Given the wealth of knowledge on this board about the “Wonder Theaters” and the Loew’s organization, this is probably a good place for me to clear up what I’m beginning to think was a misconception on my part about them.
Growing up with the “atmospheric” Valencia (undoubtedly one of the five Loew’s “Wonder Theaters”), I thought that all five of the Loew’s “Wonder Theaters” were “atmospherics” and that, in this region at least, the “Wonder Theaters” (or at least the Loew’s organization) had a, more or less, “franchise” (in an informal way, not legally) on the atmospheric “brand.”
Of course, I realize you can’t copyright something like the “atmospheric” concept. But I thought that in this region the concept might have been so associated with Loew’s that other theater owners would have shied away from using it (thinking that it would “brand” their theater as a Loew’s theater in the public consciousness). And I thought that maybe Loew’s (or as Warren points out, the original sponsor of the five Wonder Theaters, Paramount-Publix) might have seen the success of earlier “atmospherics” elsewhere and decided to import them on a grand scale, and in a big way, to NYC as their way of establishing a NYC presence or “brand.”
Therefore, I thought (apparently, mistakenly) that all of the regions grand “atmospherics” that I knew of were one of the five “Wonder Theaters.” So, in my mind, the five Wonder Theaters would have been the Loew’s Valencia, the Loew’s Triboro (which I now know, while being a Loew’s atmospheric, was built after the original five Wonder Theaters), the Loew’s Paradise, the Loew’s Kings and the Loew’s Jersey City.
Substituting the Loew’s 175th St., in Manhattan, for the Loew’s Triboro, in Queens, I still thought that all these theaters were atmospherics. But, a friend tells me (if I understood him correctly) that in Jersey City, for instance, it was the Stanley, not the Loew’s Jersey, that was the “neighborhood” atmospheric.
So, if all the Wonder Theaters were not atmospherics (and if other non-Loew’s, non-Wonder Theaters were) what WERE the distinguishing qualities that the planners and builders of the five Wonder Theaters saw in their theaters that made them group them together under that one “umbrella” title?. Was it only their common ownership, large size and the fact that they were all built at about the same time — and, thus, labeling them “Wonder” would be a nice publicity gimmick? Or did they actually have some things in common among themselves (aside from common ownership, and closely spaced opening dates) that distinguished them from the other large movie palaces built in the area?
Also, it would be interesting to find out if the other, non-Loew’s atmospherics in the region were built before or after the five Wonder Theaters?
Speaking of Loew’s “Wonder Theaters,” just an amusing thought/daydream:
Too bad the “Valencia” wasn’t built on the Grand Concourse, and that the “Paradise” wasn’t built on Jamaica Ave.
If this had been the case, the grandest theater in the Bronx would be an Hispanic-themed one — and would have even greater appeal as a Bronx “community” theater/town hall for graduations, concerts, etc. (I realize that Bronx residents already love the theater but, still, wouldn’t a theater inspired by the courtyards of Spain be really super?) And the worshippers belonging to the “Tabernacle of Prayer” would be going to religious services at the “Paradise”!
Does anyone know the name of the multiplex that now serves downtown Jamaica? I’d like to find out more information about it, and would like to look it up on this website (if it is listed) on elsewhere on the internet.
Looked at the photos that Bryan posted — very interesting!
I find it interesting to think about what such photos “communicate” about 42nd St. and what people (especially those who’ve never been to 42nd St.) actually think about 42nd St. because of them. Do people looking at such photos think the street is “exciting” or “just ugly” — and if they think it’s “just ugly,” why exactly?
(I happened to go to an interesting symposium, held at Columbia University, a few years ago which discussed the “semiology”(sp?) of Times Sq. and 42nd St. Many of the big players in the revitalization efforts were there at the symposium. However, in the end, these kinds of questions didn’t really get discussed — it wound up being more a debate about whether the revitalization efforts were a good or a bad thing.)
Looking back to my first recollections of 42nd St. from the late 1950s, to me the north side of 42nd St. had a startling, pleasantly bizarre look — it was hard to figure out how they could actually fit so many (regular-sized) theaters so close together. (Of course, it’s easy once you realize that half of the auditoriums are really on 43rd St.) But as a kid, the image of all those theaters (when theaters were “theaters!”), sitting cheek by jowl to each other, was almost as surreal as one of those puzzling drawings by M.C. Escher.
Plus, all the zipper lights around those closely spaced marquees made the street also seem still pretty exciting and glamorous. And while the north side of the street had obviously seen better days, I think its positive qualities outweighed the negative ones. As a result, it seemed to me to be something that was unusual â€" bizarre â€" but in a mostly positive way.
However, to me the south side of 42nd was depressing and ugly, and I think it was largely because of the blank facade of the Hubert’s Museum, the blank facade of the Anco theater and the big parking lot at the end of the block. (Which, now that I think about it, had an old bank on it until the late-1960s(?) or so â€" I think it can be seen in the photo on the New Amsterdam site. While the bank may have been a beautiful old classical one, I think it was also probably pretty dirty and poorly maintained — furthering the “depressing” quality of the street.) Plus the longstanding messages on those painted signs (e.g., “Save Free TV!”) probably also added to its drab, depressing quality.
As a young teenager in the early 1960s, I don’t think I saw 42nd St. as dangerous so much (although even then it probably did have a more modest version of its later reputation for danger) as much as cheap (e.g., Nedick’s stands) and run down (e.g., cheap, make shift alterations to buildings that were poorly maintained). I think my friends and I also though of it as somewhat “naughty,” although in actuality it was probably pretty restrained as compared to what is seen on streets all across America these days.
It would be interesting to look, as you are trying to do, at what actually played at the theaters on 42nd St. I suspect that it was a lot tamer (at least compared to later standards), for a lot longer, than what most people imagine.
Actually, when I was a young teenager in the early 1960s, I traveled in from Queens once to meet an aunt from New Jersey at the Port Authority Terminal and she took me one Saturday or Sunday afternoon to a family movie, “40 Pounds of Trouble,” at one of the theaters on the north side of the street. (The Selwyn?) I remember telling a friend of mine from junior high about this, and we were both somewhat scandalized (given the lower crime rates and tamer standards of that day) that my aunt would do this.
What added even more shock value to the story was that there was, indeed, an “incident” in the theater when I was there. Didn’t see the particulars (my aunt told me to stay in my seat, not that I would have had the nerve to take a closer look anyway), but we were sitting in the front of the balcony and we heard some rustling and then some running and someone hitting the floor. (My guess, these days, is that maybe someone was originally being pickpocketed and the victim realized it and chased him and knocked him down to the floor?)
This morning I was looking through a great book, “East Side, West Side” by Lawrence S. Riter (1998), about the old time sporting scene in New York City, and I saw a photo on page 3 of the south side of 42nd in the 1960s. (This chapter is about Hubert’s Museum [shown in the photo] where two great sporting figures, Grover Alexander and Jack Johnson, made a living after their sporting days were over.)
The photo is credited to UPI / Corbis – Bettman and seems kind of commonplace. (I think I’ve seen it elsewhere.) On the marquee of the Harris: “Murderer’s Row,” Ann Margaret, Dean Martin & “Desperado Trail.” On the Marquee of the Liberty: “Great Spy Mission,” George Peppard, Sophia Loren. On the marquee of the Empire: “The Professionals,” Burt Lancaster, and (partially obscured) “ … to Kill,” … & Lee Marvin. (Don’t remember if anything could be seen on the marquee of the Anco.)
A 1960s Ford Fairlane[?] is prominently seen in the foreground.
Regarding theater curtains: I remember wondering as a VERY YOUNG kid, whether the image that was seen when a movie theater’s curtains opened or closed was an image projected upon a solid curtain or whether it was an image that shone through a thin curtain (like the sun shining through home window curtains). Of course as an older kid I realized that the image was being projected upon an opaque curtain, but when I first went to the movies as a four(?)-year old I wasn’t sure.
As a pre-schooler, theatre curtains were one of the “mysteries of life” — like figuring out whether the light inside the refrigerator was always lit, even when the door was closed, or whether it was built in some way so that it lit up as soon as one started to open the door.
By the way, one scene from “Raging Bull” was shot just about down the block from the current Film Forum (that was, of course, 15[?] years or so before the Film Forum moved to its current location). The scene where Jake Lamotta first spots his future wife was filmed at the Carmine St. pool on W. Houston St. The dressing room vans (with one that was set-up to be a barber shop — to give all the 1970s[?] long-haired guys1940s[?] haircuts) were parked on St. Luke’s place. Antique cars were parked on W. Houston. And, if I remember correctly, the modern-day street lamps on W. Houston were dressed up with placards making them look like old-fashioned street lamps.
I’m familiar with some of these theaters (at least the names, since many are mentioned in the Henderson book), but am not sure about some of the others (especially with the way the names of theaters are changed so often).
Elysee: This theater sounds familiar, I even think I remember hearing “Live from the Elysee Theater” — but I can’t place it. I wonder if this was the theater on W. 58th that used to be used for Dick Clark’s “Pyramid” game show (which I never saw)?
Never heard of a few of the CBS theaters: Lincoln Sq., Monroe, Peace, Town.
A particularly exciting excursion into “the city” that I remember from my childhood was being driven by the Colonial when they were doing the “Price is Right” from there. I remember you could see a house trailer (one of the prizes) parked out front. And it seemed so amazing to me that this was the outside of the same place that I could see on my TV in Astoria!
I wonder if there is a particularly good source for this kind of info, if one wanted to look up what shows, in particular, were done from what theaters? Most of the things I’ve seen are written by authors who are not particularly interested in this info.
I think it’s really amazing to think of all the stuff that was happening in (mostly) mid-Manhattan in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, etc. The regular movie theaters, the first run movie theaters, the movie “palaces” with live shows (including famous singers, comedians and big bands), the Broadway shows, the nightclubs and hotel ballrooms and dance halls, Madison Sq. Garden, the recording studios A N D the nationally broadcast live radio and TV shows emanating from Manhattan theaters and studios (including one of the first big hit shows on radio — with “Roxy” Rothapfel — emanating from the Capitol Theater)! (The radio show with Roxy is described in Hall’s, “Best Remaining Seats.”)
