Roxy Theatre
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
83 people
favorited this theater
Showing 476 - 500 of 1,209 comments
Of all the Manhattan moviehouses I never got to visit, this is the one I most mind having missed. When I accompanied my folks to New York starting in 1955, we always went to whatever was playing at Radio City Music Hall, starting with “Mr. Roberts.” But despite the awareness that the Roxy was nearby, we somehow never got there. Damn!
Warren: Thanks for the photo!
In a book entitled Lucille Ball: A to Z by Michael Karol (page 296) it reads in part: “The chauffeur, who was one of the witnesses, drove them back to New York in time for Desi to appear for the second show at the Roxy Theater. It was the first marriage for both.”
Fascinating. Thanks for all the great research Warren, it is very much appreciated!
Ken and Warren:..thanks for the references but I have had the Center bookmarked for a long time. What I have been looking for specifically is more photos of the interior. I have seen the one that ken mc posted here but that is the only photo I have come across in the last few years.
Here’s another:
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/MID/MID061.htm
Does anyone know if the NEW ROXY was the theater formally known as the CENTER THEATER located within the Radio City comlex at about 6th Ave and 49th St. I saw an ice show there once as a kid about 1949 and it also was the theater where American Ballet Theatre made its debut in 1940 I believe. Around during the early 50s, Kate Smith, a popular singer of that period famous for “God Bless America” – did her weekly TV show from there. I’m curious why a NEW Roxy when the REAL Roxy was still present.
Richard
The New RKO Roxy/RKO Center Theatre/Center Theatre has its own page here:
/theaters/564/
I wish there was more stuff around on the New Roxy/Center. Looks like a wonderful theatre. Makes you wonder what they were thinking when they built Radio City Music Hall and the New Roxy so close to each other…during the Depression.
When I first saw the original ads for “King Kong” in the early ‘70’s, that always confused me. I just assumed that the movie played in both Radio City and the Roxy at the same time. I didn’t know anything about the “New Roxy”. I wonder if that confused New York moviegoers back then, too.
…also known as the “New Roxy” when it was first built.
Just wondering why the link was posted on this site.
ken mcc…isn’t that the Center…the second movie theatre at Radio City?
Here is a 1932 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/5jp5es
Vito:
Thanks for the extra information on presentation…..makes me feel much better! And no, you were not anal about the non-sync stuff. We did the same thing.
We only had one full time projectionist (Chief) and the rest of us were part-time. However he instilled presentation into us from day one. If anything was not right it wasn’t just our Chief…but the manager too….who would be chewing us out.
Thats why I cringed reading your post about the lack of proper masking. Even after being away from all that for 47 years, I still shake my head at the complete lack of presentation at the multiplexes.
Well Sam, some of us would avoid the noise of the needle hitting the record by killing the volume at the end of the song and raising it again after the record was changed and the needle was safely on the next record.
That’s how anal we were about that :)
I remember well that 78rpm pre-show, intermission music to this day, complete with hiss, pops and scratches and other assorted surface noise. Even with theatre sound systems that de-emphasized high frequencies it was still noticeable. For that matter with the sometimes careless handling of vinyl, the LP’s and 45’s weren’t always any better.
I forgot,33 and one third records, which were also very popular in the booth.
One more very important thing about pre show music (non sync)
NO VOCALS! music only.
You boys have great memories of the early scope days. We sure had fun in the booth putting on a show. Yes,it ws policy with some circuits to never show the masking move. As a matter of fact Century theatres insisted on Delux presentsations at all their theatres. Delux meaning closing the curtains between shorts, trailers etc, as well as bringing uo the stage lights, then opening the curtain and lowering the lights at the start of the feature. Another rule was “Never Cut a Record”, that meant you never faded a song out or cut it half way through to start the show. We would always wait for a song to finish, sometimes if there ws only a minute or so before showtime we would simply stop the music then and not allow another song to start. By the way, we played 78 RPM records, later we had
45 RPM and then tape.
I am surprised that even at some of today’s multiplexes they have masking that change — but they only widen.
Wow !! I sure do remember those early days of scope. Our Fox and other theatres did the same thing. After the previews, cartoon, news on the regular size screen, the main curtain would close and instantly the projector would switch to the scope film and the curtains would open to reaveal the full screen. Obviously as the main curtain closed the masking unseen to the audience would open. The contrast from the smaller format to the wide format was something to behold. It was especially effective with those old Fox films with that fanfare and logo. The good old days..Nothin' like em'. Of course, everyone, including myself just took all that showmenship for granted. Good-bye to yesterday!!
