Roxy Theatre
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
83 people
favorited this theater
Showing 851 - 875 of 1,209 comments
Warren, could you check that photo number again? I couldn’t find the image either by it or by going to the ‘movie theatre’ category. If there were some alpha elements to that photo number that may have been omitted, they apparently are necessary to find the image.
According to an article published by the China Mail[of Hong Kong] on 1st February,1934,We[the Alhambra Theatre of Hong Kong]have the benefit of RCA Victor “High Fidelity” sound apparatus similar to that installed in the luxurious Roxy theatre in New York.
Raymond Lo/22nd May,2005
Look at this classic Roxy shot, they put a lit sign above the marquee advertising a sneak preview. People got to see 2 films and the stage show.
This may not be the place to discuss this, but I too wondered about letterboxing, can anyone expain how the different aspect ratios are re-formatted for TV/DVD, and why the image size varies?
Re:CinemaScope 55 and it’s use for “The King & I”, I wonder if this is why when I watched it a few weeks ago on Fox Movie Channel, the letterboxing seemed a tad ridiculous. As much as I love the letter boxing format, for that movie, the movie image was more like a strip in the middle of the screen. The black portions on the top and the bottom were unusually prominent. Anyone agree?
Mr. Rankin: What was posted here was only a rough draft so some of the text and captions were neither edited nor rewritten yet, which would have been done had the book come to pass. It was done this way mainly for the designer, not for publication.
A number of “Stepale2"s earlier comments and proposed captions about the ROXY were taken word for word from the late Ben M. Hall’s "The Best Remaining Seats: The Story7 of the Golden Age of the Movie Palace” and I hope that they were fully credited in the proposed book, since they are not so credited here.
Here is some more from my Roxy chapter from my book on Times Square that did not come to pass: (I’m sorry for the length and misspellings…it was never edtited…and if it is too boring…just skip ahead.
Caption for photo of the Roxy’s CinemaScope screen:
CinemaScope was demonstrated at the Roxy in April 1953 for the first time. An invited audience of reporters, exhibitors and other members of the film industry saw clips from The Robe and How to Marry a Millionaire, plus some aerial footage of New York’s skyline and the winter sports at Sun Valley.
Cinerama was big hit when it opened at the Broadway Theatre in 1952. But the process was expensive and impractical, requiring three projectors in three separate projection booths, (as well as three projectionists and a controlling engineer at each performance.) In addition, seats had be removed from the ochestra floor to accomodate the big curved screen and the three projection booths.
3 D was also popular in 1952, but it required special glasses that caused eye strain and headachs and the novelty soon wore off.
Caption for color poster for The Robe:
In the early 1950s, when television was beginning to keep audiences at home, it took spectacle and technical innovation to get them back to the theaters. The Robe provided both, breaking box office records at the Roxy, and everywhere else it played.
Promoted as “the modern miracle you see without glasses,” CinemaScope was the best publicized of the new processes, but was really just a poor man’s version of Cinerama. And it was not new, having been invented in 1927 by Henri Chretien in France. Chretien had been seen Abel Gance’s Napolian which was shot in TK a primitive three camera process. and he was inspired to come up with a similar, but more practical solution. Cretian’s anamorphic lens had been optioned by England’s Rank Organization, but after their option lapsed, it was was picked up by 20th Century Fox. CinemaScope required a special lens on the camera that compressed the image during filming. Another lens on the projector unsqueeze it when the film was shown on a wide, slightly curved, screen, two and a half times wide as it was high. The complete the CinemaScope experience, a four-track stereophonic sound could be installed Fox made the process available to the other studios, and they all used it for some of their productions, with the exception of Paramount and Republic. But many directors did not care for the proportions. Fritz Lang said it was only good for"snakes and funerals,“ and George Stevens thought it was would be best for "class photographs.” William Wyler had more serious reservations, “Nothing is out of the screen, and you can’t fill it,” he went on, “You either have a lot of empy space, or two people taking and a flock of others surrounding them who hav nothin to do with the scene. Your eyes wonder just out of curiosity."
