Comments from vindanpar

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vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Radio City Music Hall on Jul 10, 2017 at 7:42 am

I’ve never seen such a long timing for a stage show! The Rockettes and Madame Butterfly 4xs a day? Whew.

Even the audience must have left exhausted.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Radio City Music Hall on Jul 7, 2017 at 11:38 am

CC posted the Robin and Marian ad.

Probably the dreariest Easter show ever. Another what were they thinking film. Not that the Music Hall had much of a choice. Hepburn said, I could have done without the rotten apples at the end.'

Considering the seemingly endless acres of empty seats at every performance audiences could do without the film.

And what was truly astounding was that the stage show was in Black and white! An Easter show in black and white! It’s like everyone at the Hall had it in for the place.

I saw every Glory of Easter I could because it was so beautiful and the only thing that held on to what was great about the theater. When it was revived after the stage and screen show era they must have lost the original lighting charts because the lighting was pretty much lights on lights off. The lighting of the original which they kept through the 70s was gorgeous.

It was also I believe the last Easter show to have the religious icons on the choral stairs.

Would love to know who designed it and what year it was first presented. I think the first Easter show(Cavalcade second run) had a Good Friday tableaux.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Ziegfeld Theatre on Jul 1, 2017 at 1:57 pm

New Orleans' Whorehouse. Yes, exactly! That’s hilarious.

By the way I read somewhere in an interview with George Cukor probably sometime during the 70s and he couldn’t understand the love people had for the movie palaces. He thought they were pretty tacky!

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Radio City Music Hall on Jul 1, 2017 at 1:46 pm

Seems like it might have been even less.
With a final stage show at 9:30 and a final film at 9:58 and then you need to have at least a few minutes break this was very tight.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Ziegfeld Theatre on Jun 29, 2017 at 7:53 pm

A large gaudy red wallpapered shoebox. With gold curtain and accents.

Never understood the love for this theater when there were the Rivoli, the Criterion and the Warner Cinerama still around into the 80s. Great theaters.

All of them were worth preserving but not this one. Yeah I know I’m in the minority but boy was I disappointed when I first entered it in ‘72.

I never got its mystique and I went quite a few times only because it often had movies I wanted to see. I just wished I was seeing them in other NY cinemas. Even east side places like Cinema 1, the Beekman, the Little Carnegie(ok midtown) and the Coronet were far superior.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Loew's Capitol Theatre on Jun 29, 2017 at 5:57 pm

Of course if you had real class you had reserved seats to see GWTW at the Astor rather than waiting on line to see it with the mobs at the Capitol.

Bill I so envy you!

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Loew's Capitol Theatre on Jun 29, 2017 at 10:50 am

Divans-how good could they be at $4.25 for a weekend evening? The far classier Criterion loge seats were $5.50 back in ‘64 and were $6 for tickets they were selling in advance for Funny Girl. Clearly the middle class Capitol even on hardticket was for the hoi polloi.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Loew's Capitol Theatre on Jun 29, 2017 at 7:04 am

Was there a curtain behind them? As older pictures show on this page the lower balcony was separated by a curtain from the upper balcony.

I wonder how the seating was configured for the roadshow Windjammer at the Roxy. I doubt they were selling the entire house.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Hollywood Theatre on Jun 29, 2017 at 4:45 am

The sale of Broadway’s most beautiful theater was criminal. Nederlander probably pocketed a fortune with the sale and with all the tax breaks he was getting from the city for his theaters he should have been thrown right into jail for stealing taxpayers money.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Loew's Capitol Theatre on Jun 28, 2017 at 6:42 pm

Found it on ebay:

The Making of Kubrick’s 2001 Edited by Jerome Agel 1970

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Loew's Capitol Theatre on Jun 28, 2017 at 5:53 pm

Found it in Michael Coates article: 37 weeks total.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Loew's Capitol Theatre on Jun 28, 2017 at 5:47 pm

There was a paperback book which I think came out in the 70s on the phenomenon that was 2001 which unfortunately I no longer have. It quoted Kubrick as saying or writing that he expected the film to have a 2 year Broadway run. It seems odd now if they knew already the Capitol was slated for demolition when the film opened and Ice Station Zebra needed NY’s only remaining Cinerama theater.

Anybody know how long 2001’s total Broadway run was between the two theaters? For a roadshow film sensation it seems to have been fairly short.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Broadway Theatre on Jun 28, 2017 at 5:12 pm

Ok I was just trying to figure out the point of CC’s post.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Loew's Capitol Theatre on Jun 28, 2017 at 2:24 pm

I think Das Doppelte Lottchen would have been a better June school’s out film at the Hall rather than here.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Loew's Capitol Theatre on Jun 28, 2017 at 2:22 pm

They could have sold it out and not have replenished the Millionaire souvenir book yet so you could have gotten it there. It was definitely not there when I saw the film at the Hall. Only the comic book which as I noted seems kind of strange.

