Rivoli Theatre
1620 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10019
1620 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10019
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favorited this theater
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Having only seen 70mm single camera Cinerama, can someone tell me why it is considered so inferior to the earlier three projector process? I thought that it was almost as big a picture? Was the depth not as great?
The “2001” print that played the Uptown in DC in 2001 was the cut version. The 162 minute version was seen only by a lucky few, like Paul Noble. I saw it at the Capitol in June 1968 and so missed it by several weeks, but I have an old New York Times from 1968 which features a letter to the editor written by Jon Davison, who became a film producer in later years (“Robocop”, etc.). This letter gives us some idea of what the original version was like:
TO THE EDITOR:
After seeing “2001: A Space Odyssey” at a press preview, I was eager to see it again. Monday I cut poetry class, went to the theater and discovered someone else had been very busy cutting.
Stanley Kubrick’s magnificent work has been butchered; the sad result of the critical abuse heaped upon it by critics conditioned by TV pacing and Lester’s running, jumping and falling down editing. Almost 20 minutes have been removed, including some important plot threads. (This is a film that can ill afford to spare them.) The cuts (numbering somewhere near 30) were rather sloppily made on the print Loew’s Capitol is projecting. When I asked the manager about the deletions, he denied them, but a nearby projectionist added, “They only cut some of the parts that didn’t mean anything.”
Some of the parts that “didn’t mean anything” were: The computer’s asking for permission to repeat the message from mission control telling of its own malfunction; parts of the scene in which Dullea removes the faulty communications unit; the computer’s turning off the pod’s radio before killing Lockwood (thus puzzling the audience when Dullea asks HAL if he has been able to establish radio contact yet) and a host of visual cuts and shortening of scenes.
Besides the wholesale slicing, MGM added two meaningless title cards, which grate on the film’s visual style. The bastardization, complete with sloppy splices and uneven pacing, is now being viewed by even more confused audiences than met the original. But the most confused of all is MGM, whose lack of artistic faith in its own film led it to cut what it couldn’t comprehend, thus destroying what it hoped to save.
JON F. DAVISON
Graduate Film Student
New York University
New York City
Elsewhere in the same Arts and Leisure section (April 28, 1968), there’s a short article quoting Kubrick on how he himself has cut 19 minutes out of the film:
“Nothing has been deleted entirely,” he said. “These were simply short cuts here and there – it’s a common practice – to tighten and make the film move more rapidly.”
Anyway, I hope Richard W. Haine is right and the cut sequences still exist. I’d love to see them someday.
I have a question about the 70mm print of “2001” which played at the DC Uptown, among other places, with what I believe was a digital sound remix, about 2 or 3 years ago. How close to the original 162 minute version is this print? I’m told that this is the only print that was struck. I remember saying to my friend at this time how good it was to hear directional dialogue once again. Also, wasnt' the “official” world premiere of “2001” in 1968 held at the Uptown, before the NYC Loew’s Capitol (Cinerama) opening?
I saw the first press showing of “2001: A Space Odyssey” at the Capitol, which was the Monday evening before the Thursday night “world premiere.” It was then the original length of 162 minutes. I belive that at least a quarter of the audience hadn’t returned after intermission. There had been no hype about the “ultimate trip,” and they were impatient to say the least!
I was one of only a handful of people remaining in the theater when the curtains finally closed at the end of act 2. I turned to the booth (which was on orchestra level) and gave the thumbs up to Stanley Kubrick!
I’m convinced that his cut version, which I saw several more times at the Capitol, the Warner Cinerama, and the Ziegfeld was superior, but it would be nice for a restoration to be done if just for the historical value of it.
I believe that “2001” started as a hard ticket show in NYC during it’s initial run then they changed it to allow people to see it without reserved tickets. The hard ticket policy was gradually abandoned over the next few years, not over night. I did see “Oliver” in a reserved seat Roadshow engagement somewhere in Florida in 1968. I don’t recall whether it was in 70mm or 35mm mag stereo.
I’m well aware of the ratios of Cinerama films over the years. It’s possible however that they made a special rectified print of “2001” that played around or even for a single theater. They made custom rectified prints of “Oklahoma!” among other titles. Perhaps it was just an optical illusion though based on the screen masking or lens they used at the Rivoli in 1976 and 1978 although since Vincent recalls the wider image I suspect there was some difference in the presentations.