I’m thinking that at least some of the TV studios “in” the Rialto, (that were referred to in previous posts), were in the space that looks to me like it was once a ballroom. This ballroom, and other smaller associated office spaces, appeared to me to wrap around the actual lobby and auditorium space of the Railto — in a way similar to the auxilliary spaces that a lot of other Broadway theaters seem to have.
Some other easily seen examples in the theater district of such auxilliary spaces being “part” of a theater are the Belasco, the Shubert and St. James. (On a walking tour of the theaters on 42nd St. that I took in the 1970s, we visited such spaces in, what I believe was, the Lyric Theater.) A less visible — but more amazing example — are the auxilliary spaces associated with Town Hall on 43rd St. I went to a conference in a private club (which I think use to be the NYU’s version of the Harvard Club or Princeton Club) that was built in and around the lobby and auditorium spaces of Town Hall. It was amazing. It was like being in what I imagine a country club to be (with large meeting rooms, a ballroom, etc.)
Looking at the Rialto from diagonally across 42nd St./Seventh Ave., on the ground floor you would see the marquee / entrance to the Rialto on the right, and a row of stores going around the corner. On top of that, you would see a row of “French door” type windows that had been painted in. That’s where, I’m guessing, at least some of the TV studios were.
As far as I can recall, though, the Rialto did not have a “conventional” office building associated with it (the way, for instance, both the New Amsterdam and the Palace had small office buildings built over their lobbies).
In her book, Mary Henderson, mentions a good number of Manhattan theaters that once served as radio or TV playhouses (and movie houses, too). Unfortunately, since her focus is on live theater, her history of what actual radio / TV shows were done (or what movies played) in what theaters is very skimpy. (For instance, I don’t believe she mentions — as has been mentioned elsewhere on this site — that “Gigi” had its premiere NY engagement at the Royale, or that “La Dolce Vita” played the Henry Miller.)
While I know that not ALL of the theaters that were TV studios were in the Times Sq. area, I can only think of a handful that weren’t. For instance, I think there was a movie theater on upper Broadway (in the 80s?) that was used as a TV studio (Sesame St.?). Then there was that “Dick Cavett” theater all the way over on 10th(?) Ave. And the Colonial (Broadway in the 60s), of course, is another. But all the others, I’m aware of are “more or less” in the theater district (e.g., 58th St. or lower).
Are there any others, in particular, that I can add to my list?
(I’m guessing that most of these movie / radio / TV theaters would be in the Times Sq. area, because by the time radio / TV came along, most other “surplus” theaters outside the area had already been demolished. Plus, with such a surplus of theaters available for radio / TV in the highly accessible Times Sq. area, why settle for a theater somewhere else?)
Thanks Bryan for the wonderful little history of this “mystery” theater. I use to go to the theater district a lot in the early 1960s (and vaguely remember it as a theater with Japanese films), but I could never quite figure this theater out. I’ve seen it mentioned in books about the history of theaters (like Mary Henderson’s) but the theater they described didn’t seem to be the same theater that I remember, which appeared from the outside (never went inside) to be wierdly tiny for a theater in the Times Sq. area. (Actually, in some ways it reminded me of the Guild in Rockefeller Center, another small theater that seemed “mysterious” to me.)
The fact that the Astor’s remodeling cut into the original auditorium explains a lot. I think they also remodeled the outside a bit, too (and painted the whole front white?). And, if I remember correctly, one of the wierd things about it was that its facade didn’t even look like a theater facade.
By the way, I think sometime during the early 1960s, it was used for a bit as some kind of TV facility — to preview video tapes (?) of new TV shows? If I remember correctly, there used to be these guys (college students?) who would be handing out these free tickets for TV shows, and some of them would be for this theater. (I think they wouldn’t give one to me or my friends because you had to be accompanied by someone over 18.)
Also, I believe one of the live shows to appear there was a show called “Mummenschanz” (which sounds German, but I asked a German speaking friend about it, and he said the name didn’t mean anything to him). I believe “Mummenschanz” was a dance/revue without words, and the dancers/actors would wear black tights with large, crazy, puppet-like masks and contort themselves into unusual shapes.
P.S. — By the way, I believe Joe Franklin did his “Memory Lane” TV show from studios in this building sometime during the 1980s.
For those of you unfamiliar with this show, it was a classic, cult, wonderful/awful TV show, that was shown in NYC beginning in the 1950s(?). Joe Franklin, whom I thought of as kind of like a Dick Clark of sorts (doing the same thing forever and never aging) for New Yorkers of my parents' and grandparents' generation, did a kind of daytime talk show (a la the Tonight Show) that very often had obscure vaudevillians, silent movie stars, etc. as guests. If I remember correctly, Woody Allen incorporated the show into the plot of Broadway Danny Rose.
It appears that the second Rialto originally had some kind of nightlub or dance hall on its second floor (which was probably transformed into the TV studios). If you looked at the building closely, it had these wonderful large french door type windows, which give off this impression anyway. The general “look” of these windows have been incorporated, at a much larger scale, into the facade of one of the new buildings further west along 42nd St.
Also the second Rialto appears to have originally had a partially blue mirrored glass exterior which had been painted over in its later years. In addition, there was some sort of art deco pylon that had a billboard wrapped around it.
I’d love to see a picture of the second Rialto as a new structure. It must have been SOME building!
tvhistory: I’m interested in finding out more about the TV/radio history of some of the movie/“legit” theaters in New York (especially during the “golden ages” of radio/TV, like the Roxy Center Theatre being used for, I believe, the Milton Berle show), so I found your info about the Rialto fascinating. Do you have any recommendations about how I could find out more (any books, etc.)? Thanks in advance for any further info you have! (I know some day I will have to make my way over to the Museum of Broadcasting and the Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.)
Some interesting info along these lines that I’ve already gotten from the Cinema Treasures site:
Roxy Center — Milton Berle
Ziegfeld — Perry Como
From elsewhere and general knowledge:
Colonial — The Price is Right
Hudson — The (Steve Allen) Tonight Show
And non-movie theaters used for TV:
(forgot original name) — Ed Sullivan Show
(Gallo Opera House) — What’s My Line?; To Tell the Truth
I’m not sure about this, but I think this was an off-Broadway playhouse up until the late 1960s. I think I saw the Claude Van Italie play, “America Hurrah!” here in 1968 or so.
P.S. — Some relatively minor quibbles about the description posted at the top of this listing. I would consider the location of this theater to be the “East Village” or the “Lower East Side” — not Greenwich Village. (A personal note: perhaps one reason I didn’t go to this theater more often — viewing issues aside — was that it always seemed like a really long haul from where I lived in Greenwich Village.)
I wouldn’t consider it to be one of the city’s oldest revival houses. In fact, I think of it as one of the “last” of the City’s revival houses. I think Mr. Otway started in up in the early or mid-1970s. At that time there were plenty of (much?) older revival houses (Thalia, Elgin [haven’t noticed a listing for it here yet], New Yorker[?], Regency [?], — even one in Washington Heights!) that eventually closed, I believe, before Theatre 80 St. Marks. Don’t really think any appreciable percentage of the true “revival” theaters opened after Theatre 80 did. (Although places like Film Forum and the Angelika Center, and others, may also show / have shown revival type films as part of their programming.)
Although what follows is not about really about Theatre 80 St. Marks, and I hate to clutter up it’s page with questions about other cinemas, I’m not sure where else to put these comments/questions.
Is there a page on this site where one can ask about cinemas that don’t already have a page (or cinemas that one might have a hard time remembering the proper name of)?
Reading about Theatre 80 St. Marks makes me think of a few other Manhattan cinemas for which I can’t find pages and/or don’t know the proper names for:
Thousand Eyes Cinema (W. 43rd? St., between Ninth and Tenth Ave.) — A magical experience: went there in the early 70s on a snowy Christmas eve. It was located in a large “brownstone” (rowhouse) and had, I believe more than one screening room. All the screening rooms together had a seating capacity of 500 — hence the name Thousand Eyes Cinema.
It was a very “artsy” place with really obscure cinema treasures that were really beyond me and my friends.
The evening we went, my two friends and I were almost the only people there. Saw a double bill of Douglas(?) Sirk, light drawing-room type comedies. Don’t recall seeing his films before. He seemed to specialize in very WEIRD set decoration — his films LOOKED like they were taking place on stage sets on a sound stage (which of course they were).
The Heights (?) (In Washington Heights near the GW Bridge) — After being a very, very early (1913?) neighborhood cinema, so it seems to me, it became an art / revival house (before becoming a porno theater). During it’s art house/revival phase, I think they actually had printed flyers that listed the films that were being shown for the next few months, something I associated with the “downtown” revival houses like the New Yorker (?) and the Thalia.
The Elgin (Eighth Ave. in the high teens, now the Joyce Dance Theater). Surprised that, the last time I looked, I don’t recall seeing a listing for it here. It seemed to me to be a “biggie” on the revival house scene in the early 1970s. Great, funky lounge — with barber chairs, etc. — in the downstairs lounge. (Saw the classic revival house double bill, Citizen Kane and the Lady Vanishes, here.)
The Charles (Ave. B) — I’m not sure that this was a true revial house, although it might have been. It was a good place to catch up with non-current movies at a cheap price and on a double bill.
The theater on Second Ave., just north of Eighth St. I saw “Turning Point” and “All That Jazz” here on a double bill. May also have seen “Sleuth” here months, or years, after its initial run.
As much as I liked the programming and the idea of the theater, I have to agree that Theatre 80 St. Marks is probably the very worst movie theater I’ve ever been to — and not only because it seems to me that rear projection is a very bad way to experience a movie. (“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was terrible — the image seemed all washed out.)
The other problem with Theatre 80 St. Marks in my opinion is that the “auditorium” itself (which appears to be in a very long, narrow “brownstone” or rowhouse) has a very unorthodox, uncomfortable set-up. Rather than using the “logical” seating arrangement for such a space (lots of short rows facing towards the rear of the house), they decided to use a very unconventional one (a few very long rows that face the side of the house) apparently in order to allow them to place the rear projection system in the adjoining rowhouse to the east.
In addition the few, very long rows of seats were steeply banked stadium style, but very close to the screen.
The result was that in the whole theater, there were only maybe four seats where you weren’t seeing a very washed out image on the screen from some very weird angle.
Plus, I think the few times I was there (in the mid-1970s) some of the best positioned seats were broken.
