Roxy Theatre
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
83 people
favorited this theater
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Yes SimonL… but was it truly your “wish” to have a no-tipping policy? If so, you put my cynicism to shame and I tip my cap to your exemplary work ethic – something, I might cynically add, that is woefully lacking these days.
Actually, if you scroll up to the 2nd image posted by Warren on October 27th, all is revealed. It’s an overhead shot presumably taken from high up on the Radio City building that shows the fully exposed rear wall of the Roxy, thanks to the adjacent parking lot on the 6th Ave side of the block. That’s W. 50th on the left side of the photo and W. 51st on the right. You can clearly see the balcony fire escape on the 50th Street side and the orientation of the auditorium towards 51st. The loading dock is not evident, but it must be on 51st. This makes sense since the entry foyer was on the opposite corner of the building at 50th and 7th Ave.
As an usher we wore body hugging pants and a jacket with no pockets and tight white gloves. we never considered taking a tip, whether we assisted someone in a wheelchair or escorted a pregnant woman to her seat. The management was strict and we respectfully obeyed the rules and never questioned them. We remained poor but stood tall. End of story.
If the auditorium of the Roxy was built at an angle to accommodate a greater width was the audience facing towards 50th or 51st St and on which street were the stage doors and loading docks?
I saw the worst a receptionist at a Dr’s office with a tip cup !!!!!
So if people did tip especially in first Mezz were they refused? If an usher was found to have accepted a tip by a set up would he be fired?
Wow,say what,omigosh,baldergash,who are you kidding?At a time when the pay was barely a dollar a hour.The nerve of management to suggest such a thing. Surely a anti labor anti worker sign .
Yeah, I’ll bet that the uniformed staff wanted that policy instituted! They even petitioned management to make the public aware that tipping was not desired! In a pig’s eye.
Nowadays, you can’t get a cup of coffee at the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru – or even over the 7-11 counter – without seeing a tip cup on prominent display!
I was in the neighborhood with camera in tow this past Saturday night and snapped this sad photo of the spot where this “Cathedral” once stood. Please forgive as this is a night shot and the illumination is not as bright as I might have liked. As has been posted before, a TGIF (along with Dunkin Donuts and Tad’s Steakhouse) now occupies the former entrance vestibule and lobby that ran in a corridor through the existing Taft Hotel (now the Michelangelo) on the corner of 7th Ave and W. 50th Street. Looking down W. 50th you can see where the Hotel ends and the modern (and rather ugly) office building which replaced the demolished Roxy now stands. Further down, you can also make out the vertical red Radio City sign on 6th Avenue and some of the purple and red neon from the marquee:
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You can’t really make it out that well, but the lower portion of the facade (below the 4th floor cornice) has been re-clad in a marble facing.
The Times Square area is truly a place of excess. There is another Friday’s not 4 or 5 blocks south of this location on Broadway and there are two Applebee’s restaurants (one on B'way and another on 42nd Street). Each Applebee’s is adjacent to a redundant pair of McDonald’s; And every chain/theme Stepford-wife restaurant you might imagine – Hard Rock Cafe, ESPN Zone, Planet Hollywood – has a loud storefront located somewhere along the Square. And to imagine that folks fly in from all over the country and the world to visit New York City – home of Frankie and Johnny’s Steakhouse, Puleo’s Italian Restaurant, Victor’s Cafe and other examples of fine World-class cuisine – just to wind up with a basket of warmed-up frozen chicken fingers and french fries at Applebee’s. I’m not saying that Ho Jo’s, Nathan’s and Horn and Hardart’s were the epitome of fine dining, but at least they each had their own unique character and charms. The modern chains take the Disney World mentality and scale it down to the dining experience. Fitting, I suppose, since Times Square has become the new Disney World.
SimonL—Thanks for all the hard work you did that weekend! If I remember correctly, I saw it with a friend the day after it opened. The NY Daily News (Kate Cameron) awarded it four stars, and that intrigued the two of us, who thought MM would be forever consigned to junk. It was a hot weekend, but I wore a jacket and tie to appear older than my fourteen-years, fearing the cashiers might reject me for being under-age. And, yes, I recall that the house was packed. Many posts back, you mentioned that you can be seen in the TCM newsreel clips ushering for the opening of “Anastasia.” Next time it’s on TV, we’ll look for you. I recall seeing that show a few days before Christmas, hoping to beat the holiday rush.
Warren—Life imitated art when you saw “Bus Stop” on a bus stop. But give the film another chance (Joshua Logan, perhaps a godsend to B'way, brought nothing but disaster to the screen, except for this film; after that, it got progressively worse, no?). After a nine-hour trip from The Big Easy, who could see straight? On my first visit to Atlanta (1967), I headed for the Fox, too, with no interest in seeing the movie. It was “Hombre” with Paul Newman, but I paid more attention to the dreamscape of Ali Baba cradling the proscenium. If I practiced what I’ve preached, I’ll have to give that film another chance, huh?
