Radio City Music Hall

rcdt, I meant for “Hearts and Lights”. And have they added a number to replace “Let Christmas Shine”?

rcdt, from what I’ve read thus far, it appears Haberman and Co. are not putting in any “kick” numbers for the 36. Is this true?

rcdt55b, I agree with your assessment about “Snow”. It may be impossible to liven that number, short of having the skaters get married in Central Park. It could be made timelier if it was a same-sex marriage. That said, I have a go-to mantra during the slow sections of the show. I meditate, breathe and keep repeating, “The Hall could have been a parking lot.” I can’t wait to see the spring show.

rcmh was the subject of a jeopardy answer last night in a category devoted to abbreviations.

I’m glad “Let Christmas Shine” is out. I kind of felt sorry for the six, count ‘em, six singers on the Choral Staircases. They looked so lonely. I hope its replaced with a good, old-fashioned Rockette tap number. And who is going to make the sophomoric joke about Radio City having “balls”? Oh, that would be me.

Vito, my wife is going to a meeting tom'w for all the wardrobe dresses. She heard thru the grapevine there might be some new numbers, but I don’t know if this will affect the booth.

The only lines i can recall that are the longest are those for the xmas spectacular, the easter show, and celebrity jeopardy. Even sold out concerts by big name artists can have long lines as well as the annual nfl draft.

“The Bells of St. Mary’s” is the movie Al Pacino and Diane Keaton went to Radio City to see in “The Godfather”. I’m trying to imagine Michael and Kay waiting on that impossibly long line.

Ray Dolby was included in the In Memorium section of this year’s Emmy awards show.

Rob, Thanks for the heartwarming Ray Dolby tribute, he changed and greatly enhanced the way we hear recorded sound. During the sixties and most of the seventies 35mm sound had for the most part gone mono optical a full decade and a half of almost nonexistent stereo sound in the theatres. Then came Dolby and a breath of fresh air had been pumped into the theatres again, finally stereo sound was back bigger and better than ever. It also, thanks in many ways to George Lucas, revitalized 70mm which had all but disappeared. Yup movie sound had gotten pretty dull there for quite a while but Mr. Dolby forever changed that what a joy it has to be to have known both Ray and Ioan Allen both of whom brilliantly improved recorded sound.

I am glad you mentioned the confusion caused by magnetic prints being sent to theatres that could not play them, another great innovation in those times was of course mag/optical prints which to some degree solved that problem. I say some degree cause there was still the issue with one of the mag tracks overlapping slightly onto the optical track area but we lived with that

Thanks Bill I appreciate that, sometimes I worry that my posts are too boring or long in the tooth. In the days when I still attended union meetings I would enjoy entertaining the youngins with stories about the good ole days of projection, or at least I hope they were entertained. As to REndres I cannot compare my humble posts to the magnificent ones he provides which are always interesting and technically educational. In spite of all my years in the business I still managed to learn something new reading Robs posts.

Correction, Please substitute the word Photocell with Solar Cell in my post. PHOTOCELL!!! my goodness now that’s really showing my age.

Thanks Mark perhaps someone will, let us know when all of that awful set is completely gone and the stage is once again back to its glory.

REndres fun reading about the early Dolby years at RCMH it was quite a time to be sure, we were all excited about the new sound with so little stereo available since the early 60s when Mag sound began to wane, There was confusion about the early prints as the exchanges did not seem to care which prints they sent to the theatres similarly to the way mag/optical prints were sent to theatres with optical capabilities only and optical prints were sent to theaters with magnetic installations it was a mess back then and continued in the early days of Dolby SVA prints. At the start there were two versions of the prints; optical mono and optical stereo and all too often film exchanges would send out the wrong versions to some of the theatres. Of course I am sure more care was taken to send proper prints to first run B’way houses but not to the neighborhoods. We would also occasionally get mixed prints with some reels stereo and some mono (that was annoying) It was made worse by the studios who did not id the prints clearly; in some cases the only way to tell a mono from a stereo print was to check the modulation on the track itself to see which type of track it was, there was not even lab markings in the leaders to identify mono or stereo which was simply ridicules. Eventually the prints were labeled properly but not until about a year of confusion. Soon as more theatres installed Dolby they stopped making optical mono all together producing only optical stereo prints and life got easier for us. The fear of course was the notion that SVA prints did not play well with mono only photocells all of which changed when newer technology improved photocells and ultimately eliminated exciter lamps. But in the early years of what is now antiquated sound reproduction of Solar cells and exciter lamps things were difficult for us in the booth with respect to stereo optical. This may sound all very odd to those working RCMH were I am sure the proper version of those early SVA prints were sent. Or where they?? Of course the madness continued as more and more Dolby wana bees sprung out; we had DTS (which Spielberg loved) then there was Sony SDDS adding to the confusion or what I called madness. The studios final got it right with all four tracks, Dolby stereo, Dolby Digital, DTS, and Sony SDDS) married onto one print so that whichever system you had could play just about any print. Having all four stereo tracks on one print made life a whole lot easier, just as long as you had the film path lied up properly to avoid the DTS control track, which was located right alongside the SVA track, from being picked up causing buzzing. Yeah, that wasn’t too irritating. But it was the fun and excitement of being a projectionist back then. Was it not? In the 50s we had a new picture format born every year and in the 70s it was a new sound format, now a day’s sound on film has been replaced by digital files provided by a computerized server producing sound digitally. In the good ole days we were kept on our toes something the kids today don’t have with Digital, Kinda feel bad for don’t you Rob?.

My apologies to those who may have found this post a bit rambling or inappropriate to be made here. I just thought it fit in to the Music Halls into to optical stereo.