It would be interesting if Tishman Speyer tried to appeal it. However I have a friend in NY who’s a member of IATSE who is plugged into all the talk and when I brought it up to her said she’s heard nothing of the sort however she added that she wouldn’t be surprised.
Tishman Speyer owns Rockefeller Center. The Music Hall is probably a major drain and they could make a fortune putting in profit generating commercial outlets.
It talks about the lack of G rated films but the Hall had no problem showing PG films. But nobody with good films wanted them at the Hall anymore. It no longer had prestige and the overhead was so high. Also they had gotten rid of the ballet company which was a big part of the spectacles the Hall was famous for. The great stage looked threadbare and severely underpopulated. The Rockettes sometime in the mid 70s were reduced to 30.
This was posted by Pantopticon on September 28, 2020 at 4:04 pm on the photo page but it deserves to be here:
‘Don’t take this for certain but, the theater industry pipeline has this theater, regardless of landmark status as changing. Interior conversion to mini mall, restaurants, apartments, and office space. Hopefully not.
vindanparvindanpar on September 27, 2020 at 3:48 pm (remove)
I’m going to put this here as I don’t know where else to put it that gets some kind of traffic and this theater was named after all after the Rue de in Paris.
This is for Kinospoter who lately is doing a great job putting in all these pictures of cinemas in France.
What about the Palais Garnier? It would be interesting to know how many films opened there even if they did not have runs nor could it have ever been considered a cinema. I know of two-Gance’s Napoleon and Wyler’s Funny Girl of which newsreel footage of the premiere is on youtube. Maybe these were the only two?
Holmes did so poorly it ended Thanksgiving films at the Hall forever. It was pulled mid November and the Christmas show with Scrooge was rushed in causing the entire western world to rush Christmas when before the holiday season always started in December. A vestige of this remains as the Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center is still in December.
For its 50th anniversary at RCMH Sunflower is getting some attention. I must be the last one alive who went to this show. I remember all the middle aged ladies on line early in the morning just like you see in the older pictures of lines outside the Music Hall. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even notice the film was in Italian and dubbed into English.
I remember seeing this at nighttime at Christmas ‘68 with my family. It was a beautiful sight. Of course had I been older and knew it as a single screen theater it would have been depressing as hell.
On the day the box office opened for Fiddler I went that morning. School was closed that day due to a severe storm that made my school inaccessible. Went to a Sat matinee in Nov and it was a sold out performance so it was the only time I saw every seat in the theater filled. Maybe it was filled for action and exploitation films but I don’t know as I had no interest in seeing them which sadly kept me out of the major Times Square houses for long periods at a time. Had it been the 60s I would have been spending a lot of time in them exulting in the showmanship of their roadshow presentations. Just missed them.
Hal Prince had produced the original stage production of Fiddler so we had him to thank for the film at the Rivoli. A block north was his original production of Follies at the Winter Garden(one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in my life and I have refused to see any production of it since) and then a couple of blocks north of that the original production of Fiddler was still playing at the Broadway Theater. It was as if Prince owned Broadway as a thoroughfare from 49th St to 53rd St. Though I never knew him and saw him only once I miss him enormously and his contributions to the theater. He was a giant on the cultural scene of which there are none today and despite dying in his early 90s I thought he would go on like his mentor George Abbott living to the age of 107. I couldn’t imagine NY without him. Taken from us far too soon.
And by the way he also produced the original production of West Side Story providing the Rivoli with another one of its longest running hits. Dear god the talent that existed.
I believe though not announced here she made a personal appearance as well in the evening. I went that Saturday morning and the publicity had filled at least the orchestra.
Cinetech you’ve given us much great information concerning DVDs and transfers which is greatly appreciated but we often discuss films that have opened first run at specific theaters and their afterlife and we often discuss films that have tangential relationships to those films which opened at other theaters entirely as recently was happening on the Rivoli thread. A kind of collective cinematreasures stream of consciousness.
Your contribution here is of great help to collectors. So called experts can too often be wrong.
I saw LH when it opened at Loew’s State 1. Watching The Things I will Not Miss on youtube is a guilty pleasure of mine a good song with what was he thinking staging by Hermes Pan. And then Question Me an Answer is another shocker. I saw Bobby Van in No No Nanette when it opened and again when he returned to it after filming the movie. It ain’t the same man I tell you. Watch him and Helen Gallagher dance to You Can Dance With Any Girl At All on youtube. I don’t believe he ever lived down tap dancing on grass. I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole James Shigeta’s elaborate take on the importance of family as the foundation of society. It has to be seen to be disbelieved. Checkout Living Together Growing Together on youtube as well. I like that they wear 70s mustaches in Shangri La.
