I haven’t seen the film AUGUST RUSH, but I’m curious how the Fillmore East was depicted in the film. I understand that both interiors and exteriors of this theatre were used to stand in for the Fillmore in the flick. I see they dressed up the Olympic’s marquee to look like the Fillmore East, but the facade bears absolutely NO resemblance to the fabled concert hall’s edifice. Did they use CGI to complete the illusion, or did they leave the Olympic’s facade as-is to depict the theatre as a long vacant site?
Chances had to be 100% that the interior was shot either on a soundstage or at some other old theatre – the auditorium of the original Fillmore East was demolished a number of years back. However, the Second Avenue facade – in which the theatre’s tunnel-like entry foyer and upstairs offices were located – survives, sans marquee. A bank branch occupies the former foyer/lobby space. I guess it was easier for the filmmakers to use the Olympic Theatre Concert Hall as a stand-in for the old place since the building still has a marquee that could be fitted with the old Fillmore logo? Otherwise, the facade of the Olympic looks nothing like the old Fillmore/Commodore. I assume CGI completed the illusion.
Here’s an image of the Olympic dressed up as the Fillmore. Fred Beall, you’ll note that the marquee design was physically constructed on location and not via CGI. Here’s a vintage view of the real Fillmore East to compare.
The Fillmore East is listed on CT under the name [ur/theaters/527/]Loew’s Commodore[/url] – as this was the name under which it last operated as a cinema. The exteriors for AUGUST RUSH utilized a different theatre’s facade located in the Bronx (the name of that location eludes me at the moment). A CT member posted an image of that Bronx theatre dressed up for the movie shoot.
lbnybill… it’s great if you live or work in the City and can get to the RCMH box office to get tickets and avoid tickemaster’s exorbitant fees. But for a lot of folks living out of Manhattan, or more than a quick subway ride away, you’re pretty much stuck with the added expense. Again… I didn’t mean to turn this into a back and forth argument. It is merely a matter of personal taste and opinion as to the show’s merits and value. For me, I was disappointed when I saw the show a few years back. I found it sagged in parts and was overly long for the attention span of an average pre-teen child. I’m almost positive that the pricing scheme was much higher a few years back, but perhaps I’m wrong. I would agree that at $100 a ticket – particularly at $70 on a weekday – the price seems fair enough in comparison to the cost of other live entertainments in NYC. Perhaps the show has been much-improved over the last couple of years and my evaluation might be different if I took in the latest edition. I just haven’t had a desire to check back on it and the kiddies haven’t been exactly begging for a return trip! They’re much more excited about the New Shanghai Circus show at the New Victory Theatre next week (top tickets for members at $35 apiece). Maybe next year!
Assuming the lamp post was not itself relocated… that would place the Yankees Store more or less on the original site of the Harem. Steroids and porn make for a potent combination.
I’d also hasten to add that RCMH is hardly just “making a go of it”… With Cablevision’s deep pockets and with a healthy schedule of year-around bookings, I don’t think the Hall will miss my couple of hundred bucks this year, or next.
Hey oldjoe… Don’t label me a “Grinch” or a hypocrite merely because I balk at paying high prices to see the show. Let me remind you that I already DID pay in excess of $450 to take my family of four to see the show back about 4 or 5 years ago. I also shelled out to attend the Tony Awards in 2001 and had previously taken my kids to see a Barney show at the Hall. I’ve also attended concerts at RCMH and grew up seeing a movie and a show just about every Easter and Christmas in the 1970’s. And I was there in Easter of ‘78 when the death knell was about to be sounded for the theatre, signing petitions outside of the box office with my Mom and Dad to help save the place. I do not need a lecture on how lucky we are to have this Grand Old Lady still with us and looking 75 years YOUNG!
Having said all of that… I think that I have a right to decide whether or not I find this show to be worth the $100 dollars per ticket it would cost to sit in the very best seats. For my particular tastes, it is NOT worth an annual pilgrimage. I saw it once and watched my kids squirm in their seats towards the end and that was enough to hold me over for a quite a while. You make excellent points about the bang for the buck offered by the show in terms of all the scale and scope of the extravaganza – but again, for me, once was enough to hold me for a while.
Al… IBDB.COM (the Internet Broadway DataBase) shows the Lunt-Fontanne as being dark for two periods in 1976 – from the December 8th 1975, until April 25th of ‘76 and then again from June 6th until December 8th of '76. I would think that the theatre would have been busy during at least some of this down time prepping for the next legitimate show to open and I wouldn’t think that there’d have been a whole lot of time for a name change and film bookings. Surely by April 2, the show that opened on April 25th (a play called REX) would have been in rehearsals or in previews.
