Radio City Music Hall

$100! Sheesh!
For $100 I expect to see My Fair Lady.
With the original cast.

At the risk of offending just about everyone, it would seem to me that RCMH might do better staying away from the nativity sequence altogether and stick with entertainment. Leave the religious aspects to those institutions recreating nativity scenes already and in surroundings better suited to it.

When I went to the Christmas show a few years ago, there were quite a few people that left when the Nativity segment began. I had a family of 7 or 8 right in front of me (with small children) get up and leave. It took them several minutes to gather their things, and they weren’t trying to be too quiet about it either.

Needless to say, it was VERY distracting for those that wanted to stay!

I was moved by the narration at the end and felt it was in keeping with the nativity scene. But I seem to remember it even back in the 1970s when I saw my first movie at the Hall, “Bedknobs and Broomsticks.” So my question is, when exactly was this text added to the Christms Show?

Leonidoff’s Nativity and Glory of Easter were two of my favorite theatrical events.
The current show is a manifestation of current religious smugness and righteousness(and Christians are not the only perpetrators.)
If RH were not so quick to label us as Christian bashers(I was raised a good Catholic boy) he or she would understand that what we find objectional is the reduction of a great theatrical pageant narrating the story of Christmas using imagery from Rennaissance painters to a flattened out fundamentalist tract that does little to impart the true meaning of Christmas and only reinforces a tendancy to assume superiority.
Leonidoff avoided this while at the same time creating a thrilling sense of exhiliration. And he was Russian Orthodox!!!
What in the world has happened to us?
Christian bashing indeed.

I’m amazed by the relentless Christian-bashing by many on this page. Multitudes exit the Music Hall each December grateful for having the true message of Christmas presented. That includes many life-long NYC residents, of which I am one. My parents took me for the first time on my 4th birthday in December, 1969. I plan to continue to bring my family for many years to come.

I say kill the Christmas show next year, it’s time to put it out of it’s misery. Let us have a big December release movie and a new holiday theme stage show, with the Rockettes, produced by someone who has the vision to start a new tradition. I want the steam curtain, the stage curtain going up and down through out the show, and the orchestra to come up from the pit roll to the rear of the great stage. What else do we want?

CConnolly and others have asked for the complete text of the Christmas message that was presented as part of the holiday show. I found it on the web.

One Solitary Life
Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.
He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself…

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth â€" His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.

This essay was adapted from a sermon by Dr James Allan Francis in “The Real Jesus and Other Sermons” © 1926 by the Judson Press of Philadelphia (pp 123-124 titled “Arise Sir Knight!”). If you are interested, you can read the original version . Graham Pockett

Ok, the presentation of the stage shows might’ve changed but we’re running the possibiltiy of re-opening the can of worms that was run into the ground earlier about the abysmal (sp?) Christmas Show.

Yep, I was born in ‘66 and that probably puts me in the LAST generation that remembers (fondly) single screen large theaters that were well maintained. My guess is that anyone born after 1970 cannot remember these theaters at all well.

I first the Christmas show in 1972 with “1776” (a thudding bore to a 6 year old). But the Christmas show? Fantastic. And I saw it every year after that until around 1978. Each year was great. And as I stated above, I took my 8 year old daughter to see it this year expecting her to be amazed by it like I was and I cannot tell you how incredibly, jaw-droppingly AWFUL the thing was.

I do not recall ever seeing another show at RCMH besides the Christmas show though. I might’ve but I don’t remember them.

BUT…the Music Hall itself is still grand and I will take my daughter on the tour sometime in the future. She LOVED the place more than the insipid show.

That joke, Ziggy, would go FLYING over the heads of everyone under the age of 50 or so. I’m 38 and I “get-it” because of my scant experiences and mostly due to my parent’s descriptions of places like The Roxy and RCMH.

And yes, I know the “Hare Do” cartoon Bob speaks of. It’s the one that culminates with Bugs Bunny leading Fudd through the darkened theater (he’s actually wearing dark sunglasses) and it seems to take forever (at one point you hear the sounds of them walking through water!) and Bugs constantly saying (with an abrasive accent) “right this way sir.”

Another funny scene that plays into the BIG theater theme is when Fudd is sitting in one of the upper balconies. When he looks down, he’s so far up that the stage is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay below him.

And how the audience runs out of the theater to smoke up a storm in the lobby!

Very funny stuff and Thanks Bob Furmanek for brining that one up.

All this talk about the overblown aspects of theatres and stage shows reminds me of a joke I read in a 1920’s joke book. (interesting that movie palaces were such a part of the public psyche that one could publish jokes involving them). Anyway..here goes.

A couple went to the movies on a date. During the presentation the young man got thirsty, so he left his seat and asked the usher if he could direct him to a drinking fountain “Certainly sir” was the reply, “just take the staircase to the left and walk through the art gallery, turn left and proceed down a row of potted palms. Then turn left… ” and so the usher continued. After getting thoroughly lost, the young man finally stumbled into what seemed to be a forest glade with a babbling brook. In desperation he threw himself down to drink from the stream, and somehow found his way back to his seat. Seeing that the picture had started he asked his date “How was the stage show?” She replied “You ought to know, you were in it.”

While I agree that the picture was not the second item at RCMN — that, for most of the year at least, people usually went to RCMH depending on what movie was being shown, and not depending upon what was in the stage show (the true details of which they probably didn’t know about most of the time anyway) — I think it’s important to remember that the Rodgers and Hart song is an affectionate send-up with a lot of teasing “zingers” along the lines of a Friar’s Club Roast. He’s joking about some of the “awful” things that make RCMH so “wonderful” (the performers twirling on their digits with the balconies so high that they look like midgets, etc.)!

In a sense, Hart even contradicts himself, saying that while the show is “worth the dough” one shouldn’t even bother looking at the ads — since the show is the same every time anyway. This would hardly be true if “the picture is a second item.”

Regarding the Roxy Music Hall Scene in “I Married an Angel.” As I understand it (from either Richard Rodgers' or Joshua Logan’s autobiography?), Hart originally got some flack for suggesting this scene, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with the storyline of “I Married an Angel” — which takes place in Hungary(?)!

But Hart said it would be a fun, light-hearted, satirical diversion, and he was right — people did enjoy it.

(Not only does it have a lot of great lines, the Rodgers' melody is a lot of fun too.)

By the way, how many other movie theaters/palaces have songs about them?