Embassy 1,2,3 Theatre
707 7th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10036
707 7th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10036
39 people
favorited this theater
Showing 451 - 475 of 1,094 comments
The Mayfair foreign phase was very short lived. Even “M” was dubbed into English by the third week and mainstream films were mostly the norm.
RKO had been the previous operator.
“No longer affiliated with RKO Theatres, the Mayfair was now being booked and managed by its owner, Walter Reade, with a policy of "The Cinema of All Nations.”
Tinseltoes-What time frame are you referring to with the above statement? Loews was there before Walter Reade, who I worked for.
Hollywood 90038 I tried to e mail you about the Times Sq Theatres. The one that starts with unisphere? Do you have a new e mail thanks Terry San Franciso CA
Tinseltoes mentioned the one and only Jane Russell in his post of 2/9/2011… Sadly, we lost Ms Russell earlier this week on Monday the 28th, at the age of 89.
LOL- At some point in time EVERYTHING was in an SMPTE Journal. I have all my own journals from 1972 on. I also have most of the 1940’s & 50’s journals from Bill Nafash’s stuff. I donated most of the EXTENSIVE documentation I got from him to The Museum of the Moving Image in 1989.
REndres said:
“I’ve heard of the Paramount system of "TV” projection before, and there may even be documentation about it in Richardson’s “Bluebook of Projection”. I think the State-Lake Theatre in Chicago used the same system"
I used to have an SMPE Journal from the late forties with a picture of this installation at the Paramount. They had E7’s, Hall & Connelly HC10’s and WE TA7400 soundheads. I also have an issue of International Projectionist from the same era with an article about the installation at the Chicago theatre.
Um, that should have been provided, not proved!
Nice image of the Underwater wrap-around ad, lifted from three posts above proved by hdtv267.
http://media.oldmovieexhibition.com/bnr.jpg
You mean the difference between cement hot splices made at the lab and “film exchange” hot splices that come apart.-lol
Labs can’t afford to have stock splices come apart, since it can take them a half a day to rethread the processor.
Actually, it’s the other way around: B&W stock which is silver nitrate based is thicker because of the silver applied to the film. The silver blocks the light much more than “black” on dye-based color stock does, which is why Spielberg wanted to use it, but that can create problems: the silver also absorbs more heat from the lamp than color stock does creating more buckle if the light isn’t spread evenly across the aperture, and the thickness difference may require refocussing, particularly if short-focal length high-speed lenses are used, since their depth of focus is lower thus making focus more critical. Cine-focus would help since it tends to minimize buckle at the gate.
On the other hand, printing B&W on color stock also has problems. The processing chemicals used in labs can vary over the course of a day, even though carefully temperature maintained. For a terrific explanation of this check out the DVD of “Pleasantville” which explains how they had to individually look at the “B&W” scenes on each reel processed and then put the reels in piles marked “slightly red”, “slightly blue” etc. If all the reels in a given print are matched to each other the change from “true” white isn’t as noticeable, but that requires careful inspection of each reel as it comes out of the processor. The eye is more tolerant of variations in color between color reels, but any variation really stands out in a B&W picture.
A few years ago we had to project a print of Jim Jarmusch’s “Coffee & Cigarettes” for the producers to approve. Jarmusch had made one print on true silver nitrate B&W stock for festival screenings, but we were projecting a test print pulled on color stock. At the first changeover the color temperature varied markedly from green to red. Our projectors are carefully matched in color temparature, so we pulled the aperture plates so the perforations in the stock were exposed on the screen. We re-ran the reel and again the color temparature of the picture changed at the changeover, but the light through the perfs remained the same white. At that point the producers stopped the screening and went down to the United Artists' office below us and pulled a vice-president up to see for himself. Needless to say, that print was scrapped.
In the days of “The Wizard of Oz” there were projectionists in the booth. The change from sepia tone to Technicolor and back came at reel changes, so there was someone there to refocus if necessary.
Presumably, cement splices made with a hot splicer are stronger than the stock itself, even when splicing color to B&W stock, but perhaps as with many things the technique had been lost by the time “Schindler” was released.
The B&W to Color focus problem happened mostly with theatres without water cooled gates. I did not have bad or weak lab splices , those ran fine through the projector. Even with inspecting the film prints before there was no problem. I had minor shedding on my prints. I handled one of the Los Angeles First run houses running it. I was down the street from Universal Studios. I opened with three prints, one on a water cooled gate Century SA. And two on non-water cooled gates Centurys. By the end of the weekend Universal sent 5 more prints for me to run and test.
It seemed the color stock was thicker than the B & W causing either a loss of focus or a lab splice break about four times at each showing. The prints were replaced with full color stock after about three weeks of problems at all of the Manhattan runs.
“More recently, does anyone remember the disastrous prints of "SCHINDLER’S LIST” in Manhattan that went from color stock to black and white, breaking at each joint?
posted by AlAlvarez on Feb 1, 2011 at 11:03am"
I recall them shedding very badly and a focus problem going from B&W to color stock. There may have been prints with weak lab splices going from B&W to color (or vica versa). But if the operator inspected the film that wouldn’t happen….right?
