Ziegfeld Theatre
141 West 54th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
141 West 54th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
104 people
favorited this theater
Showing 276 - 300 of 3,892 comments found
i thank my fellow poster for the reply to my post. well at least i have an answer as to why the Ziegfeld has never been twinned. this could easily have been done by separating the elevated rear section of the orchestra. so my other question is simple. why haven’t the owners of the theater sold it? i wholeheartedly thank them for keeping the theater open but i’m guessing they could could get a huge truck load of cash even in today’s economy if they decided to sell the theater and the land for redeveloping.
I see that the Ziegfeld is showing ‘Tommy’ ‘The Song Remains the Same’ ‘The Last Waltz’ ‘U23D’ ‘Shine a Light’ ‘Stop Making Sense’ – are these 35mm prints or DCP’s?
On Saturday May the 5th – the recent 4K restoration/transfer of ‘Yellow Submarine’ is being shown as well as ‘The Beatles: Last Concert’ on Sunday.
I used to work at the Ziegfeld, and the building is part of the complex including the skyscraper facing 6th Ave. It used to be Burlington, I don’t know if it still is. Clearview only rents. Burlington would never allow it to be twinned, so that is probably why it is still a single screen.
Hello-
i have been a big fan of this theater since seeing its debut engagement the Dec.1969 roadshow run of “Marooned”. its always a joy to see a film here. a simple question- the land under the theater must be worth a bzallion dollars even in today’s economy so how has Clearview Cinemas been able to keep it open? has the chain promised to keep the theater open and never sale it or tear down. i have wondered this the last few years especially since this theater and the Paris are i believe the only single screen movie theaters left in Manhattan.
Agreed Saps! The Ziegfeld deserves to and SHOULD have the biggest screen in the city and not just barely. It should be significantly bigger and I think it would draw many more people if it did.
I’d be happy if the Ziegfeld put in a bigger screen. There is so much wasted space now above, below and on the sides — it looks like one of the classic palaces with a giant proscenium and a postage stamp screen. (Not quite, of course, but still…) The screen is out of proportion to the size of the house. Plus a bigger screen could be a real selling point for promoting the theater.
The NY Times mentions plans for a new Lincoln Center Cinerama location back in 1962. That,of course, never happened.
DEFG: Thanks for the kind remarks; I very much appreciate your comments as well.
I re-checked the finding aid for the Miller Collection of Cinerama theater plans at UCLA; it can be viewed here. It does not list any box containing plans for a new, purpose-built Cinerama house within NYC, but there are gaps in the box sequencing. It is possible that those who did the indexing for the finding aide were unable to identify the proposed locations for some of the theaters.
Also, possibly, the theater’s plans might have been included in the plans for the new Cinerama NYC offices or may have been among those generic plans mentioned at the end of the list. Then too, given the price of real estate, especially in Manhattan, it is possible that Cinerama dropped the idea or thought that another retrofit might be more practical, or by the time that the discussion were going forward, Cinerama may have decided that that the investment was no longer practical.
One day I hope to get out to UCLA and take a look myself
Thanks, CSWalczak.
I don’t know, but now that NYC has no Cinerama house, couldn’t the Ziegfeld put a 3-strip Cinerama equipment and screen even though it is not designed in the design favored by Cinerama as in the Capitol, the Dome, etc.? Besides Cinerama they could screen 70mm classics like Lawrence in a curved screen. What do you think DEFG? I know the only time that Cinerama was shown here, as explained in earlier comments, it was in 70mm, but could real Cinerama be shown here?
Over the years, Cinerama considered installing the process in a number of other NYC area theaters. According to the J. Evan Miller collection of Cinerama Theater plans housed at UCLA, at least preliminary plans or sketches were created for both Loew’s State and the Rivoli in Manhattan, the Meadowbrook in East Meadowbrook, and the Century in Huntington. There were also plans for a Cinerama New York office which would have included a screening room.
The #1 movie for the second straight week in a row is playing at this theater, “The Hunger Games”, which will still do well for weeks to come. What’s the next movie to play here? I hope it’s a mix between summer blockbusters and indie movies, since the Z always plays a mix of great movies. Once in awhile they have a bad movie that lasts only one week before they show another one.
Another look at the infamous console, thanks to member DEFG.
Howard, you’re a dreamer!
Future projectionists, please make sure the sound is loud, use the curtain, and send ushers to eject all patrons who answer & chat on their cell phones (after the cell phones ring!) during the feature. And, please routinely replace the projection light bulbs so the picture is light enough.
It’s all academic, now. Here we are, 43 years on, and we’re on the brink of having nothing left to thread in cinemas across the nation. Working masters of the craft such as yourself, Peter, will eventually be left simply to punch up data files, particularly once studios stop striking prints altogether and all extant reels just fall apart from wear and tear.
I think the intention was that he would thread up the projectors during intervals and then come back down, the way manager/projectionists did outside New York.
So they added a guy in the auditorium to ride the sound & lights while keeping a projectionist only to thread up and make changeovers, etc.? Sounds like a monumentally dumb idea.
Peter that was the first thing I said to him. With Smoke coming out of my ears and fire out of my mouth I reduced the little twerp to rubble and walked away. As Professor Higgins once said “I am a gentle man BUT…let a women (in his case idiot in my life :)
If there was “no man in the booth”, who was threading up?
Oh yes Bill I shall never forget the day I went to that opening and confronted that fool running that control panel who said something along the lines of “We don’t need the man in the booth anymore” I went off on him like a bomb, I could not accept a 306 guy telling people that, it was a touchy subject at the time with all that automated stuff about to pounce on us. We knew it was the beginning of the end of projection as we knew and loved it but I still was not ready or willing to accept it. Little did we know that platters were just waiting in the wings to pounce on us or the inevitable replacement of film with Digital. “Won’t need the guy in the booth” indeed has sadly come to pass.
Thanks, Ed! I’ll be using that from now on.
Click here for a picture of the Ziegfeld console in 1969.
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Does the Ziegfeld support 7.1 Dolby Surround?