All that negative stuff being said, I was happy to see the theater succeed as long as it did. It was a really charming idea — in the abstract!
(I loved the idea of a miniscule Grauman’s Chinese Theater forecourt in front of the theater. By the way, I think at one point Theatre 80 St. Marks got into trouble with the City because the concrete blocks with the footprints, etc. on them were considered to be a pedestrian hazard.)
With all these prices, along with their helpful dates, being listed, I noticed something interesting.
In 1970 a movie cost about $1.75 (that’s my guess); at $2.00, Radio City Music Hall probably cost a bit more than a movie; a chow mein dinner cost about $2.50; and a top Broadway ticket was $15.00 for a Saturday night. So a $2.00 ticket to Radio City Music Hall was “positioned” closer to a movie ($1.75[?]) than to the top price of a Broadway show on Saturday night ($15.00).
If you multiply all these prices by a factor of six you, get the following prices, adjusted for inflation: a movie costs $10.50, an “old-time” Radio City Music Hall ticket should cost $12.00, a chow mein dinner costs $15.00, and top price of a Broadway show on Saturday night is $90.00. While this is off a bit, it is roughly true for a movie and a Broadway show (don’t know about the chow mein dinner). But, obviously, the management of Radio City Music Hall has “repositioned” a show at Radio City Music Hall to be seen more like a $100 Broadway show (like the “Lion King” or “Beauty and the Beast”) and less like a trip to the movies ($10.50).
While middle-class movie goers were possibly more polite in 1916 (“Ladies, please remove your hats.”) than they were in the 1950s (although this is debatable), were they more polite than 1916 theatergoers attending plays on Broadway in theaters that didn’t have these apparently “new fangled” cut outs over the rear orchestra seats?
I would doubt it, especially since in those days the early movies seem to have attracted a more “lower class” type clientele.
Hall says that in 1913, New York [5 boroughs?] has “986 movie houses — of all kinds …” (pg. 39) “Most of them [neighborhood movie theaters] were throwbacks to the nickelodeons of earlier days, and while they were profitable, audiences were made up mostly of kids and people who wanted to kill an hour with anickel … and nobody took them very seriously.” (pg. 31)
Hall also says that at the Regent (opened 1913), “ … there was no need … for those functinaries familiar to nickelodeon audiences who went up and down the aisles squirting noisome helio-trope-avec-creosote into the air from spray guns.” [i’m guessing this is because in those days the audience could smell bad?]
By the way, here’s a very rough chronology from the Hall book of some of Thomas Lamb’s early theaters:
In 1909, when Thomas Lamb was 22, he designed his first theater, The City Theater. In (approx.) 1913 he designed the Regent Theatre. Then came the Strand (1914), and the Rialto (1916) [which has a half oval cut-out over the rear orchestra seats, that is shown on pg. 46]. The Rivoli opened in 1917.
The movie theaters with the cut outs and the small lobbies that we are talking about are very, very early movie theaters (at least as early as 1913, 1916) — not the kind of movie theaters that we think of when we think “movie theater” (late 1920s, 1930s).
For instance, the one that I went to in Washington Heights in the late 1960s (that I believe was an even earlier version of the original Rialto, pictured in the Ben Hall book, and its sister, the Rivoli), was well maintained but a VERY primitive theater. Perhaps, it’s hard to describe, but the lobby area was virtually non-existent. You almost just walked right into the theater from the street, and I believe there might have been a curtain across the doorway to keep out the light and sound, and a glass screen (like that pictured in the Hall book) to separate the orchestra seats from what there was of a “foyer.”
While lobbies for “legit” Broadway theaters have traditionally been small, when you look at the oldest extant Broadway theaters (like the Lyceum, the Hudson and New Amsterdam, all from 1903 — ten years before these early movie theaters) you see that the lobbies and public areas may be small by today’s standards, but they are not as small, I believe, as these early cinemas by any means.
Also, while watching a silent may involve more concentration (for instance, because you can’t turn your head away because you might miss a title card), maybe people talking in the lobby areas around the cut out, etc. 1) didn’t interfere with this kind of concentration or 2) were still beneath the loud sound of the music accompanying the movie. So I’m thinking that maybe this is why the cut outs might not have been thought of as such a problem.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, I thought the price of a “regular” ticket for a movie was $1.00 (50 cents for a child’s ticket)? So although those great standee prices ($1.50, $2.00) were cheaper than a real seat, they would still seem to be not quite the same price as a movie. And using the “rule of thumb” index for inflation (a movie today is approx. 10x the price of a $1.00 movie in the early 1960s), a $1.00 movie costs $10.00 today (which it more or less does), so $1.50 or $2.00 standing room would $15.00 or $20.00 today (don’t know if that is the case).
I also liked to compare my great theater bargains to the price of a movie also. Although I wasn’t aware of the Playbill program (too young then anyway), my junior high (I think?) had some kind of program in the early 1960s that allowed students to see a Broadway show for, I believe, a dollar — which happened to be (I think) the price of an adult ticket to a movie! Got to see “Carnival” (rear orchestra), “A Man for All Seasons” (rear orchestra), “Mary, Mary” (balcony or second balcony) this way.
Don’t know if all NYC public schools had this, or if my school was lucky. Also wonder if the fact that a fellow student’s father was the conductor for “The Sound of Music” had anything to do with it. (Like maybe he alerted the school authorities at my school to this program?)
I wonder if the Roxy ever had movies that allowed schools to use a trip to the Roxy as a class trip. (I know in junior high (?) our school had a class trip to see “El Cid” — an historical drama about the unification of Spain? — at either the Capitol or the Warner, I believe.) A trip to the Roxy could have been a TRULY educational experience (with talks about silent films and the impact of the “talkies,” movie “palaces” for people who weren’t rich, etc.).
Also saw many shows with standing room. Most memorable standing room experience?: “Camelot” (second to last performance) and “How to Succeed” (early in its run, when it was still a “hot” ticket).
Over the years, got a few front row center seats with TKTS or twofers too. Best twofer deal?: $1.00(?) to see Barbra Streisand in “I Can Get It For You Wholesale” (twofers, last row of the second balcony on a Saturday matinee).
“Ever afterward (or at least until the Roxy closed in ‘61), the name of Rothafel’s World Famous Theater provided a consoling by-word for a band of foot-weary standees in Gotham, eventually making its way into pages of fiction.”
This sounds interesting, please explain. Are you saying that one of the friends included this experience in a novel he/she wrote? Or do you mean something more prosaic?
The conversation about cut-outs near the rear orchestra seats of some early movie theaters, and the problems such cut-outs create, along with the fact that many of these theaters seem to have had especially small and unprotected lobbies, makes me wonder about the reasons for such design decisions in the first place.
What makes it especially interesting to me is the “fact” that I don’t believe “regular” theaters (“legit,” “opera,” etc.) built during this time, or before it, had such design features (at least to the same degree). So I wonder if the builders of these early movie theaters actually saw such new features as “improvements” over what was already being done in “regular” theater design or, at the very least, as innovations that would not pose the same problems in the new movie theaters that they would have posed in existing “regular” theaters?
A number of things come to mind as possible explanations that make these new architectural features more sensible:
1) Movies had just left the penny arcade. Movie theaters weren’t yet seen as worth the investment in real estate that would have allowed them to accommodate large “buffer” lobbies? Things like ceiling cut outs seemed like a fun way of making public spaces seem “grand”?
2) Less noise. People were more polite and street noises had less “punch,” making these innovations seem less problematic than they would be in later years? Or, looking at it the other way around, maybe a general public that was accustomed to frequenting music halls and beer gardens were less bothered by ambient noises? Kind of the way some audiences today ENJOY people talking — and shouting out — during a performance. (I remember going to see “Dream Girls” and getting the impression that both the audience And the performers desired the audience to shout out comments during certain songs. That was part of what this theater going experience was ABOUT.)
3) These early movie theaters played SILENT movies (although accompanied by some kind of live music). In silent movies, viewers are “listening” to the film in only a very general way; more important is the ability to “see” what is happening on screen — the moving visuals and the title cards that explain the dialogue and make the plot more comprehensible. In other words, unlike movie goers in the sound era, maybe movie goers in the silent era might have been less bothered by ambient sound — they weren’t straining to concentrate and hear dialogue explaining what was happening on the screen?
While I agree that the picture was not the second item at RCMN — that, for most of the year at least, people usually went to RCMH depending on what movie was being shown, and not depending upon what was in the stage show (the true details of which they probably didn’t know about most of the time anyway) — I think it’s important to remember that the Rodgers and Hart song is an affectionate send-up with a lot of teasing “zingers” along the lines of a Friar’s Club Roast. He’s joking about some of the “awful” things that make RCMH so “wonderful” (the performers twirling on their digits with the balconies so high that they look like midgets, etc.)!
In a sense, Hart even contradicts himself, saying that while the show is “worth the dough” one shouldn’t even bother looking at the ads — since the show is the same every time anyway. This would hardly be true if “the picture is a second item.”
Regarding the Roxy Music Hall Scene in “I Married an Angel.” As I understand it (from either Richard Rodgers' or Joshua Logan’s autobiography?), Hart originally got some flack for suggesting this scene, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with the storyline of “I Married an Angel” — which takes place in Hungary(?)!
But Hart said it would be a fun, light-hearted, satirical diversion, and he was right — people did enjoy it.
(Not only does it have a lot of great lines, the Rodgers' melody is a lot of fun too.)
By the way, how many other movie theaters/palaces have songs about them?
Re: Stadium seating vs. the sunken, gradual rake of RCMH
One of the interesting benefits of a stadium seating design, at least as shown by the current Ziegfeld (movie theater), the Majestic, the Richard Rodgers and the Virginia (“legit” theaters), is that a very steep rake allows a theater’s builder to save space and use his/her land more efficiently by tucking the theater’s lobby beneath the rear of the theater’s orchestra level (or its equivalent) seats. (The orchestra level then rakes downward, so that the front rows of the orchestra level are at or near ground level.)
In the case of at least two of these “legit” theaters (and perhaps all three), one actually first steps DOWN into the main lobby, before one must ascend a full flight of stairs again just to access the orchestra-level seating! And then, remember, all the “legit” theaters with stadium seating have balcony levels too, which involve even more stairs. Speak of being inconvenient! (And, as far as I know, none of the OLDER [pre-1960s] Broadway theaters [or concert halls, opera houses, etc.] — even the more conventional ones — had passenger elevators or escalators for ticket holders to use! Speak of being inconvenient for everyone — let alone inaccessible and inhospitable to the handicapped!)