The first CinemaScope feature to be released was Fox’s The Robe, which had its premiere at the Roxy on September 16, 1953. (How to Marry a Millionaire was finished first, but Fox decided that The Robe would be better as the first release.) Most of the studio’s productions were shot in the process until 1967, when In Like Flint marked the end of the process.. Fox as well as most of the other studios had long since switched to the Panavision lens, creating a similar effect, but with a sharper image with better depth of field..
Caption for ad for Carousel at the Roxy
CinemaScope doubled the width of the screen to an aspect ratio 2.55:1, but few theaters could accommodate screens with those proportions. CinemaScope 55, which had a 55.6 millimeter camera negative, exposing a negative twice as high and wide as 35mm CinemaScope, but it was used only twice, for Carousel and The King and I, both of which opened at the Roxy. Two years later, Fox abandoned CinemaScope 55 for their big pictures in favor of Todd-AO. the 70 mm process.
In a couple of years, after the novelty of CinemaScope wore off, stage shows returned to the Roxy. National Theaters, which took over Fox’s lease after the consent decree forced the studios to sell their theaters, appointed Robert C. Rothafel, the nephew of Roxy, as the manager in 1955. “We hope to stage shows every bit as lavish as those originated by my uncle,” the young Rothafel explained, “except we won’t try to put that number of people on stage or in the pit. Do you realize his shows included a chorus of 100 voices, 36 Roxyettes, a corps de ballet of 20, and in the pit there was a symphony orchestra of more than 100 men!” “Happy Holiday, Anywhere, U. S. A., ” was the title of his first show. It was well received by the critics and audiences seemed to enjoy it as well.
Former Olympic star, Sonya Kaye, appeared in a 45 minute ice show with a company of 39 singers and skaters, and a 24-piece orchestra with The Rains of Ranchipur on the screen. Fox’s TK, combined with stage shows played at the Roxy for the next three years until Windjammer, a kind of travelogue photographed in a new process called Cinemiracle was booked in 1958. There was no stage show and seating was cut in half. It was not a success and stage shows returned to the Roxy, when the 1958 film version of Damn Yankees. At that time the Roxy was sold to Rockefeller Center, but Robert Rothafel had formed a company to lease it back and was trying to run it himself, but with a new approach, described as “youthful and modern.” Too little and too late. The Gazebo was the last film and stage show combination. Then there some reissues, The Cain Mutiny with On the Waterfront.
The final night was uneventful. There were no stars, no ceromony, On March 29,1960, the last ticket was sold at 10:35 p.m., and then after a final showing of The Wind Cannot Read, the final movie to play at the theater, about 300 people filed silently into the night, most unaware that the Roxy was closing for good.
Three years later, after Pennsylvania Station was demolished, The New York Times printed an editorial which might also be applied the destruction of the Roxy,.
“…..we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build, but by those we have destroyed.”
Caption: Eliot Elisofon photographed Gloria Swanson in the ruins of what had been the Roxy’s rotunda. This 1960 photograph was the inspiration (“rubble in the daylight”) for producer/director Hal Prince’s staging concept for Follies (1971), the Stephen Sondheim/James Goldman musical.
One can still get a glimpse of the Roxy in the movie The Naked City (1948), which had several sequences shot in the rotunda.
I conducted the interview below which was to be included in my Roxy chapter…if anyone is interested….
Confessions of a Gae Foster Roxyette:
My father had reared me with the idea that all women should be financially independent. There weren’t many careers a woman could have in the 1920s, so I decided I would be a dancer. I always wanted to go to New York, but I really never had aspirations to be a star. “Don’t go to New York,” my dancing teacher warned, “You can’t even BUY a job.” The year was 1931—it was the Depression.
Scared, I went anyway. My mother went with me. It took about four months of day-long looking, exchanging information—networking, I think they call it now—going to “calls,” etc. I finally landed a job—it was a 33-week tour that played presentation houses across the country and into Canada and was produced by Leon Leonidoff, one of the producers at the Roxy Theater. We returned in September 1932 and I then worked with a vaudeville act that was playing out-of-the-way places like Canarsie in Brooklyn.
I was literally down to my last nickel when one of the girls I was rehearsing with (there were rehearsal jobs for things that never opened) told me about a call for dancers at the Roxy—actually the call was for only one dancer—and it came down to the two of us; when they called up the line, between shows, and tried to place us, she did not fit anywhere, so I got the job.
