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 526 - 550 of 1,094 comments
The theatre was re-named the DeMille in 1959. The three Cinemechanica “Victoria X” 70mm projectors were installed for Spartacus, although it wasn’t the first picture run after their installation. In fact, the original 70mm print of Spartacus that was run was 30fps, but shortly after the opening they changed the print to a 70mm 24fps print because of problems. There were only 6 other Victoria X projectors ever imported into the U.S. While I like the Norelco AA2 (Todd AO) projector the best, the Victoria X is right up there with it.
Add “Cast A Giant Shadow” (4-1-1966), perhaps in 35mm.
These are the 70MM Reserved-Seat Engagements.
“Spartacus” (10-7-1960) 53 Weeks
“Barabbas” (10-11-1962)
“The Cardinal” (12-13-1963)
“The Fall of the Roman Empire” (3-27-1964)
“Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying…(6-17-1965)
"Hawaii” (10-11-1966) 41 Weeks
“War and Peace” (4-28-1968)
“The Shoes of the Fisherman” (11-14-1968)
Check the New York Times archives.
my question is about the theater when it was known as the Demille.
from say 1955 thru Dec. 1972 the studios used the roadshow policy
to release all their “big” films. so aside from “Spartacus”,
“Hawaii”,“The Fall of the Roman Empire”,“Those Magnificent Men
In Their Flying Machines” and the Russian “War and Peace” is it
possible to find out what other films played the Demille on a
roadshow policy during the 1955-1972 period? thanks for any info.
“posted by REndres on May 11, 2005 at 3:40pm
The Mayfair/DeMille/Embassy 2-3-4 entrance may well have changed from the side street to 7th Avenue. ……… Ben Olevsky at the Music Hall told me once that at one time the auditorium was exactly reversed from the way it is now, with the stage and screen at the 7th Avenue end. I mentioned this to the contractor when it was being triplexed and he said, "That explains it.” Apparently none of the architctural drawings they could find made any sense because they were from the earlier (Mayfair?) era……"
Techman- The entrance of the Columbia/Mayfair/DeMille was NEVER changed. The entrance was always on 7th ave and NEVER on 47th street. The OLD Marquee from the Mayfair only wrapped the corner onto 47th street, but the entrance always remained in the same place until it closed. Although I was told that when the theater opened as the Columbia Burlesque the stores were not there and that was part of the lobby.
posted by REndres on May 12, 2005 at 6:14am
“……. (This was the first house in New York to use Pott’s platters rather than Christie — the concept was still pretty new.) As a practical note: Short of climbing from the orchestra of the Music Hall to the booth (the Hall has an elevator to that level), the booth in the DeMille requires the most arduous cllimb of any booth I’ve worked in. The balcony is very steep, and even when you get to the top lobby level, there are another set of stairs going up to get to the booth (you can see the booth windows from 7th Avenue and get an idea of the climb). At one point the projectionists could go into the office building entrance on the street side of the building and take the office elevator to a level just below the booth, then enter a closet and climb the emergency booth exit ladder up one flight to the booth. Eventually the office building management rescinded that courtesy and the crew had to climb up from the street level entrance. Once you got up there you didn’t want to leave until your shift was over!”
Techman- I assume you’re referring to the point in time that the theatre was tripled. All the years that I worked there as a projectionist, we used the elevator to the 5th floor and had a key to the electrical room (that belonged to the theatre) that went through to the top of the balcony. None of the regular operators ever walked up the stairs to get to the booth (except the last flight from the balcony up to the booth). Also, the Embassy 2 3 4 wasn’t the first theatre in NY to have potts platters. Unless by New York you mean only Manhattan, I installed them in a number of theatres in Brooklyn, including a set of endless loops made by Potts shortly afterward.
========================================================
“posted by REndres on May 13, 2005 at 5:07pm
Porter Faulkner: The fire was set (one rumor was that it was by a disgruntled projectionist) probably in the back of the balcony (that’s where I remember the smoke damage when I was in the house when it was the single screen dollar house and during the triplexing.) One of the men on my crew at Radio City was working there as a relief projectionist at the time, and said that they had stayed to convert the three projectors over to 70mm since they were going to start the move-over run of "That’s Entertainment” from the Ziegfeld the next day. There was enough smoke and soot to cause the theatre to close, and that was when Walter Reade walked away from it. Perhaps their lease was up and they realized the difficulty of keeping a venue of that size going. The damage (at least what I could see) didn’t appear to be great, although the north end of the back of the balcony was smoked when the house reopened as a low-price theatre. The projectionist’s union gave them a reduced rate with the caveat that the balcony remain closed, thus reducing the seating capacity to match the lower booth cost. There were people in the balcony when I was there, but I suspect they just wanted to sit there and snuck up, the house certainly wasn’t full.
I was in the house once when it was run by Walter Reade and was their showcase house. I was still living in the Midwest and came up from a technical conference in Washington D.C. to spend the weekend in New York. “Shoes of the Fisherman” had just opened and was running roadshow in 70mm. Reade even had a VIP section in one corner of the orchestra completely walled off from the rest of the seating area which had its own speakers and which may have been vented to allow smoking. At intermission I also went up to the booth. As you have pointed out, there was no stage presentation (or much of a stage) and the house lighting and stage lighting board was in the booth (as it was at the Criterion in its one screen days.) Thus there were two projectionists and a stagehand since the lighting was under the jurisdiction of Local #1. The theatre was really beautiful in those days.