Thanks, Life. I must share credit with various other CT members because not all of the photos (particularly the “vintage” ones) are my own – I culled them from other collections to flesh out mine.
Has 20th Century restored “Doctor Dolittle” to roadshow length? The DVD and cable versions have all been of the shorter general release version. I’d enjoy seeing that one (a childhood favorite) on the big screen.
Thanks, LTS… I thought I reposted that link here after I reorganized my photobucket albums. Anyway, there are a ton of newer images in the album (and many more theatres) since I first posted the links above.
Thanks, Warren. With your permission, I’d like to include this shot (as well as the ad you posted on 12/12) in my photobucket scrapbook for this theatre – despite the murkiness!
Greenpoint, Warren’s photobucket account has limited space so he often rotates images in and out of there. When an image is removed, the link for it in his post on CT is disabled. Warren – I don’t think any of your links to images that are STILL in your photobucket scrapbook have been changed at all. I think Greenpoint merely stumbled across a link to one of the images you removed and assumed there was a change.
At the risk of betraying my lack of proper education in these matters, I’d like to ask a question pertaining to presentation of various aspect ratios at the Jersey. Do both the scope and flat presentations here utilize the full height of the Jersey’s screen – with masking only necessary to bring in the legs at either side? Or are 2.35:1 films masked at top and bottom as well?
RCDTJ… I realize this, of course. It just seems to me that if a theatre is going to run such a rare and important engagement as THE JAZZ SINGER that they would make sure to have the proper aperture plate on hand. Apart from the recent showings at the Loew’s Jersey, this was the only showing of the film’s restored print in the NYC area. What a shame they couldn’t present it properly.
I saw the show a few years ago with the kids. It just burns me to pay so much for a decent ticket. I really didn’t think it was worth the money. Perhaps for a one-time thing, but certainly not to make a tradition of it. If you combined all the admissions I paid (or my folks paid, rather) for the show PLUS a movie back in the ‘70’s, the aggregate would still not be as much as a single 1st Tier ticket to today’s production!
In 1980, after the Hall had ceased its old show & film format, the top ticket to the Christmas Spectacular was just $11.50 – half the top price for a Broadway ducat at the time. I think the top ticket today is just over $100, after fees and surcharges – about what you’d pay for a typical Broadway show – so at leats it’s not as bad as it was a few years ago when the pricing scheme went almost to $200 for the best seats!
I am generally opposed to lip-syncing at any type of live performance. When I go to a live concert or a Broadway show, I expect to hear the performers singing LIVE not lipsyncing to pre-recorded tape. However, I really don’t consider the Radio City Christmas Show to be a live concert or a Broadway production, so I don’t hold the show to that same standard. I agree with Bob Endres and Vito… There’s just no way you can expect a group of precision dancers to tap and kick around the vast RCMH stage without getting winded. I’ve seen video clips of singers who have (bravely) sang live while performing energetic dance routines (Madonna and J-Lo come to mind) and the vocal performance suffered miserably as a result. In a show as highly polished and as filled with glitzy artifice as the RCMH Xmas spectacular, I think I’d give the producers a pass for utilizing a pre-recorded track. Had it been my professional choice to make, I think I’d have eliminated the need for lip-syncing entirely by simply having the music exist as a soundtrack to the Rockettes' number and would not have attempted to create the illusion that it was the dancers who were singing the lyrics. I hasten to add that my acceptance of the practice is limited to the big dance line. I do not condone the use of lip-syncing to pass for what should be a live non-dancing vocal performance. And I’m not particularly fond of using pre-recorded tap sounds for a live dance routine – unless live micing is truly not a technical feasibility.
At the very least, I would hope that some effort would be made to preserve and restore the handsome Merrick Rd facade. While original interior elements may have long ago vanished and would be unfeasible to restore for a gut and multiplex job, there is no reason why the original character of the Lynbrook’s exterior (which appears to be in very good shape) shouldn’t remain intact. Unless the structure itself is physically unstable, I don’t see why the entire building has to come down, Mike. As long as the foundation and outer walls are stout, the mission could be accomplished with a complete interior gutting down to the bare brick walls. This is how the Fantasy Theatre in Rockville Center was renovated – even though they needlessly mutilated the main exterior facade with the modernization. Better still is the example of the Midway Theatre in Forest Hills, Queens, where they pretty much preserved the integrity of the original facade, entrance foyer and lobby while gutting the auditorium space behind to carve out 9 modern and comfortable stadium style rooms – all within the original footprint of the old theatre.
