Rivoli Theatre
1620 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10019
1620 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10019
49 people
favorited this theater
Showing 501 - 525 of 1,005 comments
“Old Ironsides” premiered Dec. 1926 at the Rivoli. If featured several sequences in Magnascope. Magnascope was a special projection process. It used a wide angle short throw lens to project a large image on a 30 by 40 foot screen during those special sequences. That screen was twice the size of their regular screen at the time which was 15 by 20 feet. The non-Magnascope sequences were projected using a longer throw lens. An illusion of gradual image enlargement was produced by the movement of the black masking around the screen.
I wonder if that was a verified fact or just advertising hyperbole.
Here’s a clipping from the News in November of 1963 just after the assassination of JFK:
Daily News 11/25/63
“Cleopatra” was 5 months into its run at the Rivoli, while “How the West Was Won” had already been playing 9 months at the former Capitol on a reserved seat basis.
Per a current biography about MGM founder Louis B. Mayer, in approximately 1949, Mayer purchased the Rivoli.
It was not coincidence but it was not the cause either. All the major chains were in financial crisis and up for sale. Cineplex Odeon had a cash infusion from Universal Pictures as that studio had faith that Garth Drabinsky’s multiplex concept would help save the business. Through their financial backing to took over RKO and Walter Reade within months.
Most of the Times Square properties, including the RKO Warner Twin were already sold. Cineplex Odeon actually saved several theatres that were on the verge of being demolished and extended their lives.
Cineplex Odeon added real butter, fixed structures, added faux- marble to every flat surface, added art-deco touches, raised all prices to record highs and made everything first-run. New Yorkers bitched and moaned as they made those old houses some of the highest grossing in history and Garth a folk hero in Hollywood. Loews scrabbled behind trying to keep up until Sony did the same for them. City Cinemas, made up of left over Cineplex disposal sites, was hardly registering.
It took ten years for everyone to notice that the profits just weren’t there since the leases were so bad.
That “porn theatre” you mention is listed here as the Rialto.
I wonder if was by accident or by design that 1987 was the year that saw the Rivoli, Strand & State all closed? Because it was roughly around this time that Cinemplex Odeon had come into Manhattan with a storm, promising us real butter on our popcorn, burnished marble floors and the multi-plex boom began. I remember they actually re-opened or turned a porn theatre on the Northwestern corner of Times Square (Beacon Theatrend & Seventh where the Reuters building now stands) into a movie theatre and moved the entrance from 42nd Street to Seventh Avenue.
Times Square was still Times Square back then and it is probably one of those weird coincidences that all three closed in one year.
I have been putting up images from souvernir programs and other great movie material that I have and most are for sale.
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I also have a great website www.cinemagebooks.com
where you can view over 5,000 film related items including programs and much more. Please feel free to email me
don’t understand why members don’t give email addresses. I’m new to the photobucket site but i guess you can view all my images using my
name irajoel.
posted by ij on Jul 23, 2006 at 12:15pm
To answer Vincent’s question about “West Side Story”: it did move out into the suburbs sooner than that, and in 70mm to boot. The 35mm engagements in theaters all over the area didn’t begin until April 1963:
From Michael Coate and William Kallay’s excellent website, which all Cinema Treasures fans will enjoy:
View link
October 19:
West Side Story
Super Panavision 70 / Six-Track Stereo
Reserved Seat Engagement
United Artists
Manhattan: [uA] Rivoli
Includes World Premiere on October 18, 1961
Expanded release on April 13, 1962:
Asbury Park: [Walter Reade] St. James
Syosset: [Skouras] Syosset
Upper Montclair: [uA] Bellevue
Expanded release on June 28, 1962:
Nanuet: [Skouras] Route 59
Vincent, in most cases, no. The order of delivery was: NY opening, then LA, then CHI, then Philly. Usually within a month. However, and this the crux of the matter, distribs often restricted the suburbs until well after the “hard-ticket” engagement had ended. For an instance, and I hope this answers your question…“Ben-Hur” ended at the Philly Boyd in Jan or Feb 1961, replaced by “Exodus.” The 35mm prints of “BH” didnt get around into the burbs until late Spring (probably Easter time) or early Summer. But smaller locations in Pennsylvania had runs prior to that, too.
Does anybody familiar with distribution during the roadshow era know if a film which had a long run in New York had its national distribution held until the end of its Times Square hard ticket run?
I doubt if in the smaller cities throughout the country runs in a single theater were so long. So for instance did the whole country wait until the summer of ‘66 for My Fair Lady to end its Criterion run though its hardticket run had ended long before in many other cities?
Did the whole suburban market have to wait til the summer of 63 for West Side Story to end its Rivoli run?
Was this the same block where later they opened an RKO Video Store? I know the video store was on one of those short streets (east/west) between Broadway/Seventh Avenue at the north end of Times Square? I remember that video store had a great selection and I would go there on my lunch hour every Friday and rent four videos in the late eighties/early nineties. Alas, like the Rivoli, that video store is long gone.
Hardbop… you wouldn’t recognize the block today at all!!! A gleaming glass tower now occupies the site on which Broadway’s own Parthenon (the Greek-inspired facade of the Rivoli) once stood.
