Embassy 1,2,3 Theatre
707 7th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10036
707 7th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10036
38 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1,051 - 1,075 of 1,093 comments
Warren,
During the ‘60s the Demille along with the block long sign above the
Astor and the Victoria had the best NY movie billboards. They were sensational in 3 D and with moving parts(Unless I was delusional at 8 years old.) And the picture I’ve seen of the giant nude Jane Fonda! This should be in color in a coffee table book of the great Manattan movie signs and marquees. It was at the beginning of the '70s when they stopped using the billboard. The last movie I remember it being used for was Ginger. Then it was used for years for that boring Panasonic ad.
By the way folks. Looks like Toys R Us is going, going… Time to rebuild the Criterion.
When exactly did it stop showing movies as the DeMille…My guess is 1974…I remember seeing The Concert for Bangla Desh there in the summer of ‘72
Does anybody know where one can obtain color photos of the Demille wrap around sign from the 60’s when it was a roadshow house? From what I remember as a child it was pretty spectacular. The back of the Rivoli was very nice too and I wouldn’t mind seeing photos of that from the same time period as well. And while we’re at it how about the marquee of the Criterion. Remember the spinning Funny Girl logos that sat atop the corners?
The original entrance and grand lobby is now the Sbarro restaurant on the corner. The current location of the marquee is an exitway off of the back of the auditorium which served as its entrance after it was triplexed. It was indeed called the Embassy 1-2-3 after the Embassy 1 closed.
When the theater was tripled it was opened as the Mark 1,2,3 and didn’t stay open very long. Guild took over the theater and ran it for many years. The information above is incorrect.
The only thing I am not sure of is about the downstairs theater. I remember applying for a job at the Demille in 1975 when it went to a 2nd run house and there was a large stage. The two times I went to the theater after it was split there was no stage downstairs.I think that when it was first tripled, they took part of the orchestra and converted into a tore. As I rememebr the downstairs theater was not very large.
The Embassy 2,3,4 was rechristened as the Embassy 1,2,3 after the original Embassy 1 closed it doors in 1997, in anticipation of its renovation and reopening as the permanent home of the Times Square Visitors Center. (For the record, the TSVC was previously housed in the lobbies of the Rialto/Warner, Harris, and Selwyn theatres.)
I was in NYC yesterday taking photos and i went to thhe old Embassy/DeMille?mayfair and took pictures. The marquee is still there, boarded up and I got a shot of the exterior of the theater which I’m sure was complemented by being the DeMille/Mayfair. I bet it was nice to look at even by my picture. Cinema Treasures is overhauling it’s “add a photo” options. When it is fixed, I will add the photo to this site. I also took pics of The Astor plaza, now closed, with The Village marquee.
BTW…how would I add a photo to my message as a link, if that can be done?
Warren I agree with you about the Hollywood-Mark Hellinger but it will never return to being a movie palace. The Mark Hellinger would be a legit theatre right now if the church would give it up and move to another location. Disney would love to operate the Mark Hellinger like the New Amsterdam. Im sure the Nederlanders have first choice if the church chooses to sell or lease it out since they sold it to the church in the first place. The Mark Hellinger is the perfect size house to host broadway musicals. Cameron M. wanted the Mark Hellinger for “Miss Saigon” but the Nederlanders leased it to the church because they needed the money to offset the flop “Legs Diamond” with Peter Allen.The Broadway community was upset with the Nederlanders for doing so. Many musical shows coming into New York have to wait for a theatre like the Mark Hellinger which has caused a booking jam the last few years.brucec
On the “Psycho” DVD there’s an excellent documentary where you can see the outside of the DeMille as it was in 1960. And I mean all of it: the box-office booth with ticket prices posted, the lobby, all kinds of posters and displays, the marquee and the big corner billboard, the sidewalk outside where people waited in a special line(for the first time in movie history, probably) for the current show to be over and for the next show to begin, etc.
Since the Mayfair is the last movie palace left in Times Sqaure from the old days maybe the City of New York could declare it a landmark and eligble for federal and state funds. Why couldn’t a new building incorporate the theatre the way the Palace was down the street.The excuse I have always heard from New York City is that they have so many legit theatres and this is why there are no movie palaces left in the Times Sqaure Area. Im afraid London has done a better job preserving movie theatres in the West End and they also have many legit theatres. New York City has gone from having some of the best movie theatres in the world to having theatres now that in many cases are not even on par with theatres you see in the suburbs across the US.New York City maybe one of the few large cities in the US that has not restored a large movie palace in there entertainment Zone called Times Sqaure because I regard Radio City as outside Times Sqaure.
