Roxy Theatre
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
83 people
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Benjamin, as a P.S., I suppose another analogy for the Norma Desmond quote could be “I am a big bargain, it’s just that the rest of the world lowered their standards” ;–)
Hello Benjamin! You’re right, I should have mentioned the years of my grandparents recollections. These prices would have been from the late 1930’s, and would have been typical for Rochester, NY. I think also, if we compared prices then we should compare experiences. Granted, a great many movies from the 20’s and 30’s are pretty bad but suppose a typical theatre seat in a city cost 50 cents, and for that half dollar you get an orchestra, organist, newsreel, travelogue, short subject, feature film, and a stage show. You also get to experience this in a magnificent hall ornately decorated with copies and originals of various works of art. Now, I know that 50 cents was a lot of money 70 or 80 years ago. As a guess I would say it translates into 10 or 15 dollars today. If it were possible to replicate the moviegoing experience of the 20’s and 30’s for 15.00 per person (which, given minimum wage laws and theatre union wages, I assume it’s not possible) I would definitely be more of a moviegoer than I am. I just don’t think I get my 8 bucks worth. To get back to my grandparents, my grandmother remembered going to the Eastman, which was Rochester’s largest and highest class theatre in the mid 20’s. She said you could sit in the balcony for a quarter and after it was all said and done you definitely felt you had gotten your quarter’s worth, and then some!
Back to my great aunt’s hats. You could be right about hand crafted clothing. She married a rich man and had no children. I’m just amazed because catalogues from the same era show very pretty women’s hats for $1.50 and less.
There was always a “slap” at the Music Hall but I don’t remember it being that bad. In fact the Sound of Music sounded great there in ‘75. The organ in the wedding sequence sounded as if it were being played live. Also the revival of Singin in the Rain in '75 used a fake stereo(which I normally hate) extremely well done. I’ve never heard Conrad Salinger’s wonderful arrangements again with such clarity and impact. Canby called this presentation “gilt edged.”
Re: Accoustics of the Roxy vs. The Music Hall. The accoustics at Radio City were excellent for the live show but terrible for the films. There was an echo; especially when I saw Audrey Hepburn films there like “Two For the Road” or “Charade”. The Roxy had no echo and the films were clearly audible.
Went to the museum of the moving image and few weeks ago to check out the exhibit on Loews theatres, and although it was good, wish it was larger. They had some newsreels of openings at the Loew’s state including some like it hot, lolita, ben hur and lots of photos. The museum is fun and if you have not visited you should. As a kid I always would want to go to the music hall, it was just more special to me than the Roxy, also it might have been the movies. But as someone else said (or did they) they were both great and the Roxy is missed along with the other great theatres. I don’t think there was much hue and cry of the destruction of the Roxy, it was just another day in the city. Sad but I have my memories and all my programs from RCMH and the Roxy.
P.S. — Sorry, but I made a significant typo in my previous post. One sentence should have read: “ … but these prices are NOT recorded for cost comparisons.”
(In other words, some people WERE paying similar prices for hot tickets in the old days, we just don’t know about it.)
Ziggy:
Thank you for the accurate version of that wonderful quote! While that version of the quote could also be used as a launching pad for an analogy, it is also quite unlikely, however, that someone would ever, ever admit to it!: “I AM still a big bargain; it’s that the rest of the rest of the world got less expensive!”
I think the illustrative prices provided by your grandparents and aunt are great (although dates would make it even better) and help illustrate my two points: 1) that you have to compare across the board within an era; 2) that comparisons across eras are nevertheless tricky because of other changes in the way people live (like hats not holding the same place in a well-dressed woman’s wardrobe as it used to have).
By the way, given what people tell me about prices for woman’s clothing — especially hand crafted, high fashion items — $1,500 for a hat (if hats still held the same place in a woman’s life as they did then) would not be all that outrageous. I forget exact prices that woman have told me that they’ve paid for things they’ve purchased, but I do remember being shocked at the price of “simple” things like scarves, tiny bathing suits, handbags, etc.
Vincent:
I think the key thing you mentioned in your last post about the $7.50 for “Follies” was that it was for a Wednesday matinee. I’m not sure about these days, but traditionally that’s the cheapest set of prices for a Broadway show, and in the “old” days such prices were SIGNIFICANTLY lower than those for the top tickets on a Friday or Saturday night. Usually when people talk about prices for Broadway shows they make comparisons between the top prices for a Friday or Saturday night, which is what I thought your $7.50 figure was referring to.
The $250 and $500 tickets you mention are a new phenomenon and using them to compare to past prices is misleading. In the old days “scalpers” would also charge (illegally) such exorbitant sums for “hot” tickets — but these prices are recorded for cost comparisons. The $250 and $500 tickets today are a way of producers seeing to it that such money spent goes into the hands of the producer rather than to a scalper (who hasn’t shouldered any of the risk of putting on the show).
But in addition to prices that are, in fact, genuinely higher than those of the past, another way of charging more for Broadway show is to charge higher for the lower priced seats — 2nd balcony, matinees tickets, etc. — and my guess is that THAT is where you probably are going to see the biggest price difference between prices today and in the “old” days.