Ah. So I was in here! Thanx Warren on the Embassy thread for pointing out that the Rivoli and UA Twin were one and the same. I’ve been going nuts trying to figure out if I was in the Strand/Warner, State & Rivoli/UA Twin. I know for sure I patronized the Strand/Warner at least once (Star Wars revival in ‘83) and the Rivoli/UA Twin for a film called BEDROOM WINDOW sometime in '87, the same year the theatre closed. I remember the night well because a) I had a date; b) I left my umbrella in the theatre. I remember the theatre as being empty and BW was kind of a schlocky title in line of an earlier comment that UA was booking B movie fodder in here.
I’ve must walk down that block again to refresh my memory about where the theatre actually was.
Warren… it appears that the Frisco on 7th Ave played the XXX twin bill as early as 1973 or ‘74 and my newspaper clippings show the pair still going strong in 1980 and 1982. Have you information that shows the Frisco run was not continuous?
By my records of continuous runs in Manhattan, I agree DEEP THROAT/DEVIL IN MISS JONES is probably the record holder but due to the nature of the films and the way they were advertised, this is difficult to prove. There is also THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW at midnight at the 8th Avenue Playhouse to contend with if that counts.
Here are other lonest runs saw I show them:
THE RED SHOES (1948) 2 years, 4 weeks â€"BIJOU
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (1956) 1 year, 51 weeks â€" RIVOLI
OPEN CITY (1946) 1 year, 49 weeks – WORLD 49
THE BIG PARADE (1926) 1 year, 43 weeks â€" ASTOR
THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) 1 year, 41 weeks â€" RIVOLI
LILI (1953) 1 year, 40 weeks â€" 52nd ON LEXINGTON
THIS IS CINERAMA (1952) 1 year 36 weeks â€" WARNER
(Moved over after 35 weeks at the BROADWAY)
MY FAIR LADY (1964) 1 year, 34 weeks â€" CRITERION
SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD (1956) 1 year 25 weeks â€" WARNER
WEST SIDE STORY (1961) 1 year 25 weeks – RIVOLI
There is a Movie Clock listing from December 1980 for that double feature at the Frisco. The same listing (with the exact same showtimes) appears in March of ‘82. AlAlvarez and I had been pondering just exactly what/where/when the Frisco was, but it looks like that might be the theater you’re thinking of veyoung. Here are the listings:
NY Post 12/11/80 (second column about half way down)
NY Post 3/10/82 (top of the third column)
I found this photo from a link to a Roger Ebert article on the films of Gerard Damiano:
Frisco Theater circa 1973
At first I thought it was a Chicago photo (since it’s an Ebert interview) but then I noted the Avon 7 in the background and pretty much knew it had to be Times Square. It’s a small photo and the background is pretty dim and washed out, but I think you make out a sliver of the Mayfair Theater and billboard on the left edge of the image and beyond that the old RKO Palace building and marquee.
Here’s a link to the Ebert article:
Ebert Interviews Damiano
Now the question is… was the Frisco ever known as anything else? Was it merely a converted store front porn palace?
i think it played in a small theatre on 7th ave…between the back of rivoli and the old castro show room…
it lasted so long for out of towners it was a must see…
wally7
Hey, Ed and you other guys and girls. Pls answer a question for me. Someome once asked what was the longest run of any film in NYC. My guess is the double feature of “Deep Throat” and “Devil & Ms Jones” somewhere in Manhattan. Opened in the 70’s and ran well into the 80’s. Can someone correct me. pls.
Mikeoaklandpark… I looked up Pump Boys and Dinettes on the ibdb.com website and found that it played from Feb 1982 through June 1983 at the Princess Theater. There is no further information on the Princess at that site, unfortunately. The Cine Lido is not listed here either – at least not under that AKA. Does anyone know if it had a history prior to its years as a porn house or was it converted from retail space specifically for that purpose?
don…
back in new york…631 321 wnyg…..4-8pm m-f..
wally1975
The theater in the reflection was indeed the former Trans Lux 49th Street which opened as a newsreel theater in the late 1930’s and later became the Trans Lux West (to compliment and often day and date with the Trans Lux East on 3rd Ave). “Woodstock” did indeed play there in 1970. Later that decade it became the XXX Pussycat Cinema (and later still the Grand Pussycat). The former Cine Lido and Pussycat 2 – I believe – were on the east side of Broadway closer to 48th Street.
Amazing! The gentleman in the tuxedo, standing between Robert Redford and George Roy Hill is Wally Walters. At least that was his radio name when he worked with me at WGBB on Long Island in the early 70s. I knew he was manager of the Rivoli.
nice going…bill
wally 1975
Wally: “Woodstock” played on Broadway at the Trans-Lux West. Was that the name of the theater that became the Pussycat?
ed
i think i was the pussy cat 1 or 2….before that..
i remember watching woodstock in 4 or 8 track stereo…
i however can’t remember the name…
wally 75
ps….the record store would put a display in the window for every
sound track of the movie playing at the rivoli…