Here are some examples of Restored Movie Palaces in Entertainment Zones in the US
Seattle Paramount and Fifth Ave
Portland Portland(Paramount)
San Francisco Orpheum,Warfield and Golden Gate
Oakland Paramount and Fox Oakland(resoration in progress)
San Jose California(opens in Sept)
Hollywood Chinese,El Capitan,Pantagees Egyptian not eligible
Los Angeles Orpheum,United Artists(Church) many unrestored
San Diego Fox(Copley),Balboa and Sprecles
Phoenix Orpheum
Dallas Majestic
San Antonio Majestic and Aztec(under restoration}
Denver Paramount
St Louis Fox and St.Louis(Powell)
Kansas City Midland
Minneapolis Orpheum,State and Pantagees
Chicago Chicago,Oriental and Palace
Detroit Fox,State and Grand Circus(Opera House)
Cleveland Palace,State,Allen and Ohio
Columbus Ohio,Palace and Southern
Indianapolis Indiana and Circle
Buffalo Sheas Buffalo
Pittsburg Heinz Hall(Loew’s Penn),Benedlum(Stanley)and Byham
Baltimore Hippodrome
Providence Ocean State(Providence)
Boston Wang(Metropolitan),Majestic(Saxon) and Opera House
Wash DC Warner
Richmond Carpenter
New Orleans Saengar and unrestored Loew’s State
Jacksonville Florida
Tampa Tampa
Miami Guzman(Olympia)
Birmingham Alabama
Omaha Orpheum and Astro(Rose)
Albany Palace
Syracuse Landmark
Salt Lake Capitol
Louisville Palace
Memphis Orpheum
Jersey City Loew’s Jersey and Stanley(Church
Albuquerque Kimo
Tuscon Fox and Rialto
These are a few examples and there are many more. New York City along with Phildelphia, and Cincinatti are among the worst in saving historic movie palaces.brucec
Vincent
Having been a theatre manager for many yers I too hate not seeing curtains open and close between features. One of the theatres I used to manage had a short in the line that ran from the projection booth to the curtain motor. The owners did not want to spend the money to repair it so we had an usher who would go and press the button backstage before and after every show. I know when I was on duty I always made sure he did it as the picture hit the screen and on the rating symbol on the end. In all of the Loews theatres that show the video or slides between features I wish they would close the curtain as the video ends and reopen it on the feature. The Loews Trylon did that till it closed, guess it was an old time manager who ran the place. They had Austrian drapes.
Warren I went to the Walter Reade the other night and was put out by the fact that they weren’t using the curtain(is this permanent?) I think this was the last theater that used one. When I went to comment to the staff in the lobby they looked at me as if I was certifiable. I suppose if this bothers me maybe I am.
Vincent, Warren, and ErwinM:
Absolutely, Cinerama at the Broadway in ‘52-’53 did use curtainsâ€"deep blue at the Broadway, then burgundy at the Warner. But the Broadway did not use a top or bottom mask for the prologue. That offered the first hint to this ten-year-old that the newpaper reviews might be trusted, that the curtains would part and the screen would burst into color with stereo sound. I too felt a letdown when Lowell Thomas began to drone in b&w, but when his talk turned to the history of film and its technology, it enthralled me almost as much as the main event did eighteen minutes later. When Cinerama moved to the Warner in Spring ’53, the new theater provided top and bottom masks for the prologue. In both cases, the opening of the curtains proved essential to the new medium’s overwhelming effect. Sorry for my mistake in terminology: I thought “float†referred to a free-standing screen positioned in front of the proscenium
BoxOfficeBill
I also saw “This Is Cinerama” early in its run at the Broadway and confirm Warren’s recall that a curtain definitely covered the screen. I remember being somewhat disappointed after the lights dimmed, the curtain parted and Lowell Thomas appeared on a small squarish screen chatting about something or other and wondering… What is all the excitement about ? ?….and then Lowell uttered those immortal words…“and now ladies and gentlemen…This is Cinerama” and the top masking of the picture flew up….the curtains parted..and parted…and parted…the surround sound came on and you were on a roller coaster ride. For me, that was the most thrilling moment in a lifetime of moviegoing that I have ever experienced. I still get goosebumps thinking about it. By no stretch of the imagination could such an effect be achieved without a curtain covering the screen.