After two or three days of rehearsal, I started working at the Roxy on Christmas week 1932. That lasted for one month—and I was out. The Roxy had changed regimes—Mary Read who was the producer—she was one of the original Tiller girls and John Tiller’s favorite dancer
—Tiller was the one who invented precision dancing—then she was out and Fanchon and Marco took over. I tried out again, and again I was chosen.
Our daily life was: on stage, dressed in rehearsal clothes and on our marks—we each had a number—at nine a.m. Thirty seconds late and you were given a penalty: one week out without pay. Since the pay at the beginning was only $27.50—Fanchon and Marco took out their 35 per cent agent fees—that made it $26.13, which was a lot more then but wasn’t very much. After the NRA took effect, our “take” was $30.
We would rehearse until eleven; the house opened at 11 a.m. There were also costume fittings, or if things hadn’t gone well on stage, we would go up to the rehearsal room on the fifth floor. Then lunch, out, at Hanson’s Drug Store at Seventh Avenue and 51st Street. We would come back, put on our makeup—the first show was generally between 1:00 and 1:30 and lasted for 35 or 40 minutes. We usually did three numbers and then we would rehearse some more. We would do another show and at about five, go to dinner and then back to do the dinner show; we rehearsed some more, for about an hour and a half, and then we did ANOTHER show. We were free between 10:30 and 11:00—makeup off, in street clothes, and home by 11:30. I usually ate a “night” lunch and was in bed between 1:30 and 2:00. We ate four meals a day.
We did not have much social life. The theater was your life. There was no time for outside friends, and there were no “stage door Johnnies” at the Roxy Theater. If anyone was there, it was someone who knew one of the girls, not someone who was hoping to meet one. We had no time for the high life. If you tried night-clubbing for a couple of hours after all those shows, you wouldn’t be there the next morning.
Sometimes on Friday nights, to relax after our long opening day, we went to where the good shows were, the MGM pictures over at the Capitol Theater. They had midnight shows and we would be transported into another world by watching Clark Cable and Joan Crawford. Later, we worked for five or six weeks and then got five days free, but you would practically lose touch with all of your friends. I think that was about the deadliest part of working at the Roxy: confinement to one life and to one group of people, week after week, month after month, year after year. It took a lot out of you.
But it was glamorous in a way, because our costumes were so very beautiful. Bonnie Cashin was our designer; she later became quite a famous fashion designer. And it was such fun to get into them. When the lights come on and the music started playing—yes, there was something about it that got you. To me, it was the same thing as a college education: It prepared you for living. It was a great discipline.
I hadn’t been in it very long, perhaps two years, when I knew that the theater was not to be my life’s work. In 1938, I went to Columbia University for night courses in journalism and to the Traphagen School of Fashion to study fashion journalism. I had been married in 1937 to a civil engineer who went off to exotic places around the world. I realized that if I wanted to be with him, I could write anywhere—even where I could not dance—so I became a writer.
In 1976, I was visiting my friend Dorothy Dunlop in New York. We had danced together at the Roxy when she was known as “Orchid”; then she was head of the workroom in the Roxy’s wardrobe department. We had gone to church one Sunday morning and afterwards, walking down Seventh Avenue, went into a pancake place for brunch. As we were chatting away, we realized we were sitting on the spot where the Roxy’s lobby had been—a fitting place for our reunion.
Betty O'Neal Gibony worked at the Roxy until 1939 when she became a writer. In 1945 she moved to New Castle, Indiana, where she still lives.
In 1988 I was writing a book about Times Square. It ALMOST was published, but for reasons beyond my control, it did not happen. The design layout scheme was cost prohibitive and there were other problems as well, but that’s another story. Here are the opening paragraphs from the Roxy chapter— the photos are missing. The book was meant to be a heavly illlustrated with over 1000 pix, which was part of the problem……
The ROXY
The 1920s were a decade of flamboyance. Herbert Lubin, a film producer turned real estate developer, who was intoxicated by the spirit of the times, wanted to build “the most sumptuous theater in the world†on the corner of 50th Street and Seventh Avenue. To help him realize his dream, Lubin lured "Roxy” Rothafel away from the Capitol by offering to name what was to be known as the “Cathedral of the Motion Picture,†after Roxy—as well as by giving him complete control of the design and operation of the theater— plus a share of the profits. But Rothafel’s grandiose ideas coupled with architect Walter Ahlschlager’s extravagant plans, were too much for Lubin’s pocketbook (the cost of the theater escalated from $6,000,000 to $10,000,000) so a week before the Roxy was was to open, Lubin sold his interest to William Fox, head of the Fox Theater chain and the Fox Film Corporation.