Al, So the Manhattan runs had that problem?
Paramount’s television system is covered in some detail in the HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CINEMA book series.
More recently, does anyone remember the disastrous prints of “SCHINDLER’S LIST” in Manhattan that went from color stock to black and white, breaking at each joint?
Regarding converting 30-fps Todd-AO to 24-fps, there were only 2 features filmed at 30-fps: OKLAHOMA and AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. Both of these pictures were filmed with both 35mm and 70mm equipment. OKLAHOMA used 2 different setups for 35mm and 70mm, while 80 DAYS filmed both processes simultaneously. They did not use a special pull-down printer to generate the 35mm prints. You can find documentation on this at www.widescreenmuseum.com, a very, very good website for information on wide-screen technical processes.
I’ve heard of the Paramount system of “TV” projection before, and there may even be documentation about it in Richardson’s “Bluebook of Projection”. I think the State-Lake Theatre in Chicago used the same system. In that case, the Paramount/Publix/ABC TV affiliate (now) WBKB was located in the building above the theatre auditorium and I think they processed the film upstairs and sent it down a shaftway to the booth. Access to that booth could be gained by entering an unmarked door in the office hallway above and walking down a staircase to the booth level, so it’s possible that the processing equipment could have been located pretty much right above the booth and projectors. Considering some of the platter paths used for interlocking screens in some multiplexes today, it wouldn’t have been a big stretch to do so.
“crackpot” ideas or not, they REALLY did that stuff as incredible as some of it might seem. I’ve never read Widescreen Review magazine and don’t know R.M. Hayes, but it sounds interesting.-lol
The stuff you’re writing about, techman, reminds me of the crackpot ideas that R.M. Hayes wrote about in the pages of early issues of Widescreen Review magazine and in the book he co-authored, Wide Screen Movies.
Probably because it’s true. The problems they described when running 30fps on the Cinemechanica Vic X’s was described to me by 3 different projectionists that ran it at the time had such detail that I believe it to be true. Since two of the 3 projectionists didn’t know their ass from their elbow mechanically, only the truth could account for their detail.
They did strange stuff back then. When “Thunderball” was running 24 hours a day at the Paramount, At 3am I went to see one of the projectionists who was a friend of mine. His partner that was working that night had been a projectionist there for many years. We got into a conversation and he described a “newsreel system” that had been installed there that actually processed B&W 35mm film right out of the camera magazine and developed, dried and sent it, still green, right to the projector in one continuous operation. This gave them up to the minute (so to speak) news on the big screen. At first I though it was a joke, but, guess what….it was TRUE. A few years later I actually came across documentation for the system.
I don’t know what the big deal is about 30fps Spartacus, especially considering some of the strange things they did back then. They built 2:3 pulldown intermittents to print Todd/AO 30fps to 24fps for 35mm prints. Why do you find it so difficult to believe they did a 3:2 pulldown intermittent for printing 24fps to 30 fps just like a 35mm telecine projector. I put together a few telecine projectors in the late 70’s. The “original” engineer who designed the Simplex telecine projector was still alive then and lived in Stowe Vermont (where the Von Trapp family of Sound Of Music fame lived), his name was Ed Mercier. He had a complete machine shop in his barn.
I’m surprised no one has challenged Techman’s “Spartacus” 30fps claim from a couple weeks ago.
Al – Your explanation is exactly the same as what my understanding was.
The definition of grind, like the definition of Roadshow has changed over the years.
The original meaning of grind was that feature showtimes were not advertised, there were no intermissions, and patrons came and went as they pleased. Eventually it came to mean any theatre that ran all day.
For years a roadshow was an exploitation film that traveled from town to town usually on a four-wall deal. The distributors cleaned up with a massive campaign and premium priced tickets, and then moved on to the next town. Eventually the term was used applied for two-show-a-day attractions that skimmed profit from reserved premium priced prestige showings.
By the way ‘theater’ meant legitimate and ‘theatre’ meant movies until AMC started mixing it up in the seventies.
It’s too bad to hear about the Egyptian. I guess it’s not just NY that has NO RESPECT for beautiful old theatres. Well, at least they still have the Cinerama Dome still operating…..I hope.
All the 42nd st houses would be the only “grind” houses by that definition then. They all ran 3 & 4 shifts a day.
techman, UA closed the Egyptian in 1992 and American Cinematheque reopened it around 1998 after a somewhat of a restore job. The place looks and runs nice. The giant D-150 screen is not longer there and a smaller seating capacity. To projectionists on the West Coast continuous showing was just that. Grindhouse theatres were the ones that opened early in the day and ran all night till around 5-6am. And ran three or four features a day. And on program change days you could see the first 3 or 4 features plus the next weeks films too for a dollar or two. From what I have seen the theatres on 42nd Street ran Grind policies and the Cameo, Arcade and Hollywood Theatres in Los Angeles ran grindhouse policy. And during World War 2 in major markets.