Ok, the presentation of the stage shows might’ve changed but we’re running the possibiltiy of re-opening the can of worms that was run into the ground earlier about the abysmal (sp?) Christmas Show.
Yep, I was born in ‘66 and that probably puts me in the LAST generation that remembers (fondly) single screen large theaters that were well maintained. My guess is that anyone born after 1970 cannot remember these theaters at all well.
I first the Christmas show in 1972 with “1776” (a thudding bore to a 6 year old). But the Christmas show? Fantastic. And I saw it every year after that until around 1978. Each year was great. And as I stated above, I took my 8 year old daughter to see it this year expecting her to be amazed by it like I was and I cannot tell you how incredibly, jaw-droppingly AWFUL the thing was.
I do not recall ever seeing another show at RCMH besides the Christmas show though. I might’ve but I don’t remember them.
BUT…the Music Hall itself is still grand and I will take my daughter on the tour sometime in the future. She LOVED the place more than the insipid show.
Valencia: So the three theaters you name (Valencia, Alden and Merrick) were still thriving in 1965. But when, do you estimate, did they begin to decline and finally die out?
It seems to be that the trend for movie theaters in NYC was that until the late 60’s, they still had some of their old grandeur left. But seemingly very abruptly, it all changed around 1969 or so. Do you think this is true? I’m just curious.
You can trace an area’s urban decline by the way the theaters were maintained in some cases.
That joke, Ziggy, would go FLYING over the heads of everyone under the age of 50 or so. I’m 38 and I “get-it” because of my scant experiences and mostly due to my parent’s descriptions of places like The Roxy and RCMH.
And yes, I know the “Hare Do” cartoon Bob speaks of. It’s the one that culminates with Bugs Bunny leading Fudd through the darkened theater (he’s actually wearing dark sunglasses) and it seems to take forever (at one point you hear the sounds of them walking through water!) and Bugs constantly saying (with an abrasive accent) “right this way sir.”
Another funny scene that plays into the BIG theater theme is when Fudd is sitting in one of the upper balconies. When he looks down, he’s so far up that the stage is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay below him.
And how the audience runs out of the theater to smoke up a storm in the lobby!
Very funny stuff and Thanks Bob Furmanek for brining that one up.
It’s entirely believable that someone like Crawford would do something like the above described by Valencia. By the early 60’s, her career was in decline. But she lived for her fans and would do almost anything for them as cited by the incident above.
She was a complicated figure. “Mommie Dearest” turned her into a monster but the facts are more complicated than that. She worked very, very hard for what she got. In so many ways, she puts today’s actresses to shame.
Can someone confirm that a 1984 re-release of Lang’s great “Metropolis” played here? It had a horrible rock track added to it but the movie was still spectacular.
But it’s the theater I remember well. It was small but very art deco and the bathroom/lounge was downstairs.
If this was it, this is a GREAT theater and I’m glad it’s still around.
In late 1984 or so, Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” was re-released with a pretty bad rock score accompaniment (not good…). Being a long time fan of Lang’s I went to see it but it was before I was keenly aware of the great NY theaters. I have no idea what theater it was but it was in the 6th Avenue area. I remember the lounge/bathrooms were downstairs and the place was VERY art deco. Smallish but beautiful. For some reason, I thought it might’ve been on 57th Street but I don’t think it was the Sutton because there was a balcony.
What I found interesting about the theater is that it’s kind “off-the-beaten-path” for such a large theater. It’s no where near Route 4 or any major roadway. When it was built (had to be before 1930…just a guess though..) Interstate 80 was years away.
I love it that I managed to perk up a few memories of that oval. I found the picture in a book of post cards of Times Square.
If the oval was over the rear orchestra seats, how did they design it so that any noise in that area didn’t filter down into the theater itself? They must’ve know this could occur but did something to limit it.
WOW! I was wondering the other day why that theater isn’t on here. You can clearly see the theater from Route 80. I, too, would like to know more about the place.
You are probably right. This lounge area probably existed behind the slope of the balcony (kind of “under-the-stairs”, so to speak). But considering the size of the land, this would mean that the balcony was way steep. I know someone on this site said that it was but WOW! Talk about stadium seating!
Of all the Times Square theaters on this site, The Rivoli is the one I’m getting more and more obsessed about. Thanks.