Caption: The main entrance was leased from the adjoining Manger Hotel, which was renamed the Taft in 1932.
Caption: There were six boxoffices in the outer lobby.
Caption: The Roxy was often referred to as the “Cathedral of the Motion Picture,” and its 50th Street facade was said to resemble the Cathedreal at Valladolid in Italy.
Caption: “Harold, I see my theater like the insisde of a great bronze bowl,” Roxy told Harold Rambusch, the theater’s decorator. “Every thing in tones of antique gold. Warm. Very, very rich. Gorgeous.”
Caption: (for the shot of the rotunda)
For twenty-five cents anyone could spend a couple of hours in this palacial setting. The rotunda (ushers reportedly would get sacked if they called it a “lobby”).and the adjoining foyers could hold 2,500 patrons who might have to wait as long as an hour before being seated in the auditorium. Twelve green marble columns supported a dome from which this twenty-foot chandelier was suspended. The oval-shaped rug was said to be the world’s largest and heaviest.
(The best rotunda pic can be found at the Smithsonian.)
Caption (for ground floor plan): Walter Ahlschlager’s placement of the auditorium made good use of the Roxy’s irregular plot. The stage, 60 feet deep by 70 feet wide, was divided into four sections, two of which were equipped with elevators. The musicians were seated on an elevator that could be raised up to stage level. When the Roxy opened, there were three Kimbal organ consoles as well as 100 muscians in the pit.
Caption: Most theaters had projection booths directly above the balcony; at the Roxy, they were in front of the mezzenine, insuring a bright and distortion-free picture as the projectors were only 100 feet from the screen. The Roxy’s 5,920 seats looked down upon the stage, enabling the entire audience to see the feet of the dancers.
(Photo and neg of proscenium and stairs in photo file B NYPL. Best clipping file for the Roxy is MWEZ + n.c.20,278 and there is a good collection of Partington’s performance shots filed under
MFL + n.c. 1829. Early pictures of Roxy are in MFL + n.c.1830)
Backstage, there were five floors of dressing rooms, a costume workroom, rehearsal halls, a projection room, a cafeteria, as well as a hospital, gymnasium, barber shop, plus Roxy’s broadcasting studio.
Even at eleven dollars a seat, the opening night was a sell-out. Gloria Swanson, star of The Loves of Sunya,“ the first motion picture to be shown, recalls the event in her 1980 autobiography:
A limousine arrived for Henri and me at seven-thirty, [Swanson was married to Henri, Marquis de la Falaise, at the time] and the short drive from Sixth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street to the theater at Seventh Avenue and Fiftieth Street — ordinarily less than five minutes by car — took half an hour, owing to the traffic congestion caused by the sea of people that had been building up around the theater since late afternoon. Policeman on horseback spotted our car and slowly cleared the way for us. The driver told Henri that Mayor Walker had put a hundred extra cops on just for the opening and the cops had told him that the crowd in the street numbered well over ten thousand.
When we pulled up under the marquee and got out of the car, a tremendous roar went up. In the blinding glare of a double row of kleig lights trained on the shiny new building, I turned and waived, and before I could turn again and enter the theater, an unstoppable wave of people surged forward and almost knocked us over. In spite of the efforts of the police, we had to fight our way into the lobby in order not to be crushed against the closed doors and walls.
