatre where the cast practiced. The large hall has the three elevator lines and the turntable radius painted on the floor, and is the same length as the stage. The Rockettes practiced their routines there. There was also a complete Peter Clark built model of the stage in the production office, which at one point even had moving elevators, so minature scenery could be tried out. The picture sheet (screen) had a heavy backing applied to it which also covered the center channel movie speaker which flies out with the sheet. When stereo came in, openings were cut in the backing to make flaps which could be lowered to accomodate the extra channel speakers which rode in on top of the first border of lights. When the flaps were down, the first entrance blacks were closed to keep light and noise from leaking out into the audience. Thus the stage crew could work during the film changing drops and scenery. The scenery was hung on alternate pipes for each production, so the new show could be hung while the current one was still running. The Rockettes had their own dormitory on the 50th street side of the building, and would stay there overnignt on change nights. Lighting call (which also included film effect set up and rehearsal) was at 4 A.M., with full cast due at 6 A.M. for rehearsal until the house opened for the first movie before 10. Since we also screened each of the two prints of the new film before it opened, this meant being there after the last show until 2 A.M. or so for a couple of nights close to the change. In addition, the whole production crew was expected to be there until the last stage show on opening day was completed. In the instance of the first 70mm roadshow presentataions we did when I was there we also had to reinstall overhauled 70mm projectors and a new xenon lamp on one machine, so I just slept in my chair at my desk until the 4 A.M. lighting call even though I was living just five blocks north of the Hall at the time. As frantic as those times were, the load-ins and load-outs after the movie/stage policy ended were even more hectic. I can remember walking into the theatre at 8 A.M. after the first MTV Awards show had been done the night before, and finding stage hands sleeping in the aisles in the orchestra, since they had another large show coming in that day. The cast and crew were able to pull off the changes overnight because everyone’s life pretty much revolved around the theatre and they were used to it. Some of that crew is still there today, and in some cases their grandkids are now working on the crew too. There’s a level of devotion to that theatre that I suspect may be unmatched anywhere else in the country.
Vito, I believe they took the pipe for the Golds/Silvers traveller out for our “Snow White” presentation since they needed to hang a tree leaf piece in that position. While I think of the traveller as being “the Golds” I think the control board has the switching marked as the “Silvers” so both colors must have been used at one time or other. The curtain was acoustically transparent, so for the roadshows we did with Entre'act music we didn’t bring the contour in because it acted as a high frequency filter as it came down. The traveller was motor operated from the same panel as the contour, and could travel at four speeds. I had seen “Dr. Zhivago” in 70mm at the Palace in Chicago, and was impressed that after the intermission music as the picture started (with the train carrying Zhivago going through a tunnel) a point of light appeared on the screen and got bigger as the train approached the mouth of the tunnel. The stagehand in Chicago opened the curtain just ahead of the growing spot of light up until the train exited the tunnel and you saw the curtain a moment or so before it cleared the screen. I mentioned that to our house people, and when we ran “Zhivago” the light board and stage manager and control board operator tried the various traveller speeds and timing until they were able to recreate the effect. I think they had some fun doing it, as it wasn’t just the usual open/close cycle the traveller was used for. By the way, there was also a light set in between the contour and the proscenium at the top of the arch which mirrored the footlights below. Apparently it didn’t work all that well since I never saw it used although it was there when I started at the Hall, and I saw it from the catwalk above the proscenium. It also was removed to make way to hang other pieces.
While I don’t know about John getting a piece of scenery from Leon, I do know that Leon got a piece of scenery out of Japan. Leon did a show at the World’s Fair, and got Japan to present New York with a beautiful, HUGE Doncho drop of woven silk. The story is that Leon specified the size, and after the World’s Fair was over the only place in New York with the space to hang it was the Hall. It hung there all during the time I was there and was used in several shows including the 50th Anniversary show. It’s so heavy it takes two pipes to support it, and was too large to move to the Harlem warehouse. Several of the Music Hall souvenier programs from the ‘50’s on featured a centerfold color shot of the Rockettes with the Doncho drop in the background. If John scammed a scenic piece out of Leon it could be that he had learned from the master!
I just got an e-mail from a person I know in Bloomington who says the MARC Center has moved. There’s now a sign on the door of the Illini that says, “Studio 222” but he hasn’t poked his head in to see what they do.
I was there for what I remember as the last one they did in 1974. The most impressive thing for me was the start when a “sunrise” was created in house. Since Roxy was said to get his inspriation for the coves from a sunrise while he was on a cruise, the Easter “sunrise” was a natural with the house going dark, and then blue lights in the grilles, followed by the coves gradually coming up in blue as the grilles went to red, then red and blue lighting in the house with amber in the grilles, and then finally full amber house lighting accompanied with organ chimes. I saw it from the booth, and for anyone seated where they could see the full view of the house it looked great! I’m glad I got to see it at least once.