So I think one reason this design didn’t catch on more in NYC, even in the pre-accessibility for the handicapped era, was because it did involve the introduction of a lot of stairs at a time when escalators (also, not seen as very classy) and elevators (in those days, with attendants!) were probably seen as being unnecessarily expensive. (As compared to the newer Broadway theaters and, I believe, the current Ziegfeld, which depend on escalators to get almost all patrons into the theater.) But I suppose, for certain theaters in the “old” days, where they really wanted to put a relatively big theater on a very small site, such a design probably was the only economically viable way to go.
In Radio City Music Hall, on the other hand, because of its enormous seating capacity (especially on the orchestra-level), the importance of its grand foyer to its overall presentation, the economic feasibility of elevators for grand movie palaces and the relative availability of a large parcel of land, a sunken and more modestly raked orchestra level was, quite understandably, a better way to go.
Re: photos of the interior of RCMH
The photos that I’m referring to, do not just show stage show, but also include a good deal of the “telescoping” interior of the auditorium PLUS the stage show. While these photos may have changed weekly, I’m guessing that this wasn’t the case, as it was probably too involved to do every week. So I’m guessing that the “Camera Highlights” that BoxOfficeBill refers to was probably more of a photograph of what was happening on the stage and didn’t include the auditorium with hundreds (thousands) of people filling the orchestra-level seats.
When I say I wished they had more photos of the interior of the auditorium, I am talking about a “greedy” little kid. (Same holds true for the wish for more movie stills, in general.) I’m just explaining why I think I so closely poured over the few photos that were available.
Of course, there is very little economic reason for the owners of the RCMH to provide more than just one stock shot of the interior (to acquaint those, who are otherwise unfamiliar with the theater, with its spectacular auditorium). For most potential customers, however, this one stock shot was probably sufficient to make them interested — if they had any interest in the first place — in seeing the theater.
It seems to me that in her book Krinksy (pg. 180) is implying that this photo, and others like it, are the work of the Radio City Music Hall publicity department — meant to show off the theater rather than the stage show. In any case, as far as I know, almost all the shows produced at RCMH were done by RCMH itself, anyway. (The one exception that I can think of is I believe Disney was invited one time to put on a stage show to accompany one of his own films.) So I don’t think the photo was altered to highlight the glories of a particular production. (Plus even with the enlargement, the photo doesn’t really tell you much about what is happening on stage anyway.)
Although it is true that enterprises like RCMH are often run by MBA types rather than theater people, etc., I think this is very much more of a current day phenomenon — something that wasn’t true as much when Roxy “built” the theater, and probably wasn’t all that true even when this photo was re-touched either. Reading various things about the history of RCMH, the history of the movies (with a lot of garment entrepreneurs become movie titans) and the history of business in general (prior to the 1960s), a surprising number of “big-time” businesses in the “old” days seem to be entrepreneurial operations (with non-college graduates running the show) or even “Mom and Pop” family operations.
Although RCMH management may, indeed, have been making the right decision regarding enlarging the Rockettes and the stage shows in these photos (my feelings could be the exception), it seems to me that they were being misguided and somewhat overly sensitive. To the limited extent that the photo makes any difference in the first place, I think they would probably be attracting more potential customers than they would lose.
Aside from being “fake” and “inauthentic” such photos seems to rob RCMH of some of its wonderful grandeur. How disappointing that, in the photo the world’s largest stage, it is barely big enough to fit all 36 Rockettes! (It looks like you can squeeze in an additional two Rockettes on stage right and one more on stage left — but that’s it.) It would be like having an interior shot of the RCMH auditorium where they take out some of the seats and enlarge the rest of them to fill out the space!
Also, it seems to me that the kind of stage shows they had — especially the ones that were the most effective — did not depend upon theatergoers seeing the faces of the performers up close. Now my memories of these stage shows are a bit fuzzy (it was a long time ago and I was just a kid for most of them), but it seems to me that the actual appeal of the shows was in their overscaled pageantry — something that is enhanced not diminished in a photo of a gigantic stage brimming over with spectacular scenery and dozens upon dozens of costumed performers.
Actually, as much as I know I enjoyed the stage shows at RCMH, I remember only one specific scene from, maybe, the five to ten shows I saw at RCMH: the Rockettes falling down like dominos during their “March of the Toy Soldiers” routine. (As far as I know, I never got to see gems such as the “Underwater Ballet” mentioned in previous posts.) So I don’t think of these shows as conventional shows — something to be seen, heard and understood — but rather as shows intended to entertain through spectacle.
I hope those older than myself will correct me if I’m wrong. But aside from the Rockettes and some other clever and truly theatrical spectacles, it seems to me that the live shows at RCMH were bright, cheery, melodic and insipid (genuine) entertainments. While the shows were genuinely entertaining in the 1950s and 1960s, they were an entertainment world equivalent of 1950s and 1960s “comfort food”! (As was much of show business in the 1950s?!) The shows at RCMH were kind of a fancifully done up, spectacularly presented, feast of “Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup,” “Wonder Bread,” “Peter Pan Peanut Butter,” “Welch’s Grape Juice” and “Hostess Twinkies” all presented in an unparalleled environment! I don’t think such entertainment, “suffers” from being seen on a giant, far away stage, but actually is enhanced by the theaters vast spaces, its echoy sound, its warm glow, the boomy rumbling organ, the mass of fellow spectators, and the giant, far away stage with tons of scenery and a virtual small town of costumed performers.
By the way, I suspect that this was true of the Music Hall in the 1930s as well as the 1950s. As mentioned previously there is a wonderful 1938 Rodgers and Hart song, “At the Roxy Music Hall” which is an affectionate send-up of Radio City Music Hall. The Lorenz Hart lyrics say that you don’t have to read the ads to decide whether or not to go to the Roxy Music Hall:
“It’s always worth the dough.
Any week you go,
It’s the same old show!”
This lyric can be heard by the same performer who introduced it on Broadway on track 19 of the “Ultimate Rodgers & Hart, Vol. II” which is produced by the Pearl division of Pavilion Records Ltd. in England. (I got it at a local chain store.) But I noticed in the published version (from the “Complete Lyrics of Lorenz Hart” by Hart and Kimball, Knopf, 1986) that there is even more that isn’t on the CD.
“The ballet that you saw is called "Othello”,
though it might as well have been some other fellow.
The stuff’s been here so long it’s good and mellow."
Hart says that on the stage of RCMH you can see the Grand Canal and the Bridge of Sighs of Venice — “They do Venice swell, and without the smell.”
He also says:
“Where the spectacle goes on ad infinitum, and the picture is a second item.”
Box Office Bill: Apparently the Hagstrom map you refer to is a full scale version of the one that I have — I think mine must be an “excerpt” from this larger one. It is included in a terrific little picture guidebook to New York City, published by Hagstrom in the very early 1960s. The guidebook is about 5 inches wide, 9 inches long and bound with wires (kind of like a spiral notebook).
It also includes some nice photos of the Times Sq. area at night, including one of a crowd scene outside the Loew’s State (which looks like the premiere of Ben-Hur); one of Times Sq. looking south, which shows the marquee of the Astor Theater (Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Felicia Farr in “3rd(?) to Yuma” — the Criterion marquee is off in the distance); and one that includes the vertical Loew’s State sign up the side of the adjacent skyscraper.
This version of the map only goes from the north side of 41st St. to the south side of 51st (so, disappointingly, no Warner Hollywood/Mark Hellinger) and goes from a little west of Eighth Ave. to a little west of Sixth Ave.
I didn’t notice the Loew’s State goof until after I submitted my post, and had never been in the De Mille, so wasn’t sure how accurate that one was.
However, there are a number of cutouts that are so “improbable” that I’m assuming that they must be “real” — would cartographers go out of their way to make such weird mistakes? For instance, I’m assuming that the Victoria cut-out is pretty accurate. The main body of the theater was indeed located on 46th St. (a great photo of it is included in the Mary Henderson book on Broadway Theaters), and it did have a tunnel lobby to Broadway. The only weird thing about the cut-out is that it shows that parts of the Astor Theater (to the south) and the Victoria Theater (to the north) seem to be interleafed. This is such a “weird” mistake, I’m thinking there must be something to it — it’s so much easier to just draw a straight line!
Another example is the cutout for the Lyceum, which seems to show a tunnel loading dock (instead of the usual tunnel lobby) that goes from the stage, located in the middle of the block, all the way to 46th St.
Also enjoy the fact that they show various hotel nightclubs, restaurants (Jack Dempsy’s, Toffenetti’s, Brass Rail), retail stores (Bond’s, Woolworth’s) and garages (some of which were the location of demolished theaters). I wonder if the nightclubs are accurately placed within the hotels? I think the Green Room in the Edison is. (I believe it later became an off-Broadway theater that housed the long-running “Oh, Calcutta.”)
I’m surprised that you’re surprised that Florsheim locations are shown. I thought it was an upscale shoe chain that would belong with the other kinds of stores shown on the map: Weber & Heilbroner, I. Miller.
What’s particularly great about the fact that they show all this is that it very often shows, at least by the process of elimination, the actual footprint of a theater “camouflaged” by adjacent office buildings, etc.
Re: rear wall of Rivoli
What I find interesting about the Seventh Ave. wall of the Rivoli is how plain and “ugly” it was (although the giant billboard helped a great deal) compared to the wonderfully elaborate Broadway facade of the building. This “schizophrenia” is not uncommon among builders (at least in New York), and I understand the economic reasons behind it — but I do find it “funny” and interesting when it happens nevertheless. It’s kind of like wearing clothes that are beautiful and spotlessly clean in the front, but ugly, worn and dirty when seen from the back!
Some of the 42nd St. theaters do the same thing (e.g., the New Amsterdam), while others go all out with their secondary facade (the Lyric).
Both the Roxy and Radio City Music Hall have rear facades that are consistent with their main facade — although the Roxy did have an extra lot line wall that they left “undesigned.”
I have a circa 1960 Hagstom’s map of the Theatre District that shows the approximate footprints of the various theaters in the Times Sq. area. While the map is not STRICTLY to scale (the roadbeds of the street, for instance, are larger than they should be), the “land” portion of the map does seem to be pretty accurate for the most part.