Going back to the discussion of the Roxy and movie palaces, in a way the movie palaces provide another example. Although their prices probably remained quite reasonable until the “end,” the demand for their product at that price became less and less (as the public’s taste changed). In other words, given all the other inexpensive entertainment options that existed, and were being developed, fewer people were still interested in seeing that type of combo film and stage show, even if the prices for it were eminently reasonable. People preferred spending their entertainment dollar on something else.
(Another better example, I think, might be transatlantic ocean travel. It’s not that ocean liners became more expensive, but that the development of jets made other options quicker and cheaper.)
Ziggy
I agree for adults it’s ok, just too morbid for kids to see about her dead grandparents and all.
Vincent, in response to the legalized extortion, I agree. I can guarantee that I will never see a Broadway show, simply thinking about how much I paid would keep me from enjoying myself.
I think “The Little Princess” is another technicolor film for Shirley Temple. I agree with you about “The Bluebird”, but it is a fascinating film, in a weird way.
I always thought the Bluebird was such a sad and morbid film. It was sad that this was the only Technicolor film she made. This seems so unusual for the Roxy to play a moveover in those days, but then again they were pretty much the premiere Fox house.
Benjamin I assure you that a full price $7.50 for the orchestra is correct. I bought my Wednesday matinee ticket the Monday after Easter on my way to seeing A New Leaf at at Radio City.
Again remember that $100 is the advertised top price for a musical, but it is not the case. As I noted prices are really $250 to $500 for the center orchestra.
At the Palace I bought an advance ticket for Lauren Bacall in Applause at the box office for a June matinee. The 5th row center on the aisle seat cost $8.00.
Remember at this time the top price for a movie was $3.00. today it is 10.25. A top Broadway ticket was $15.00 for a Saturday night today it is officially(though not in practice)$100. If you do the math the Broadway producers are indulging in daylight robbery to an astounding degree. Why do you think corporations are the producers today. It’s called legalized extortion. But then I must admit nobody is forcing people to buy tickets.
We must be as a society becoming individually and collectively very stupid.
Benjamin I assure you that a full price $7.50 for the orchestra is correct. I bought my Wednesday matinee ticket the Monday after Easter on my way to seeing A New Leaf at at Radio City.
Again remember that $100 is the advertised top price for a musical, but it is not the case. As I noted prices are really $250 to $500 for the center orchestra.
At the Palace I bought an advance ticket for Lauren Bacall in Applause at the box office for a June matinee. The 5th row center on the aisle seat cost $8.00.
Remember at this time the top price for a movie was $3.00. today it is 10.25. A top Broadway ticket was $15.00 for a Saturday night today it is officially(though not in practice)$100. If you do the math the Broadway producers are indulging in daylight robbery to an astounding degree. Why do you think corporations are the producers today. It’s called legalized extortion. But then I must admit nobody is forcing people to buy tickets.
We must be as a society becoming individually and collectively very stupid.
My Mother commented once that the most expensive movie she saw in her younger days was “The Best Years of Our Lives” which was a whopping $4.00 in it’s first release. She said the price was unheard of.
Hi Benjamin, I think the Norma Desmond quote you’re looking for is “I AM big. It’s the pictures that got small.”. This in response to William Holden’s character when he said “You’re Norma Desmond! You used to be in silent pictures! Used to be big!” Regarding prices, it’s hard to say what may have seemed inexpensive to our grandparents without being there to experience it ourselves. A line from the 1933 film “Footlight Parade” has someone saying “It’s a lot better to fill your theatre 4 times a day at 50 cents a head, than to have it half full once a night for 5 dollars per person.”
My grandparents used to recollect going to the movies for 35 cents, and buying a week’s groceries for a family of five for $5.00, yet I had a great aunt who was known for buying $75.00 hats! If the average movie admission today costs $7.00 this would compare to expensive hats costing about $1500.00! This would also mean one could feed a family of five for about $100.00 a week. If I can go by my own grocery bill, this may not be a reasonable amount. I guess one can’t simply compare prices across the board. Some items have increased a great deal, some not as much, and some items (like expensive ladies' hats) don’t seem to exist at all anymore!
Re: great “low” prices of tickets to movie palaces (and musicals) in the “olden” days
While it is indeed probably true that tickets to the movies and the great movie palaces were great bargains (and great entertainment values!) in years gone by, it should also be remembered that people MADE a lot less money in those days too, and that prices for other things — including other forms of entertainment — were also correspondingly lower in those days too.
In other words, it’s important to account for inflation across the board and not just selectively when comparing prices from one era to another. What is “really” more accurate (to the extent that one can be accurate about such things in the first place — it’s stubbornly tricky) is to compare the RATIO of prices within one era to the RATIO of prices within another era. For example, a more accurate way of making such a comparison would be to say that the price of a ticket to a musical was, say, eight and a half times more than that of a movie in 1960, versus, let’s say, eleven times more than that of a movie in 2004. (Don’t know if this is true, just guessing here.)
