Rivoli Theatre

I hate that black skyscraper every time I pass it. Same for the Roxy site. And Roseland, I was just there a year ago for the opening night party of “Motown the Musical”. Another shame that one is gonna bite the dust too.

“Replaced by a black skyscraper” This would also apply to the Roxy and Capitol, three of the finest and most famous movie palaces ever built, denied to future generations through sheer greed of developers and a city administration blind to it’s unique heritage.

Just uploaded photos of the marquee and front of theatre during the engagements of STAR!, HELLO, DOLLY! and JUSTINE. Taken in 1968 and 1969

Thanks for the info – what I’ve been doing is copying entire lists of films (not just single titles) from Excel and pasting them in.

I have not been counting “invitation-only charity premieres” such as those held for roadshow films, but the week that the regular paying-public got to get into the theater…I found a lot of these were on Tuesday evenings, which is why some of my dates are a week later…and yes, I used Variety a lot, but I would subtract 6 days from the date on the city report.

Thanks so very much for catching that, Coate – I put my info in Excel spreadsheets and didn’t catch the word “Rivoli” for the “Jaws” row because it was behind “Loew’s Orpheum” alphabetically. It opened in most cities on Wednesday, June 18, 1975. I actually wondered about that when I sorted the spreadsheet – didn’t think “The Return of the Pink Panther” played that long.

Re: Your other concerns. As I’ve already typed all this data in Excel, I don’t have time to retype everything, so I just copy and paste, which probably is what makes it one paragraph. Any suggestions to improve the format are welcome – I’m just trying to get my data on here for others to save them all the years of microfilm reading I’ve done.

As far using Wednesday dates, I grew up and live in Pittsburgh, and our theaters changed bills on that day up to around October 1974, when they began trying Fridays. Going through old newspapers on microfilms, it would take forever to look at every single day to see what new openings there were. In addition, Variety used Wednesdays for their weekly box-office reports so I choose to do so, also. The date I use is just considered by me to be the first day of the opening week, although many cities opened new films on Wednesdays beside Pittsburgh.

Finally, I think that anyone who might be interested in Cinema Treasures is pretty much already aware of the titles that were “roadshow presentations” and there are other websites that list 70 mm or other large size film, so that info is already available elsewhere…I was just interested in what theaters played what films when compared to here, regardless of process or type of booking.

But I thank you for reading my posts! :–)

Coate..you are right, I was GM there at that time, one it had a World Premiere on the 18th or 19th…Back then there was what they called “A RED CARPET” run..then a few weeks later opened wide.

RSM3853… “Jaws” is missing from your list. It started 06/20/75 (or 06/18/75 using your “Wednesday of the opening week” approach).

Every Sunday in December 2013, the NYC subway system runs a vintage train filled with ads from the 1940’s and 1950’s:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/billhuelbig/Vintage%20NYC%20Subway/DSCF0551_zpsae3c76c3.jpg

relevant part of above article- A particularly gruesome mutilation was the one visited on Thomas Lamb’s 1917 Rivoli Theater, once at 49th and Broadway. Lamb did not literally reproduce the Doric facade of the Parthenon, but on busy Broadway it was certainly close enough.

The white glazed terra-cotta facade lasted until 1986, when the owners destroyed a column and beheaded the top — gods, classical drapery, chariots and all. At the time, preservation groups were focused on the stage theaters; the Rivoli was built for film, and it was not on anyone’s radar until the bucrania were out of the barn.

Never made it to a road show in the Rivoli but was there for Jaws on Saturday night 10:30 show high up in the rafters second day of release…a great audience experience highlighted by a lady in a very very green suit – a hostess from Air Pistachio as per my friend JC’s comments United Artists never really got the good Broadway bookings after that – most went to Loews Astor Plaza and State or the Criterion multiplex…the house met a sad end as the United Artists 1 and 2

I saw “The Last Starfighter” at one of the Rivoli Twins in July, 1984. I was aware “South Pacific” had played a long run there in Todd-AO, having transferred from the Criterion. Whilst being impressed by the cinema I was in, I wish I’d seen the large theatre in its 70mm. heyday. All the above info. is fascinating and I now know just how important the Rivoli was.

The Rivoli Theatre can be seen in the opening crane shot of the film “My Favorite Year” (MGM/UA, 1982) starring Peter O'Toole. The movie is set in 1954 and the marquee to the Rivoli is emblazened with a display for the classic Vincent Price horror film “House of Wax” (Warner Brothers, 1953) presented in “3 Dimension.” The slogan reads: “Every thrill of its astounding story comes off the screen right at you!” The key art on the marquee shows a line of chorus girls and a shadowy figure kidnapping one of them. I actually worked on “My Favorite Year” as a production assistant for the New York location shooting (under New York unit producer A. Kitman Ho — who went on to produce such films as “Wall Street,” “JFK,” “Platoon,” and “Born on the Fourth of July”). I remember well the day of the crane shot outside the Rivoli Theatre (at Broadway and 50th Street) because I was such a huge Vincent Price fan and a fan of “House of Wax.” I remember discussing our love of the film with the movie’s director Richard Benjamin and the production designer Charles Rosen (a fellow North Carolina native who had production designed the 1978 remake of “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”). There was also a sidewalk newsstand on that block that was decorated with period 1954 magazines and newspapers. During the lunch break, it was my job to guard the newsstand — and, let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. Many tough New York pedestrians were rushing by, blindly plopping down coins to purchase the daily newspaper, not realizing that these newspapers were mockups of 1954 newspapers. I kept having to stop them from just grabbing them. I literally got into tugs of war with more than one annoyed passerby. Lots of other pedestrians were trying to buy tickets for “House of Wax” at the Rivoli boxoffice and got extremely miffed when they were told that “House of Wax” was not really playing there and that the marquee had been mocked up for a new movie being shot that day. Instead of laughing it off as if they’d just been punk’d on “Candid Camera,” most of these jaded New Yorkers were simply pissed by the inconvenience. So much for the glamor of filmmaking. And, luckily, no one was hurt during the melee.