(By the way, what’s particularly great about this map is that it clearly shows how theater lobbies in the area were often appendages to the main body of an auditorium. So, for instance, from the map one gets a really clear idea of how six theaters were squeezed into a very small area of one block on the north side of 42nd St. and how five theaters were squeezed into a slightly larger area on one block on the south side of 42nd St.)
In any case, the footprint of the Rivoli on this map actually appears to be a little bit LARGER than average when compared to most of the “legit” theaters in the area — but, of course, much smaller than those for two grand Times Sq. movie “palaces”: The Capitol and the Warner.
The footprint for the the other great, then existing, movie palace in the area, the Paramount, is slightly “botched,” as the map makers try to show the footprint of the Parmount within that of the footprint of the Paramount office building, and wind up making the theater much smaller than it actually was — they were getting a bit too cute with this particular rendering.
As for the Roxy, only the outlines of the footprint — with no label — are shown on the map. It almost appears as though they just erased the name of the theater, and its eastern boundary, before reprinting the map. (But you can still see where the ticket lobby occupies the ground floor of the Taft.)
I was looking at “Best Remaining Seats” which has quite a bit of info about the Rivoli. Unfortunately, as wonderful as the book is, it also very chaotically organized in my opinion, and at the moment I don’t have the patience to search through it. But, if I remember correctly, although the Rivoli had live entertainment, it was mostly orchestral music — and thus the theater probably did not have much in the way of a stage, stage house, dressing rooms, etc. I believe, in fact, that along with its earlier Rothapfel sibling, the Rialto, it was one of the first theaters in NYC to be built withOUT facilities for stage productions (without a stage house, etc.).
I believe the Hall book, whose writing can also be frustratingly too “cute,” even jokes about the musicians running up Broadway from one Rothapfel theater (e.g., the Rialto) to another (the Rivoli).
By the way, on pgs. 46 and 47 of the book, there are some great photos of interior of the Rialto Theater which, I believe was Roxy’s “baby” just before the Rivoli (and before the Capitol, before the “Roxy,” and before the Center and Radio City Music Hall). These photos seem to show a situation quite similar to — although, perhaps, just a bit different from — the one described for the Rivoli.
In the photo you can see a grand, almost enormous domed auditorium with a very large, steeply raked balcony and a small stage (with, I believe no true proscenium and stage house).
The photo of the “foyer” shows the area at the back of the orchestra level seating, with a glass screen separating the seats from the “foyer,” and a semi-oval “cutout” in the back of the balcony lounge area (apparently under the steep rake of the balcony) which allows those in the second floor lounge to look down upon and see where the “standees” (if there were “standees”) would be standing at the back of the orchestra.
This photo also shows, I believe, how theaters in those days had almost non-existant lobby/foyer space to serve as a barrier between the auditorium and the street. I believe the doors shown on the left of the photo lead almost directly to the street.
I once went to an old neighborhood theater in Washington Heights that had been made into an art/revival house in the late 1960s, and it seemed to be quite similar in certain ways to what is shown in the Rialto photo (but much less grand). It also appeared to be a theater from that era and, and it was amazing how “basic” the theater was in terms of lobby space, etc.
So it would seem to me that one reason the auditorium of the Rivoli could be so grand on such a small site is that a lot of what we associate with movie palaces was left out — and the actual auditorium probably took up a “disproportionate” amount of the footprint (“disproportionate” at least when compared to more modern theaters).
On the Hagston map, the site of the Rialto theater (a later, different, structure than that which is shown in the photo — but still presumably occupying the same footprint) is even smaller than that of the Rivoli!
Another thought: I think theater spaces appear deceptively large when they have seats in them — because each of the seats represent one person, and seated people are much closer to each other, for long periods of time, then they would be in “normal” circumstances. Take the seats out (as is done when a theater becomes a disco, etc.) and the theater space appears to be its “true” size — a lot smaller.
While I think most theaters — especially large older ones — probably try to use a “sunken” arrangement, I can quickly think of quite a few theaters (in New York City at least) that, for one reason or another, haven’t.
The two that come to mind the quickest are the main auditorium of Carnegie Hall and the now demolished Helen Hayes on 46th St. I believe in both of them you had to go up a steep, but small flight of stairs to get into the theater at the orchestra level (the back of the orchestra). Since both of these theaters also had box offices in their very small “stairway” lobbies, it made for very lobbies that were awkwardly memorable. (The renovation of Carnegie Hall somehow did away with the awkwardness — can’t remember exactly how.)
Plus there are two big old Broadway theaters (from the 1920s?), the Majestic and the Richard Rodgers, that have early versions of stadium seating in which the back of the orchestra level is a between a half-story and a full story above street level. (I believe in the Richard Rodgers you first go down a few steps to get into the lobby and then you go up a full flight of stairs for the back of the orchestra). I believe the Virginia (which used to be called the ANTA?), also from around the same time, has a similar set-up. Plus there are the more modern Broadway theaters (the ones that were built as part of office buildings) that really only begin after you get one or more flights off the ground: the Minskoff, the Uris, and the Mariott Marquis (correct name?).
Getting back to movie theaters, I think in the current Ziegfeld Theater, the entire (single screen) seating area of the theater is on the second floor. Plus in Manhattan and all over the country there are all those small multiplex theaters, probably very few of which are sunken.
But generally speaking, putting the back of the orchestra level at the same grade as the surrounding sidewalks does often seem to make the most sense, especially for a large theater.
P.S. — Of course I could understand the management wanting the audience to think that they could see performers up close when RCMH was truly a “music hall.” But, of course, RCMH was a true music hall only for a few weeks when the theater first opened.
Finally got around to re-reading the early posts in this listing — great to see that RCMH listing has so many posts!
Especially loved reading the July posts from SimonL (explaining how the theater operated, and the practical difficulties of moving people in and out of a 5,945 seat theater), BoxOfficeBill (on the way the curtains were used to present a movie), and the post listing movies that played the Music Hall that was compiled by Ron3853(?) (which helped me remember when I saw certain movies there).
If I remember correctly, when I went to see “Crossed Swords” at the Music Hall (another poster mentions seeing it there in 1978) it was after it had been announced that they were considering closing the theater for good. It was such an emotional experience each time that the Rockettes came on — everyone thinking that this might be the last series of shows that the Rockettes might ever do.
Around 1978 and 1979, I was a tourgroup leader who used to escort out-of-town tour groups to see the movie and the stage show at RCMH as part of a multi-day NYC tour package. If I remember correctly, RCMH was ususally scheduled for Sunday evening (the last evening of a multi-day visit), and it was great because there was actually very little else that one could do with a tour group in NYC on a Sunday evening.
I believe I saw “The Promise” with Kathleen Quinlan with one of these tour groups. Didn’t realize that (according to another poster) this was the last regular movie shown at RCMH.
I think I also took a tour group to the first edition of the Christmas Spectacular after the Music Hall switched to its new format. I remember thinking to myself that the show wasn’t all that good — or, at least, that it needed a lot of work (although I was, of course, rooting for it to be good enough to “save” the Music Hall).
Perhaps the show wasn’t that good, but to be fair perhaps I was also overcritical because I so wanted it to succeed. (My tour group liked it.)
One very strange “act” in the first edition that I believe they did drop though: at one point in the first of the new Christmas Spectaculars, they had a singer dressed as a homeless bag lady come out to sing a ballad. The idea, I assume, was to make a poignant statement about the disadvantaged at Christmastime.
I thought this was strange scene for the RCMH Christmas Spectacular, however, in part because homeless bag ladies were relatively new in New York City (with the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill in the mid-1970s[?]) and I didn’t think out of town tourists would really get what was happening. (If I remember correctly, the one or two people in my group that mentioned this scene didn’t really know what it was supposed to be about, but more or less got the general gist — rememember the disadvantaged at Christmastime, too — anyway.)
I also thought it seemed to be too severe a departure from the tone of the rest of the show.
Re: why the Music Hall doesn’t look so big from outside
I’ve wondered about this too, and here are some thoughts:
1) Some of the theater’s public spaces are concealed in the office building fronting on Sixth Ave. (the ticket lobby and the lounges, etc. above it);
2) Most of the great size of the auditorium is in it’s block long (200' wide) width, rather than it’s length. And since the theater’s width is concealed by the office building on Sixth and the office building on Rockefeller Plaza, you never really get to see from the outside how wide the theater is.
3) The theater has a plain exterior and the two buildings that bookend it also have the same plain exterior which blurrs the dimensions of the theater — where does the theater begin and where does it end?
4) I’m not sure about this, but I believe RCMH has a somewhat sunken auditorium that lessens the apparent height of the theater.
Explanation: when I went by the theater the other day, the door to the loading dock that leads onto the stage was open and you could see onto the stage. If I remember correctly, this loading dock was flush with the sidewalk, which means parts of the auditorium are below street level.
The same holds, true, by the way with the Hudson Theater (which I’m more sure of). The loading dock to the stage is only inches above the sidewalk, which would mean the the first rows of the orchestra level are probably below sidewalk level.
(This is also common, I believe, in atheletic stadia [when a low water table permits it]. The playing field is below street level, and when patrons enter the field boxes from the surrounding street, they find themselves going down to the level of the playing field. Otherwise a lot of stadiums would be much taller — like Shea Stadium with its high water table — than they are now.)
5) The size of the theater might be camouflaged a bit by the beautiful grills that cover the firescapes and by the windows (to the executive offices and the dressing rooms) which, again, might help blur the difference between where the theater ends and the other buildings begin.
BoxOfficeBill: Thanks for the fascinating info about how the RCMH contour curtain was used. I wish I had thought of observing and counting the folds like that!
I’m not sure, however, if that is what the touch-up artist did in the photo that Krinsky shows and comments upon in her book — but, then again, maybe it is? Let me describe the photo.
First, a brief description to identify it: the photo in the book, and on the back cover, shows 36 (I counted!) towering Rockettes lined up before scenery that … well, is hard to describe. On stage right, there seem to be three enormous circles (hula-hoops?) covered in flowers. (The hoops are about twice the size of the people standing infront of them.) On stage left, there seems to be the top three quarters of a rising moon that is just a bit taller than the performers in front of it. And in the background there seems to be an elevated swan boat. Above the scene there appears to be two floral moons connected by a garland of flowers (or lights) hung from the sky, with more flowers (or lights) in some sort of pattern in the background.