Technicolor was capable of making all sorts of unsual prints in custom made ratios. “Around the World in 80 Days” 35mm magnetic stereo prints had the entire silent academy ratio with picture but with a 1.75 x 1 squeeze so that when it was unsqueezed it replicated the 70mm 2.21 x 1 ratio. You needed one of those Tushinsky variable squeeze anamorphic lenses to show it. The 35mm optical mono Technicolor prints had the standard 2 x 1 squeeze and 2.35 x 1 slightly cropped ratio. “Ben Hur” 35mm Technicolor prints had the standard 2 x 1 anamorphic squeeze but contained a slight ‘letterboxing’ (black borders) on top and bottom of the frame to simulate the 70mm MGM Camera 65 2.76 x 1 ratio. The 1969 release prints in 70mm were spherical cropped 2.21 x 1 and the 35mm Metrocolor prints 2.35 x 1 without the black borders. So, Technicolor could custom make any kind of print you wanted in 35mm and 70mm.
re: 70mm aspect ratios for “Cinerama” presentations. Of the 7 “recognized” Cinerama productions (those reading “in Cinerama” during the title credits),4 were photographed in Ultra-Panavision, which is 65mm production with anamorphic lenses (not all theatres had compensating lenses to completely unsqueeze the image)..these were “Mad World,” “Greatest Story,” “Hallelujah Trail,” “Battle of the Bulge,” and “Khartoum”. The spherical 65mm productions, often called Super-Panavision or Panavision-70 “Cinerama” presentations were “2001,” “Ice Station Zebra,” and “Grand Prix.” Many locations, particularly New York, had “in Cinerama” presentations (and, as far as the audience viewpoint was concerned, they were indeed “in Cinerama), that were not actually licensed Cinerama productions. Some of these were "Cinerama Mediterranean Holiday,” which was photographed in 65mm using a German process called MCS-70. And “Cinerama’s Russian Adventure,” was was mostly photographed in the Soviet 3-camera Kinopanorama process. As for the Rivoli and its 70mm D-150 presentations, which, although using a 2.2:1 ratio, had curvature built into the projected image, along with curved top and bottom masking, that, when in the “sweet spot” gave the impression of a more ribbon-like image on a curve greater than 128 degrees. It is questionable, however, how often the Rivoli utilized the full width/height D-150 image, as one young projectionist told me at some point in the 1960’s that he only used the “smaller” D-150 70mm setting, because the full D-150 screen “was too large”. AARGH. I could have strangled him on the spot!:)
Richard, 2001 opened in New York at the Capitol and then moved over to the Strand which I believe is pretty well documented on this and the 70mm in New York site. It would be interesting to hear from people who saw it on its original engagement. Also I thought that the film had a pretty standard road show release which only changed when it was pushed out of the Strand in the fall of ‘68 for Ice Station Zebra. But maybe there are others who could enlighten us on this. Remember there were still a few successful roadshows to come-Funny Girl, Oliver, and Fiddler(ugh!)
By the way, “2001” was the film that changed the “Roadshow” presentations. Prior to that movie, all Roadshows were hard ticket.
That meant you needed to buy your ticket and numbered seat in advance. “2001” was popular with young people who prefered to wander into the theater at whatever the next screening was rather than reserve their seat. It was such a success that theaters decided to alter their Roadshow policies. Incrementally then
retained the exclusive area showing for the film with the higher
ticket price and superior presentation in 70mm and stereophonic sound but abandoned the reserved seat policy. You could go see the film whenever you wanted.
Roadshows continued through the eighties although the window shortened to only a week or so before the same movie went into general release. At least many movies were released in 70mm.
When digital sound was introduced in the nineties, distributors
dumped the 70mm process which was the last nail in the coffin of
showmanship. The last new feature to be shown in 70mm was “Titanic"
which played the recently closed "Loews Astor Plaza” in 1997. There have been occasional classic films reprinted in the format like “2001” and “Lawrence of Arabia”. Otherwise, it’s another superior format abandoned by the film industry. The same year that “Titanic” was released, the Technicolor dye transfer process was resurrected. Classics like “Rear Window” and “The Wizard of Oz” were reprinted in “Glorious Technicolor” along with some new films like “Toy Story II”, “Pearl Harbor” and “Bulworth”. It was shut down again in 2001.
Today, unless you attend a screening in Hollywood, you’ll be seeing a garbage high speed print struck from an internegative three generations removed from the camera negative. Due to the static charge in the estar stock, it’s likely that dust will be printed into the release copy which has poor contrast and inferior resolution.