“Dazzling Crystal Lobby,” eh? No trace of that exists in the church that now occupies the building. I’m sure anything either dazzling or crystal was removed when the place was converted into a bowling alley in the late 1950’s!
The address for this theatre is overdue for a correction to 38-39 Bell Blvd – per discussion in various posts above from September of 2006. The address given above as 39-01 would place the theatre on the wrong corner of the 39th Ave/Bell Blvd intersection (where a Citibank branch is now situated).
Yup. Don’t know if Briarwood had its own cinema, but there was also the Main Street Theatre not too far away (and which probably seemed a lot closer back when there was no Van Wyck Expressway standing in the path between Kew Gardens and Kew Gardens Hill)!
I’d be surprised if the opening of the nearby subway station had much of an impact on attendance at the Austin, Pete. I would imagine most of its contingent came from the surrounding neighborhood. I can’t imagine it was a “destination” cinema – particularly with other sub-run houses competing in nearby Forest Hills, Richmond Hill and Kew Gardens Hills.
There was also a small above-ground public pool within walking distance from my families 3-family house on 41st Avenue. It was located in what used to be known as Linden Park just behind the former Loew’s Plaza Theatre. The park is now called “Park of the Americas” – I presume in celebration of the neighborhood’s predominantly South American ethnic makeup. I remember swimming at that pool once and finding that my sneakers had been stolen from their cubby (being an outdoor pool, there were no indoor lockers). I had to make the 6 or 7 block walk home in my bare feet – carefully studying the sidewalk and pavement ahead of me for any broken glass, bottle caps, soda-can rings or any other potential sources of pain and discomfort! I think back on those days – an 8 year old boy allowed to walk himself to the local park – and wonder how many parents would feel safe permitting the same these days! I thought nothing of it back then. My father used to ride the subways on his own at that age back in the ‘40’s as did my grandfather when he was 11 or 12 in the very early '30’s. And the City is quite a safe place nowadays! I think a very definite “suburban” mind-set has ingrained itself in the minds of many urban parents in recent years. Kids are babied and over-supervised as they grow into pre-adolescence to a degree that never existed even just 20 years ago. But I digress. I don’t want to continue to summon Warren to this page for something not directly related to the Valencia. Here endeth my social commentary!
I haven’t seen the film AUGUST RUSH, but I’m curious how the Fillmore East was depicted in the film. I understand that both interiors and exteriors of this theatre were used to stand in for the Fillmore in the flick. I see they dressed up the Olympic’s marquee to look like the Fillmore East, but the facade bears absolutely NO resemblance to the fabled concert hall’s edifice. Did they use CGI to complete the illusion, or did they leave the Olympic’s facade as-is to depict the theatre as a long vacant site?
Chances had to be 100% that the interior was shot either on a soundstage or at some other old theatre – the auditorium of the original Fillmore East was demolished a number of years back. However, the Second Avenue facade – in which the theatre’s tunnel-like entry foyer and upstairs offices were located – survives, sans marquee. A bank branch occupies the former foyer/lobby space. I guess it was easier for the filmmakers to use the Olympic Theatre Concert Hall as a stand-in for the old place since the building still has a marquee that could be fitted with the old Fillmore logo? Otherwise, the facade of the Olympic looks nothing like the old Fillmore/Commodore. I assume CGI completed the illusion.
Here’s an image of the Olympic dressed up as the Fillmore. Fred Beall, you’ll note that the marquee design was physically constructed on location and not via CGI. Here’s a vintage view of the real Fillmore East to compare.
Lost, you beat me to it… and didn’t screw up the html!!!
The Fillmore East is listed on CT under the name [ur/theaters/527/]Loew’s Commodore[/url] – as this was the name under which it last operated as a cinema. The exteriors for AUGUST RUSH utilized a different theatre’s facade located in the Bronx (the name of that location eludes me at the moment). A CT member posted an image of that Bronx theatre dressed up for the movie shoot.
lbnybill… it’s great if you live or work in the City and can get to the RCMH box office to get tickets and avoid tickemaster’s exorbitant fees. But for a lot of folks living out of Manhattan, or more than a quick subway ride away, you’re pretty much stuck with the added expense. Again… I didn’t mean to turn this into a back and forth argument. It is merely a matter of personal taste and opinion as to the show’s merits and value. For me, I was disappointed when I saw the show a few years back. I found it sagged in parts and was overly long for the attention span of an average pre-teen child. I’m almost positive that the pricing scheme was much higher a few years back, but perhaps I’m wrong. I would agree that at $100 a ticket – particularly at $70 on a weekday – the price seems fair enough in comparison to the cost of other live entertainments in NYC. Perhaps the show has been much-improved over the last couple of years and my evaluation might be different if I took in the latest edition. I just haven’t had a desire to check back on it and the kiddies haven’t been exactly begging for a return trip! They’re much more excited about the New Shanghai Circus show at the New Victory Theatre next week (top tickets for members at $35 apiece). Maybe next year!
