Rivoli Theatre

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?

I moved to NYC in 1979…saw several movies at the Rivoli over the years while it was still open. The first was Coal Miner’s Daughter…I was blown away by the size of the screen…the biggest I had ever seen.

In addition he was a supreme gentleman. Had the privilege of meeting him and Portia Nelson at the Biograph when they held a Wise festival in the early 90’s. Do those kinds of classy people in anybody under 70 exist anymore?

No, you’re right, Vincent. He deserved one of those front page below-the-fold articles with a picture. He got the same treatment as Bob Denver. He should’ve gotten the same treatment as Marlon Brando.

To be fair to the New York Times, they did mention Wise on the front page of yesterday’s late edition, which we get here at work. It was a listing in the “Inside” index at the bottom of the page: “Robert Wise, Director, Dies” … page A29.

So Robert Wise dies who is one of the very last of the top tier talents from the golden age of Hollywood who was still alive and he does not even rate a one line mention on the front page of the New York Times. What a culturally disastrous world we live in and the “paper of record” certainly leads the way.

Another Rivoli roadshow
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Currently there are three Digital sound formats available. All releases today carry Quad sound tracks, which means all four sound tracks (3 digital and 1 analog) are on the print. Of the three the most popular is Dolby, it’s a good sound when it works properly, however it must be maintaned. The original installations included a penthouse reader similar to the old magnetic penthouses which sat above the projector head, but most installations now have a “basement reader” which has both the analog and digital pickup heads mounted in the optical sound head below the projector head.
The basement reader does not seem to work as well as the penthouse reader, there are LEDs that begin to dimish and must be kept at a recommended power to operate properly. When this is not monitored you will experience the kind of sound Vincent described. In addition the quality of the sound can be determined by the condition of the print and how the sound image was printed on the print. You might notice a change in the quality of the sound from reel to reel. Clearly there is work to be done but when it works properly and the amplifiers and equalization is set to spec, the sound can be rather good. Unfortunatly some theatres just let the equipment run and run without proper maintenance and the result can be rather awful. The six tracks: left,center,right,left surround, right surround and sub woofers must also be balanced, I have heard theatres were the surround levels are set too high and that can be distracting.

to frankcan,
I rememhber seeing Superman 2 at the Cinerama 1. Definately not the 2. Perhaps they moved it at some point. You’re right the 2 was huge I always felt that it was the entire Strand Balconey with modern decor. It you see original pictures of the balcony it is exactly the same but with ornate moldings. Stadium seating before the term was coined. You are right about the sound in 1. It was great. there isn’t a theater I’ve been in since the destruction in the late 80’s of the great Times Square houses where the sound is as good. Or maybe its just a different type of sound that I do not like. Too glassy, not enough warmth and richness. And geez is it loud.