Inside the monumental foyer, in front of an inclined bank of red and white carnations that spelled out his name, Roxy stood with his family, being photographed with celebrities. Henri and I joined them to kiss and shake hands with the people we knew in a steady blaze of flash powder. Roxy had pulled out all the stops. The parade of notables included four U.S. Senators, three U.S. Generals, three consul generals, two borough presidents, the governor of New Jersey, and the minister of Lithuania, as well as Adolph Ochs, Mrs. Otto Kahn, and Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy Walker. The crowd almost broke down the doors when Charlie Chaplin tried to sneak in unnoticed, and they went wild again when they recognized Harold Lloyd and his wife. We stood there for twenty minutes and greeted an endless stream of people with engraved invitations: the Shuberts, Irving Berlin, Lois Wilson, Sport Ward, Hope Hampton, Tommy Meighan, Joe Schenck, Walter Wanger, Wil Hays — even Jesse Lasky. Then we all took our seats down front in the great auditorium, and the show began.
Chimes were the first thing one heard on opening night. After the third note, the auditorium went black. Then a spotlight picked up a mysterious figure dressed in a monk’s robe who read the invocation:
“Ye portals bright, high and majestic, open to our gaze the path to Wonderland, and show us the realm where fantasy reigns, where romance, where adventure flourish. Let every day’s toil be forgotten under thy sheltering roof—O glorious, mighty hall—thy magic and thy charm unite us all to worship at beauty’s throne…Let there be light!”
And was there light. And how! The Roxy’s lighting plant had three times the capacity of any other theater and used enough power to light a city of a quarter of a million.
(Include a short description of the first show. (or the program)
As the first nighters were filing out, Roxy proudly exclaimed, “Take a look at this stupendous theater, it’s the Roxy and I’m Roxy and I’d rather be Roxy than John D. Rockefeller or Henry Ford!”
Carillons, such as the Deagan array in the Roxy, were normally installed in church and clock towers and designed for outdoor use to sound over a large area. Even in the vast space of the Roxy auditorium it must have been overwhelming. I’m not 100% certain but I believe that the carillon in Niagara Falls ON., heard and part of the plot in the film ‘Niagara’ was built by Deagan. In addition to the huge outdoor carillons such as this one, Deagan built chime arrays used by orchestras, as well as xylophones. I recall reading that during demolition the carillon in the Roxy came crashing down with an ear deafening roar and ended up mixed with the general debris. Not a scrap of it was salvaged…what a waste!
TC’s comment about the “bell” is illuminating and I wonder where he found such detail about the installations by Deagon. Lest anyone assume that he is talking about a glockenspiel, the “bell” was a ten thousand pound, 15-foot-high array of tubes which were struck by ‘hammers’ as soleniods with dampers controlled from the organ console! The photo of them on page 88 the late Ben Hall’s landmark book “The Best Remaining Seats: The Story of the Golden Age of the Movie Palace” shows why they were referred to most often as “chimes.” The previous page claims that there were 21 notes to this indoor carillon, but we won’t quibble about the total since it must have been a wondorous sound in any case! I believe that I somewhere read that they were mounted above the ceiling near the stage where a separate division of the organ, called the “Fanfare Organ” was located. I too react with the thought ‘what a waste to demolish such with the theatre’ but it occurs to me: ‘where would one quickly move and install such a massive instrument?!!’ Few buildings are large enought to receive a 15-foot-square, ten thousand pound musical instrument.
Here is some interesting information on a subject rarely discussed on CT:
In 1927, the J.C. Deagon Company installed a 20 tone bell at this theater. Of the 425 or so worldwide installations, only 2 were at theaters: this one & a 10 tone bell at the Mayfair in Asbury Park, NJ. Pretty impressive company!
Both bells were demolished with their respective theaters
Thanks BillH. Right you are. Newman’s score for “Bernadette” must have been the first not use the traditional Fox fanfare, as it came out in 1943. Thanks again :–)
Stepale2: I believe “The Song of Bernadette” (1943) was the first Fox film not to use the fanfare. It had a great Alfred Newman score, so maybe Herrmann’s “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” was the first non-Newman-scored feature not to use it.
I always assumed the Music Hall always had such long lines because it was just more popular. If the lines were too long at the Hall you went to the Roxy because you knew you’d get in. Also why did such major Fox film as some of the Temple films at her height of popularity, On the Avenue, Anna and the King, and The Ghost and Mrs Muir play at the Hall and not at the Roxy?
