Radio City Music Hall

deep in my heart-1954
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dangerous when wet-1953
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easy to love-1953
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wherws charley?-1952
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see you in my dreams-1951
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the man-1950
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pajama game
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Also 1961 “Come September” with Rock Hudson
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This plan, reproduced in each Showplace Program up through the early ‘60s, projects an optical illusion, or at least a misleading ratio since the mezzanine sketches do not share the same scale as the orchestra sketch. If you measure the width of the mezzanines as compared with that of the orchestra, or the opening of the mezzanine promenades as compared with that of the Grand Foyer, you’ll find that the scale of the upper levels is magnified by comparison with that of the ground floor.

This disproportion vexed me as a kid who studied such architectural plans compulsively. I’d never set foot in the first mezzanine, which held only reserved seating during the film years, but when as a teenager I eventually climbed to the second and third mezzanines with cartons of Philip Morris to puff on, I recognized the difference immediately.

Here’s a program from May, 1959:

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We all liked Shirley MacLaine, ever since we first saw her in “The Trouble with Harry,” and we thought she’d make a great comedienne. I’ll never forget seeing her arrive at the World Premiere of “Around the World in Eighty Days” on television in October ’56. In those days, all the big B’way premieres were televised live on the local NYC Dumont network channel 5, and “Around” was no exception. As La Shirley stepped from her limo, the interviewer asked her how she acquired such a wacky hair-do, and she giggled, “With an eggbeater,” and then swept grandly into the Rivoli. We speculated that she was ever so tipsy from Champagne and that we’d love to see her again. The Todd-AO spectacle proved disappointing as it allowed her no scope for madcap hilarity, so we waited for the proper comic vehicle to display her talents.

And waited. In January ’59, “Some Came Running” (an RCMH “adult” film, booked for the January post-holiday sober set) gave her an opportunity to act tipsy and boused again, but not really funny. Then in May came “Ask Any Girl,” with its promise of airy sexcapade. But I found the film leaden and predictable. And I don’t recall a single act from the stage show, even though the female violinist, the coloratura, and their crowd wore pajamas and peignoirs. All I remember was the terrific excitement that Audrey Hepburn would follow in “The Nun’s Story,” a book that as a Catholic high school kid I had read amid great controversy about its realistic treatment of religious vocation. A year later MacLaine would hit her stride with “The Apartment,” allowing her to act by turns tipsy and funny.

Earlier posts about “Norh by Northwest” reminded me of the scene about two hours into the movie when Eva Marie pretends to shoot Gary Grant, there is a young boy extra sitting in the background who puts his fingers in his ears in anticipation of the gun shot. I wonder how Hitch felt about not having noticed that until it was to late.

I was wrong about the song – it was sung by “The Pennypipers”. It was an early credit for John Williams. He wrote the film’s score and the music for the title song.

Anybody see the film Penelope at the Hall? About as archtypal a New York 60’s comedy as you can get. Natalie Wood at her most beautiful. Lensed in Panavision and glorious 60’s Technicolor(or is it Metrocolor?) With New York looking scrubbed and very glamourous in a way it would never look again. It must have looked great within that sunburst procenium. According to Variety it broke house records.
Then it went wide release and its failure almost cost Wood a breakdown.