Truly awful Music Hall movies started creeping up with some regularity in the late 60’s with films like The Bobo, Sweet November, and The Impossible Years. But maybe the lowest point was See No Evil in 71. A low budget, very bloody, slasher flic which had no reason being at the Hall and should have opened on a double bill on 42nd ST.
Operation Crossbow is another one of those holiday films where I wonder what the Hall was thinking. It’s a pretty brutal violent WW 2 movie(in fact it should not even have been booked for the Hall at all.)This was the Easter 65 film with Sound of Music playing down the block at the Rivoli.
I saw the coming attractions for Matilda when I went to Fantasia. It looked unwatchable. I guess it was as bad as I thought.
There was a wonderful long article about The Best of Everything in Vanity Fair due to the fact that its been getting a lot of play on television lately. Even the Times did a piece on it(the usual Times dopey, condescending, aren’t we so much more enlightened today nonsense.)I was very surprised to read in that article that it opened at the Paramount and not the Roxy.
I work by the Seagram’s building and every time I pass it I think of the very pretty Hope Lange looking at it going to work on her first day. I miss her.
It is interesting that some important Fox films in the 30’s and 40’s played at the Music Hall rather than the Roxy but in the 50’s it seems the Roxy had them all.
The Happiest Millionaire might not have been a success but it was the best Christmas movie I saw at the Hall. I saw most of them from this point on and from production design alone it was the best looking on that screen(also that great looking 60’s technicolor which was about to turn to the grainy washed out color of the 70’s.)
From this point on they were all turkeys(except for Scrooge but the blow up 70 mm print left al ot to be desired.)
Even before that you’d have to go back to The Sundowners to find a good proper Christmas film for the Hall.
By the way GWTW was shown again at the Rivoli in 70mm in the 70’s.
I saw a late afternoon showing after seeing a matinee of Angela Lansbury in Gypsy at the Winter Garden in I believe ‘73 or '74. They were selling the souvenir book for the film as well.
Well if you had a few months of the same stage show with changing films shown in Imax it could work. However you would need another Leonidoff to produce the stage show and I don’t think there is a person in the business today who knows how to properly utilize the Hall with its own specific characteristics. It is treated as if it were simply the theater at Madison Square Garden or another concert venue. When I see photos of the auditorium now with those speakers hanging down its stomach churning. And the amazing thing is all they do is just make the music louder!
Robert could you post that photo of the Rivoli with the GWTW marquee?
Any othe roadshows would be great too that we haven’t seen like Sweet Charity, West Side Story, and Star.
And how about the great back wall billboard with its smaller billboard underneath? We haven’t seen any of those.
And then there’s that great billboard of Star above the Astor and Victoria in the fall of ‘68.
When I worked there in ‘76 a ticket seller(she had worked the Strand during The Sea Hawk which she said was intense) told me that Odd Couple was the last film where the work was non stop. One of the old gentlemen(he had been a Roxy usher-his photo is in the Best Remaining Seats where all the ushers are on stage) said there were as many people the last day of the run as on the first.
Barefoot in the Park is one of those bright technicolor New York 60’s comedies that I would have given anything to see at the Hall.
Redford and Fonda are talented and sexy beyond belief. Glad to hear the stage show was good too. Others I wish I had seen there are How to Succeed and the Odd Couple.
The success though of Barefoot seems to have precipitated the strike that occurred shortly after the opening of Up the Down Staircase in August. Reducing the stage show to just the symphony orchestra and singers from what I gather. At least the Hall had one good movie left for the year in Wait Until Dark.
Then the Hall had only two good movies in ‘68- Odd Couple and Bullitt and one in '69- True Grit. Goodbye you wonderful old Hollywood Studio era.
Even though I have never been able to sit through all St. Mary’s Bergman is pretty wonderful in it. Still as much as I like Leave(and love Gene) the idea of the Roxy filled with holiday families watching Tierney passively watch a crippled boy drown gives one pause.
(Makes me think of those holiday families watching the brutal Charade at Christmas of ‘63 at the Hall right after the murder of the president.)
At Long Last Love looked great at the Music Hall. I also saw it there twice. Yeah it wasn’t very good and the performances embarrassing. But Cybil was at the height of her beauty and the production design was gorgeous. Definately the best looking new film I saw there in the 70’s(well, outside of Airport but I really consider that a 60’s film.)
The stage show was one of the worst. I remember people dressed up as bunnies doing stupid things with carrots and the like. I can’t imagine what Cybil and Peter thought. The ballet was gone by this time. I think the last decent stage show that I can recall was the Easter show with Mame(ugh.)
I know we’ve had this converstion before but did people at the time really view Gilda the way we do today?
I mean the Hall was a very family friendly, classy place and how many parents complained when they went to see stuff in the nabes like Blondie and puppet shows and Gilda with their tykes?
People must have found Hayworth so sensational that the thick atmosphere of moral licentiousness that drips from every scene must have been completely difused by Hayworths star wattage which has no equal today.