In this photo the contour curtain has 10 “genuine” folds that are fitted within the portion of the arch that contains 9 of the radiating grilles (sunbursts). This is about three-quarters of the way up the arch — which I suspect is much higher than the curtain would really go?
To the left and right of the 10 “genuine” folds, there are very elogated, droopy folds that appear to me to be painted in! Behind these painted in folds, there is a traveling curtain, that also looks to me to be painted in! (For one thing, they seem to be “lighted” differently.) Also the end Rockettes on either end of the line seem to be partially cut off by the traveling curtain.
The clues for me in this photo that the Rockettes are larger than life — and the performers BEHIND the Rockettees make the Rockettes themselves look as big as large dolls! — was that the end Rockettees on stage left(?) not only seem much, much larger than both the people in the orchestra pit and in the audience just in front of them (and closer to the camera, yet), but they also look a bit too big to fit behind those curtains on the stepped stages going up the side of the auditorium.
(By the way, I didn’t notice how large the performers behind the Rockettes were [!] or that the curtains seem painted-in until just now.)
As a kid, I use to love to look at the movie stills outside a theater (there never seemed to be enough of them), and I remember wishing that RCMH, in particular, had more photos (and a greater variety of them) in the display cases along 50th St. I also remember being disappointed that this one photo of the Music Hall’s interior (or a similar photo) seemed to be the one and only photo of the interior of RCMH that they ever showed in the display case — and actually the one and only one of the interior of RCMH that you ever seemed to see anywhere.
Looking at “this” photo as a kid, I wanted to be overwhelmed by the giganticism of RCMH and its stage and was thus disappointed that the performers were so big and that the stage seemed so “small” (judging by the way the performers so easily filled it up) for such a large theater. Examining the photo as carefully as I could, I could sense that something seemed wrong about “the” photo, but couldn’t put my finger on it — couldn’t find the smoking gun, so to speak.
It’s ironic that the management of RCMH specifically wanted the performers to appear large (and thus have the stage appear “small”). I suppose they knew what they were doing, and perhaps my kid’s mentality was the exception. But I would think that most people going to RCMH were not going to see live performers up close, anyway, but were going for the spectacle of it all — enormous scenery, large crowd scenes, etc. — in which case a stage full of tiny scenery and tiny, tiny performers would seem to me to be an asset in a publicity photo rather than a liablity.
To bring in another example: when I was a pre-schooler, and before I ever went to visit the Empire State Building, I remember being thrilled by the tales told to me by my slightly older friends who had been there. “The people on the sidewalk are so tiny, they look like little ants!” When I finally went to the Empire State Building, however, I was disappointed because the people on the sidewalk really didn’t look all that small (and the Empire State Building, itself, didn’t really look all that tall either)!
There are certain experiences where you want to be overwhelmed by enormous scale of things — so seeing large crowds of tiny people, in these instances, would seem to me not to be a liablity but an asset! (At least if the sound applification was good enough for you to hear what is going on.) Now if RCMH management chose to enlarge the image of a movie screen in a photo of the interior, that would be a different story!
I noticed that the Ziegfeld was mentioned in yesterday’s (1/20/05) “USA Today” article written by Ross Melnick and Andreas Fuchs, “Ten Great Places to Revel in Cinematic Grandeur.” While, in a sense, I can understand why they included the Ziegfeld in the article (I can see how, in a narrow sense, it meets their criteria), the listing of it in such an article made me think of the concept and the expression, “defining deviance down.”
I believe it was the late New York Senator and former Harvard professor (among other things), Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who coined this phrase. And if I understand it correctly, the idea of the phrase is to point out that a lot of behavior that was once considered bad is now considered “OK” because we have been unconsciously lowering our standards — “defining deviance down.”
So, in connection with the Ziegfeld, it seems to me that this theater is now considered a “great” place for seeing movies only because we have re-defined “cheap,” “tasteless,” and “uninspired” downward — thus enabling the Ziegfeld to now be considered “great.”
I’ve only been to the Ziegfeld a few times, and even the last time was probably many years ago. (I saw “That’s Entertainment” there in the early 1970s, and I went there a time or two after that for movies I can’t remember at the moment.) So my memories of it are probably a bit fuzzy. But when I first saw the theater I was kind of embarrassed at just how “tacky” it was — even as a public space on its own, without even beginning to compare it with the truly beautiful, grand and imaginatively designed movie theaters and movie palaces that used to be the norm.
In a way this is strange for me to say, because I am all for exuberant decoration and the breaking of the “rules” of “good” modern design. But rather than being in “poor” taste (poor taste being the aesthetic preferences of a minority that happens to be out of favor with the taste “establishment”), the Ziegfeld struck me as being a place where nobody really cared about taste, and thus little real thought was given to its design. It seems to me that the owners/“designers” of the Ziegfeld just decided to use left-over materials from a “Gay ‘90s” steak house and to indiscriminately plaster the stuff around the inside of a plain “modern” box. (If I remember correctly, there was also some kind of New Orleans balcony type grill work also stuck up on some of the walls.)
When I noticed that the Ziegfeld began to be used for premieres, I believe I was embarrassed that such a “tacky” theater would be used for such functions in New York City and thus represent to Hollywood the “best” that the city had to offer — when L.A. had (at least in my imagination, don’t know if it actually was used for premieres) the magnificent Graumann’s Chinese!
I realize, especially from reading the posts on this site, that movie theaters are more than just their architecture and design. Just as important — actually, even more so — is the way a theater presents a movie (e.g., the quality of the picture, the quality of the sound, etc.). And I don’t mean to include this aspect in my comments about the Ziegfeld. As far as I can recall, I don’t remember any problems in this regard.
While I realize the title of the piece was “Ten Great Places to Revel in Cinematic Grandeur,” and thus implied theaters of a certain seating capacity (and pomposity), I wish the authors had chosen a slightly different title (say, “Ten Great Places to Revel in a Special Cinematic Experience”) which would have allowed them to include smaller, luxurious (but less pompous) theaters in their article also. In that case, they could have included the endangered “Beekman” theater — a handsome art moderne theater that offers, in my opinion, a truly special single-screen movie going experience in Manhattan.
Given the wealth of knowledge on this board about the “Wonder Theaters” and the Loew’s organization, this is probably a good place for me to clear up what I’m beginning to think was a misconception on my part about them.
Growing up with the “atmospheric” Valencia (undoubtedly one of the five Loew’s “Wonder Theaters”), I thought that all five of the Loew’s “Wonder Theaters” were “atmospherics” and that, in this region at least, the “Wonder Theaters” (or at least the Loew’s organization) had a, more or less, “franchise” (in an informal way, not legally) on the atmospheric “brand.”
Of course, I realize you can’t copyright something like the “atmospheric” concept. But I thought that in this region the concept might have been so associated with Loew’s that other theater owners would have shied away from using it (thinking that it would “brand” their theater as a Loew’s theater in the public consciousness). And I thought that maybe Loew’s (or as Warren points out, the original sponsor of the five Wonder Theaters, Paramount-Publix) might have seen the success of earlier “atmospherics” elsewhere and decided to import them on a grand scale, and in a big way, to NYC as their way of establishing a NYC presence or “brand.”
Therefore, I thought (apparently, mistakenly) that all of the regions grand “atmospherics” that I knew of were one of the five “Wonder Theaters.” So, in my mind, the five Wonder Theaters would have been the Loew’s Valencia, the Loew’s Triboro (which I now know, while being a Loew’s atmospheric, was built after the original five Wonder Theaters), the Loew’s Paradise, the Loew’s Kings and the Loew’s Jersey City.
Substituting the Loew’s 175th St., in Manhattan, for the Loew’s Triboro, in Queens, I still thought that all these theaters were atmospherics. But, a friend tells me (if I understood him correctly) that in Jersey City, for instance, it was the Stanley, not the Loew’s Jersey, that was the “neighborhood” atmospheric.
So, if all the Wonder Theaters were not atmospherics (and if other non-Loew’s, non-Wonder Theaters were) what WERE the distinguishing qualities that the planners and builders of the five Wonder Theaters saw in their theaters that made them group them together under that one “umbrella” title?. Was it only their common ownership, large size and the fact that they were all built at about the same time — and, thus, labeling them “Wonder” would be a nice publicity gimmick? Or did they actually have some things in common among themselves (aside from common ownership, and closely spaced opening dates) that distinguished them from the other large movie palaces built in the area?
Also, it would be interesting to find out if the other, non-Loew’s atmospherics in the region were built before or after the five Wonder Theaters?
Speaking of Loew’s “Wonder Theaters,” just an amusing thought/daydream:
Too bad the “Valencia” wasn’t built on the Grand Concourse, and that the “Paradise” wasn’t built on Jamaica Ave.
If this had been the case, the grandest theater in the Bronx would be an Hispanic-themed one — and would have even greater appeal as a Bronx “community” theater/town hall for graduations, concerts, etc. (I realize that Bronx residents already love the theater but, still, wouldn’t a theater inspired by the courtyards of Spain be really super?) And the worshippers belonging to the “Tabernacle of Prayer” would be going to religious services at the “Paradise”!
Does anyone know the name of the multiplex that now serves downtown Jamaica? I’d like to find out more information about it, and would like to look it up on this website (if it is listed) on elsewhere on the internet.
Thanks in advance for any info.
Jerry42nd Street Memories,
Looked at the photos that Bryan posted — very interesting!
I find it interesting to think about what such photos “communicate” about 42nd St. and what people (especially those who’ve never been to 42nd St.) actually think about 42nd St. because of them. Do people looking at such photos think the street is “exciting” or “just ugly” — and if they think it’s “just ugly,” why exactly?
(I happened to go to an interesting symposium, held at Columbia University, a few years ago which discussed the “semiology”(sp?) of Times Sq. and 42nd St. Many of the big players in the revitalization efforts were there at the symposium. However, in the end, these kinds of questions didn’t really get discussed — it wound up being more a debate about whether the revitalization efforts were a good or a bad thing.)