BOBill,
It seems very strange to me that the first presentation of Cinerama would be a float. I would think that they would have wanted the curtains to open on a normal size screen and then on the words This is Cinerama to open on an ever widening screen. To launch such a project this would be the only possible way.
Warren and RobertR—
Time plays tricks with memory — I’ll concede that. But my sense of the floor plan is that the long lobby hallway ran along the north wall of the auditorium to the center, then opened to a wide entrance aisle cutting horizontally across the house, allowing an upward acent to the raked rear or a downward progression to the lower orchestra. Since the late 50’s, I’ve been to the theater only once, in 1987 to see John Badham’s “Stakeout” with a raucous Saturday night crowd (whew!)—by that time it had been subdivided. As for the Soviet knock-off of Cinerama, it was a “float” (again, subject to the tricks of memory), if by that term you mean that the screen stood free-style in front of the theater’s regular screen. Or o I remember. I recall the first Cinerama screen at the Broadway (before the attraction moved to the Warner) in winter 52-53: that was a “fload.” The Cinerama at the Warner had a lot of drapery that gave it a more permanent look.
Bill
The Soviet Cinerama knockoff, referred to above by BoxofficeBill, was called KINOPANORAMA and played the Mayfair sometime in 1958. I believe the film was titled “Great Is My Country†and was shown for a relatively short time (two weeks?) in conjunction with the Soviet Trade Exhibition, which was being held at the New York Coliseum at the same time. It supposedly had 9 channels of stereophonic sound. As I recall (46 years later !), the screen was not draped. Probably because the run was so short and drapes were expensive.
As a side note, original ads before the opening called the process “Cinepanoramaâ€, which did not sit too well with the “Cinerama†people. The Russians then had to change the name back to their original name “Kinopanoramaâ€.
BoxofficeBill
For the Russian Cinerama film did they drape the screen or just let it float like the Ziegfeld did with This is Cinerma?
I’ve been to this house, and I’m surprised to read there’s not a true balcony. As I recall you have to climb a lot of steps to get upstairs, and then you’re only at the foot of the steeply raked seating. I know that in the Ziegfeld you go up a few steps to the first row of the “balcony” but here it seems like there’s plenty of steps before you reach the first row.
If only we can see this reclaimed. It is the last movie theater in Times Square.
The “balcony” was not a true balcony in the sense of overhanging the orchestra. It was instead a raked portion at the theater’s rear, divided from the lower orchestra by a wide aisle that admitted patrons from the long entrance lobby flanking the left side of the house. The Mayfair showed some pretty important 20-Century Fox films, such as “Gentlemen’s Agreement.” And “High Noon” premiered there in ‘52. I saw “Wizard of Oz” there in its 1949 revival (and at the age of seven, cringed from fright at the Wicked Witch). It also showed Disney features (I recall being brought “Cinderella” there). As a high-schooler, I caught a revival of the Brando-Leigh “Streetcar Named Desire” in the late 50s. Finally, a Soviet-Union knock-off of Cinerama played there, featuring a travelogue of the USSR on a giant curved screen, assembled and disassembled specially for the film’s run.
Here are a few films that played exclusive run at the Mayfair/DeMille.
1951 Detective Story
1931 Frankenstein
1945 Gentlemens Agreement
1960 Psycho
1965 Magnificient Men in Flying Machines
I have the New York Times Movie Adds for these features except Flying Machines.Brucec
I’ve never been to this theater (regretfully) but I always remeber walking past it, it had a long lobby after the ticket booth (did it not). Is this theater really still intact inside and where are the pictures some of you say you have. maybe someone needs to start a site with pictures of all the old theaters.
I believe the first film to play the new Demille Theatre in 1958 was a documentary called Behind The Great Wall which had been narrated by Chet Huntley..It was exhibited in a process named Aroma-rama which released differnt smells thru the air conditioning ducts of the theatre. A unique thing about attending this theatre was that you were able to smell the different scents of China for at least 10 years after that presentation.
Mike as a boy I saw My Fair Lady at the Criterion during its first run and then in ‘76 as a teenager I saw 2001 at the Rivoli. Talk about your religious experiences!