Assuming the lamp post was not itself relocated… that would place the Yankees Store more or less on the original site of the Harem. Steroids and porn make for a potent combination.
I’d also hasten to add that RCMH is hardly just “making a go of it”… With Cablevision’s deep pockets and with a healthy schedule of year-around bookings, I don’t think the Hall will miss my couple of hundred bucks this year, or next.
Hey oldjoe… Don’t label me a “Grinch” or a hypocrite merely because I balk at paying high prices to see the show. Let me remind you that I already DID pay in excess of $450 to take my family of four to see the show back about 4 or 5 years ago. I also shelled out to attend the Tony Awards in 2001 and had previously taken my kids to see a Barney show at the Hall. I’ve also attended concerts at RCMH and grew up seeing a movie and a show just about every Easter and Christmas in the 1970’s. And I was there in Easter of ‘78 when the death knell was about to be sounded for the theatre, signing petitions outside of the box office with my Mom and Dad to help save the place. I do not need a lecture on how lucky we are to have this Grand Old Lady still with us and looking 75 years YOUNG!
Having said all of that… I think that I have a right to decide whether or not I find this show to be worth the $100 dollars per ticket it would cost to sit in the very best seats. For my particular tastes, it is NOT worth an annual pilgrimage. I saw it once and watched my kids squirm in their seats towards the end and that was enough to hold me over for a quite a while. You make excellent points about the bang for the buck offered by the show in terms of all the scale and scope of the extravaganza – but again, for me, once was enough to hold me for a while.
Al… IBDB.COM (the Internet Broadway DataBase) shows the Lunt-Fontanne as being dark for two periods in 1976 – from the December 8th 1975, until April 25th of ‘76 and then again from June 6th until December 8th of '76. I would think that the theatre would have been busy during at least some of this down time prepping for the next legitimate show to open and I wouldn’t think that there’d have been a whole lot of time for a name change and film bookings. Surely by April 2, the show that opened on April 25th (a play called REX) would have been in rehearsals or in previews.
Thanks, Life. I must share credit with various other CT members because not all of the photos (particularly the “vintage” ones) are my own – I culled them from other collections to flesh out mine.
Has 20th Century restored “Doctor Dolittle” to roadshow length? The DVD and cable versions have all been of the shorter general release version. I’d enjoy seeing that one (a childhood favorite) on the big screen.
Thanks, LTS… I thought I reposted that link here after I reorganized my photobucket albums. Anyway, there are a ton of newer images in the album (and many more theatres) since I first posted the links above.
Thanks, Warren. With your permission, I’d like to include this shot (as well as the ad you posted on 12/12) in my photobucket scrapbook for this theatre – despite the murkiness!
Greenpoint, Warren’s photobucket account has limited space so he often rotates images in and out of there. When an image is removed, the link for it in his post on CT is disabled. Warren – I don’t think any of your links to images that are STILL in your photobucket scrapbook have been changed at all. I think Greenpoint merely stumbled across a link to one of the images you removed and assumed there was a change.
At the risk of betraying my lack of proper education in these matters, I’d like to ask a question pertaining to presentation of various aspect ratios at the Jersey. Do both the scope and flat presentations here utilize the full height of the Jersey’s screen – with masking only necessary to bring in the legs at either side? Or are 2.35:1 films masked at top and bottom as well?
RCDTJ… I realize this, of course. It just seems to me that if a theatre is going to run such a rare and important engagement as THE JAZZ SINGER that they would make sure to have the proper aperture plate on hand. Apart from the recent showings at the Loew’s Jersey, this was the only showing of the film’s restored print in the NYC area. What a shame they couldn’t present it properly.
I saw the show a few years ago with the kids. It just burns me to pay so much for a decent ticket. I really didn’t think it was worth the money. Perhaps for a one-time thing, but certainly not to make a tradition of it. If you combined all the admissions I paid (or my folks paid, rather) for the show PLUS a movie back in the ‘70’s, the aggregate would still not be as much as a single 1st Tier ticket to today’s production!
In 1980, after the Hall had ceased its old show & film format, the top ticket to the Christmas Spectacular was just $11.50 – half the top price for a Broadway ducat at the time. I think the top ticket today is just over $100, after fees and surcharges – about what you’d pay for a typical Broadway show – so at leats it’s not as bad as it was a few years ago when the pricing scheme went almost to $200 for the best seats!