I work directly across the street from where this was (it’s now 750 7th Avenue…a completely anonymous and unremarkable black glass and steel tower). And I got a clear look at the space (or “footprint”, as the term is in real estate terms) it occupies and it’s tiny.
Then I saw in a postcard book a picture of what looks like some kind of lounge area in The Rivoli. What I could make of it showed an area with a cutout in the floor in the shape of an oval. Through this oval, you could make out some theater seats below (I assume the orchestra). Where on earth could this area have existed inside such a space?
Can anyone give a good, solid description of what it was like inside this theater or tell me a book that could? I’m astonished (and obsessed) with how such a grand space could’ve existed on such a small plot. Are there any old blueprints?
It’s probably $$$ and recognition. The current (and reprehensible) trend of naming theaters (and other arenas) after corporate sponsers is what is behind this. The Waverly is owned by Cablevision which also owns the Independent Film Channel (IFC). I assume they want to draw recognition to IFC by renaming this theater as well.
Thankfully, some institutions resist the name change no matter what. Know anyone who calls The Wintergarden, The Cadillac Wintergarden? I think, to New Yorkers, the Waverly will always BE the Waverly.
Past Will Flicker in Village Theater After Renovation
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
here are often second acts in the lives of New York buildings. Sometimes third acts. At a timber-peaked brick box in Greenwich Village – the Waverly Theater to generations of moviegoers – the sixth act is about to begin.
In its newest incarnation, the 174-year-old building at 325 Avenue of the Americas will house the IFC Center, a three-theater complex. Scheduled to open in late spring, the center is meant to embody IFC Companies, a filmmaking and exhibition unit of Cablevision that includes the Independent Film Channel. Jonathan Sehring, the president of IFC Entertainment, said the complex would offer a comfortable and up-to-date place to watch movies and even to dine.
It will also offer audiences a glimpse into the distant past.
Bogdanow Partners Architects, designers of the $8 million renovation, chose to leave the original brick buttresses and roof rafters exposed in the main auditorium. And, as in the Waverly days, the old gabled roof will be visible along West Third Street, even though the facade will be newly framed in illuminated steel mesh panels.
“My view of architectural history is that it doesn’t stop,” said the architect, Larry Bogdanow.
Certainly not at 325 Avenue of the Americas.
Around 1831, the Third Universalist Society built a church on the site. It was enlarged from 1843 to 1844 by St. Jude’s Episcopal Free Church into a sanctuary that could hold nearly 800 worshipers. St. Jude’s successor, St. John’s in the Village, at 224 Waverly Place, still keeps the records of the Sixth Avenue church, which dissolved in 1853.
Poignantly, but with great cursive flourishes, these ledger books chronicle the shrinking of the parish. Mrs. Parcells of 18 Greenwich Avenue: “Disappears the second year; an Adventist.” Mrs. E. Wilson, widow, of 9 Sullivan Street: “Removed to the country.” (“Probably the Bronx,” said the Rev. Lloyd E. Prator, rector of St. John’s.) James McAdam of 109 Fourth Street: “Not right in the head. Belongs to St. Mathews Church.”
The Union Reformed Church, which next occupied the building, undertook a rehabilitation in 1872 that left the place “beautifully decorated and upholstered,” The New York Times reported.
J. & R. Lamb Studios, founded in 1857, was next to arrive. Its 1893 alteration turned the facade into a billboard for the firm’s offerings, but the church’s Gothic style windows and gabled roof were left intact.
“It was a fabulous place – everywhere there was stained glass,” said Barea Lamb Seeley, whose father, Karl B. Lamb, was president of J. & R. Lamb. The place was impressive and welcoming enough to have persuaded Jane Lathrop Stanford, a founder of Stanford University, to offer Lamb an enormous commission: the windows for the university’s Memorial Church, begun in 1899.
The Lambs may have installed the most unusual remaining interior feature at 325 Avenue of the Americas: a 10-foot circular opening in the second-story ceiling. There would have been room enough behind it for electric lights. Perhaps this was the frame for a stained-glass dome.
The Lamb studios moved in 1934 to Tenafly, N.J. (They are now in Clifton, N.J.) The building was remodeled into the Waverly by the architect Harrison Wiseman, who gave it an Art Deco flair but could not shake that gabled rooftop.
