Radio City Music Hall

RobertEndres on February 8, 2005 at 8:09 am

The opening effect is intended as a prologue, and one of the reasons they decided to go ahead with a 3-D effect is that it is short. There are still problems when using the gain screen necessary for 3-D at Radio City. The downward angle is about 19 degrees, and the auditorium is a block wide. Thus there are still some places where the light and polarization may not be optimum even with a 70' wide screen. It was gutsy of them to go ahead (and yes — deal with all those 3-D glasses). Vito, in answer to your question — I started as Head Projectionist at Radio City in January of 1974 and left in 2000. Long enough to get a 25 year gold ring from Madison Square Garden.

BoxOfficeBill on February 8, 2005 at 7:46 am

Right— “On Demand,” not “No Down”— sorry for the slip. The date is accurate. Is the story about the projection booth true?

RobertEndres on February 8, 2005 at 7:26 am

It was planned to run “Kiss Me Kate” at the Hall in 3-D, and in fact, it was announced that it would run without the intermission as the Hall had four projectors. Ben Olevsky, who was Head Projectionist at the time, told me that everythng was set up, and they did indeed run a test run in 3-D, where it was discovered that they would lose about 2,000 seats because of the light drop off from the gain screen in the corners of the auditorium. At that point the Hall was still filling its seats, and it was felt that the economic loss would be too great. Theatres in the rest of the country took the attitiude, “Well if Radio City won’t bother with 3-D why should we?” I always thought that the Radio City rejection might have been the turning point that killed 3-D. Ironically, the current Christmas show at Radio City starts with a 3-D segment, projected on two projectors with 7,000 watt lamps,and from 70mm film running at 30 frames per second. Its a short segment, but everyone I’ve talked to who has seen it says its very impressive.

VincentParisi on February 8, 2005 at 6:46 am

It would have been pretty bizarre for the Hall to have presented Kate in 3D. The logistics of handing out the thousands of glasses and then collecting them for each performance and then dealing with all the people who have no idea it’s in 3D and then disturb the others to complain. What a nightmare.
KMK is a very good George Sidney MGM musical and on the whole makes little use of the 3D effects. While it’s enormous fun to see it with a two projector system it stands on it’s own.
That all being said how about it being included on a 3D festival at the Loew’s Jersey?

PeterApruzzese on February 8, 2005 at 5:58 am

I think that Kiss Me Kate did not show in 3-D at the Music Hall. I’ll ask Bob Furmanek to add his expertise about 3-D to this thread.

veyoung52 on February 8, 2005 at 3:53 am

And I am so happy that you are still with us.I got a number of questions to ask of you, if you don’t mind.

Vito on February 8, 2005 at 3:44 am

REndres, Nice to hear fom you, as a projectionist for many many years I always wondered about any projection horror storys at RCMH. Would you share any? I can still hear the guys in thr booth calling out the changeover cues.

chconnol on February 7, 2005 at 11:40 am

Since we’re kind of discussing RCMH oddities, I remember back in 1977 when I took the NBC tour which included a backstage tour of RCMH we were shown this odd “room” which overlooked the orchestra level of the auditorium. It was on the right hand side of the auditorium and was about (I’m guessing here) about twelve feet above the auditorium floor and was angled to see the stage though you could clearly see most of the auditorium from it. It was about ¾ down towards the stage. There was soundproof glass in the room and it was small (only fit about four people). The tour guide said that it was impossible to be seen in this room by anyone in the auditorium. I never understood what purpose this room served unless it was for VIP’s or for security.

I wonder if it’s still there. Does anyone else recall seeing or hearing of anything like this?

Benjamin on February 7, 2005 at 10:53 am

I took a quick look at the Krinsky and Loth books to see what they had to say about the underground concourse. I was kind of surprised to see that, at least from a quick glance, they really don’t have much to say about it — most of their comments are actually about the “entry plaza” to the underground concourse (the “entry plaza” is the area that was eventually transformed into a winter ice skating rink) and about the stores that were around the sides of this plaza when it first opened (where the restaurants are now).

It is with regard to these shops that they say business in the pre-subway years was bad. But I suppose it’s fair to assume that the shops further into the concourse were probably even worse off — as they were even more inconveniently accessible.

Some quotes:

Loth (pgs. 100-101) “On the whole, Rockefeller Center was successful in achieving its shop objectives [i.e., renting out to desirable, financially worthy tenants]. But the mortality of such establishments in the 1930’s was high … . Not the least of the difficulties concerned the underground maze of corridors and concourse … . the concourse was planned to link up with the station of a new Sixth Avenue subway. But the rackety old elevated train still ran.”

Loth (pg. 149) “[The Lower Plaza — the site of the skating rink — was] Orphaned by the long delay in the Sixth Avenue subway … [and] failed as a passage bringing pedestrians from the promenade into the shops that originally lined it. After a couple of years of hesitation and debate, the shops were replaced by a couple of restaurants, and the Lower Plaza [where the skating rink is] was no longer even a passage into the concourse.”

---

As far as I can recall, I first visited the underground concourse in the mid-1960s, and I don’t really remember the box office opposite the underground entry into Radio City Music Hall being used then (although the corridor into the Music Hall was apparently in operation). But, of course, it may have been open other hours, or maybe it was open and I just didn’t notice it, or I noticed it and don’t remember it now. But in my memories, at least, it was a “funny” presence in the underground corridors (like those abandoned stations or corridors that you sometimes see in the subways).