In comparison, most prints were struck directly from the camera negative in 70mm, or in 35mm Eastmancolor and 35mm Technicolor through 1968. That’s among the reasons that films looked so spectacular in the large screen theaters like “The Rivoli” or movie palaces like “Radio City Music Hall”. The sub-standard high speed prints cranked out at 2000 feet per minute made on features today would not look good on a 40 foot or 80 foot wide screen common in the fifties and sixties. In contrast, release prints were made at a very slow printing speed in the fifties. 45 feet per minute which allowed for a good exposure on the release print and contrast changes. High speed prints are made on a ‘one lite’ setting and look it. One of the reasons that even blow up 70mm prints looked good is that there were no high speed printers. All 70mm copies were made at a slow printing speed. In addition, many were camera negative blow ups. For example, “Camelot” 70mm prints were optically enlarged directly from the 35mm Panavision negative. A first generation blow up. I saw it at the Warner Cinerama in 1978 (“Broadway Comes to Broadway” festival) and it almost looked like a 70mm original.
Vincent,
So I’m not the only one who noticed this. It might have been a 1968 ‘rectified’ print then in 1976. What this means is that they
slightly cropped the movie and spread it out with a differential squeeze from the center to the edges. A special lens would incrementally unsqueeze it so it looked normal when projected but was very wide. Technicolor was certainly capaple of doing this.
They had done it with “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” which is why the extra faded scenes they found from the Roadshow look strange on Laserdisc and DVD. “2001” actually utilized two labs. Both Technicolor and Metrocolor are listed in the credits. Alas, if either print that was shown at the Rivoli still exist for examination, they would be totally faded by now. Despite the superior sharpness of 70mm, it was chemically unstable like all Eastmancolor prints made prior to 1983 (the year Kodak introduced ‘low fade’ Eastmancolor stock).
The new prints of “2001” in 70mm and 35mm look quite good. It’s one of the most ‘protected’ films that exists. Not one but two sets of B&W 65mm separations were made on the movie by MGM.
Did anyone here see the original “Roadshow” in 1968 shown at the Strand in Cinerama that was 20 minutes longer? Kubrick cut the film after a few days and no one has seen the 162 minute version since.
Allegedly, the cuts exist at his house in England.
Another film that only played uncut at The Rivoli was “The Sand Pebbles”. It was 13 minutes longer than the version played every where else. There’s a website on the film that has B&W copies of the cut scenes in French. I wish Fox would restore it to the original running time.
“Gone with the Wind” played in the heavily cropped 70mm version there in the seventies. They blew up the center of the 1.33 35mm image making wide shots into medium shots, medium shots into close ups and close ups with the actors missing their heads and chins.
The even changed the title design.
You mean narrower in ‘78?
Yes!!!
I thought it was a larger image as well in '76 but I thought my memory was playing tricks on me in '78.
So maybe I was right all these years.
Vincent,
My guess is that the 76 showing was an original 1968 print that Kubrick supervised since it had the “Cinerama” logo. The 1978 print
was a new one made by MGM and not supervised by Kubrick so the contrast and saturation was not as good. It had the “70mm” title card at the end. Either that or the 78 was from an internegative and the 76 was from the camera negative which accounts for the image quality difference.
Perhaps it was my imagination but I do recall the 76 print being wider than the 1978 print. I know that the aspect ratio for 70mm had been standardized at 2.21 x 1 after 1966 (when they used the Ultra-Panavision anamorphic 70mm ratio of 2.76 x 1). Do you recall it being wider too? It might have been a specially made rectified print to fill out the ratio of the earlier Cinerama width. Maybe it’s just my imagination but I had a sweet spot seat both times and I do seem to recall the image being narrower in 1976.
To Richard Haines,
I’m glad you mentioned the ‘76 showing of 2001 at the Rivoli with the Cinerama card. This was one of the greatest cinematic experiences of my life. The print was so beautiful and enveloping and despite being contiuous perfs it was full roadshow presentation. The closing of the curtains at intermission on the moving mouths with Hal looking on was chilling beyond belief. The 78 print was good but not nearly the same experience.
I so regret they did not show Sound of Music there again in the '70s and instead showed it at the National which I found a horrible theater. And why did the Ziegfeld at this time become the major presentation big movie theater at this time when New York still had the Criterion and the Rivoli?
The owners of these theaters should be tried for cultural vandalism.
I can’t even walk in front of their former sites.
The Rivoli was my favorite NYC movie palace. It had an awesome
curved screen with head on projection in the back of the theater
so the horizons were straight and didn’t smile upwards. The sound
was also impressive. I attended showings in the seventies through
the eighties when it was re-designed to squeeze another theater in
the balcony area. The orchestra level still was impressive although
they removed the Dimension 150 screen and put in a flat one. Still,
screenings like the 70mm version of “The Thing” were impressive.