The theater opened in 1937 and was best known for midnight showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” beginning in 1976. It made it into the lyrics of “Frank Mills” in the musical “Hair” and was the setting of a scene in the movie “Six Degrees of Separation.”
At the time of its closing in October 2001, the Waverly was run by Clearview Cinemas, a corporate sibling of IFC. For a while, the building looked abandoned. The lobby was boarded up and the marquee explained only that it was “Clo ed for Reno ation.”
Mr. Sehring ascribed the long delay in part to the uncertainty after 9/11. Plans were revised. Two general contractors came and went. And there were more structural problems than expected in converting an adjacent building into a 60-seat theater and a cafe, which will be called the Waverly.
The main theater is to have 220 seats and the upstairs theater 110. Overall, that is a loss of 120 seats from the Waverly era. On the other hand, Mr. Sehring said, “I don’t think the community would have welcomed a twelve-plex.”
It remains to be seen whether it will welcome a new name. With good-natured resignation, John Vanco, the vice president and general manager of the IFC Center, predicted: “There will be people for years who’ll say, ‘We’re taking the IND to the Waverly.’ There’s nothing we can do about that.”
The multiplex was a HELLHOLE back in the early 90’s when I lived in Brooklyn for two years. On a crowded Friday or Saturday night, it was chaos in the lobby if there was one or more big, opening films there. Secondly, the place STUNK. Literally, it smelled like an old sneaker in there. I went back there about five years after I had left Brooklyn, it still smelled like that.
The only reason why this place has remained is because there were/are(?) so few choices for people in Brooklyn. I understand there’s new theater in East NY on the Belt Parkway but would YOU go there?
This was one of the nicer Bally’s around. They did not do much to disguise the interior as being once a movie theater so it was kind of surreal. The ceiling was painted a bright blue and you could easily make out the old ornamentation. Where the stage was, they had aerobics classes. The arch was still there and all.
This was back in the early 90’s. I know it’s still a Bally’s but I don’t know how well they’ve maintained the place. I would assume it’s OK because the area is still nice.
The gym was HUGE so the theater itself must’ve been also.
Article on this website today makes it sound like The Fabian’s days are numbered.
I drove into Paterson about a month ago to see where this is. Though I wouldn’t say the downtown area is a shambles (it’s really not THAT bad…) the theater doesn’t look good from the outside.
Can anyone tell me when they feel Paterson officially “hit-the-skids”? A poster above remembers seeing “The Godfather” at The Fabian in 1972 and it was still a good area. The woman that I bought my home from in Northern NJ told me that she was born and raised in Paterson. Even after she got married, she lived on the Eastside in a luxury apartment building. She said the area was fine through the 60’s BUT around 1972, she noticed that it was no longer desirable even on the Eastside. She got out of there in 1972.
I always find it fascinating to hear people talk of areas like Paterson and when it was nice and then how seemingly quickly the area turns. To many, it seems like it’s overnight.
From IMDB.com regarding the World Premiere of “Oklahoma”:
The world premiere was preceded by a parade of fringed surreys, led by then-Oklahoma Gov. Raymond Gary (1908-1993, governor 1955-1959), which made its way from the St. James Theater, where the stage version of “Oklahoma” had opened 12 years earlier, to the Rivoli Theater for the film premiere. There, standing atop a carpet of transplanted Oklahoma soil, Gov. Gary helped raise the Oklahoma state flag from the theater staff and officially proclaimed the Rivoli to be Oklahoma territory.
“Oklahoma” blows on a TV screen, I don’t care how large it is. This film and many others like them were made for a LARGE screen. Seeing these films at home on TV screen destroys whatever “magic” they might’ve had and shows up all their limitations (story, characterization, etc.) Certain other musicals such as “West Side Story”, “Gigi”, “Funny Girl” and “Oliver” work OK on TV because their basic story structures and characterizations are more pronounced. They hold up better over the years. But it would be a wonder to see those on the BIG screen for the full impact.
One of my parent’s most beloved movies was “Gigi” which premiered at a theater called The Royale. I do not see it listed here. Does it go under a different name?
Broadway as a two way street? Imagine that. Oye. The traffic would’ve been horrendous.
