CC were you ever in the Warner Cinerama or the Rivoli or Criterion before they were twinned?
Then you’ll know why we give the Ziegfeld a bad rap. Though today its the best game in town. I was hoping they would have a Todd AO retro next year for the anniversary but I doubt it. They should have had MFL for its 40th in Super Panavision 70 which they had in ‘93 and it was an enormous success. And how about the restored Mary Poppins for an engagement before its release on DVD(a re-premiere with Andrews and Van Dyke in attendance?) That of course would have been perfect for Nov at the Music Hall along with the Christmas show (which could have been cut in half with no loss.)But that would make too much sense. These high paid execs make too much money to actually know what they’re doing.
But I remember waiting on line in the late 70’s and early ‘80s for the Cinema 1 or the Baronet or the Coronet. It was great. The anticipation of seeing a hot new movie in an exclusive run and having to wait for it!
For CC I saw Fair Lady as a boy at the Criterion in the summer of ‘65(my only roadshow of the '60s. There were two more in the early '70’s.) I remember seeing people dressed up as if they were at a wedding or at church and being amazed. Also the souvenir book seller was in a tux! To this day I picture the Criterion as the ultimate in classy first run picture presention.
Speaking of which for those of you going to Times Square movie houses during the roadshow era was it possible to “mingle” with the audience at intermission and “second half” a film?
It’s also very exciting to have the auditorium and the stage right next to the sidewalk. The synergy! Not to mention the intermissions!
(but we won’t talk about that.)
Well I remember back in the early ‘70s when Times Square theaters would create lines even if a theater wasn’t sold out just to create interest. I remember going to the Music Hall to see the revival Of Mary Poppins in '73 and people being told that general admission was sold out and they had to buy reserved seats.
Well no wonder, when I went in I found that the third mezzanine was closed!
Since when did it happen in New York that people waiting in line on a sidewalk to see a movie became a problem?
Thanks to Koch, Giuliani and Bloomberg New York becomes less New York with every passing minute.
Gee Warren for those of us who only knew it as a twin it looks magnificent. The twinning was truely ghastly. Now I finally know what it looked like as a roadshow house from Ben to Dolittle. Too bad there isn’t also a photo with the curtain open so we can see the size of the 70mm screen in relation to the auditorium.
Maybe somebody has various pictures of the interior before ‘59?
Simon-I believe you meant without the famed 36 so does the strike of ‘67 count? I don’t think there was even the ballet in that one. The film was Up the Down Staircase.
In the Madama Butterfly Jan Peerce sang 4 Pinkertons a day 7 days a week! And then 40 years later he was doing Tevya on Broadway!
CC I hope you saw the Disney Robin Hood Christmas show as it was the last one with the ballet company and the Rockettes looking especially sensational much like in that great Kodak photo of them in red against a blue background. For me after that it was never the same. I guess it was right after Leonidoff left that they disbanded the ballet. For me the stage started looking pretty sparse and then they reduced the Rockettes from 36 to 30.(I think at the very beginning the Rockettes totaled 46 on stage. Please correct me if I’m wrong.)
I don’t remember it with The Slipper and the Rose(awful) at all. But maybe you are right. The Variety review would clear that up. Still that would be twice in 10 years.
The movie for that Christmas show should have been Bogdonovich's
Nickolodeon, with the O'Neals pere et fille and Brian Keith, and Slipper should have been the following Easter Show. However Nick had major problems so they moved up Slipper.
I may be the only person in the world who enjoyed Bogdonovich’s At Long Last Love. At least at the Music Hall it was visually stunning(the final moments alone worthy of Lubitsch.) And hearing Porter there was heaven. Yeah for the most part everyone sang very badly, the dialogue was strained and maybe today its unwatchable(anyone out there for a restoration-it was cut during the Music Hall run! I saw two different versions of it there a week apart) but seeing it as an Easter show in the mid 70’s well what else could they have shown. Maybe visually it was the best new film I ever saw at Radio City.
And as regards 1776 imagine anyone sitting through that thing and I had loved the Broadway album as a kid! Though I believe it was the last film to sell out the Hall in the evening shows with people being told that the final stage show was sold out and they could only buy tickets for the movie.
So what’s up with the Rockettes?
Why does their director know what she is doing while her colleagues are 100 percent clueless? It makes no sense.
By the way the wooden soldier routine was not done every year. I saw most of the Christmas shows for the late ‘60’s to the mid 70’s and the only time they did it was for the film 1776. It was a special event not to be overdone. It was done under the large lower branches of a Christmas tree and they came out of a toy castle.