Just a few random bits about this and that: The general admission prices for “The Robe” were as follows weekdays $1 to noon l.50; to 4 and 2.00 after 4pm Saturdays: 1.50 to noon; 2.00 to 3; 2.50 3 to closing. Sunday 2.00 to 1; 2.50 1 to closing. (The Music Hall also adopted a change of price at 3pm on Saturday as opposed to the more popular change at 6pm for other first runs.)
Regarding the accuracy of grosses: Yes grosses were often padded, however other theaters as well as Variety had house checkers which would purchase tickets and check the “Initial” (how many patrons in the house before the start of the first feature on opening day) and do subsequent periodic checks during matinees and evenings. It was easy for savvy checkers to predict and validate the accuracy of the weekly grosses in most cases. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what the gross would be for the week based on the opening day patronage plus a peak during Saturday night and Sunday matinee. As far as holdover figures, The Roxy, unlike the Music Hall (which had a rule of thumb of $88,000 for the first four day (Thurs – Sunday to warrent an extra week for most of the 1940s and 1950s), adhered pretty close to a three-week booking for most features, unless it was something really special like “The Razor’s Edge,” “Forever Amber” and “Leave Her to Heaven.”
As to the question of lines at the Roxy vs the Music Hall: The Roxy would fill up its rotunda with sometimes 2,000 patrons waiting for the next break…rarely necessitating a street line. And the tunnel leading to the balcony could also hold up to 500 patrons. Although it was against the fire laws, another few hundred would snake down the grand staircase to the rotunda. The Music Hall was not designed to hold patrons in its lobby and could only hold a few hundred at best, making long street lines common.
Does anyone remember when the Roxy organ was no longer being played during the intervals? I know they used canned music during the late 1950s. Was the organ played during the engagement of “The Robe?” And I know this is off-subject, but when did the Paramount, Capitol and Strand stop using their organs during the interval?
Sorry to go “off-topic,” this being the Roxy site and all, but I read some of the other posts regarding the history of the Fox fanfare as well as the first film to include the “CinemaScope extention,” so, I was wondering if someone knew the first Fox film NOT use Alfred Newman’s fanfare? My best guess was “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” which had a score by Bernard Herrmann. Does anyone know for sure? Thanks.
P. S.
After the Roxy was demolished in 1960, some of the plush Roxy seats were moved to the New Yorker Theater on Broadway and 89th Street. Something else, if anyone has any interest, I will post an interview I did with a former Gae Foster Roxyette who worked at the theater in the late 30s into the early 40s.
At today’s prices, in US dollars, on prime real estate such as the original was built upon, and the to the standards of quality expected in the 1920s, the ROXY would no doubt cost upwards of 350 million dollars. Far lesser quality designs of performing spaces today are being built for upwards of that figure, so it is a nice fantasy to hope that such could come to be, but while a few billionnaires could afford to build such a temple to entertainment with the added features of comfort and safety demanded today, it will never come to be. Some of the craftsmanship of those days is now essentially gone, and everyone involved today would be looking for ways to make it cheaper no matter how much you paid them, for our society of yesteryear had more of what money cannot buy: integrity.
A thought just popped into my head, I wonder what would it cost today to build a theatre like this?, I was guessing too much to even comprehend.
There used to be a Roxy Theatre In Wellington, New Zealand. It was built in 1913 and closed in 1974 then demolished the same year to makeway for a highrise office tower in Manners Street. It used to show continues movies I am not sure what the style of it was but it was a popular movie palace in Wellington, New Zealand. I hope my comment sounds right!
Unfortunately, I have no advance info re screening of AUNTIE MAME on April 30 in Los Angeles. The ad in the newspaper says “WIDESCREEN TECHNIRAMA.” I would assume its a horizontal 35mm print. The historic Alex screens classic films from time to time.
Do you mean an actual horizontal 35mm Technirama print of AMAME?
The FOX rep said they are prepping the CAROUSEL print to play various cities for repetory theatres, etc. I consider myself lucky living in LA. Last year I got to see the CinemaScope 55 print of THE KING AND I, and we have several theatres that can play 70MM films and do so at least once a year. Next week the historic Alex Theatre in Glendale will screen a Technirama print of AUNTIE MAME.