Ziegfeld Theatre
141 West 54th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
141 West 54th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
99 people
favorited this theater
Built just a few hundred feet from the original Ziegfeld Theatre, this ‘new’ Ziegfeld Theatre opened in December 1969 and the movie house was one of the last big palaces built in the United States.
It was built from plans by the firm of Emery Roth & Sons, with designs by Irving Gershon and interior design by John McNamara.
The theatre features 1,131 seats: 825 seats in the front section and 306 seats in the raised balcony section in the rear. The interior is decorated with sumptous red carpeting and abundant gold trim.
The Ziegfeld Theatre is, arguably, the last movie palace still showing films in Manhattan.
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Recent comments (view all 3,663 comments)
Thanks, Ed! I’ll be using that from now on.
Oh yes Bill I shall never forget the day I went to that opening and confronted that fool running that control panel who said something along the lines of “We don’t need the man in the booth anymore” I went off on him like a bomb, I could not accept a 306 guy telling people that, it was a touchy subject at the time with all that automated stuff about to pounce on us. We knew it was the beginning of the end of projection as we knew and loved it but I still was not ready or willing to accept it. Little did we know that platters were just waiting in the wings to pounce on us or the inevitable replacement of film with Digital. “Won’t need the guy in the booth” indeed has sadly come to pass.
If there was “no man in the booth”, who was threading up?
Peter that was the first thing I said to him. With Smoke coming out of my ears and fire out of my mouth I reduced the little twerp to rubble and walked away. As Professor Higgins once said “I am a gentle man BUT…let a women (in his case idiot in my life :)
So they added a guy in the auditorium to ride the sound & lights while keeping a projectionist only to thread up and make changeovers, etc.? Sounds like a monumentally dumb idea.
I think the intention was that he would thread up the projectors during intervals and then come back down, the way manager/projectionists did outside New York.
It’s all academic, now. Here we are, 43 years on, and we’re on the brink of having nothing left to thread in cinemas across the nation. Working masters of the craft such as yourself, Peter, will eventually be left simply to punch up data files, particularly once studios stop striking prints altogether and all extant reels just fall apart from wear and tear.
Future projectionists, please make sure the sound is loud, use the curtain, and send ushers to eject all patrons who answer & chat on their cell phones (after the cell phones ring!) during the feature. And, please routinely replace the projection light bulbs so the picture is light enough.
Howard, you’re a dreamer!
Another look at the infamous console, thanks to member DEFG.