Cinematour lists the theatre as being demolished. It was the main theatre in LaSalle when I was growing up in Illinois, and although I was only in it once, I have one very vivid memory of the theatre. When I was a candidate for admission to the LaSalle County I.A. local which covered my hometown of Streator, I went to LaSalle to introduce myself to the projectionists there who would have a vote on my membership. I had heard that several of them were waiting for the projectionist (an old-timer)at the Majestic to retire so they could have his job. When I went to the booth, which meant going through the Men’s room, I climbed a flight of stairs and found myself up near the ceiling over a steep balcony. While the booth was fairly deep and roomy, I was shocked to see that from the viewing ports you could only see the bottom half of the screen because of a beam located just outside the booth. The light from the projection ports just cleared the bottom of the beam. The projectionists had to mark cues on the bottom of the film frames in order to be able to make changeovers. The old-timer, who may have been there since the house opened was quite proud of the booth, but couldn’t see the top half of the movies he was projecting. I had this vision of him asking, “Does Greta Garbo still make movies? Boy she had a great set of legs!” The theatre went non-union when platters came in and the projectionists waiting for the job probably never got to hold it.
The Illini is indeed next door to Lucca’s Grill. I vacation in Bloomington every year (I’m still a member of the Bloomington/Peoria Stagehand’s Local), and Lucca’s is a must place to visit. Karl Blakeny, who along with his brother was an official of the Local and grew up in Bloomington has taken me on several tours of theatre sites and introduced me to Lucca’s. From their parking lot you face the back of the Illini and it’s easily identifiable as a stage house. The only trace of the theatre from the front is the pillars above the second floor, now interspersed with windows for the MARC Center. Before it was the Illini, I think it was named something else and was an early opera house. Karl says there is no trace of the former theatre left inside, and while the MARC may still utilize the space, I’ve never seen any signs of life when I go by. I’ll be back there for vacation next month, and will try to get more information from Karl.
Vito: The 3-D projection for the Christmas Show is with two 70mm projectors, interlocked and running at 30fps. Digital projection has been done from the front of the First Mezzanine with two projectors (one for backup) and the sound routed up to the booth and run through the cinema sound system. I left the Hall in 2000 to work for the company I’m working for now, but our technicians are in for premieres and special events, and I wander over every once in a while also to say, “Hi!” to my Music Hall “family”. Boston Light & Sound supplied the lamphouses, so I’ll have to check with their rep about the 35mm wattages since I frequently have dinner with him when he’s in town.
I did get a chance to see some of Leon Leonidoff’s 16mm footage of the stage shows. After he left he wrote asking me to send it to him, but at the time the case containing his film was in a jumble with the rest of our film library in the area behind the screen in our large screening room, and I didn’t know what I was looking for. When the 50th Anniversary Show came along, I found it and sent it along with other archival footage to California where it was incorporated into the multiple screen montage sequences projected during the show. Unfortunately, the producer of those sequences returned the footage in small chunks and I was never able to piece it back together. Leon did have color footage of “Rhapsody In Blue” and “Bolero” which looked pretty good considering the limitations of the stage lighting and 16mm film at the time. I’ve always felt badly that I didn’t realize that footage was what he was looking for and return it to him before his death.
The projectors are definitely still there. Two of the three 35/70mm machines now have 7,000 watt xenon lamphouses for projection of the opening 70mm 3-D sequence in the Christmas Show, and the two 35mm machines have upgraded lamphouses installed. Most motion-picture premieres these days are done with digital projection rather than film (as they increasingly are everywhere else).
Vito: As the expession goes: “Everything old is new again”. The success of IMAX 3-D is reviving the process. Last week Disney, Dolby and ILM announced that they will be installing digital 3-D in 100 theatres for the release of “Chicken Little” in November, and Lucas has announced plans to re-release the “Star Wars” series in 3-D. Check last Sunday’s “Arts & Leisure” section of the New York Times for a front page article on some of the new 3-D projects in the works. I guess if we stick around long enough we meet our past coming back to greet us!
Vito: You’re right — we (at least those of us who have been around for a while) refer to anything non-anamorphic as “Flat” and anamorphic prints as “Scope”. That terminology has even been carried over to film cans and leaders in many cases. I did want to add to one of your comments about single strip 3-D made on one of the other theatre sites. There were two kinds of single strip 3-D films in wide release. You mentioned the “over/under” variation used for wide aspect ratio films such as “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein” and Arch Obler’s “The Bubble”. (Talk about blurring distinctions: even though those films had an aspect ratio similar to “Scope” technically they were flat.) The 3-D attachment superimposed the upper two-perf portion of the image over the bottom portion. With films made in the 1.37 ratio such as “House of Wax” and “The Stewardesses” the image, although “Flat” was actually two anamorphic images side by side with a slightly reduced frame height on the film. The 3-D attachment was in line with the anamorphic lens and put one of the images over the other. The 70mm 3-D release of “House of Wax” wouldn’t have been anamorphic since there was room on the frame to put to “Flat” images side by side. Sure gets confusing doesn’t it?