For those who saw 2001 at the Capitol. Were the audiences really different from the normal roadshow audience? Or was it a raodshow epic audience? Were they really hippie types who bought their tickets righ before the film like a regular movie and did pot smoke really hover near the screen?
Alien was the last movie I saw at the Criterion. I went because I had just seen Funny Girl at the Music Hall and was feeling very nostalgic. Superman was the last movie I saw at the Criterion that I liked. I had first seen it in the suburbs. Oh why couldn’t it have opened at the Criterion instead of the Astor Plaza? And two years before why couldn’t Star Wars open there instead of the Astor Plaza?
If only people had realized it was a far greater movie theater than the Ziegfeld.
With the Gordon’s Gin sign above it and the Bond store and the Woolworths it was one of New Yorks greatest blocks. In later years I actually heard while walking on the opposite side of the street on a few occasions strangers comment to each other how the block had really deteriorated and they couldn’t believe it. I guess they had seen it for many years before its descent into cheap camera and souvenir stores and the Criterion’s descent into black exploitation.
When the National(ugh)was playing the ‘73 revival of SOM the Criterion was playing Wattstoxx. A block above Loew’s State was playing Lost Horizon.
How did the Criterion which was New Yorks greatest house in the 60'so quickly lose all its luster and turn into a grind house? Even the Rivoli and the Loew’s State had far better bookings into the 70’s.
According to BOB’s post you could see(from what I could make out)on Broadway;
Ethel Merman, Olivia de Havilland, Charles Boyer, Agnes Moorehead, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Harris, Jack Carson, James Barton, Vivienne Segal, Harold Lang, Henry Fonda, John Hodiak, Kim Hunter, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Gertrude Lawrence, Robert Preston, Jose Ferrar, John Raitt,and Phil Silvers.
And Singing in the Rain was playing with the Easter show at the Music Hall.
The Beekman will be closing in a New York considerally more culturally impoverished than the one it opened in.
As the people who I worked with at the Music Hall in the 70’s who had been around in the halcyon days of the 40’s said of those dark days it was simply unimaginable.
Well the Music Hall was stuck with Father Goose for the Christmas show.
Send Me No Flowers opened as the Thanksgiving ‘64 Music Hall film.
Truly awful Music Hall movies started creeping up with some regularity in the late 60’s with films like The Bobo, Sweet November, and The Impossible Years. But maybe the lowest point was See No Evil in 71. A low budget, very bloody, slasher flic which had no reason being at the Hall and should have opened on a double bill on 42nd ST.
Operation Crossbow is another one of those holiday films where I wonder what the Hall was thinking. It’s a pretty brutal violent WW 2 movie(in fact it should not even have been booked for the Hall at all.)This was the Easter 65 film with Sound of Music playing down the block at the Rivoli.
I saw the coming attractions for Matilda when I went to Fantasia. It looked unwatchable. I guess it was as bad as I thought.
Were the Missouri Rockets first the Roxyettes before becoming the Rockettes and if so who is Gae Foster?
And just a few months before the Cinerama was playing Song of Norway with Florence Henderson.
There was a wonderful long article about The Best of Everything in Vanity Fair due to the fact that its been getting a lot of play on television lately. Even the Times did a piece on it(the usual Times dopey, condescending, aren’t we so much more enlightened today nonsense.)I was very surprised to read in that article that it opened at the Paramount and not the Roxy.
I work by the Seagram’s building and every time I pass it I think of the very pretty Hope Lange looking at it going to work on her first day. I miss her.
It is interesting that some important Fox films in the 30’s and 40’s played at the Music Hall rather than the Roxy but in the 50’s it seems the Roxy had them all.
Weren’t all Speilberg films shot(or at least directed)flat?
The Happiest Millionaire might not have been a success but it was the best Christmas movie I saw at the Hall. I saw most of them from this point on and from production design alone it was the best looking on that screen(also that great looking 60’s technicolor which was about to turn to the grainy washed out color of the 70’s.)
From this point on they were all turkeys(except for Scrooge but the blow up 70 mm print left al ot to be desired.)
Even before that you’d have to go back to The Sundowners to find a good proper Christmas film for the Hall.
Well I saw Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall in the 80’s and the above description bears no relation at all to that audience.
By the way GWTW was shown again at the Rivoli in 70mm in the 70’s.
I saw a late afternoon showing after seeing a matinee of Angela Lansbury in Gypsy at the Winter Garden in I believe ‘73 or '74. They were selling the souvenir book for the film as well.
Well if you had a few months of the same stage show with changing films shown in Imax it could work. However you would need another Leonidoff to produce the stage show and I don’t think there is a person in the business today who knows how to properly utilize the Hall with its own specific characteristics. It is treated as if it were simply the theater at Madison Square Garden or another concert venue. When I see photos of the auditorium now with those speakers hanging down its stomach churning. And the amazing thing is all they do is just make the music louder!
