Rivoli Theatre

i saw the sound of music at the rivoli when i was in high school
and thought what a great theatre to manage…
in 75 i was made city manager of the rivoli…first theatre to play jaws, great waldo pepper and the savage is loose..do to the fact we
held a picture for two or three months, every new grand opening
ment a paint job front to back up and down and a new screen..i have some photo’s of the theatre would like to share them…
tell me how
longislandwally75

One of the Rivoli’s early orchestra leaders was Erno Rapeé (1891-1945), who was also a noted film composer. He began conducting theatrically at the Rialto after a successful American tour. He later was the leader at the Capitol, Philidelphia Fox, UFA Berlin Theater, the Roxy and finally the Radio City Music Hall orchestra.

The breakdown of the Rivoli original orchestra was:

8 First Violins, 4 Second Violins, 4 Violas, 4 Cellos, 3 Basses, 2 Flutes, 2 Clarinets, 1 Oboe, 1 Bassoon, 2 Horns, 3 Trumpets, 2 Trombones, 2 Drummers, 1 Harp

Here’s a photo I took this weekend of the Winter Garden Theater blockfront on Broadway and you can see all but the very tippy-top of the very large skyscraper behind it that was built on the site of the old Rivoli:

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At ground floor level is Caroline’s Comedy Nite Club and a Ruby Foo’s chinese restaurant. By the way, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, Ellen’s Stardust Diner is a fun – if crowded – place to take luncheon. The singing wait staff puts on a good show as you dine.

This photo was originally posted on the Winter Garden Theater site, but I thought I’d link it from here as well since you can clearly see the monstrosity that would replace the Rivoli Theater rising on the right side of the image.

I also didn’t notice until now that the sign for the old Hawaii Kai night club was still in existence at the time of this photo, though I’m not sure if the club itself was still open. My Mom came to the house the other day and showed me an 8x10 souvenir photo from the Hawaii Kai that she had found in her box of old scraps. The photo is from the very early ‘60’s and shows Mom, Dad, my Grandparents and my Aunt & Uncle dressed to the nines for a night out on the town. Priceless.

June 1963
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Your thoughts resonate with me, Vito… I feel like I didn’t appreciate the beauty of those old Times Square theaters either. I was mostly attracted to the more lurid double-bills presented at the grind houses on 42nd Street, but I did make my way to a few of the old “roadshow” palaces on B'Way from time to time during the very late ‘70’s and early '80’s. The Loew’s State was already a twin by that time as was the RKO Cinerama (former Strand) so, much of their beauty was obscured by the conversion – although I do recall admiring the upstairs theater at the State. The Rivoli was the only one of these theaters that I can remember seeing before it was cut up or altered in any way. The movie was 1979’s “Dawn of the Dead” and I remember the place was immense.

I wish I could say that I recall with clarity any details of the interior design and architecture, but I really don’t. I took it all for granted. I know for sure I came back here to see Sylvester Stallone in “First Blood” but I think the place had been twinned by that time. I don’t think I started appreciating the magnificence of some of these old theaters until the last time I visited the RKO Keith’s in Flushing around 1986. I felt as though I was in a place that was “out of phase” with the rest of the world… It was as if I had been transported to a place where time stood still and the world outside had completely passed it by (despite the fact that the theater had been already been converted to a triplex). But it was obvious that time had caught on to this forgotten space and was quickly closing in. The smell of death was on the old place and I thought I’d better have a look around and drink it all in before it was too late.

Unfortunately, by then, my trips into Times Square were few and far between and I don’t think I had the same opportunity to “drink in” and appreciate those old palaces as I had with the Keith’s. And now they’re ALL gone. I’m thankful that the redevelopment of 42nd Street has allowed me to finally visit the New Amsterdam Theater (which was either already shuttered or about to be when I started attending movies on the Deuce in ‘79-'80) and the New Victory (which was porn at the time and me and my buddies weren’t into that). Plus, I get to go back and revisit the Selwyn Theater with some frequency as a subscriber to the Roundabout Theater. I’ve also visited the AMC Empire 25 and tried to remember, as I ascend on escalator through the preserved proscenium arch to the modern auditoriums beyond, what the old Empire felt like back in the grind-house days. I hope someday that I can get back inside the Liberty and Times Square theaters after their refitting for “adaptive re-use” is complete, but I wonder how much will remain for me to reflect back upon my youth.