While it had the deeply curved screen, I saw “2001” three times in
70mm. Once in 1976 and twice in 1978. The 1976 print contained the
“Cinerama” title card and the 78 print the “70mm” card. The 1976 print had much more saturated color than the 78 print. However, this
film looked spectacular in this house. Even mediocre movies like “1941” were impressive since the curved screen and superior 6 channel sound made it entertaining although there was an infant crying in the audience at each explosion.
The rear channels did not blast at you in this cinema as they did
at the Cinerama theater down the street or Loews Astor Plaza. I think it had the best 70mm presentations in the city.
Ironically, my low budget exploitation film, “The Class of Nuke Em High” was among the last to play there before the theater was demolished. There was already scafolding in front of the cinema
when it was booked there. I guess I miss this Roadshow house more
than any other one I attended at the time.
Does anyone know of a good website where one can learn more about the architect Thomas W. Lamb? I’ve read so much about the theaters he designed here but there’s very little else. When was he born? Where did he get his schooling? Who and what were his influences? How did he come to design theaters as opposed to other kinds of buildings? I’ve searched the web and there’s precious little. I DO keep getting redirected to THIS site, though so it seems to be the main site for info on him.
Can anyone help?
The location shots in “My Favorite Year” are amazing. I forgot about the one at the beginning with the Rivoli — although now that you’ve mentioned it, I do remember enjoying getting a charge out of it when I saw the movie.
I think I too assumed that it was shot on location for the movie, and that they hired a few “antique” cars (cars from the 1950s) to go down Broadway for the few seconds of this scene.
I think the most amazing location shot in the movie, however, was the one looking east towards Broadway along W. 45th St. It’s looking towards the Criterion, I believe — although I don’t remember if you actually see the Criterion in the shot. What you do see, among other things, is the Astor Hotel (currently the site of the Minskoff Theater and One Astor Plaza).
What’s so amazing about this shot? I think you see one of the featured actors of “My Favorite Year” walking down the street, and the street is so “real” — you can see people walking and cars moving — but the Astor Hotel had already been torn down for about fifteen years before the movie was made!
If it was indeed a location shot (and I’m not misremembering something that was instead just cleverly used stock footage), I think the scene was a matte shot — filmed through glass that had the Astor Hotel painted onto it.
The other day I was in the Virgin Mega store on Union Sq. and saw a book devoted to this kind of special effect. I looked for this scene in the book, but didn’t find it. If the shot in the movie was indeed a matte shot, perhaps it was too “unspectacular” and too “non-glitzy” to be included in the book. (The book has a lot of sci-fi scenes in it.)
There are two very distinct shots of The Rivoli in the movie “My Favorite Year”. They both occur at the very beginning. It seems the film was shot on location because they show the kid walking right into Rockefeller Center and it does not look like a set. I know because I’m in there every day…
You catch a glimpse of the Rivoli marquee and the giant vericle sign spelling out “Gone with Wind” in the soft porn film, “Fuego”, probably filmed in 1967. Although the film was shot in Argentina, a few minutes was actually filmed in Times Square. On the DVD you freeze frame it for a good look.
We purchased some original exterior pictures of the Rivoli stamped and dated by Paramount Publix Corporation, 1932. The pictures show several billboards, street scenes, and patrons lined up in front of the theater. One of the pictures clearly shows a street sign reading 43rd street. It is possible we have pictures of several historical theaters. We were sad to hear the Rivoli has been distroyed. We were ready to take a trip to see the theater in our pictures.
While middle-class movie goers were possibly more polite in 1916 (“Ladies, please remove your hats.”) than they were in the 1950s (although this is debatable), were they more polite than 1916 theatergoers attending plays on Broadway in theaters that didn’t have these apparently “new fangled” cut outs over the rear orchestra seats?
I would doubt it, especially since in those days the early movies seem to have attracted a more “lower class” type clientele.
Hall says that in 1913, New York [5 boroughs?] has “986 movie houses — of all kinds …” (pg. 39) “Most of them [neighborhood movie theaters] were throwbacks to the nickelodeons of earlier days, and while they were profitable, audiences were made up mostly of kids and people who wanted to kill an hour with anickel … and nobody took them very seriously.” (pg. 31)
Hall also says that at the Regent (opened 1913), “ … there was no need … for those functinaries familiar to nickelodeon audiences who went up and down the aisles squirting noisome helio-trope-avec-creosote into the air from spray guns.” [i’m guessing this is because in those days the audience could smell bad?]
By the way, here’s a very rough chronology from the Hall book of some of Thomas Lamb’s early theaters:
In 1909, when Thomas Lamb was 22, he designed his first theater, The City Theater. In (approx.) 1913 he designed the Regent Theatre. Then came the Strand (1914), and the Rialto (1916) [which has a half oval cut-out over the rear orchestra seats, that is shown on pg. 46]. The Rivoli opened in 1917.