Looking back to my first recollections of 42nd St. from the late 1950s, to me the north side of 42nd St. had a startling, pleasantly bizarre look — it was hard to figure out how they could actually fit so many (regular-sized) theaters so close together. (Of course, it’s easy once you realize that half of the auditoriums are really on 43rd St.) But as a kid, the image of all those theaters (when theaters were “theaters!”), sitting cheek by jowl to each other, was almost as surreal as one of those puzzling drawings by M.C. Escher.
Plus, all the zipper lights around those closely spaced marquees made the street also seem still pretty exciting and glamorous. And while the north side of the street had obviously seen better days, I think its positive qualities outweighed the negative ones. As a result, it seemed to me to be something that was unusual â€" bizarre â€" but in a mostly positive way.
However, to me the south side of 42nd was depressing and ugly, and I think it was largely because of the blank facade of the Hubert’s Museum, the blank facade of the Anco theater and the big parking lot at the end of the block. (Which, now that I think about it, had an old bank on it until the late-1960s(?) or so â€" I think it can be seen in the photo on the New Amsterdam site. While the bank may have been a beautiful old classical one, I think it was also probably pretty dirty and poorly maintained — furthering the “depressing” quality of the street.) Plus the longstanding messages on those painted signs (e.g., “Save Free TV!”) probably also added to its drab, depressing quality.
As a young teenager in the early 1960s, I don’t think I saw 42nd St. as dangerous so much (although even then it probably did have a more modest version of its later reputation for danger) as much as cheap (e.g., Nedick’s stands) and run down (e.g., cheap, make shift alterations to buildings that were poorly maintained). I think my friends and I also though of it as somewhat “naughty,” although in actuality it was probably pretty restrained as compared to what is seen on streets all across America these days.
It would be interesting to look, as you are trying to do, at what actually played at the theaters on 42nd St. I suspect that it was a lot tamer (at least compared to later standards), for a lot longer, than what most people imagine.
Actually, when I was a young teenager in the early 1960s, I traveled in from Queens once to meet an aunt from New Jersey at the Port Authority Terminal and she took me one Saturday or Sunday afternoon to a family movie, “40 Pounds of Trouble,” at one of the theaters on the north side of the street. (The Selwyn?) I remember telling a friend of mine from junior high about this, and we were both somewhat scandalized (given the lower crime rates and tamer standards of that day) that my aunt would do this.
What added even more shock value to the story was that there was, indeed, an “incident” in the theater when I was there. Didn’t see the particulars (my aunt told me to stay in my seat, not that I would have had the nerve to take a closer look anyway), but we were sitting in the front of the balcony and we heard some rustling and then some running and someone hitting the floor. (My guess, these days, is that maybe someone was originally being pickpocketed and the victim realized it and chased him and knocked him down to the floor?)
This morning I was looking through a great book, “East Side, West Side” by Lawrence S. Riter (1998), about the old time sporting scene in New York City, and I saw a photo on page 3 of the south side of 42nd in the 1960s. (This chapter is about Hubert’s Museum [shown in the photo] where two great sporting figures, Grover Alexander and Jack Johnson, made a living after their sporting days were over.)
The photo is credited to UPI / Corbis – Bettman and seems kind of commonplace. (I think I’ve seen it elsewhere.) On the marquee of the Harris: “Murderer’s Row,” Ann Margaret, Dean Martin & “Desperado Trail.” On the Marquee of the Liberty: “Great Spy Mission,” George Peppard, Sophia Loren. On the marquee of the Empire: “The Professionals,” Burt Lancaster, and (partially obscured) “ … to Kill,” … & Lee Marvin. (Don’t remember if anything could be seen on the marquee of the Anco.)
A 1960s Ford Fairlane[?] is prominently seen in the foreground.
Regarding theater curtains: I remember wondering as a VERY YOUNG kid, whether the image that was seen when a movie theater’s curtains opened or closed was an image projected upon a solid curtain or whether it was an image that shone through a thin curtain (like the sun shining through home window curtains). Of course as an older kid I realized that the image was being projected upon an opaque curtain, but when I first went to the movies as a four(?)-year old I wasn’t sure.
As a pre-schooler, theatre curtains were one of the “mysteries of life” — like figuring out whether the light inside the refrigerator was always lit, even when the door was closed, or whether it was built in some way so that it lit up as soon as one started to open the door.
By the way, one scene from “Raging Bull” was shot just about down the block from the current Film Forum (that was, of course, 15[?] years or so before the Film Forum moved to its current location). The scene where Jake Lamotta first spots his future wife was filmed at the Carmine St. pool on W. Houston St. The dressing room vans (with one that was set-up to be a barber shop — to give all the 1970s[?] long-haired guys1940s[?] haircuts) were parked on St. Luke’s place. Antique cars were parked on W. Houston. And, if I remember correctly, the modern-day street lamps on W. Houston were dressed up with placards making them look like old-fashioned street lamps.
DougDouglass: Terrific info, thanks!
I’m familiar with some of these theaters (at least the names, since many are mentioned in the Henderson book), but am not sure about some of the others (especially with the way the names of theaters are changed so often).
Elysee: This theater sounds familiar, I even think I remember hearing “Live from the Elysee Theater” — but I can’t place it. I wonder if this was the theater on W. 58th that used to be used for Dick Clark’s “Pyramid” game show (which I never saw)?
Never heard of a few of the CBS theaters: Lincoln Sq., Monroe, Peace, Town.
A particularly exciting excursion into “the city” that I remember from my childhood was being driven by the Colonial when they were doing the “Price is Right” from there. I remember you could see a house trailer (one of the prizes) parked out front. And it seemed so amazing to me that this was the outside of the same place that I could see on my TV in Astoria!
I wonder if there is a particularly good source for this kind of info, if one wanted to look up what shows, in particular, were done from what theaters? Most of the things I’ve seen are written by authors who are not particularly interested in this info.
I think it’s really amazing to think of all the stuff that was happening in (mostly) mid-Manhattan in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, etc. The regular movie theaters, the first run movie theaters, the movie “palaces” with live shows (including famous singers, comedians and big bands), the Broadway shows, the nightclubs and hotel ballrooms and dance halls, Madison Sq. Garden, the recording studios A N D the nationally broadcast live radio and TV shows emanating from Manhattan theaters and studios (including one of the first big hit shows on radio — with “Roxy” Rothapfel — emanating from the Capitol Theater)! (The radio show with Roxy is described in Hall’s, “Best Remaining Seats.”)
I’m thinking that at least some of the TV studios “in” the Rialto, (that were referred to in previous posts), were in the space that looks to me like it was once a ballroom. This ballroom, and other smaller associated office spaces, appeared to me to wrap around the actual lobby and auditorium space of the Railto — in a way similar to the auxilliary spaces that a lot of other Broadway theaters seem to have.
Some other easily seen examples in the theater district of such auxilliary spaces being “part” of a theater are the Belasco, the Shubert and St. James. (On a walking tour of the theaters on 42nd St. that I took in the 1970s, we visited such spaces in, what I believe was, the Lyric Theater.) A less visible — but more amazing example — are the auxilliary spaces associated with Town Hall on 43rd St. I went to a conference in a private club (which I think use to be the NYU’s version of the Harvard Club or Princeton Club) that was built in and around the lobby and auditorium spaces of Town Hall. It was amazing. It was like being in what I imagine a country club to be (with large meeting rooms, a ballroom, etc.)
Looking at the Rialto from diagonally across 42nd St./Seventh Ave., on the ground floor you would see the marquee / entrance to the Rialto on the right, and a row of stores going around the corner. On top of that, you would see a row of “French door” type windows that had been painted in. That’s where, I’m guessing, at least some of the TV studios were.
As far as I can recall, though, the Rialto did not have a “conventional” office building associated with it (the way, for instance, both the New Amsterdam and the Palace had small office buildings built over their lobbies).
In her book, Mary Henderson, mentions a good number of Manhattan theaters that once served as radio or TV playhouses (and movie houses, too). Unfortunately, since her focus is on live theater, her history of what actual radio / TV shows were done (or what movies played) in what theaters is very skimpy. (For instance, I don’t believe she mentions — as has been mentioned elsewhere on this site — that “Gigi” had its premiere NY engagement at the Royale, or that “La Dolce Vita” played the Henry Miller.)
While I know that not ALL of the theaters that were TV studios were in the Times Sq. area, I can only think of a handful that weren’t. For instance, I think there was a movie theater on upper Broadway (in the 80s?) that was used as a TV studio (Sesame St.?). Then there was that “Dick Cavett” theater all the way over on 10th(?) Ave. And the Colonial (Broadway in the 60s), of course, is another. But all the others, I’m aware of are “more or less” in the theater district (e.g., 58th St. or lower).
Are there any others, in particular, that I can add to my list?
(I’m guessing that most of these movie / radio / TV theaters would be in the Times Sq. area, because by the time radio / TV came along, most other “surplus” theaters outside the area had already been demolished. Plus, with such a surplus of theaters available for radio / TV in the highly accessible Times Sq. area, why settle for a theater somewhere else?)
Thanks Bryan for the wonderful little history of this “mystery” theater. I use to go to the theater district a lot in the early 1960s (and vaguely remember it as a theater with Japanese films), but I could never quite figure this theater out. I’ve seen it mentioned in books about the history of theaters (like Mary Henderson’s) but the theater they described didn’t seem to be the same theater that I remember, which appeared from the outside (never went inside) to be wierdly tiny for a theater in the Times Sq. area. (Actually, in some ways it reminded me of the Guild in Rockefeller Center, another small theater that seemed “mysterious” to me.)
The fact that the Astor’s remodeling cut into the original auditorium explains a lot. I think they also remodeled the outside a bit, too (and painted the whole front white?). And, if I remember correctly, one of the wierd things about it was that its facade didn’t even look like a theater facade.
By the way, I think sometime during the early 1960s, it was used for a bit as some kind of TV facility — to preview video tapes (?) of new TV shows? If I remember correctly, there used to be these guys (college students?) who would be handing out these free tickets for TV shows, and some of them would be for this theater. (I think they wouldn’t give one to me or my friends because you had to be accompanied by someone over 18.)
Also, I believe one of the live shows to appear there was a show called “Mummenschanz” (which sounds German, but I asked a German speaking friend about it, and he said the name didn’t mean anything to him). I believe “Mummenschanz” was a dance/revue without words, and the dancers/actors would wear black tights with large, crazy, puppet-like masks and contort themselves into unusual shapes.