Looks like a super panavision 70 screen to me. This was then what it looked like probably for MFL.I had always wondered. Thank you so much Lionel. So disappointing that on my first trip to London in ‘78 it was already a quad. By the way the London premiere in January '65 is on youtube both black and white with sound and color with no sound. Very nice display above marquee.
If only there were one theater like this in NY today.
The entire first mezz was always reserved seats for every performance of its move/stage show history. To say 2500 seats reserved, which itself is an exaggeration, it would have taken the entire first and second mezz.
Concerning grindhouse’s series of STAR! ads Saul Chaplin writes in his auto bio that when the first ad was placed 17 months before the opening and in the midst of production they received thousands of responses. When in ‘68 these same people received mail order forms the responses were in the hundreds. People lost interest overnight in Julie Andrews roadshow musicals. You could say that in a year the world had changed which was true but a month before the STAR opening the old-fashioned Funny Girl was a big hit at the Criterion. And then Oliver opening in Dec was another big hit. The sad bitter truth is that STAR! was a terrible film. Even I who am a lover of 60s reserved seat film when I finally saw it in a roadshow cut at the Regency thought wow this really is a bomb. I got the dvd to find out if I was wrong but when I turned it off at intermission I had no desire to turn it on again. I really wanted to love it. I remember seeing the spectacular block long sign in Times Square and then the 7th Av Rivoli billboard. Both very impressive. Got the cutout LP and loved it. And ordered the souvenir book from National Publishers which was a beaut.
But then there was the film itself which was expected to have a run of at least a year and a half rivaling that of SOM. And nobody went. Gone by February. Though I wonder if it had been the hit they were expecting where would Sweet Charity and Hello Dolly had opened? The other prestigious houses were taken though I guess Sweet Charity could have opened at Loew’s State 2(what if CCBB been a hit?) and Hello Dolly could have opened at Loew’s State 1.
I don’t see either of them opening at the Demille, Palace(this might have had George M when Charity opened), or Cinerama or Penthouse. Maybe Dolly could have pushed out Funny Girl at the Criterion.
So who took the picture of the urinals and why and why was it posted? Woody do you have pictures of the ladies' room as well? Will you post those too?
It would be interesting if Tishman Speyer tried to appeal it. However I have a friend in NY who’s a member of IATSE who is plugged into all the talk and when I brought it up to her said she’s heard nothing of the sort however she added that she wouldn’t be surprised.
Tishman Speyer owns Rockefeller Center. The Music Hall is probably a major drain and they could make a fortune putting in profit generating commercial outlets.
It talks about the lack of G rated films but the Hall had no problem showing PG films. But nobody with good films wanted them at the Hall anymore. It no longer had prestige and the overhead was so high. Also they had gotten rid of the ballet company which was a big part of the spectacles the Hall was famous for. The great stage looked threadbare and severely underpopulated. The Rockettes sometime in the mid 70s were reduced to 30.
This was posted by Pantopticon on September 28, 2020 at 4:04 pm on the photo page but it deserves to be here:
‘Don’t take this for certain but, the theater industry pipeline has this theater, regardless of landmark status as changing. Interior conversion to mini mall, restaurants, apartments, and office space. Hopefully not.
No one wants to see another one bite the dust.'
vindanparvindanpar on September 27, 2020 at 3:48 pm (remove) I’m going to put this here as I don’t know where else to put it that gets some kind of traffic and this theater was named after all after the Rue de in Paris.
This is for Kinospoter who lately is doing a great job putting in all these pictures of cinemas in France.
What about the Palais Garnier? It would be interesting to know how many films opened there even if they did not have runs nor could it have ever been considered a cinema. I know of two-Gance’s Napoleon and Wyler’s Funny Girl of which newsreel footage of the premiere is on youtube. Maybe these were the only two?
Another classic roadshow cinema that turned overnight into a porn exploitation palace.
Holmes did so poorly it ended Thanksgiving films at the Hall forever. It was pulled mid November and the Christmas show with Scrooge was rushed in causing the entire western world to rush Christmas when before the holiday season always started in December. A vestige of this remains as the Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center is still in December.
For its 50th anniversary at RCMH Sunflower is getting some attention. I must be the last one alive who went to this show. I remember all the middle aged ladies on line early in the morning just like you see in the older pictures of lines outside the Music Hall. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even notice the film was in Italian and dubbed into English.
It closed once in the mid 60s for cleaning and a new paint job. I believe it was for several days.
I remember seeing this at nighttime at Christmas ‘68 with my family. It was a beautiful sight. Of course had I been older and knew it as a single screen theater it would have been depressing as hell.
On the day the box office opened for Fiddler I went that morning. School was closed that day due to a severe storm that made my school inaccessible. Went to a Sat matinee in Nov and it was a sold out performance so it was the only time I saw every seat in the theater filled. Maybe it was filled for action and exploitation films but I don’t know as I had no interest in seeing them which sadly kept me out of the major Times Square houses for long periods at a time. Had it been the 60s I would have been spending a lot of time in them exulting in the showmanship of their roadshow presentations. Just missed them.