And to anyone who is a fan of “Oklahoma” I’d like to amend my comment disparaging the film. My comment calling it a musical mediocrity pertains soley for the FILM, not the play. The play might’ve broken new ground on the stage and is a classic. But the movie doesn’t do much.
52+ weeks of hearing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” would send me to an asylum.
It amazes me and shows how viewing habits have changed that a musical mediocrity like “Oklahoma” (sorry fans) could remain in a place like The Rivoli for so long. Does anyone know if it was successful there over the whole engagement or did the audience peter out near the end of it’s run?
What I think has changed in Times Square is that (correct me if I’m wrong) the Movie Palaces exerted a “pull” much like the Broadway show houses did. People (tourists, suburbanites) willingly schlepped into the city to see a BIG movie like “Oklahoma” because they couldn’t wait for it to trickle down to a “theater-near-you” in what? Six months, maybe even a year?
And yes, it’s the distribution that has changed all that as well. I can’t tell you how educational this site has been.
It would be an interesting experiment if some studio tried to release a really BIG movie exclusively in Manhattan (say, The Ziegfeld) and refused to let it open wide for say, three months or so. Let’s say the final “Lord of the Rings” movie was held only at The Ziegfeld. Would the demand be great enough to pull people in like the “old days”? Honestly, I think YES. If the film is BIG enough and the audience anticipation is there, it could/would work.
But the studios, the agents, the stars want their $$$$ upfront. it would and will never happen again.
They closed the DMV? Why? That was a great place to go. It was cool looking with that awesome dome, great parking and hardly any lines. Another blow to once lovely Hempstead!
The photos show a movie called “Come to the Stable” there. I thought the entrance to The Rivoli was on Broadway. How come I see cars heading uptown when I thought that Broadway was/is a downtown street? Was it at one time both ways at that point?
I know this is a minor quibble but I’m curious. Or was the entrance somewher else?
Warren: I’ve seen this and they are the BEST. Are these the ones showing “Stormy Weather” and another with “My Friend Flicka”? What’s so great about these pictures is that they are clear and you can see so much.
Ok, the presentation of the stage shows might’ve changed but we’re running the possibiltiy of re-opening the can of worms that was run into the ground earlier about the abysmal (sp?) Christmas Show.
Yep, I was born in ‘66 and that probably puts me in the LAST generation that remembers (fondly) single screen large theaters that were well maintained. My guess is that anyone born after 1970 cannot remember these theaters at all well.
I first the Christmas show in 1972 with “1776” (a thudding bore to a 6 year old). But the Christmas show? Fantastic. And I saw it every year after that until around 1978. Each year was great. And as I stated above, I took my 8 year old daughter to see it this year expecting her to be amazed by it like I was and I cannot tell you how incredibly, jaw-droppingly AWFUL the thing was.
I do not recall ever seeing another show at RCMH besides the Christmas show though. I might’ve but I don’t remember them.
BUT…the Music Hall itself is still grand and I will take my daughter on the tour sometime in the future. She LOVED the place more than the insipid show.
Valencia: So the three theaters you name (Valencia, Alden and Merrick) were still thriving in 1965. But when, do you estimate, did they begin to decline and finally die out?
It seems to be that the trend for movie theaters in NYC was that until the late 60’s, they still had some of their old grandeur left. But seemingly very abruptly, it all changed around 1969 or so. Do you think this is true? I’m just curious.
You can trace an area’s urban decline by the way the theaters were maintained in some cases.
That joke, Ziggy, would go FLYING over the heads of everyone under the age of 50 or so. I’m 38 and I “get-it” because of my scant experiences and mostly due to my parent’s descriptions of places like The Roxy and RCMH.
And yes, I know the “Hare Do” cartoon Bob speaks of. It’s the one that culminates with Bugs Bunny leading Fudd through the darkened theater (he’s actually wearing dark sunglasses) and it seems to take forever (at one point you hear the sounds of them walking through water!) and Bugs constantly saying (with an abrasive accent) “right this way sir.”
Another funny scene that plays into the BIG theater theme is when Fudd is sitting in one of the upper balconies. When he looks down, he’s so far up that the stage is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay below him.
And how the audience runs out of the theater to smoke up a storm in the lobby!
Very funny stuff and Thanks Bob Furmanek for brining that one up.
It’s entirely believable that someone like Crawford would do something like the above described by Valencia. By the early 60’s, her career was in decline. But she lived for her fans and would do almost anything for them as cited by the incident above.