Quick clarification:
The movie theaters with the cut outs and the small lobbies that we are talking about are very, very early movie theaters (at least as early as 1913, 1916) — not the kind of movie theaters that we think of when we think “movie theater” (late 1920s, 1930s).
For instance, the one that I went to in Washington Heights in the late 1960s (that I believe was an even earlier version of the original Rialto, pictured in the Ben Hall book, and its sister, the Rivoli), was well maintained but a VERY primitive theater. Perhaps, it’s hard to describe, but the lobby area was virtually non-existent. You almost just walked right into the theater from the street, and I believe there might have been a curtain across the doorway to keep out the light and sound, and a glass screen (like that pictured in the Hall book) to separate the orchestra seats from what there was of a “foyer.”
While lobbies for “legit” Broadway theaters have traditionally been small, when you look at the oldest extant Broadway theaters (like the Lyceum, the Hudson and New Amsterdam, all from 1903 — ten years before these early movie theaters) you see that the lobbies and public areas may be small by today’s standards, but they are not as small, I believe, as these early cinemas by any means.
Also, while watching a silent may involve more concentration (for instance, because you can’t turn your head away because you might miss a title card), maybe people talking in the lobby areas around the cut out, etc. 1) didn’t interfere with this kind of concentration or 2) were still beneath the loud sound of the music accompanying the movie. So I’m thinking that maybe this is why the cut outs might not have been thought of as such a problem.
I agree with Vincent, silent movies require greater concentration and therefore less conversation. It wasn’t until talking movies came along that one could allow ones attention to wander from the screen without losing track of the story. I also believe that people were better behaved in public. Even in my not so very distant childhood, the act of speaking aloud at the movies was considered indescribably rude. Regarding Vincent’s point #1, I think most legit theatres at the turn of the century had very minimal lobby space (there were exceptions of course) and that movie theatre lobbies in the teens and twenties were noted for their expansiveness in comparison with their “legitimate” brethren.
In college, in a film class, my great teacher got us all to see Garbo’s “A Woman of Affairs” in the college theater with a full stero track and all. The print was supberb. She did this every year to show students how rich and amazing the “silents” could be. Prior to this, I was only acquainted with that ridiculously cliched piano accompaniment to silents. The experience opened my eyes to how visually amazing they were. And how quite a theater could be.
Silent movies require more concentration creating a more rapt focused audience. I imagine these vast audiences of thousands of people totally involved in what was going on. That must have been something.
I think you hit it on the head about the silent films. Seems strange to us know but I’m sure back then, who saw the need for sound? I don’t think anyone in Hollywood saw it coming. Thus, the cutout would be OK.
AND, yes, people would’ve been quieter as well.
The conversation about cut-outs near the rear orchestra seats of some early movie theaters, and the problems such cut-outs create, along with the fact that many of these theaters seem to have had especially small and unprotected lobbies, makes me wonder about the reasons for such design decisions in the first place.
What makes it especially interesting to me is the “fact” that I don’t believe “regular” theaters (“legit,” “opera,” etc.) built during this time, or before it, had such design features (at least to the same degree). So I wonder if the builders of these early movie theaters actually saw such new features as “improvements” over what was already being done in “regular” theater design or, at the very least, as innovations that would not pose the same problems in the new movie theaters that they would have posed in existing “regular” theaters?
A number of things come to mind as possible explanations that make these new architectural features more sensible:
1) Movies had just left the penny arcade. Movie theaters weren’t yet seen as worth the investment in real estate that would have allowed them to accommodate large “buffer” lobbies? Things like ceiling cut outs seemed like a fun way of making public spaces seem “grand”?
2) Less noise. People were more polite and street noises had less “punch,” making these innovations seem less problematic than they would be in later years? Or, looking at it the other way around, maybe a general public that was accustomed to frequenting music halls and beer gardens were less bothered by ambient noises? Kind of the way some audiences today ENJOY people talking — and shouting out — during a performance. (I remember going to see “Dream Girls” and getting the impression that both the audience And the performers desired the audience to shout out comments during certain songs. That was part of what this theater going experience was ABOUT.)
3) These early movie theaters played SILENT movies (although accompanied by some kind of live music). In silent movies, viewers are “listening” to the film in only a very general way; more important is the ability to “see” what is happening on screen — the moving visuals and the title cards that explain the dialogue and make the plot more comprehensible. In other words, unlike movie goers in the sound era, maybe movie goers in the silent era might have been less bothered by ambient sound — they weren’t straining to concentrate and hear dialogue explaining what was happening on the screen?