Hal Prince had produced the original stage production of Fiddler so we had him to thank for the film at the Rivoli. A block north was his original production of Follies at the Winter Garden(one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in my life and I have refused to see any production of it since) and then a couple of blocks north of that the original production of Fiddler was still playing at the Broadway Theater. It was as if Prince owned Broadway as a thoroughfare from 49th St to 53rd St. Though I never knew him and saw him only once I miss him enormously and his contributions to the theater. He was a giant on the cultural scene of which there are none today and despite dying in his early 90s I thought he would go on like his mentor George Abbott living to the age of 107. I couldn’t imagine NY without him. Taken from us far too soon.
And by the way he also produced the original production of West Side Story providing the Rivoli with another one of its longest running hits. Dear god the talent that existed.
I believe though not announced here she made a personal appearance as well in the evening. I went that Saturday morning and the publicity had filled at least the orchestra.
Interesting that it opened at 3 LA theaters and at only one in NY.
Cinetech you’ve given us much great information concerning DVDs and transfers which is greatly appreciated but we often discuss films that have opened first run at specific theaters and their afterlife and we often discuss films that have tangential relationships to those films which opened at other theaters entirely as recently was happening on the Rivoli thread. A kind of collective cinematreasures stream of consciousness.
Your contribution here is of great help to collectors. So called experts can too often be wrong.
I saw LH when it opened at Loew’s State 1. Watching The Things I will Not Miss on youtube is a guilty pleasure of mine a good song with what was he thinking staging by Hermes Pan. And then Question Me an Answer is another shocker. I saw Bobby Van in No No Nanette when it opened and again when he returned to it after filming the movie. It ain’t the same man I tell you. Watch him and Helen Gallagher dance to You Can Dance With Any Girl At All on youtube. I don’t believe he ever lived down tap dancing on grass. I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole James Shigeta’s elaborate take on the importance of family as the foundation of society. It has to be seen to be disbelieved. Checkout Living Together Growing Together on youtube as well. I like that they wear 70s mustaches in Shangri La.
Looks like a super panavision 70 screen to me. This was then what it looked like probably for MFL.I had always wondered. Thank you so much Lionel. So disappointing that on my first trip to London in ‘78 it was already a quad. By the way the London premiere in January '65 is on youtube both black and white with sound and color with no sound. Very nice display above marquee. If only there were one theater like this in NY today.
TCM is showing Woodstock? Are they also showing Joe and Zabriskie Point?
So I reread my post. If Star had been a hit and Dolly opened at the Criterion where would Patton have opened? I see it at the DeMille.
‘The only theater in NYC that will or can show Cinerama productions.’
Is that because the Warner no longer could show 3 strip? Did they remove the projection booths for only single strip fims?
Ok, so what’s the movie that I’m paying to see?
Ok, so what’s the movie that I’m paying to see?
Huh?
Does Google translate English to English?
The entire first mezz was always reserved seats for every performance of its move/stage show history. To say 2500 seats reserved, which itself is an exaggeration, it would have taken the entire first and second mezz.
Concerning grindhouse’s series of STAR! ads Saul Chaplin writes in his auto bio that when the first ad was placed 17 months before the opening and in the midst of production they received thousands of responses. When in ‘68 these same people received mail order forms the responses were in the hundreds. People lost interest overnight in Julie Andrews roadshow musicals. You could say that in a year the world had changed which was true but a month before the STAR opening the old-fashioned Funny Girl was a big hit at the Criterion. And then Oliver opening in Dec was another big hit. The sad bitter truth is that STAR! was a terrible film. Even I who am a lover of 60s reserved seat film when I finally saw it in a roadshow cut at the Regency thought wow this really is a bomb. I got the dvd to find out if I was wrong but when I turned it off at intermission I had no desire to turn it on again. I really wanted to love it. I remember seeing the spectacular block long sign in Times Square and then the 7th Av Rivoli billboard. Both very impressive. Got the cutout LP and loved it. And ordered the souvenir book from National Publishers which was a beaut.
But then there was the film itself which was expected to have a run of at least a year and a half rivaling that of SOM. And nobody went. Gone by February. Though I wonder if it had been the hit they were expecting where would Sweet Charity and Hello Dolly had opened? The other prestigious houses were taken though I guess Sweet Charity could have opened at Loew’s State 2(what if CCBB been a hit?) and Hello Dolly could have opened at Loew’s State 1.
I don’t see either of them opening at the Demille, Palace(this might have had George M when Charity opened), or Cinerama or Penthouse. Maybe Dolly could have pushed out Funny Girl at the Criterion.