She was a complicated figure. “Mommie Dearest” turned her into a monster but the facts are more complicated than that. She worked very, very hard for what she got. In so many ways, she puts today’s actresses to shame.
Yes, I agree that that is the one. Thanks. Yet another cinema mystery solved for me.
Can someone confirm that a 1984 re-release of Lang’s great “Metropolis” played here? It had a horrible rock track added to it but the movie was still spectacular.
But it’s the theater I remember well. It was small but very art deco and the bathroom/lounge was downstairs.
If this was it, this is a GREAT theater and I’m glad it’s still around.
In late 1984 or so, Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” was re-released with a pretty bad rock score accompaniment (not good…). Being a long time fan of Lang’s I went to see it but it was before I was keenly aware of the great NY theaters. I have no idea what theater it was but it was in the 6th Avenue area. I remember the lounge/bathrooms were downstairs and the place was VERY art deco. Smallish but beautiful. For some reason, I thought it might’ve been on 57th Street but I don’t think it was the Sutton because there was a balcony.
Can anyone tell me what theater I saw this in?
What I found interesting about the theater is that it’s kind “off-the-beaten-path” for such a large theater. It’s no where near Route 4 or any major roadway. When it was built (had to be before 1930…just a guess though..) Interstate 80 was years away.
Must’ve been a nice theater. From the interstate, you can see it was quite large.
I love it that I managed to perk up a few memories of that oval. I found the picture in a book of post cards of Times Square.
If the oval was over the rear orchestra seats, how did they design it so that any noise in that area didn’t filter down into the theater itself? They must’ve know this could occur but did something to limit it.
WOW! I was wondering the other day why that theater isn’t on here. You can clearly see the theater from Route 80. I, too, would like to know more about the place.
Thanks for posting this!
You are probably right. This lounge area probably existed behind the slope of the balcony (kind of “under-the-stairs”, so to speak). But considering the size of the land, this would mean that the balcony was way steep. I know someone on this site said that it was but WOW! Talk about stadium seating!
Of all the Times Square theaters on this site, The Rivoli is the one I’m getting more and more obsessed about. Thanks.
I work directly across the street from where this was (it’s now 750 7th Avenue…a completely anonymous and unremarkable black glass and steel tower). And I got a clear look at the space (or “footprint”, as the term is in real estate terms) it occupies and it’s tiny.
Then I saw in a postcard book a picture of what looks like some kind of lounge area in The Rivoli. What I could make of it showed an area with a cutout in the floor in the shape of an oval. Through this oval, you could make out some theater seats below (I assume the orchestra). Where on earth could this area have existed inside such a space?
Can anyone give a good, solid description of what it was like inside this theater or tell me a book that could? I’m astonished (and obsessed) with how such a grand space could’ve existed on such a small plot. Are there any old blueprints?
“Why cant they call it the IFC Waverly”
It’s probably $$$ and recognition. The current (and reprehensible) trend of naming theaters (and other arenas) after corporate sponsers is what is behind this. The Waverly is owned by Cablevision which also owns the Independent Film Channel (IFC). I assume they want to draw recognition to IFC by renaming this theater as well.
Thankfully, some institutions resist the name change no matter what. Know anyone who calls The Wintergarden, The Cadillac Wintergarden? I think, to New Yorkers, the Waverly will always BE the Waverly.
From the January 25th New York Times…
Past Will Flicker in Village Theater After Renovation
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
here are often second acts in the lives of New York buildings. Sometimes third acts. At a timber-peaked brick box in Greenwich Village – the Waverly Theater to generations of moviegoers – the sixth act is about to begin.
In its newest incarnation, the 174-year-old building at 325 Avenue of the Americas will house the IFC Center, a three-theater complex. Scheduled to open in late spring, the center is meant to embody IFC Companies, a filmmaking and exhibition unit of Cablevision that includes the Independent Film Channel. Jonathan Sehring, the president of IFC Entertainment, said the complex would offer a comfortable and up-to-date place to watch movies and even to dine.
It will also offer audiences a glimpse into the distant past.
Bogdanow Partners Architects, designers of the $8 million renovation, chose to leave the original brick buttresses and roof rafters exposed in the main auditorium. And, as in the Waverly days, the old gabled roof will be visible along West Third Street, even though the facade will be newly framed in illuminated steel mesh panels.