“Bus Stop” opened on Labor Day weekend 1956. The memory of that first weekend is still fresh in my mind as I was working there as an usher. Attendance was so stupendous beginning on Friday and continuing through the holiday on Monday that the house managers ordered the multiple main entrance doors on 7th Avenue closed because the outer lobby was so jammed with ticket buyers from the time the house opened at 10:30 am. Only the door on the 50th Street side was opened to allow a more orderly entrance to the theater. The crush was intense at peak times for the next four days. About 30 minutes before a break, the length of the rotunda was often packed with people standing ten-abreast (possibly 1,000 or more). The street line stretched from 7th Avenue and 50th Street towards 6th Avenue, and on Sunday actually turning the corner on to 6th Avenue. Two box offices with four cashiers were kept busy as was the staff. Although other films played longer (Bus Stop played six weeks) and grossed more, that opening weekend was almost scary. Nothing could stop Marilyn’s fans from showing up. The inside ushers and sturdy doormen worked plenty of overtime (the pay scale was $.80 cents an hour, $1.10 for doormen).
Here’s a program from September, 1956:
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Of all the celebrated stage performances that I regret having missed in my lifetime, Kim Stanley’s Cherie in “Bus Stop†ranks high on the list. Barring that, Marilyn Monroe’s star-turn in the film version offered a swell substitute, with wonderful touches all its own. Who could ever forget MM stretched teary eyed across the diner’s countertop horizontally covering the full CinemaScope frame in the film’s climactic marriage proposal scene? On the Roxy’s gigantic screen, it looked magnificent. My memory of its final frames remains indelible, as the billowing contour curtain descended on the image of MM waving gaily from behind the window of the departing bus. The film presented my favorite MM performance of all, confirmed by a retrospective of all her major work that I had seen over a scant weekend just after her death. The tiny art-house screen couldn’t compete with the Roxy’s sweeping curveâ€"what could?â€"but the audience lapped the comedy up and applauded at the end, which it didn’t do for any other film in the series.
And of all the Roxy’s stage shows that I had seen, “Magic of the Stage†presented my favorite, too. It amounted to a spectacular display of scenery and stage effects that dwarfed the skate-bladed performers. Its “Story in verse by Robert C. Rothafel†excerpted in the program’s italics will unintentionally split your sides: Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour! But the centerpiece with its “Scenery Ballet†and “Dancing Spotlights†pulled out all the scenic stops and taught me a lot about stage machinery. It began with a bare stage, onto which scenery kept descending from and ascending to the vast fly space, demonstrating how rapidly sets could be set up and struck. At one point, the CinemaScope screen dropped down, replete with shape-shifting masks, and illuminated from behind so as to show off the sound amplifiers. At another point, the full-stage cyclorama rose to expose the brick wall at the rear of the stage, co-incidently revealing the stage’s triangular floor-plan and the situation of the auditorium obliquely between W. 50 and W. 51 Streets so as to enable the orchestra’s width at its greatest point to exceed a city block. This width had always caused me to marvel, and now I knew the reason why. I could have watched that display for hours and been happy if the Blades and Roxyettes had all glided off to Norway.
Technirama is the winner. Learn why here at the Wide Screen Museum:
www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingcm2.htm
HNY!
Hi, Happy New Year to Everybody. Does anybody have any photographs of the 1958 CineMiracle installation? There must be some somewhere. Thanks
Here’s a program from October, 1956:
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Weighing in at three hours and twenty-one minutes, “Giant†left a scant twenty minutes for the Roxy’s stage show plus a few minutes on either end for seating the patrons. But it was a great show all around, sore as our backsides might have been after sitting in the Roxy’s plush seats for nigh-on-to four hours. I remember seeing it after school on the day before the Columbus Day holiday. I can’t recall which Irving Berlin favorites accompanied the Native-American motifâ€"“I’m an Indian, Too†from “Annie Get Your Gunâ€? For a small snapshot of Manuel Del Toro and Nicky Powers as Indian Chief and Medicine Man with the Roxyette Squaws, see my post on 23 December above.