When I was a trainee projectionist in 1960 I worked at a small 390 seat theatre. We had motor-driven masking and..in the true spirit of showmanship…were not allowed let the audience see the masking change. With a Cinemascope feature we would close up the travellers after the previews, open the masking from the booth once they were covered by the closing curtains and open back up right away with the wide scope image on the curtains and screen…with the stage lights also being dimmed. Preferably with the Fox fanfare cranked up a couple of notches! This sure provided a contrast for the audience between the normal wide screen and Cinemascope.Now if this was the situation in a small theatre in a small town why were others so cheap?
And Bob Endres….thanks for the great Music Hall stories. Keep ‘em coming!
Yes Peter it sure does.
Or as they say, ya gotta do what ya gotta do :))
Hi, Vito – in your 4/1 post above you wrote, “In a situation where a theatre had only one curtain, when we showed a flat picture on the scope screen we would not open the curtain all the way, stopping it just after the edge of the image.”
When we first took over the Lafayette in Suffern back in 2002, there was no masking. By the time we started running classics as part of our line-up in early 2003, we still didn’t have masking so I used that exact same method with the curtain for running Academy ratio films until our new screen and masking went in a few months later. What goes around, comes around…
Stan, what you have described was very common in theatres without movable masking. Often, as I wrote before, the footlights were defused enough and refocused to show only on that portion of the screen not being used. A sort of red glow would be seen surrounding the picture area.
In addition, we had theatres which had to remove the curtains completely in order to accommodate the new bigger screens. The proceniums were simply not wide enough for the traveler curtains to open past the ends of the screen. Theatre owners wanted the widest screens possible. So rather than refit the entire mechanism the curtains were removed. Fortunately since most traveler curtains open to completely disappear behind the procenium it was not a problem, but in some situations they did not, happily, this happened in only a few theatres. Two of the theatres I worked in on Staten Island at the time, the Liberty in Stapelton and the Lane in New Dorp, removed the curtains. The Liberty only lated about two or three years after converting to scope and the Lane was the last theatre on SI to install the process. The Paramount was the first theatre to install scope for the “The Robe”, we opened on Christmas day and spent most of Christmas Eve doing the installation. The curtain was not removed at the Paramount. Some locations would show a slide which would be projected from the booth featuring some sort of scenic design or in some cases a picture of a curtain was projected on to the screen.
To: Bob Furmanek
I grew up in the Florida Theatre, Jacksonville, Florida, a 2000
Seat movie palace which was the highlight of the town, always the best presentation and best movies.
I remember well the transition to CinemaScope and thought you might like to hear what it was like in a smaller city.
First of all I remember on lamp posts all over town they hung these banners: JACKSONVILLE WELCOMES CINEMASCOPE â€" THE MIRACLE YOU SEE WITHOUT GLASSES.
We were all very excited about this and I thought, as a 12 year old, that this would be 3D without glasses. So when I saw THE ROBE I was a little disappointed but got over it when I heard the voices move with the characters on the screen and then there was music from the back of the theatre.
As far as the masking. This theatre was very strict that never would the screen be seen without a picture or a curtain in front.
They did not have automatic masking. And, so when the ROBE
concluded, the curtain would close and I could see faintly through the curtain the stage hand (who was also the curtain puller) re-mask the screen for the News, cartoon, short subject and previews (with the curtain pulled between each segment). Then after the previews, the stage hand would re-mask for the
CinemaScope screen.
It was the first time I had ever witnessed an INTERMISSION since it was always continous except just before the feature there would be a short (30 seconds or so) music break and golden lights would turn on around the proscenium announcing the feature. Ah, the days of the past.
But then I remember that this remasking stopped and they showed everything on a CinemaScope screen. The Cartoons and such would be shown in the middle of the screen but with a lense that fit the dimensions of the smaller space in the middle perfectly. On both sides of the Cinemascope screen they projected some type of artistic design filling out the screen so that there was never any white screen. I guess this was there way of dealing with the lack of automatic masking.
Stan Norton
Thank you Vito, I look forward to hearing from you!
Bob