Robert could you post that photo of the Rivoli with the GWTW marquee?
Any othe roadshows would be great too that we haven’t seen like Sweet Charity, West Side Story, and Star.
And how about the great back wall billboard with its smaller billboard underneath? We haven’t seen any of those.
And then there’s that great billboard of Star above the Astor and Victoria in the fall of ‘68.
Wasn’t State Fair a moveover from the Music Hall? Bet that didn’t happen often.
When I worked there in ‘76 a ticket seller(she had worked the Strand during The Sea Hawk which she said was intense) told me that Odd Couple was the last film where the work was non stop. One of the old gentlemen(he had been a Roxy usher-his photo is in the Best Remaining Seats where all the ushers are on stage) said there were as many people the last day of the run as on the first.
Barefoot in the Park is one of those bright technicolor New York 60’s comedies that I would have given anything to see at the Hall.
Redford and Fonda are talented and sexy beyond belief. Glad to hear the stage show was good too. Others I wish I had seen there are How to Succeed and the Odd Couple.
The success though of Barefoot seems to have precipitated the strike that occurred shortly after the opening of Up the Down Staircase in August. Reducing the stage show to just the symphony orchestra and singers from what I gather. At least the Hall had one good movie left for the year in Wait Until Dark.
Then the Hall had only two good movies in ‘68- Odd Couple and Bullitt and one in '69- True Grit. Goodbye you wonderful old Hollywood Studio era.
Even though I have never been able to sit through all St. Mary’s Bergman is pretty wonderful in it. Still as much as I like Leave(and love Gene) the idea of the Roxy filled with holiday families watching Tierney passively watch a crippled boy drown gives one pause.
(Makes me think of those holiday families watching the brutal Charade at Christmas of ‘63 at the Hall right after the murder of the president.)
Leave Her to Heaven as a Christmas show?!!!
No wonder Gilda was considered family fare. Just surprised it wasn’t shown as the Easter film at the Hall.
At Long Last Love looked great at the Music Hall. I also saw it there twice. Yeah it wasn’t very good and the performances embarrassing. But Cybil was at the height of her beauty and the production design was gorgeous. Definately the best looking new film I saw there in the 70’s(well, outside of Airport but I really consider that a 60’s film.)
The stage show was one of the worst. I remember people dressed up as bunnies doing stupid things with carrots and the like. I can’t imagine what Cybil and Peter thought. The ballet was gone by this time. I think the last decent stage show that I can recall was the Easter show with Mame(ugh.)
I know we’ve had this converstion before but did people at the time really view Gilda the way we do today?
I mean the Hall was a very family friendly, classy place and how many parents complained when they went to see stuff in the nabes like Blondie and puppet shows and Gilda with their tykes?
People must have found Hayworth so sensational that the thick atmosphere of moral licentiousness that drips from every scene must have been completely difused by Hayworths star wattage which has no equal today.
For those who saw 2001 at the Capitol. Were the audiences really different from the normal roadshow audience? Or was it a raodshow epic audience? Were they really hippie types who bought their tickets righ before the film like a regular movie and did pot smoke really hover near the screen?
Alien was the last movie I saw at the Criterion. I went because I had just seen Funny Girl at the Music Hall and was feeling very nostalgic. Superman was the last movie I saw at the Criterion that I liked. I had first seen it in the suburbs. Oh why couldn’t it have opened at the Criterion instead of the Astor Plaza? And two years before why couldn’t Star Wars open there instead of the Astor Plaza?
If only people had realized it was a far greater movie theater than the Ziegfeld.
With the Gordon’s Gin sign above it and the Bond store and the Woolworths it was one of New Yorks greatest blocks. In later years I actually heard while walking on the opposite side of the street on a few occasions strangers comment to each other how the block had really deteriorated and they couldn’t believe it. I guess they had seen it for many years before its descent into cheap camera and souvenir stores and the Criterion’s descent into black exploitation.
When the National(ugh)was playing the ‘73 revival of SOM the Criterion was playing Wattstoxx. A block above Loew’s State was playing Lost Horizon.
How did the Criterion which was New Yorks greatest house in the 60'so quickly lose all its luster and turn into a grind house? Even the Rivoli and the Loew’s State had far better bookings into the 70’s.
Pomeii had Vesuvius.
New York has Disney.
According to BOB’s post you could see(from what I could make out)on Broadway;
Ethel Merman, Olivia de Havilland, Charles Boyer, Agnes Moorehead, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Harris, Jack Carson, James Barton, Vivienne Segal, Harold Lang, Henry Fonda, John Hodiak, Kim Hunter, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Gertrude Lawrence, Robert Preston, Jose Ferrar, John Raitt,and Phil Silvers.
And Singing in the Rain was playing with the Easter show at the Music Hall.
The Beekman will be closing in a New York considerally more culturally impoverished than the one it opened in.
As the people who I worked with at the Music Hall in the 70’s who had been around in the halcyon days of the 40’s said of those dark days it was simply unimaginable.