Here’s a program from December, 1956:
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This Christmas show marked a year since the Roxy had resumed stage shows (with “The Rains of Ranchipur†and “Happy Holiday†on 15 Dec. ’55) after having suspended them when CinemaScope took over in Sept. ’53. To promote the new policy, this souvenir program offered a snapshot from each of the productions that had preceded the current one. “Sonja Hennie’s Ice Review†double-lutzed with “The Lieutenant Wore Skirts†(11 Jan.). The “Rock ‘n’ Roll Ice Review†topped “Bottom of the Bottle†(16 Feb.). “Springtime†(Roxy decreed it a month-and-a-half early that snowy winter) rode in on the CinemaScope55 “Carousel†(16 Feb., the first of a string of long-running hits that year). “Gala Paree†provided haute-couture for the adult-themed Easter offering, “Man in the Grey Flannel Suit†(12 April). “Circus,†led by the famed clown Emmet Kelley, joined the flotilla of “D-Day, the Sixth of June†(29 May). “Manhattan Moods†brought us back home after “The King and I†(28 Juneâ€"Kate Cameron of the NY Daily News deliriously awarded the film a fifth starâ€"my, my!). “Magic of the Stage†double-parked with “Bus Stop†(31 August). A very short “Fall Fantasy†trailed after the long and lanky “Giant†(10 October).
On January 5 2005 above, I’ve already described what I remember from “Wide Wide World Holiday,†which was paired with “Anastasia.†The combo ran for seven weeks (13 Dec.-8 Feb.), no doubt drawing crowds away from RCMH and possibly accounting for the dismal box-office returns of the latter’s only flop in that era, “The Barretts of Wimpole Street.†Certainly the stage show’s finale marrying Love is a Many Splendored Thing to Geisha Gaiety in front of Mt. Matsumoto cast a competitive glance at “Teahouse of the August Moon,†RCMH’s Christmas film that year.
Does anyone have any color interior photos of the theater that can be posted?
So was this the Ray McDonald of Til the Clouds Roll By and Good News?
The whole town was burning up with talent.
Another wonderous job on those Roxy bookings. Looking forward to each year until its laast day. Espcially interested in 1958-1959 bookings.
The New York Phil with Mitropolous at the Roxy in the 50’s?!! Whaa?!!!
So Furtwangler and Berlin were at the Paramount?
With Grummer and Dermota sharing the bill with Steve Condos?
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Warren—
Thanks for another superb listing of the Roxy’s shows. A quick glance at the dates suggests that this was a successful year for the Roxy. Most shows played for three weeks and none for less than two. The longest (four weeks!) was, surprisingly, “Anne of the Indies†with the relatively low star-wattage of the stage acts (Sammy Davis, Jr. was just starting out at the time and couldn’t have been that big of a draw). Though the film was a B-level Fox offering with Jean Peters as a pirate girl (I’ll bet it played as second-feature when it hit the RKO nabes), its director was Jacques Tourneur: were there enough film cultists in those days to fill the Roxy? The show I would like to have seen was the preceding one, with Josephine Baker heading the stage portion: sensational. Leonard Maltin rates the film (which I have no memory trace of at all) as funny and winning.
The only show I saw there that year was “On the Riviera,†which a neighbor had tipped off my parents about as being hilarious. Irving Fields was an oddity, a concert pianist who had taken to playing at cocktail lounges accompanied by bass, drums, guitar, and bongos. He mixed Jewish melodies with Latin rhythms, most famously in “Mazeltov Merengue.†Corinne and Tito Vellez were a husband-and-wife Latin singing team (“Besame muchoâ€), and Peggy Ryan and Ray McDonald were a husband-and-wife tap-dancing team. All four had appeared in B-movies. Mimi Benzell was a second-level Met Opera soprano in the late ‘40s-early ‘50s (Musetta; Queen of the Night, with Ezio Pinza as Sarastro; Gilda, with Leonard Warren as Rigoletto) who also took to cocktail lounges singing Cole Porter and the like. Up the block, RCMH was showing “The Great Caruso,†so the Roxy’s answer to it appears to have been this opera-house/concert-hall stage equivalent.
Well when you lighten and enlarge the photo you start to see that the sign looks like it’s on the building at 51st. and Broadway were the Stardust Diner is located. Because when you lighten the picture you see the Capitol neon dome sign which would place it across from the Capitol Theatre at 51st Street.
It looks to me as if that Roxy sign might be a bit more in the foreground than the Rivoli Theater, Warren, thought it’s hard to tell for sure. It looks too high to have been on the roof of the Winter Garden Theater, so perhaps it was on the roof of the office building that stood on 51st along with the old Roseland ball room. That looks about right to me. And the Roxy itself was just a block to the east.
That sign looks like it was on the building that once housed the Roseland. That building was around seven stories tall plus the roof area. In the picture the Rivoli is a few blocks away.
Mr. Ralph…As I’ve seen almost all of the Ed Sullivan shows and quite a few of Mickey Mouse Clubs, I must have seen you. A real treat indeed.