If I remember correctly, in the early 1960s (too late for the Roxy, but as far back as my memory of these things go) prices were as follows (wasn’t earning money yet, so don’t know about wages):
15 cents for bus or subway fare to go to the movies; 50 cents for a child’s ticket ($1.00 for an adult’s ticket); 15 cents for a slice of pizza, before or after the movie; about $8.60(?) for top price to a big Broadway musical on Friday or Saturday night — both Wednesday and Saturday matinee prices seemed to be about one-half that (even without “twofers”) though. Don’t remember what the cost of a ticket to the Grand Tier of the Metropolitan Opera was, but I think it was “considerably” more (maybe in the $20 range?) than the top price of a Broadway show.
I say all this because although prices for tickets to Broadway musicals, for instance, are indeed higher than what they were in the past (even accounting for inflation), it is not quite as dramatic as it is often made out to be. (Although the cost of tickets for musicals have probably, indeed, outpaced inflation because of higher labor costs and much more technically elaborate scenery, etc.)
To paraphrase the great line said by Gloria Swanson (as Norma Desmond) — (I think it was something like) “It’s not that pictures got bigger, it’s that the people got smaller” — “It’s not that plays and musicals got expensive, it’s that everything else ("records,” home movies, etc.) got so much cheaper."
P.S. — I’m very surprised that a top priced ticket to “Follies” (whose poster design does indeed seem to consciously evoke that great Life Magazine picture of Gloria Swanson in the ruins of the Roxy — the photo is reproduced on the last page of Ben Hall’s “Best Remaining Seats”), would have cost only $7.50 in the early 1970s. I distinctly remember higher prices than that even in the early 1960s, and a collection of reviews of Broadway musicals (“Opening Night on Broadway,”[?] by Suskin[?]) includes posters of Broadway musicals that show higher prices than that, also earlier than the 1970s.
I know this isn’t the RCMH site, but after realizing that the Music Hall wasn’t really intended for films, isn’t it somewhat ironic that it’s now being used mostly for live performances?
I attended the World Premiere of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” at RCMH last May. The theater was packed, and I was sitting in the orchestra section, about 20 rows from the stage on the right side. There was a really pronounced echo in the theater, and I was very surprised. At times it was so bad, you couldn’t understand the dialogue. I thought with all those people, the standard acoustical reverb that you normally hear in such an immense theater would have been dissipated.
I am too young to have seen any shows at the Roxy. Were the acoustics similar in that showplace?
All of the participants in this full Roxy/RCMH discussion should be thanked for contributing so much to the history and analysis of the impact of these two theaters. And appreciation to “Cinema Treasures” for providing the venue. One further thought, touched on earlier: Radio City Music Hall was not built as a movie palace. So, despite its reputation for premiering the finest pictures of the mid-century, it was never the best place in New York City in which to view and hear films properly. But, as a New Yorker whose first experience at RCMH was a morning premiere at RCMH of “Bambi” in August, 1942, and who even enjoyed the “fiasco” of the three-strip “Windjammer” at the Roxy years later, I loved ‘em both.
From Frank S. Nugent’s 1939 NY Times review of “The Wizard of Oz”, it establishes that it opened at The Capitol:
“By courtesy of the wizards of Hollywood, The Wizard of Oz reached the Capitol’s screen yesterday as a delightful piece of wonder-working which had the youngsters' eyes shining and brought a quietly amused gleam to the wiser ones of the oldsters.”
Warren: You mention “Follies” and yes, it’s still one of the greatest musicals ever produced. It was somewhat dismissed by critics during it’s initial run (John Simon, critic of New York Magazine now admits this…) but it’s now considered a classic.
Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this but the concept of “Follies” was begun with the famous photograph of Gloria Swanson in the ruins of the Roxy.
You must be right. Somebody once told me “The Wizard” played at the Roxy which was strange since they showed mainly 20th Century-Fox Films. Did Shirley Temple ever appear live at the Roxy? I remember one of my cousins said they saw her there.
You are so right Warren, Oz did indead play at the Capital with Judy Garland appearing opening night.
I meant to say the curved CinemaScope screen of the Roxy in my last comment. The curvature gave more depth and enjoyment. It’s a matter of taste. If you had noisy people sitting in front of you; neither theatre was a pleasure; often there were no empty seats to change to. We recently attended a Broadway show and the people kept talking and ruined the show for us. Why do people spend over $100 just to talk? This is off-topic, so please forgive me!
Warren it was interesting seeing your post about 1960. I wasn’t able to go on my own into NY until ‘70. At that point the Roxy might as well have the the Colossus at Rhodes. I believe the Rivoli was playing The Stewardesses in 3D, the Criterion was playing Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and the Thanksgiving film Sherlock Holmes at the Hall crashed and burned after two weeks and they had to rush in the Christmas Show. The axis of the earth must have shifted in those ten years. I don’t think things change culturally so quickly even today.
However the Hall had a weekday morning admission price of $1.75 and a weekday matinee prime seating on Broadway could be had for $8.00.
Follies, the most lavish(and best produced, I still remember the audience in shock) musical I will ever see, had a top full price of $7.50! Today you cannot even get prime seating for $100 the announced top price. You’ve got to spend 3 to 5 times as much. And what you get is a golden oldies revue. Insane.