I am generally opposed to lip-syncing at any type of live performance. When I go to a live concert or a Broadway show, I expect to hear the performers singing LIVE not lipsyncing to pre-recorded tape. However, I really don’t consider the Radio City Christmas Show to be a live concert or a Broadway production, so I don’t hold the show to that same standard. I agree with Bob Endres and Vito… There’s just no way you can expect a group of precision dancers to tap and kick around the vast RCMH stage without getting winded. I’ve seen video clips of singers who have (bravely) sang live while performing energetic dance routines (Madonna and J-Lo come to mind) and the vocal performance suffered miserably as a result. In a show as highly polished and as filled with glitzy artifice as the RCMH Xmas spectacular, I think I’d give the producers a pass for utilizing a pre-recorded track. Had it been my professional choice to make, I think I’d have eliminated the need for lip-syncing entirely by simply having the music exist as a soundtrack to the Rockettes' number and would not have attempted to create the illusion that it was the dancers who were singing the lyrics. I hasten to add that my acceptance of the practice is limited to the big dance line. I do not condone the use of lip-syncing to pass for what should be a live non-dancing vocal performance. And I’m not particularly fond of using pre-recorded tap sounds for a live dance routine – unless live micing is truly not a technical feasibility.
At the very least, I would hope that some effort would be made to preserve and restore the handsome Merrick Rd facade. While original interior elements may have long ago vanished and would be unfeasible to restore for a gut and multiplex job, there is no reason why the original character of the Lynbrook’s exterior (which appears to be in very good shape) shouldn’t remain intact. Unless the structure itself is physically unstable, I don’t see why the entire building has to come down, Mike. As long as the foundation and outer walls are stout, the mission could be accomplished with a complete interior gutting down to the bare brick walls. This is how the Fantasy Theatre in Rockville Center was renovated – even though they needlessly mutilated the main exterior facade with the modernization. Better still is the example of the Midway Theatre in Forest Hills, Queens, where they pretty much preserved the integrity of the original facade, entrance foyer and lobby while gutting the auditorium space behind to carve out 9 modern and comfortable stadium style rooms – all within the original footprint of the old theatre.
“Dazzling Crystal Lobby,” eh? No trace of that exists in the church that now occupies the building. I’m sure anything either dazzling or crystal was removed when the place was converted into a bowling alley in the late 1950’s!
The address for this theatre is overdue for a correction to 38-39 Bell Blvd – per discussion in various posts above from September of 2006. The address given above as 39-01 would place the theatre on the wrong corner of the 39th Ave/Bell Blvd intersection (where a Citibank branch is now situated).
Yup. Don’t know if Briarwood had its own cinema, but there was also the Main Street Theatre not too far away (and which probably seemed a lot closer back when there was no Van Wyck Expressway standing in the path between Kew Gardens and Kew Gardens Hill)!
I’d be surprised if the opening of the nearby subway station had much of an impact on attendance at the Austin, Pete. I would imagine most of its contingent came from the surrounding neighborhood. I can’t imagine it was a “destination” cinema – particularly with other sub-run houses competing in nearby Forest Hills, Richmond Hill and Kew Gardens Hills.
There was also a small above-ground public pool within walking distance from my families 3-family house on 41st Avenue. It was located in what used to be known as Linden Park just behind the former Loew’s Plaza Theatre. The park is now called “Park of the Americas” – I presume in celebration of the neighborhood’s predominantly South American ethnic makeup. I remember swimming at that pool once and finding that my sneakers had been stolen from their cubby (being an outdoor pool, there were no indoor lockers). I had to make the 6 or 7 block walk home in my bare feet – carefully studying the sidewalk and pavement ahead of me for any broken glass, bottle caps, soda-can rings or any other potential sources of pain and discomfort! I think back on those days – an 8 year old boy allowed to walk himself to the local park – and wonder how many parents would feel safe permitting the same these days! I thought nothing of it back then. My father used to ride the subways on his own at that age back in the ‘40’s as did my grandfather when he was 11 or 12 in the very early '30’s. And the City is quite a safe place nowadays! I think a very definite “suburban” mind-set has ingrained itself in the minds of many urban parents in recent years. Kids are babied and over-supervised as they grow into pre-adolescence to a degree that never existed even just 20 years ago. But I digress. I don’t want to continue to summon Warren to this page for something not directly related to the Valencia. Here endeth my social commentary!
I moved to Laurelton in ‘74, aged 9. Prior to that, I was an Elmhurst/Corona boy living on 41st Avenue just a couple of doors from Junction Blvd.