Embassy 1,2,3 Theatre

I saw the new “King Kong” from Peter Jackson last night and it features some stunning digital recreations of New York City circa 1933. While artistic liberties are taken, Times Square is well represented in the film. The Mayfair Theater in particular, with it’s huge wrap-around corner billboard, is probably the most prominently recognizable Times Square landmark featured in the climactic New York sequence of the film. The theater where Kong is put on display in the film is a fictional “Alhambra Theater” that has more or less displaced the Palace on the block between 47th and 46th Street, although Jackson has it located on the other side of the old Newsreel Theater (Embassy 1) in his “reel” world. The action and camera movements in this sequence are very rapid-fire, so I’m sure I’ll be making good use of the “pause” and “rewind” buttons on my remote to make geeky study of all the digital detail work in the recreation (particularly as it relates to the theaters depicted) when the movie is released on DVD.

The atmospheric interior of the “Alhambra” belongs to the very real Civic Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand, which is evidently still very much in use for both cinematic presentation and live events. The theater is a stunning overseas effort by atmospheric guru John Eberson.

As for the movie itself, if anyone is interested… the first hour didn’t really work for me; I found it unevenly acted, under-directed, over-scored and poorly written. However, once the characters are set to sea and their ship encounters the mysterious fog that shrouds Kong’s native Skull Island, the film really takes off on a rip-roaring adventure. Great fun. Technically dazzling and rather touching throughout… and there are some clever (and not-so-clever) references to bits of dialog and business (and use of Max Steiner’s classic score) from the original Cooper/Shoedsack film sprinkled about with varying success. Bottom line, the old B&W version still reigns supreme, but this is a worthy re-envisioning and technical update.

The marquee has been damaged for a few years now.

Odd, nowadays, to see an ad with staggered start dates at different theaters. “Held over 3 more days” implying that a new feature would have normally been booked starting Wednesday (which is still a fairly common opening day)… but “Psycho” was starting on a Saturday in many theaters featured in the ad and would be ending it’s run on Friday at the DeMille, Baronet and Brooklyn Paramount. It’s amazing how release strategies have changed so much since then. Even in the ‘70’s it was not uncommon to have films roll out on different days (and with different co-features) depending on the theater. I used to wonder why certain theaters would play a different 2nd feature or drop the 2nd feature alltogether.

The reduction in seating could be from two or three reasons. When it was planned to use the downstairs house with strippers a runway was built down the center aisle in good burlesque fashion (the lip of the stage could have been extended as well). Perhaps the seats were never replaced in that area in the orchestra. Also remember that there’s a fairly wide gap between the two upper auditoriums for the light from the center projector to hit the downstairs screen. While as I have mentioned earlier, the space should have been bigger to pass a Scope or 70mm 2.2l image that would fill the width of the proscenium, it was wide enough to accomodate 1.85 projection. That’s a really steep, long balcony, so if seats were removed from the balcony rail to the upper back wall that could probably account for over a hundred seats. As noted above, they weren’t particularly comfortable, so its possible that the balcony (or some areas) retained older narrower seats from a previous incarnation which would have upped the total number of seats. In addition the lobby wall of the orchestra was moved forward during the renovation to accomodate the stores in the former lobby area. That would also have eaten up seats. While I was in the orchestra auditorium during the renovation, I never poked my nose in when I worked there. One of the reasons was that the single entrance was a ways from the stairs to to the upper theatre and the booth, and kind of looked like a dingy alley, so much of the under balcony space had been sacrificed to the shops.

Would be nice if the Moma would use it for wide screen films in conjunction with the American Cinemateque. Nobody but us seems to realize that it’s the last movie theater left in Times Square and other than the Paris maybe the last one left in Manhattan.

Who’s Blondie? (just kidding)

Also for the 40’s in Times Square there is very little light above the Palace and none above the Embassy. Very dark for the era. Also if this was 6:40 in the evening in September it would still be light out wouldn’t it?

When you blow-up the photo you can see a ghost of a car near the fire plug and some ghosting of people under the southern end of the marquee. There is a lot of people at the corner waiting for the light to change and a ghost of a car too. There is more traffic down by the State Theatre. Remember on those rare times in Times Square, you might not have any cars or very few cars passing for up to afew blocks away. And was it cold windy night, I know I walk alittle faster.

Thanks! I’ll tape it just in case!

TJ – It was interesting to see. It was late for me also, and from the TCM website you could not tell if was on before or after the movie.
I recorded it and watched it last night. For the record, it was on after the movie which would have been about 1:15AM .

The other night TCM showed Hitchcock’s Psycho. Following the movie was an eight minute newreel called “Releasing Psycho” which was all about the ‘no one will be admitted after the show starts’ campaign. The eight minute clip had extensive views of the DeMille.

I was walking by here last night and the building is still not rented.

Reading that ad I noticed a funny coincidence—It says No One Seated During Final Reel, which is a precursor or foreshadowing of the policy at this same theater for Psycho 30 years later, when no one was seated after the feature began.