As with Meredith Rhule in the above post, my first full-time job as a projectionist was in Kankakee seven years earlier than his. I left in 1974 to go to Radio City Music Hall. When I started in Kankakee in 1967 the Majestic was closed, and the Luna was still open. In fact, I was originally told by the business agent that he wanted me for the Luna, but after the operators there saw the Meadowview, which was just about to open, they decided to stay at the Luna. A few years later, the Majestic building was converted into a mini mall, and the balcony of the Majestic was sealed and it became the Town Cinema, with the backstage space being converted to shops or offices. The theatre had a variety of projection booths. The original one, according to the B.A. was on the roof of the building next door, until the owner of the building told the Majestic management to get it off his building. Then it was moved to the roof of the Majestic, and to get to it you had to go out on the fire escape and go up a ladder. The B.A. told me that they kept a ladder in the booth, and when the weather was very bad outside, they would lower it out the spot port and climb out the window and down into the balcony. He also told me that since they were projecting through space in the ceiling beams, the theatre could never show CinemaScope films. I was in that booth once during the construction to convert the space into the Town Cinema and the equipment was still up there intact. The last booth for the Town was carved out of the former lobby access space to the balcony. The equipment was taken out of the Luna and moved over, and then the Luna was torn down.
Dave: The V-8’s at the Murray Hill came from Cinema I originally. They were installed for “Heaven’s Gate”, and then moved to the Murray Hill for the first “Superman” film. They were installed at the Murray Hill by Altec Service, and I remember one of the men on the crew telling me how they worked all night to get the projectors ready for the first show early the next morning. They started the show for a house full of kids and when they changed to the second reel there was no sound. They went crazy trying to find the problem, and finally threaded the second reel on the first projector to discover that someone on the West Coast had not sounded the reel! The showings were cancelled until another reel could be shipped in. There may have been a second set of V-8’s installed in Cinema I after that, so both theatres could have had them at the same time. I seem to remember “Oklahoma” playing there as a re-release at 30 f.p.s.
Vito: You’ve got me. I didn’t see the telecast, but they could be scenic pieces or speaker arrays. Lots of things get hung in that area including video screens for image magnification.
dave-bronx: The reason General Cinema was able to get such a sharp edge with their aperture plates was that they used special plates. The General Cinema projection package consisted of Century projector heads which had the gate rails notched out in back over the aperture area so a thicker plate could be used which put the face of the plate closer to the film. Since aperture plates can never be in the same physical space as the film, there is always some fuzz line which varies with the depth of focus of the projection lens used (that in turn is also affected by the focal length.) The disadvantage to that system is that the closer to the film the plate is, the more the danger of scratching the film if it buckles from the heat of the lamp. My predecessor as Head Projectionist at Radio City Music Hall was Bill Nafash who was a master at cinema installation and did work for Rugoff. Those masking strips may have been a solution he worked out to provide a sharp edge to the picture. I remember seeing the strips used at the Murray Hill, and I think there were two or three sets of them for 1.85, 1.66 and 1.37. They may have also used the special “thick” Century aperture plates as well.
Ron: The Music Hall did do a largely RKO Film Festival when they did their first Art Deco Festival in 1974. I don’t remember all of the films we played (Warren will probably have the list), but we did do “King Kong”, “She”, “Becky Sharp” and at least one of the Rogers/Astaire musicals. I had just started at the Hall, and that was the most film we had ever had in the booth at one time. I remember the Rogers/Astaire picture because the promoter of the Festival was going to have to pay for a print since none existed for distribution at that time. Ginger Rogers offered to loan him her personal print, but it was nitrate. By that time we no longer had nitrate fire rollers on our machines having installed 70mm, and our insurance company said “No”! The promoter went ahead and had a print struck at his personal expense. Fortunately, the festival was a success, since it combined film screenings with a lobby full of booths selling Art Deco memorabilia. The poster became a classic (I still have one), and was actually featured in a couple of movies. Our print of “She” was loaned to us by Raymond Rohauer, who also managed to save a number of Buster Keaton’s films. I was told that he virtually kept the film under his bed at night to protect it. He did come up to the booth when we inspected it (with me wearing white gloves — an impression somewhat mitigated by one of the crew looking over our shoulders with an unlit cigar in his mouth). I said he could have the print back right after the screening, but I guess he was reassured since he said, “Hang onto it. I’ll pick it up next week.”