I just wonder why did they forget about the big first-run houses on the Square itself? Why do cinematic landmarks take a backseat to theatrical ones? Particularly when some of these theaters might have been refurbished for live performance?

Anyway… enough of my lamentations. Does anyone know what the last film was to have a splashy Hollywood-type premier in one of the old palaces on Times Square? I know from the DVD that “Jaws” premiered at the Rivoli in 1975, and as we know, began the whole “blockbuster imperative” that changed the way films were marketed and distributed. I also know that many films have had big premiers at the modern Loew’s Astor Plaza, but was “Jaws” the last hoorah for the old-time theaters?

Well said ERD, we have only our memories and photographs of a wonderful time. I was there, trouble is I did not appreciate how magnificent it all was at the time. I never expected to lose it all, but we did. I was working for UA when the Rivoli was carved into three theatres, I worked on the projection installation. It was then I realised things were changing fast and not, in my opinion, in a good way.

On the up coming “Oklahoma!” 50th Anniversary Edition there are some great featurette material. Like “The Miracle of Todd-AO”, The March of Todd-AO" and a new one called “CinemaScope vs. Todd-AO”. In some of this material there is footage of the Rivoli and Egyptian Theatres that opened “Oklahoma!”. And during the featurette “The Miracle of Todd-AO” during the rollercoaster scene you can see the stagehouse and rear half of the old Fox Dome Theatre in Santa Monica. That scene was taken on the roller coaster at the old Pacific Ocean Park at the border of Santa Monica and Venice Beach in California.

Warren it looks as though a Brando film(between WSS and Cleo?) was playing when the 7th Av photo was shot. Did the Rivoli eventually paint Harrison over Liz’s shoulder or did he stay in the snapshot in the right.
Remember meeting Harrison once to get his autograph on my MFL souvenir program. He seemed astonished and delighted to see it(didn’t he have copies lying everywhere in his home?)
Amazing to meet this man who I had seen in 70mm glory at the Criterion and who had starred in Todd AO splendor at the Rivoli and the State.

Vincent—

Now that I think of it, another first-run film that I skipped at the Rivoli and saw out-of-town was “West Side Story.” The film opened in October ’61, but I had already stood twice through the play at the Winter Garden a block north and the Rivoli’s price-scale and advance sell-out deterred me. As it happened, I saw it the following Spring in Brussels during a break in my foreign studies. The dialogue had been dubbed into French and presented with Flemish sub-titles; the songs remained in English, with a line of French sub-titles added to the Flemish ones. Quite a bit of alphabet competed with Natalie on the screen. I remember its roadshow presentation at a large, modern theater with an impressively curved screenâ€"a somewhat scaled down version of the one at the Rivoli. The price was well within my $4.00 per day travel budget, though it might have pressed me to forego a Belgian beer or two to stretch my wallet that night. The theater could have been the Acropole or the Vendôme or the De Brouckère before any of them was cut into a maze of mini-theaters. The Varieties at the time was showing Cinerama.

This ad from 1/76 shows a holiday re-issue of “Snow White” at the Rivoli.
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Vincent: instead of seeing “Lizpatra” at the Rivoli, I travelled to Boston to see it at the Wang Center (then called the Music Hall) in July ‘63. There the prices were cheaper and the waiting time for tickets was shorter. (Never mind the expense and the time it took to get to Boston.) I just posted a Playbill program for that event on the page for the Wang Center of the Performing Arts (Boston) on this site. The Todd-AO presentation at that huge theater was superb.

The Playbill runs to twenty-four pages, and I reproduce only six of them, but I like the ads, especially the one on the title page that implies the “Hungry Pilgrim” restaurant at the Statler Hilton Hotel served an After Theater supper up until noon the next day. Now, we all know that the film is egregiously over-long and that patrons would have been famished after it; but did restaurants discover that the After Theater crowd would keep arriving until the following day’s lunch hour?