Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
205 West 46th Street,
New York,
NY
10036
205 West 46th Street,
New York,
NY
10036
8 people
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I like that you can see a little bit of Horn & Hardart there on the right.
This photo with “Hoodlum Empire” on the Globe’s marquee was incorrectly posted at the listing for the New York Theatre: photobucket
In rememberance of Jane Russell, it should be noted that her first movie to be shown in New York City was Hunt Stromberg/UA’s “Young Widow,” a B&W melodrama co-starring Louis Hayward that opened at Brandt’s Globe Theatre on July 27th, 1946. Russell’s notorious debut film, “The Outlaw,” made in 1941-42, was long delayed by censorship problems, and didn’t reach New York until September 11th, 1947, at the Broadway Theatre. Amazingly, both theatres still exist as “legit” playhouses, while Jane Russell will live on in her films and recordings.
Re-posted from Vito’s post today on the Loew’s State page:
Nov. 10th: On this date in 1953 the second picture released in CinemaScope opened simultaneously at the Loew’s State and Brandt’s Globe.
I believe “How to Marry a Millionaire” was actually the first movie filmed in Scope but Zanuck in his wisdom decided to release “The Robe” first to introduce the miracle you see without glasses.
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Here’s a 1943 view with Walt Disney’s “Saludos, Amigos” on the Globe’s marquee. In the block below, the ex-Gaiety was serving as a Laffmovie, while the Astor had MGM’s “The Human Comedy”: View link
In this 1955 view, the Globe is at left, with “Ulysses” on the marquee. Source material for the Paramount import was Greek mythology, and not the controversial novel of that title by James Joyce: http://www.nfo.net/usa/bway45up.jpg
Check out Stanley Kubrick’s “Killer’s Kiss” where one scene takes place at night in Times Square. The Globe is playing “How to Marry a Millionaire in 1953. The action goes indoors for a minute then is outside again and the Globe is now playing "Beachhead” with Tony Curtis, from 1954. Guess it didn’t take Kubrick two years to shoot the film, but apparently it did take a while.
“Forbidden Planet”, first-run, at the Globe.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1484101632/tt0049223
This was never a “porno” theatre. The writer of the 11/4/09 item obviously confused it with the New York Theatre, which was re-named Globe after the original Globe had been transformed into the Lunt-Fontanne. Here’s the listing for that other theatre:
/theaters/6604/
Although the intro correctly states that the Globe became a full-time cinema in 1935, from 1927 to 1935 it spent more time each year as a motion picture theatre than as a live venue.
Porno at the Globe all right then.
It’s been submitted Al. Let’s see what happens.
Cool find, LM. It appears these facts were always there if you know where to look.
This site claims that the Ritz was also a porn theater in the 1960s and this site confirms what you posted, “From the late ‘30s and on into the '70s, the theater went through an identity crisis, being used alternately as a radio and TV studio, a performance space, and, at one point, a movie house named the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Theatre”.
Porn and kids movies. Odd combination but that should qualify the Ritz/Kerr theater to be listed on CT.
I just found a blurb in an old copy of MARQUEE (Volume 18, 1986) that mentions the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s theatre which was showing films in 1976. It states that the RFK was actually the Walter Kerr/Ritz at 219 West 46th Street and not this location.
That isn’t a photo of this theater, Cosmic Ray. It looks like the New York Theater.
1971 LIFE image -
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a night time shot of the Howard Johnson’s and Gaiety Burlesque buildings on 46th st shortly before demolition
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The Globe was showing movies between shows at least as early as 1915 when it premiered ‘The Whirl of Life".
Due to excavation work on the NW corner of 46th Street and Broadway, the east wall of the building is currently exposed to view. Markings suggest that fire exits were longago removed from that wall:
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This is a May 2008 photo of the Lunt-Fontanne.
Here is the text of the Times article about the old Globe facade and entrance: (sorry I couldn’t edit out the photo captions)
An Old Player for the Stage, Soon to Be Heard No More
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: April 5, 2006
Every so often, Times Square, that most public of places, will give up a secret it has harbored for decades.
Skip to next paragraph
Keith Bedford for The New York Times
A piece of the Globe Theater on Broadway near 46th Street is visible above the present scaffolding.
Enlarge This Image
R. M. De Leeuw
The white facade of the theater entrance as it appeared in 1910, when it opened.
Now on view near the corner of 46th Street â€" but not for much longer â€" is a fragment of the Broadway facade of the 96-year-old Globe Theater, which was hidden for a half-century behind jumbo signs far taller than its four stories.
Demolition is under way on the Globe and an adjoining 111-year-old building, 1551 Broadway, the home until recently of a Howard Johnson’s restaurant and the Gaiety Male Burlesk theater. They are to be replaced by a two-story store that will have large signs and lights on top. “We look at it as a premier retail opportunity,” said Gerard T. Nocera, the chief operating officer of S. L. Green Realty Corporation.
The theatrical producer Charles B. Dillingham built the Globe in 1910 as an L-shaped structure with entrances both on Broadway and 46th Street. (The auditorium still exists, as does the 46th Street facade, which is a landmark.)
Today, a half-dozen windows and the trace of a cornice are all that remain of the Globe on Broadway. The pediments, garlands, cherubim, comic masks and tragic masks designed by Carrère & Hastings are nowhere to be seen. Yet this is unmistakably the “modest, jewellike front” described in 1910 by The New York Times.
It was at the Globe in 1916 that a young British-born actress named Lynn Fontanne made one of her first American appearances in “The Harp of Life,” giving a performance that The Times called “notably direct, eloquent and moving.” It was at the Globe that Fanny Brice sang “Second Hand Rose” in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1921.
And it was at the Globe in 1953, during its cinema phase, that New Yorkers first peered through polarized glasses at a full program of stereoscopic films. Bosley Crowther of The Times was underwhelmed and leery of the 3-D craze, asking readers to imagine Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis appearing to be “so real and close they could reach out and almost touch you!
“One-dimension is quite enough for them!”
The Broadway entrance was severed from the rest of the auditorium four years later when it was reclaimed as a legitimate playhouse. Miss Fontanne returned for the reopening in 1958, appearing with her husband Alfred Lunt in “The Visit.” The theater was renamed the Lunt-Fontanne and the Globe disappeared for the first time. But not the last.
A very unpleasant auditorium to sit in for a show!
And according to their website, “The Lunt-Fontanne has 1,505 seats”.
Here is the website for this theater.