“My view of architectural history is that it doesn’t stop,” said the architect, Larry Bogdanow.
Certainly not at 325 Avenue of the Americas.
Around 1831, the Third Universalist Society built a church on the site. It was enlarged from 1843 to 1844 by St. Jude’s Episcopal Free Church into a sanctuary that could hold nearly 800 worshipers. St. Jude’s successor, St. John’s in the Village, at 224 Waverly Place, still keeps the records of the Sixth Avenue church, which dissolved in 1853.
Poignantly, but with great cursive flourishes, these ledger books chronicle the shrinking of the parish. Mrs. Parcells of 18 Greenwich Avenue: “Disappears the second year; an Adventist.” Mrs. E. Wilson, widow, of 9 Sullivan Street: “Removed to the country.” (“Probably the Bronx,” said the Rev. Lloyd E. Prator, rector of St. John’s.) James McAdam of 109 Fourth Street: “Not right in the head. Belongs to St. Mathews Church.”
The Union Reformed Church, which next occupied the building, undertook a rehabilitation in 1872 that left the place “beautifully decorated and upholstered,” The New York Times reported.
J. & R. Lamb Studios, founded in 1857, was next to arrive. Its 1893 alteration turned the facade into a billboard for the firm’s offerings, but the church’s Gothic style windows and gabled roof were left intact.
“It was a fabulous place – everywhere there was stained glass,” said Barea Lamb Seeley, whose father, Karl B. Lamb, was president of J. & R. Lamb. The place was impressive and welcoming enough to have persuaded Jane Lathrop Stanford, a founder of Stanford University, to offer Lamb an enormous commission: the windows for the university’s Memorial Church, begun in 1899.
The Lambs may have installed the most unusual remaining interior feature at 325 Avenue of the Americas: a 10-foot circular opening in the second-story ceiling. There would have been room enough behind it for electric lights. Perhaps this was the frame for a stained-glass dome.
The Lamb studios moved in 1934 to Tenafly, N.J. (They are now in Clifton, N.J.) The building was remodeled into the Waverly by the architect Harrison Wiseman, who gave it an Art Deco flair but could not shake that gabled rooftop.
The theater opened in 1937 and was best known for midnight showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” beginning in 1976. It made it into the lyrics of “Frank Mills” in the musical “Hair” and was the setting of a scene in the movie “Six Degrees of Separation.”
At the time of its closing in October 2001, the Waverly was run by Clearview Cinemas, a corporate sibling of IFC. For a while, the building looked abandoned. The lobby was boarded up and the marquee explained only that it was “Clo ed for Reno ation.”
Mr. Sehring ascribed the long delay in part to the uncertainty after 9/11. Plans were revised. Two general contractors came and went. And there were more structural problems than expected in converting an adjacent building into a 60-seat theater and a cafe, which will be called the Waverly.
The main theater is to have 220 seats and the upstairs theater 110. Overall, that is a loss of 120 seats from the Waverly era. On the other hand, Mr. Sehring said, “I don’t think the community would have welcomed a twelve-plex.”
It remains to be seen whether it will welcome a new name. With good-natured resignation, John Vanco, the vice president and general manager of the IFC Center, predicted: “There will be people for years who’ll say, ‘We’re taking the IND to the Waverly.’ There’s nothing we can do about that.”
The multiplex was a HELLHOLE back in the early 90’s when I lived in Brooklyn for two years. On a crowded Friday or Saturday night, it was chaos in the lobby if there was one or more big, opening films there. Secondly, the place STUNK. Literally, it smelled like an old sneaker in there. I went back there about five years after I had left Brooklyn, it still smelled like that.
The only reason why this place has remained is because there were/are(?) so few choices for people in Brooklyn. I understand there’s new theater in East NY on the Belt Parkway but would YOU go there?
This was one of the nicer Bally’s around. They did not do much to disguise the interior as being once a movie theater so it was kind of surreal. The ceiling was painted a bright blue and you could easily make out the old ornamentation. Where the stage was, they had aerobics classes. The arch was still there and all.
This was back in the early 90’s. I know it’s still a Bally’s but I don’t know how well they’ve maintained the place. I would assume it’s OK because the area is still nice.