People at the Music Hall today this is not curing cancer-it is simple showmanship. To have them now parade about in front of nothing but a cyclorama makes about as much sense as have them march about in front of the bare back wall.
Oh and by the way did I mention the midgets? It’s like we’re in some seedy presentation house in '32 watching vaudeville die.
I wrote this to Patsy on the Ziegfeld page but it really belongs here. Sorry for the repetitions but these things can’t be said often enough.
Patsy,
Yes the page on Radio City Music Hall in Cinema Treasure has many posts and I have certainly contributed quite a few as I am crazy about this building(worked there during Robin and Marian) and grieve over the way it has been wasted in recent years.
Leonidoff was the stage show producer who Roxy brought from the his original theater on 7th Av to Rockefeller Center(literally a block away.)
Leonidoff along with greats like Russel Markert and Florence Rogge created the stage shows for which the Music Hall became famous and was responsible for the religious portions of both the Christmas and Easter shows. His Nativity was a Renaissance pagaent stressing color, spectacle, movement and tableau as imagined by a Medici.
Now it has been reimagined by a Walgreens middle manager on a weekend trip to Branson.
Patsy,
Yes the page on Radio City Music Hall in Cinema Treasure has many posts and I have certainly contributed quite a few as I am crazy about this building(worked there during Robin and Marian) and grieve over the way it has been wasted in recent years.
Leonidoff was the stage show producer who Roxy brought from the his original theater on 7th Av to Rockefeller Center(literally a block away.)
Leonidoff along with greats like Russel Markert and Florence Rogge created the stage shows for which the Music Hall became famous and was responsible for the religious portions of both the Christmas and Easter shows. His Nativity was a Renaissance pagaent stressing color, spectacle, movement and tableau as imagined by a Medici.
I’ve posted my thoughts on the RCMH Christmas show on the Hall page.
The Rockettes are great. Everything else is a bad joke. But then I remember the show from the late 60’s and early 70’s when it was still pretty wonderful.
The midgets are emabarassing and the Nativity is downright offensive(I am not a PC person but this seems to have been produced by a midwestern christian fundamentalist,Leonidoff has to be spinning in his grave.)
However mine seems to be a minority opinion.
Thank you for clearing that up. I believe the writer of a previous post claims he saw SOM there on a flat screen which didn’t nake sense to me. In the early 70’s a typical idiot exec booked the revival of SOM instead of into the Rivoli into that small screened huge bunker the National. So I never got to see it there though in the 70’s they booked the 70mm GOTW a couple of times.
Bob,
Having enjoyed your programs enormously and finding the individual you are refering to always a pleasure to speak with and a charming host in his introductions one can only regret any misunderstandings the two of you have had as your previous relationship did the theater proud.
Bob,
What they are doing now makes no sense to me. They want to contiue to show classic films at the Loew’s. Yet they show films that are R rated or innapropriate for the family or they show films that as great as they are really need a rest. Am I missing something?
Just saw the holiday schedule. Wow. A Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life.
Calling Bob Furmanek
The Loew’s is in desperate, desperate need of a film programmer who knows what will play well in a movie palace and what films have not been played to death. Guys, you have struggled so much and done such magnificent work. Why are you wasting these weekends?
We had a strip mall theater in Emerson NJ nearby where I grew up. It was the smallest theater in the area. They eventually turned it into a quad I think. Now some of those suburban strip mall theaters from the 60’s seem like movie palaces to me. Even the Bergen Mall cinema(now a Gap) which used to play foreign would seem palatial.
Is this the theater where Lawrence of Arabia had its world premiere? Does the interior in any way still have the spectacular art deco decor that was still in place when the film opened?
I doubt that the Rivoli or the Criterion had the space behind the prosceniums to house a Broadway show. But the Loews State and the Strand would have been terrific as legit houses though maybe somewhat large. Though twice the capacity of the Gershwin they still would have been warmer more welcoming theatrical spaces than that aircraft hangar.
And the City Opera could have had a midtown opera house! The development in our city is a joke. I hope that Giuliani and Koch choke on their ill gotten gains.
The Music Hall is the greatest theater in the world(I dare anyone out there to argue the point.) But was the Roxy perhaps the greatest of all?
The projection booth was there all along, I believe, but was meant for special stage effects.
CC were you ever in the Warner Cinerama or the Rivoli or Criterion before they were twinned?