In fact I was impressed when I was able to purchase it a few years later at how large it was. I assumed it was only available for roadshow engagements.

After Cinerama installation the Capacity would be a heckuva lot less than 4,000. You could probably find it was somewhere near 1,500 from old Varietys.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Broadway Theatre on Jun 28, 2017 at 2:06 pm

CC I’m not sure if you are reproaching Zornig or just repeating what he already said.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Roxy Theatre on Jun 25, 2017 at 9:33 am

I feel lucky to have seen all their original productions back then. A level of genius that was awe inspiring. When Broadway was first for New Yorkers after which the tourists followed.

The Disneyfication of Times Square, the wiping away of all the great remainng movie theaters and the evening length theme park musicals are now for me heartbreaking.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Roxy Theatre on Jun 25, 2017 at 9:15 am

There are so many places to read about his going there and the inspiration of that photo for both him and Harold Prince. I honestly couldn’t tell you as I’ve already read so many different books and articles. I was going to all the original productions of their musicals being very young at the time and I saw Follies twice which was everything they say it was. I went to the first Wed mat after the opening(it was Easter week ‘71. Bought my ticket that Monday going to see A New Leaf at the Music Hall) and it seems people left the theater in a kind of shock it was so momentous. I’ve never had any desire to see a revival.

You might to read in a number of places about the creation of the musical and a good place to start would be the Time magazine cover story in a library. I believe it also contains the Swanson photo.

Sorry the movie is Hangover Square and the Herrmann score inspired Sondheim to write the composer and Herrmann wrote back

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Roxy Theatre on Jun 25, 2017 at 8:50 am

I saw nothing but TGI Fridays unhappily if that is even still there.

But during the 70s at least across from the site on west 50th on the south side there was the Roxy bowling lanes still in operation with the name in the Roxy script. It was all that remained as a reminder.

By the way Stephen Sondheim is on the record as saying he often went to the Roxy when he was young. Seeing Hanover Square there was a seminal moment in his youth. (Anyway I believe it played there. Others would know better than I where it opened in NY.)I assume he channeled some of the heartbreak he felt when it came down when he wrote Follies inspired by the melodramatic photo of Gloria Swanson standing in the rubble.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Embassy 1 Theatre on Jun 25, 2017 at 8:39 am

I thought that was still the 60s as late as it was which you can tell buy the shortness of the skirts.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Embassy 1 Theatre on Jun 24, 2017 at 10:25 pm

Can anybody figure out the film playing in the ‘71 photo? I thought that the Coke sign had been modernized by '70.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Radio City Music Hall on Jun 22, 2017 at 6:43 pm

Comfortably Cool posted the Up the Down Staircase ad from the summer of ‘67.

On the stage was one of the Music Hall’s spectacles unfortunately like all the rest lost forever called Court of Jewels. I had a Kodachrome slide of it once and it looked terrific.

By coincidence it is also the 50th anniversary of Balanchine’s great full length abstract ballet Jewels which is now being celebrated at the New York State Theater.

The summer of love certainly had rock on its mind.

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Criterion Theatre on Jun 20, 2017 at 2:29 pm

Already by December of ‘68 all the buildings I mentioned had been torn down and the Astor Hotel was a giant excavation hole(as a boy I looked into it having no idea there was ever such a thing as The Astor.) Of course I know what I’m saying is conjecture. Many downtowns of major cities were experiencing terrible downturns. I just lament the loss of such great NY landmarks and think what if?

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Criterion Theatre on Jun 20, 2017 at 1:05 pm

I should have made myself more specific. I meant the Astor Hotel. Remember you had a lot of great NY landmarks torn down in just a few years as I mentioned above and I think it was catastrophic. These were among the most magnificent and legendary buildings in the 20th century in NY and I believe they were anchors. Wasn’t the building with the PYW sign the Claridge hotel?

vindanpar
vindanpar commented about Criterion Theatre on Jun 20, 2017 at 12:12 pm

That’s a nice evening ‘69 photo including the Paint Your Wagon billboard when Times Square still had a bit of its old time glamour. The tearing down of the Astor and the building that PYW billboard is on(only a couple of years after the tearing down of the old Met, Penn Station, the Paramount…) was catastrophic for the area hastening its 70s descent into the muck and mire.