Roxy Theatre

My sentiments exactly.

The first film ever shown at the Roxy was “The Love of Sunya,” starring Gloria Swanson. Has anyone ever seen this film and is it worth purchasing? It seems available in dvd and thought it would be interesting to actually see the film Roxy opened with. The opening night story in “Last Remaining Seats” got me interested in both the Roxy and this film.

Warren: That’s a highly stylized trade ad from Dazian’s!

Compare the photo that I posted above last 18 April (from “Marquee” 2.3 [1979]: 16, depicting the Fred Waring stage show with “Wilson” in ‘44): the frame for the valance is inverted, the valance swags differ in number (three vs. two) and drape, and the choral stairways remain yet uncovered.

My memory of the Roxy from the late ‘40s is hazy, but the photo bears out most of it. Did Dazan keep adding and adjusting drapery until it swathed the entire proscenium? It’s hard to imagine the theater would have kept the same dusty drapes in place from '39 to '52. A visit to the Roxy would have brought on an allergy attack.

How’s that awful drape treatment! INfamous advertising really….. and…..recent posts about inventive cramming of marquee letters remind me of my Australian teenage ladder level exploits managing these two double features: ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE + ALLTHE PRESIDENT’S MEN. or try this one when 20 ft up: IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES + THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION OF GRACE QUIGLEY. A friend told me he had the thrill of placing THE HAUNTED AND THE HUNTED + THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. Hilarious! Imagine answering the phone 700 times and repeating that! My favourite is from the Randwick Ritz when Tony the illiterate kid we employed liked to place ‘the shapes’ as he called them, up on the marquee: LISA MINOOLI and REBORT DE BIRO in NEW WORK NEW WORK. …..I kid you not.

wow—if Gae’s girls weren’t balancing themselves on bouncing balls, they were perched on precarious pinnacles. RCMH’s Rockettes led a comparatively risk-free existence.

Thanks Vito, for pumping up the volume on “Journey”. Those lucky theater patrons (and the ghost of Bernard Herrmann) are grateful to you.

Vito: Did you actually project “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (with the fader up 2 or 3 DBs)? If so, I’d like to shake your hand! :)

There was a wonderful long article about The Best of Everything in Vanity Fair due to the fact that its been getting a lot of play on television lately. Even the Times did a piece on it(the usual Times dopey, condescending, aren’t we so much more enlightened today nonsense.)I was very surprised to read in that article that it opened at the Paramount and not the Roxy.
I work by the Seagram’s building and every time I pass it I think of the very pretty Hope Lange looking at it going to work on her first day. I miss her.

Vito: Remember when 20th Century-Fox stopped using their logo at the beginning of their movies in 1970? Having a silent logo without the fanfare (“The Sound of Music”, “The Bible”) was bad enough, but to do any with it completely – what were those Fox executives thinking? I guess they were trying to be trendy and with-it, and the logo and fanfare were perceived as old-fashioned. I remember seeing “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” at Loew’s State 2 start off with the words “Twentieth Century-Fox Presents” over the opening shot, and thinking the projectionist had made a mistake. I think only a few movies fell into this category before somebody reversed this bad decision, but “Patton” was one of them.

Thanks Warren, I shall look forward to that. I spent a couple of years working in New York for Fox during the mid to late 50s. I saw all the Fox films during that time at the Fox “Little Theatre” screening room and often again in a theatre, usually the Roxy or Paramount. It will be a kick to see those titles and dates. I still get goose bumps whenever I hear the fanfare, I am speaking about the original fanfare extension as it was written, not the awful version used today.

That “Someone” was Warren, whose comprehensive knowledge, research skills, and pitch-perfect accuracy are legendary on these pages, and his list appeared on 25 Feb ‘05 above.

Warren: you’re up to ‘45 now; bring us to '53, and then from '56 to closing. Finally: pre-'41? Would that be saving the best till last?

In her autobiography The Gift Horse, German-born actress Hildegard Knef recalls her arrival in and time spent in the United States shortly after World War II and being offered a Hollywood studio contract. Here she describes a visit to what may have been the Roxy. I originally posted this on the Radio City Music Hall page, thinking it was RCMH, but I’ve been told that some aspects of her description suggest the Roxy instead. Anyway, it’s an interesting description:

“The packed movie house is a cross between the public baths and a set for an operetta, between a temple and a railway station; in the balcony they’re making love, smoking, and chewing brown-white balloons of absorbent cotton from cardboard cartons; they run in and out during the film, during the stage show, whistle like crazy when the chorus girls kick their legs, jitterbug in the aisles; girls with mottled frozen legs sticking out of tennis shoes and white ankle socks squeak and faint, crawl about among the flower boxes on the front of the stage, cry with the crooner who’s singing something in Spanish. Now there’s a preview: a bulldog face bursting out of a German officer’s uniform barks orders in English; behind him there’s a swastika hanging the wrong way round; on comes a soldier in an SS jacket and an SA cap, clicks his heels and yells ‘Donner and Blitzen,’ ‘Jawoll!’ and ‘Heil die Führer!’ The reclining couples break apart and join the stalls in a chorus of boos.”