Roxy Theatre
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
83 people
favorited this theater
Showing 776 - 800 of 1,209 comments
Sure would like to get Varietys grosses on the Music Hall in years past. To think I subscribed in the 50-60’s when the grosses were actually publised, and threw the issues out as soon as I read them. What a treasure they would be now. As well as all the Time Square grosses. Who knew that would become Nostalgia of another era. SAY GOODBYE TO YESTERDAY.
Warren: My dad often talked about the flags flying all over the theater when he saw “Wilson” there. Maybe he was talking about the drapings, changed to red, white and blue?
There’s a link to “Next Page” at the bottom of RCMH, but it doesn’t go anywhere (yet).
Maybe the original web designers had no idea Cinema Treasures would ever be THIS popular?
I remember the film festival, sure would be nice if they did as the ad said and have it annually. I hope the owners fix the RCMH page soon, maybe some of the older posts will have to be eliminated. Meanwhile I am sure the Roxy lovers will let us post here for a while.
Bill,
Yes, the Radio City page appears to have blown a fuse. I did like your 1996 film festival post. I was also there. I wish they would do it again! I keep emailing them for one, but never get a response.
Is anybody else having trouble seeing the most recent posts on the Radio City Music Hall page? Apparently people are posting, but they’re not showing up on the screen. Maybe 1000 posts is every theater’s limit? It’s supposed to be up to 1005 right now.
So does this mean that for most of its existence the great boxes and proscenium were covered and that the auditorium as presented in The Best Remaining Seats was only visible from ‘27 to the mid 30’s?
Robert:
The dominant colors were deep red and ivory white and were replicated in the draperies hung in lounge of mirrors. The latter appears among the tinted postcards that Lostmemory posted on this page last 9 March ‘05.
Did anyone see it in person or see a color photo? I’m curious of the color
It’s horrendous in black and white, can you visualize that in ‘living color’?
My sentiments exactly.
OMG what a nightmare
The first film ever shown at the Roxy was “The Love of Sunya,” starring Gloria Swanson. Has anyone ever seen this film and is it worth purchasing? It seems available in dvd and thought it would be interesting to actually see the film Roxy opened with. The opening night story in “Last Remaining Seats” got me interested in both the Roxy and this film.
sam_e: In Australia of course, the rudest double was ADVANCE TO THE REAR + BOTTOMS UP
Warren: That’s a highly stylized trade ad from Dazian’s!
Compare the photo that I posted above last 18 April (from “Marquee” 2.3 [1979]: 16, depicting the Fred Waring stage show with “Wilson” in ‘44): the frame for the valance is inverted, the valance swags differ in number (three vs. two) and drape, and the choral stairways remain yet uncovered.
My memory of the Roxy from the late ‘40s is hazy, but the photo bears out most of it. Did Dazan keep adding and adjusting drapery until it swathed the entire proscenium? It’s hard to imagine the theater would have kept the same dusty drapes in place from '39 to '52. A visit to the Roxy would have brought on an allergy attack.
paulb: Probably the all time tongue-in-cheek coupling of titles on a marquee was ‘Getting Gertie’s Garter’ + ‘Up in Mabel’s Room’. Whether or not those two films were booked together deliberately, just for the shock value of seeing them coupled that way I can’t say, but it was done more than once at a number of theatres.
How’s that awful drape treatment! INfamous advertising really….. and…..recent posts about inventive cramming of marquee letters remind me of my Australian teenage ladder level exploits managing these two double features: ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE + ALLTHE PRESIDENT’S MEN. or try this one when 20 ft up: IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES + THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION OF GRACE QUIGLEY. A friend told me he had the thrill of placing THE HAUNTED AND THE HUNTED + THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. Hilarious! Imagine answering the phone 700 times and repeating that! My favourite is from the Randwick Ritz when Tony the illiterate kid we employed liked to place ‘the shapes’ as he called them, up on the marquee: LISA MINOOLI and REBORT DE BIRO in NEW WORK NEW WORK. …..I kid you not.
This thread from the Missouri theatre explains the Missouri Rockets became the Roxyettes and then the Rocketts Whew!
Gae Foster was the choreographer.
/theaters/3209_0_2_0_C/
wow—if Gae’s girls weren’t balancing themselves on bouncing balls, they were perched on precarious pinnacles. RCMH’s Rockettes led a comparatively risk-free existence.
Were the Missouri Rockets first the Roxyettes before becoming the Rockettes and if so who is Gae Foster?
Thanks Vito, for pumping up the volume on “Journey”. Those lucky theater patrons (and the ghost of Bernard Herrmann) are grateful to you.
Yup Bill, I had a habit of playing with the fader from time to time I couldn’t help myself. Besides,“Journey” made me do it.
Vincent, I don’t recall Hope attending the big premiere, however you would have had a bit of competition, there was a lot of talk at the time of a romance she may have been having with co-star Stephen Boyd, this before she married Don Murray.
Vito: Did you actually project “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (with the fader up 2 or 3 DBs)? If so, I’d like to shake your hand! :)
“The Best of Everything” DVD features a Fox newsreel from the big premiere at the Paramount. Arlene Dahl attended with her husband Fernando Lamas, so they even managed to get in a plug for “Journey to the Center of the Earth”! (and what I wouldn’t give to have seen THAT at the Paramount).
There was a wonderful long article about The Best of Everything in Vanity Fair due to the fact that its been getting a lot of play on television lately. Even the Times did a piece on it(the usual Times dopey, condescending, aren’t we so much more enlightened today nonsense.)I was very surprised to read in that article that it opened at the Paramount and not the Roxy.
I work by the Seagram’s building and every time I pass it I think of the very pretty Hope Lange looking at it going to work on her first day. I miss her.