Then you’ll know why we give the Ziegfeld a bad rap. Though today its the best game in town. I was hoping they would have a Todd AO retro next year for the anniversary but I doubt it. They should have had MFL for its 40th in Super Panavision 70 which they had in ‘93 and it was an enormous success. And how about the restored Mary Poppins for an engagement before its release on DVD(a re-premiere with Andrews and Van Dyke in attendance?) That of course would have been perfect for Nov at the Music Hall along with the Christmas show (which could have been cut in half with no loss.)But that would make too much sense. These high paid execs make too much money to actually know what they’re doing.
But I remember waiting on line in the late 70’s and early ‘80s for the Cinema 1 or the Baronet or the Coronet. It was great. The anticipation of seeing a hot new movie in an exclusive run and having to wait for it!
For CC I saw Fair Lady as a boy at the Criterion in the summer of ‘65(my only roadshow of the '60s. There were two more in the early '70’s.) I remember seeing people dressed up as if they were at a wedding or at church and being amazed. Also the souvenir book seller was in a tux! To this day I picture the Criterion as the ultimate in classy first run picture presention.
Speaking of which for those of you going to Times Square movie houses during the roadshow era was it possible to “mingle” with the audience at intermission and “second half” a film?
It’s also very exciting to have the auditorium and the stage right next to the sidewalk. The synergy! Not to mention the intermissions!
(but we won’t talk about that.)
Well I remember back in the early ‘70s when Times Square theaters would create lines even if a theater wasn’t sold out just to create interest. I remember going to the Music Hall to see the revival Of Mary Poppins in '73 and people being told that general admission was sold out and they had to buy reserved seats.
Well no wonder, when I went in I found that the third mezzanine was closed!
Since when did it happen in New York that people waiting in line on a sidewalk to see a movie became a problem?
Thanks to Koch, Giuliani and Bloomberg New York becomes less New York with every passing minute.
Gee Warren for those of us who only knew it as a twin it looks magnificent. The twinning was truely ghastly. Now I finally know what it looked like as a roadshow house from Ben to Dolittle. Too bad there isn’t also a photo with the curtain open so we can see the size of the 70mm screen in relation to the auditorium.
Maybe somebody has various pictures of the interior before ‘59?
Simon-I believe you meant without the famed 36 so does the strike of ‘67 count? I don’t think there was even the ballet in that one. The film was Up the Down Staircase.
In the Madama Butterfly Jan Peerce sang 4 Pinkertons a day 7 days a week! And then 40 years later he was doing Tevya on Broadway!
Always at the beginning. Leonidoff knew exactly what he was doing.
CC I hope you saw the Disney Robin Hood Christmas show as it was the last one with the ballet company and the Rockettes looking especially sensational much like in that great Kodak photo of them in red against a blue background. For me after that it was never the same. I guess it was right after Leonidoff left that they disbanded the ballet. For me the stage started looking pretty sparse and then they reduced the Rockettes from 36 to 30.(I think at the very beginning the Rockettes totaled 46 on stage. Please correct me if I’m wrong.)
I don’t remember it with The Slipper and the Rose(awful) at all. But maybe you are right. The Variety review would clear that up. Still that would be twice in 10 years.
The movie for that Christmas show should have been Bogdonovich's
Nickolodeon, with the O'Neals pere et fille and Brian Keith, and Slipper should have been the following Easter Show. However Nick had major problems so they moved up Slipper.
I may be the only person in the world who enjoyed Bogdonovich’s At Long Last Love. At least at the Music Hall it was visually stunning(the final moments alone worthy of Lubitsch.) And hearing Porter there was heaven. Yeah for the most part everyone sang very badly, the dialogue was strained and maybe today its unwatchable(anyone out there for a restoration-it was cut during the Music Hall run! I saw two different versions of it there a week apart) but seeing it as an Easter show in the mid 70’s well what else could they have shown. Maybe visually it was the best new film I ever saw at Radio City.
And as regards 1776 imagine anyone sitting through that thing and I had loved the Broadway album as a kid! Though I believe it was the last film to sell out the Hall in the evening shows with people being told that the final stage show was sold out and they could only buy tickets for the movie.
So what’s up with the Rockettes?
Why does their director know what she is doing while her colleagues are 100 percent clueless? It makes no sense.
By the way the wooden soldier routine was not done every year. I saw most of the Christmas shows for the late ‘60’s to the mid 70’s and the only time they did it was for the film 1776. It was a special event not to be overdone. It was done under the large lower branches of a Christmas tree and they came out of a toy castle.