The reason I didn’t go into the orchestra when I worked there was that when I came in I headed directly up to the booth. As I mentioned that is a very large climb, and once I got there I stayed there, although I did go into one of the balcony auditoriums to see what Wharhol’s “Frankenstein” looked like in 3-D (quite bad as it turned out). You don’t see a lot of the auditorium from the booth — the projection and viewing ports are cut into the decorative molding you noticed around the top of the theatre, and it curve out and down, so it looks like you’re watching the screen through a tunnel even when they were running 70. One thing Elson did do was to keep the curtain in the downstairs house, and it had to be closed and opened at end and start of every show. If Wednesday White Man gets the house and lowers those hanging speakers and if the lines they are anchored by are anchored by are tied to building steel above the auditorium ceiling he’ll have the lines for a good sized lighting truss for his shows. Let’s hope someone can the place open again — there aren’t many spaces like that left in New York these days."
Techman- The rumor of the fire being set by disgruntled projectionist is a new one on me (unless it’s something that D'inzillo would say). I was one of the projectionists that changed over the projectors for the 70mm run of That’s Entertainment. The only releif projectionist that I recall at the time was Ben Lieberman. In any case, when I came out of the subway the next morning I saw the marquee hadn’t been changed by the stagehand. When I found him in the lobby, he told me of the fire. The owners of the building were two partners named Koppell and Levine. I gave them the name of a seat man who they used to recover all the seats. Almost a year later they made a deal with Leonard Clark, who owned a theatre on 42nd street. He’s the guy who made a deal with the union to only usr the ground floor at a reduced rate. He opened with Once Is Not Enough and from day one used the balcony in violation of the agreement. After he closed the theatre, I decided not to go back.
Very impressive 1932 wraparound marquee and RKO signage. Any idea when the marquee was pared-down?
and here in 1932 as the RKO Mayfair showing Air Mail
http://www.flickr.com/photos/woody1969/5068924101/
and here close up in 1954 when it was screening Sitting Bull
http://www.flickr.com/photos/woody1969/5068949921/
a late sixties view of times square with the DeMille, Victoria and Palace in the background
http://www.flickr.com/photos/woody1969/5068935835/
“Spartacus” had its world premiere here fifty years ago today.
Yes, those photos are accurate. If you think getting to the top of the balcony was steep, you should have seen the stairs up to the booth. It was a major hike to get from the ground floor up to the booth, and once you got there you stayed! You can’t tell it from the photo of the back wall, but the wall curves out with ornamental plaster at the port level, so looking at the downstairs screen was kind of like looking at a postage stamp through a tunnel. The small ports at the right edge of the picture were the original projector and view ports. There were three of them for the three projectors. After the triplexing the left and right projectors were moved to spotlight and Brenograph ports which were more closely centered on the two screens in the balcony. It was a pretty impressive house before the triplexing, and still retained elements of its former grandeur after it was cut up.
Wow, those photos bring back some memories I, too, only knew this theater after it was triplexed, and that balcony rake was so steep it was dizzying. But when it wasn’t crowded, it was perfect to hang your feet over into the row below.
I’d say they were accurate. Unfortunately I never got to attend when it was the DeMille, but I was there several times when it was the Embassy 2-3-4, and that’s what it looked like. I saw “The Brother from Another Planet” in one of those converted balconies, and there was so little leg room my knees felt like they were going to touch my chin. I guess that was a problem in the DeMille balcony as well.
A peak inside this theatre:
http://www.cinematour.com/tour/us/24564.html
(sorry if posted prior to this one). Are these photos accurate?
I saw Psycho in my local movie house with a middle school buddy who tapped me on the shoulder and shouted “BOO!” at a critical moment in the movie. Of course I jumped half-way out of my seat. Fellow moviegoers were either too engrossed or freaked-out to comment on the disturbance.
In high school I was an usher at the local theater, (the Larkfield /theaters/13570/)) and our smoking section was in the loge (balcony.) So I used to come up quietly behind smokers in the orchestra section and tap them on the shoulder saying “Smoking’s in the balcony only.” More than one patron was very startled by my sudden appearance. I can only imagine that during Psycho they might have jumped out of their skins, but this movie was a couple of decades before my time.
A matron trained by the Gestapo wielding an industrial strength flashlight. And don’t forget the smoking section was two sections to the left.
My cousin saw Psycho at the age of 5. We were both 5 and we lived in the same apartment house, but he was allowed to see it and I wasn’t. I was extremely jealous. But many years later he told me how it traumatized him. There was a woman living in our building back then who looked like Janet Leigh. Every time he saw her in the hall, he’d run away from her in terror.
Children 90c – what a bargain. Except for the years of therapy afterwards
On the Psycho DVD, there’s a short documentary about the exhibition at the DeMille, and there’s a closeup of the ticket prices:
Orchestra & Balcony $2.00
Loge & Party Room $2.40
Children 90c
About how much were the ticket prices at that time Tinseltoes?
Another movie I saw starting in the middle: “Lawrence of Arabia” (of all things). It does force you to really pay attention, though, since you have to piece everything together based on what you already saw. A funny thing: I can still remember the shot thst was on the screen when I walked in from almost all those movies I saw backwards (Tony Curtis doing magic tricks in “Spartacus”, Peter O'Toole walking through a puddle in an Arab town in “Lawrence”).
Here is the “Psycho” ad with the DeMille’s corner sign:
View link
I always thought that if you do no not see the first scene of a movie you might not know what is going on,in my theatre days I could not understand why someone would come to a movie late,the first scene is very important.
I read somewhere that the whole “You Must See It From the Beginning” business was because if people walked in during the second half of the movie, they’d be wondering why they weren’t seeing Janet Leigh. My family often walked in in the middle in those days, then stayed to see what we missed. A few of the films we saw like that: “Spartacus”, “The Parent Trap”, “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World”. Of course this could never be done today, with 45+ minute breaks between showtimes. Plus it’s not really a good way to see a movie :)