The gym was HUGE so the theater itself must’ve been also.
Article on this website today makes it sound like The Fabian’s days are numbered.
I drove into Paterson about a month ago to see where this is. Though I wouldn’t say the downtown area is a shambles (it’s really not THAT bad…) the theater doesn’t look good from the outside.
Can anyone tell me when they feel Paterson officially “hit-the-skids”? A poster above remembers seeing “The Godfather” at The Fabian in 1972 and it was still a good area. The woman that I bought my home from in Northern NJ told me that she was born and raised in Paterson. Even after she got married, she lived on the Eastside in a luxury apartment building. She said the area was fine through the 60’s BUT around 1972, she noticed that it was no longer desirable even on the Eastside. She got out of there in 1972.
I always find it fascinating to hear people talk of areas like Paterson and when it was nice and then how seemingly quickly the area turns. To many, it seems like it’s overnight.
From IMDB.com regarding the World Premiere of “Oklahoma”:
The world premiere was preceded by a parade of fringed surreys, led by then-Oklahoma Gov. Raymond Gary (1908-1993, governor 1955-1959), which made its way from the St. James Theater, where the stage version of “Oklahoma” had opened 12 years earlier, to the Rivoli Theater for the film premiere. There, standing atop a carpet of transplanted Oklahoma soil, Gov. Gary helped raise the Oklahoma state flag from the theater staff and officially proclaimed the Rivoli to be Oklahoma territory.
“Oklahoma” blows on a TV screen, I don’t care how large it is. This film and many others like them were made for a LARGE screen. Seeing these films at home on TV screen destroys whatever “magic” they might’ve had and shows up all their limitations (story, characterization, etc.) Certain other musicals such as “West Side Story”, “Gigi”, “Funny Girl” and “Oliver” work OK on TV because their basic story structures and characterizations are more pronounced. They hold up better over the years. But it would be a wonder to see those on the BIG screen for the full impact.
One of my parent’s most beloved movies was “Gigi” which premiered at a theater called The Royale. I do not see it listed here. Does it go under a different name?
Broadway as a two way street? Imagine that. Oye. The traffic would’ve been horrendous.
And to anyone who is a fan of “Oklahoma” I’d like to amend my comment disparaging the film. My comment calling it a musical mediocrity pertains soley for the FILM, not the play. The play might’ve broken new ground on the stage and is a classic. But the movie doesn’t do much.
52+ weeks of hearing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” would send me to an asylum.
It amazes me and shows how viewing habits have changed that a musical mediocrity like “Oklahoma” (sorry fans) could remain in a place like The Rivoli for so long. Does anyone know if it was successful there over the whole engagement or did the audience peter out near the end of it’s run?
What I think has changed in Times Square is that (correct me if I’m wrong) the Movie Palaces exerted a “pull” much like the Broadway show houses did. People (tourists, suburbanites) willingly schlepped into the city to see a BIG movie like “Oklahoma” because they couldn’t wait for it to trickle down to a “theater-near-you” in what? Six months, maybe even a year?
And yes, it’s the distribution that has changed all that as well. I can’t tell you how educational this site has been.
It would be an interesting experiment if some studio tried to release a really BIG movie exclusively in Manhattan (say, The Ziegfeld) and refused to let it open wide for say, three months or so. Let’s say the final “Lord of the Rings” movie was held only at The Ziegfeld. Would the demand be great enough to pull people in like the “old days”? Honestly, I think YES. If the film is BIG enough and the audience anticipation is there, it could/would work.
But the studios, the agents, the stars want their $$$$ upfront. it would and will never happen again.
They closed the DMV? Why? That was a great place to go. It was cool looking with that awesome dome, great parking and hardly any lines. Another blow to once lovely Hempstead!
After looking at some nice pictures at www.historictheatres.org , I’m a little confused.
The photos show a movie called “Come to the Stable” there. I thought the entrance to The Rivoli was on Broadway. How come I see cars heading uptown when I thought that Broadway was/is a downtown street? Was it at one time both ways at that point?
I know this is a minor quibble but I’m curious. Or was the entrance somewher else?
Warren: I’ve seen this and they are the BEST. Are these the ones showing “Stormy Weather” and another with “My Friend Flicka”? What’s so great about these pictures is that they are clear and you can see so much.