People at the Music Hall today this is not curing cancer-it is simple showmanship. To have them now parade about in front of nothing but a cyclorama makes about as much sense as have them march about in front of the bare back wall.
Oh and by the way did I mention the midgets? It’s like we’re in some seedy presentation house in '32 watching vaudeville die.
I wrote this to Patsy on the Ziegfeld page but it really belongs here. Sorry for the repetitions but these things can’t be said often enough.
Patsy,
Yes the page on Radio City Music Hall in Cinema Treasure has many posts and I have certainly contributed quite a few as I am crazy about this building(worked there during Robin and Marian) and grieve over the way it has been wasted in recent years.
Leonidoff was the stage show producer who Roxy brought from the his original theater on 7th Av to Rockefeller Center(literally a block away.)
Leonidoff along with greats like Russel Markert and Florence Rogge created the stage shows for which the Music Hall became famous and was responsible for the religious portions of both the Christmas and Easter shows. His Nativity was a Renaissance pagaent stressing color, spectacle, movement and tableau as imagined by a Medici.
Now it has been reimagined by a Walgreens middle manager on a weekend trip to Branson.
The Criterion was the only theater I believe to sell the seats closest to screen as the cheapest sits in the house during roadshow engagements.
Patsy,
Yes the page on Radio City Music Hall in Cinema Treasure has many posts and I have certainly contributed quite a few as I am crazy about this building(worked there during Robin and Marian) and grieve over the way it has been wasted in recent years.
Leonidoff was the stage show producer who Roxy brought from the his original theater on 7th Av to Rockefeller Center(literally a block away.)
Leonidoff along with greats like Russel Markert and Florence Rogge created the stage shows for which the Music Hall became famous and was responsible for the religious portions of both the Christmas and Easter shows. His Nativity was a Renaissance pagaent stressing color, spectacle, movement and tableau as imagined by a Medici.
I’ve posted my thoughts on the RCMH Christmas show on the Hall page.
The Rockettes are great. Everything else is a bad joke. But then I remember the show from the late 60’s and early 70’s when it was still pretty wonderful.
The midgets are emabarassing and the Nativity is downright offensive(I am not a PC person but this seems to have been produced by a midwestern christian fundamentalist,Leonidoff has to be spinning in his grave.)
However mine seems to be a minority opinion.
Thank you for clearing that up. I believe the writer of a previous post claims he saw SOM there on a flat screen which didn’t nake sense to me. In the early 70’s a typical idiot exec booked the revival of SOM instead of into the Rivoli into that small screened huge bunker the National. So I never got to see it there though in the 70’s they booked the 70mm GOTW a couple of times.
Bob,
Having enjoyed your programs enormously and finding the individual you are refering to always a pleasure to speak with and a charming host in his introductions one can only regret any misunderstandings the two of you have had as your previous relationship did the theater proud.
Jim I am in total awe. Who are you? What do you do?
Bob,
What they are doing now makes no sense to me. They want to contiue to show classic films at the Loew’s. Yet they show films that are R rated or innapropriate for the family or they show films that as great as they are really need a rest. Am I missing something?
Just saw the holiday schedule. Wow. A Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life.
Calling Bob Furmanek
The Loew’s is in desperate, desperate need of a film programmer who knows what will play well in a movie palace and what films have not been played to death. Guys, you have struggled so much and done such magnificent work. Why are you wasting these weekends?
We had a strip mall theater in Emerson NJ nearby where I grew up. It was the smallest theater in the area. They eventually turned it into a quad I think. Now some of those suburban strip mall theaters from the 60’s seem like movie palaces to me. Even the Bergen Mall cinema(now a Gap) which used to play foreign would seem palatial.
Enough with the juke box musicals!
I guess we’ve now got to deal with decades of them.
Where’s my time machine?
Is this the theater where Lawrence of Arabia had its world premiere? Does the interior in any way still have the spectacular art deco decor that was still in place when the film opened?
I doubt that the Rivoli or the Criterion had the space behind the prosceniums to house a Broadway show. But the Loews State and the Strand would have been terrific as legit houses though maybe somewhat large. Though twice the capacity of the Gershwin they still would have been warmer more welcoming theatrical spaces than that aircraft hangar.
And the City Opera could have had a midtown opera house! The development in our city is a joke. I hope that Giuliani and Koch choke on their ill gotten gains.
The Music Hall is the greatest theater in the world(I dare anyone out there to argue the point.) But was the Roxy perhaps the greatest of all?
The projection booth was there all along, I believe, but was meant for special stage effects.