As mentioned in a previous post, I think when I took my tour groups into the Music Hall in the late 1970s we were told to use this entrance.

---

While it is possible that the Rockefeller Center management may have future plans for the box office, my interpretation of the meaning its presence post-renovation is different.

It seems to me that the one of the main reason the management renovated the underground concourse was to close off corridors and use the space to create new storefronts or enlarge existing ones. (Larger storefronts are seen, I believe, as more appropriate for modern day retailing and easier to rent out to financially sound large companies.) It seems to me that holdovers from the past, like the box office, were left alone if they didn’t interfere with this or other goals of the renovation. I think this would be especially true with a small “oddity” such as the box office and the stairs behind it — why tear them out unless you have something specific in mind to replace them with?

If I recall correctly, the Landmark Preservation Commission did review the changes to the underground concourse (along with other changes that were done all throughout the Center). While it’s possible that they may have protected it, I tend to doubt it, as they let so many other, much more noticeable and more important, features of the Center be demolished. (For instance they allowed management to totally close off some functional, handsome art deco entrances to the buildings on Fifth Ave. in order for these corridors to be incorporated into larger storefronts.) And when you think about it, how aesthetically and historical important can this box office and stairs be if even the cinema enthusiasts of Cinema Treasures know so little about them?

I doubt that a box office would be structurally important. At the very least, it’s easy to imagine them boarding it over or re-paneling it if they wanted to use it and the surrounding stairways differently.

VincentParisi on February 7, 2005 at 8:08 am

From street level that would not have been a problem as they could enter by the front entrance thereby avoiding the line on 50th St. However they then would have had to deal with the main lobby. If they enterd by the lower level they still would have to have dealt with walking across the lower lounge to get to the elevators.

chconnol on February 7, 2005 at 6:55 am

I wonder if the Rockefeller Center management has some kind of plans for the box office. Not that long ago, a MAJOR renovation was done to the concourse area. Strange that they would leave the box office there. Either it has some kind of structural element, it’s landmarked as part of RCMH or they have plans for it in the future…

Benjamin on February 6, 2005 at 3:15 pm

Re: Radio City Music Hall underground boxoffice

Thanks Warren for the fascinating info — especially with the date of the article itself. With the date, it was a cinch to find the article to check it out. Given what I’ve read about Rockefeller Center in Krinsky and Loth, however, I’d like to offer a slightly different interpretation of what it says.

From the very beginning of the construction of Rockefeller Center everyone knew that there were plans for the Sixth Avenue elevated to come down, and for a subway to be built in its place. The underground concourse was planned with the subway in mind. The underground concourse was to provide a weather-controlled passageway between all the buildings of Rockefeller Center and the subway — and the corridors would be lined with shops.

But as it happens, until the subway was actually built, Rockefeller Center had a hard time getting people down underground to shop there. Which makes sense, really, when you think about it: who wants to go downstairs a full-story below the street in order to shop in small stores along narrow dead end corridors — and, especially during the Great Depression, when even more conveniently located street-level stores were having problems attracting customers?! (And what kinds of stores are going to be able to survive in such an inconvenient underground environment? With probably few store owners willing to risk it, there were also probably too few stores to attract shoppers — a vicious cycle.)

Actually, even unto this very day the concourse has some trouble attracting people outside of “rainy day” traffic and people using it during the rush hours. This is one reason that the landmarks preservation community didn’t raise a fuss (a grave mistake, in my opinion) when the new owners of Rockefeller Center decided to remodel large portions of it a few years ago.

The original (and much more severe) problem with the concourse was due, I think, to a combination of naivete on the part of the builders of Rockefeller Center (being pioneers, they didn’t realize it wouldn’t work at all without a subway) and the subway being built a little behind schedule (leaving them stranded a little longer than they thought they’d be). I don’t have the Krinsky and Loth books handy, but I think they discuss the specifics.

By the way, the creation of the skating rink at Rockefeller Center is related to the problem of getting people down to the underground concourse. Originally the area was intended as a plaza / grand entryway to the underground concourse (which is why the pedestrian way from Fifth Ave. slopes down towards the skating rink). With the concourse attracting far fewer people than expected before the construction of the subway, the owners of Rockefeller Center decided to make it into a skating rink in the winter — and the rest is history!

Getting back to the box office. My guess is that the box office was built and operated with the completion of the subway in mind. (Given the paucity of shoppers before the subway, it’s hard to imagine them building and staffing it for seven years solely to catch the nearly non-existent shopping trade.)

I wonder if maybe the box office wasn’t actually put into operation until maybe just a few months or so before the subway opened — which, given the way things usually happen, probably opened later than originally announced. The article just says that use of the box office tripled — it doesn’t indicate, however, the period that they are comparing it to. So my guess is that they are comparing the period just after the opening of the subway with the few months prior to the subway opening (a period when the subway was supposed to be open, but wasn’t).

“Use of the subway-level box-office in Radio City Music Hall has more than tripled since the opening of the Sixth Avenue subway, it was reported yesterday by the management.”