P.S. — By the way, I believe Joe Franklin did his “Memory Lane” TV show from studios in this building sometime during the 1980s.
For those of you unfamiliar with this show, it was a classic, cult, wonderful/awful TV show, that was shown in NYC beginning in the 1950s(?). Joe Franklin, whom I thought of as kind of like a Dick Clark of sorts (doing the same thing forever and never aging) for New Yorkers of my parents' and grandparents' generation, did a kind of daytime talk show (a la the Tonight Show) that very often had obscure vaudevillians, silent movie stars, etc. as guests. If I remember correctly, Woody Allen incorporated the show into the plot of Broadway Danny Rose.
It appears that the second Rialto originally had some kind of nightlub or dance hall on its second floor (which was probably transformed into the TV studios). If you looked at the building closely, it had these wonderful large french door type windows, which give off this impression anyway. The general “look” of these windows have been incorporated, at a much larger scale, into the facade of one of the new buildings further west along 42nd St.
Also the second Rialto appears to have originally had a partially blue mirrored glass exterior which had been painted over in its later years. In addition, there was some sort of art deco pylon that had a billboard wrapped around it.
I’d love to see a picture of the second Rialto as a new structure. It must have been SOME building!
tvhistory: I’m interested in finding out more about the TV/radio history of some of the movie/“legit” theaters in New York (especially during the “golden ages” of radio/TV, like the Roxy Center Theatre being used for, I believe, the Milton Berle show), so I found your info about the Rialto fascinating. Do you have any recommendations about how I could find out more (any books, etc.)? Thanks in advance for any further info you have! (I know some day I will have to make my way over to the Museum of Broadcasting and the Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.)
Some interesting info along these lines that I’ve already gotten from the Cinema Treasures site:
Roxy Center — Milton Berle
Ziegfeld — Perry Como
From elsewhere and general knowledge:
Colonial — The Price is Right
Hudson — The (Steve Allen) Tonight Show
And non-movie theaters used for TV:
(forgot original name) — Ed Sullivan Show
(Gallo Opera House) — What’s My Line?; To Tell the Truth
I’m not sure about this, but I think this was an off-Broadway playhouse up until the late 1960s. I think I saw the Claude Van Italie play, “America Hurrah!” here in 1968 or so.
P.S. — Some relatively minor quibbles about the description posted at the top of this listing. I would consider the location of this theater to be the “East Village” or the “Lower East Side” — not Greenwich Village. (A personal note: perhaps one reason I didn’t go to this theater more often — viewing issues aside — was that it always seemed like a really long haul from where I lived in Greenwich Village.)
I wouldn’t consider it to be one of the city’s oldest revival houses. In fact, I think of it as one of the “last” of the City’s revival houses. I think Mr. Otway started in up in the early or mid-1970s. At that time there were plenty of (much?) older revival houses (Thalia, Elgin [haven’t noticed a listing for it here yet], New Yorker[?], Regency [?], — even one in Washington Heights!) that eventually closed, I believe, before Theatre 80 St. Marks. Don’t really think any appreciable percentage of the true “revival” theaters opened after Theatre 80 did. (Although places like Film Forum and the Angelika Center, and others, may also show / have shown revival type films as part of their programming.)
Although what follows is not about really about Theatre 80 St. Marks, and I hate to clutter up it’s page with questions about other cinemas, I’m not sure where else to put these comments/questions.
Is there a page on this site where one can ask about cinemas that don’t already have a page (or cinemas that one might have a hard time remembering the proper name of)?
Reading about Theatre 80 St. Marks makes me think of a few other Manhattan cinemas for which I can’t find pages and/or don’t know the proper names for:
Thousand Eyes Cinema (W. 43rd? St., between Ninth and Tenth Ave.) — A magical experience: went there in the early 70s on a snowy Christmas eve. It was located in a large “brownstone” (rowhouse) and had, I believe more than one screening room. All the screening rooms together had a seating capacity of 500 — hence the name Thousand Eyes Cinema.
It was a very “artsy” place with really obscure cinema treasures that were really beyond me and my friends.
The evening we went, my two friends and I were almost the only people there. Saw a double bill of Douglas(?) Sirk, light drawing-room type comedies. Don’t recall seeing his films before. He seemed to specialize in very WEIRD set decoration — his films LOOKED like they were taking place on stage sets on a sound stage (which of course they were).
The Heights (?) (In Washington Heights near the GW Bridge) — After being a very, very early (1913?) neighborhood cinema, so it seems to me, it became an art / revival house (before becoming a porno theater). During it’s art house/revival phase, I think they actually had printed flyers that listed the films that were being shown for the next few months, something I associated with the “downtown” revival houses like the New Yorker (?) and the Thalia.
The Elgin (Eighth Ave. in the high teens, now the Joyce Dance Theater). Surprised that, the last time I looked, I don’t recall seeing a listing for it here. It seemed to me to be a “biggie” on the revival house scene in the early 1970s. Great, funky lounge — with barber chairs, etc. — in the downstairs lounge. (Saw the classic revival house double bill, Citizen Kane and the Lady Vanishes, here.)
The Charles (Ave. B) — I’m not sure that this was a true revial house, although it might have been. It was a good place to catch up with non-current movies at a cheap price and on a double bill.
The theater on Second Ave., just north of Eighth St. I saw “Turning Point” and “All That Jazz” here on a double bill. May also have seen “Sleuth” here months, or years, after its initial run.
As much as I liked the programming and the idea of the theater, I have to agree that Theatre 80 St. Marks is probably the very worst movie theater I’ve ever been to — and not only because it seems to me that rear projection is a very bad way to experience a movie. (“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was terrible — the image seemed all washed out.)
The other problem with Theatre 80 St. Marks in my opinion is that the “auditorium” itself (which appears to be in a very long, narrow “brownstone” or rowhouse) has a very unorthodox, uncomfortable set-up. Rather than using the “logical” seating arrangement for such a space (lots of short rows facing towards the rear of the house), they decided to use a very unconventional one (a few very long rows that face the side of the house) apparently in order to allow them to place the rear projection system in the adjoining rowhouse to the east.
In addition the few, very long rows of seats were steeply banked stadium style, but very close to the screen.
The result was that in the whole theater, there were only maybe four seats where you weren’t seeing a very washed out image on the screen from some very weird angle.
Plus, I think the few times I was there (in the mid-1970s) some of the best positioned seats were broken.
All that negative stuff being said, I was happy to see the theater succeed as long as it did. It was a really charming idea — in the abstract!
(I loved the idea of a miniscule Grauman’s Chinese Theater forecourt in front of the theater. By the way, I think at one point Theatre 80 St. Marks got into trouble with the City because the concrete blocks with the footprints, etc. on them were considered to be a pedestrian hazard.)
With all these prices, along with their helpful dates, being listed, I noticed something interesting.
In 1970 a movie cost about $1.75 (that’s my guess); at $2.00, Radio City Music Hall probably cost a bit more than a movie; a chow mein dinner cost about $2.50; and a top Broadway ticket was $15.00 for a Saturday night. So a $2.00 ticket to Radio City Music Hall was “positioned” closer to a movie ($1.75[?]) than to the top price of a Broadway show on Saturday night ($15.00).
If you multiply all these prices by a factor of six you, get the following prices, adjusted for inflation: a movie costs $10.50, an “old-time” Radio City Music Hall ticket should cost $12.00, a chow mein dinner costs $15.00, and top price of a Broadway show on Saturday night is $90.00. While this is off a bit, it is roughly true for a movie and a Broadway show (don’t know about the chow mein dinner). But, obviously, the management of Radio City Music Hall has “repositioned” a show at Radio City Music Hall to be seen more like a $100 Broadway show (like the “Lion King” or “Beauty and the Beast”) and less like a trip to the movies ($10.50).
While middle-class movie goers were possibly more polite in 1916 (“Ladies, please remove your hats.”) than they were in the 1950s (although this is debatable), were they more polite than 1916 theatergoers attending plays on Broadway in theaters that didn’t have these apparently “new fangled” cut outs over the rear orchestra seats?
I would doubt it, especially since in those days the early movies seem to have attracted a more “lower class” type clientele.
Hall says that in 1913, New York [5 boroughs?] has “986 movie houses — of all kinds …” (pg. 39) “Most of them [neighborhood movie theaters] were throwbacks to the nickelodeons of earlier days, and while they were profitable, audiences were made up mostly of kids and people who wanted to kill an hour with anickel … and nobody took them very seriously.” (pg. 31)
Hall also says that at the Regent (opened 1913), “ … there was no need … for those functinaries familiar to nickelodeon audiences who went up and down the aisles squirting noisome helio-trope-avec-creosote into the air from spray guns.” [i’m guessing this is because in those days the audience could smell bad?]
By the way, here’s a very rough chronology from the Hall book of some of Thomas Lamb’s early theaters:
In 1909, when Thomas Lamb was 22, he designed his first theater, The City Theater. In (approx.) 1913 he designed the Regent Theatre. Then came the Strand (1914), and the Rialto (1916) [which has a half oval cut-out over the rear orchestra seats, that is shown on pg. 46]. The Rivoli opened in 1917.
Quick clarification:
The movie theaters with the cut outs and the small lobbies that we are talking about are very, very early movie theaters (at least as early as 1913, 1916) — not the kind of movie theaters that we think of when we think “movie theater” (late 1920s, 1930s).
For instance, the one that I went to in Washington Heights in the late 1960s (that I believe was an even earlier version of the original Rialto, pictured in the Ben Hall book, and its sister, the Rivoli), was well maintained but a VERY primitive theater. Perhaps, it’s hard to describe, but the lobby area was virtually non-existent. You almost just walked right into the theater from the street, and I believe there might have been a curtain across the doorway to keep out the light and sound, and a glass screen (like that pictured in the Hall book) to separate the orchestra seats from what there was of a “foyer.”
While lobbies for “legit” Broadway theaters have traditionally been small, when you look at the oldest extant Broadway theaters (like the Lyceum, the Hudson and New Amsterdam, all from 1903 — ten years before these early movie theaters) you see that the lobbies and public areas may be small by today’s standards, but they are not as small, I believe, as these early cinemas by any means.
Also, while watching a silent may involve more concentration (for instance, because you can’t turn your head away because you might miss a title card), maybe people talking in the lobby areas around the cut out, etc. 1) didn’t interfere with this kind of concentration or 2) were still beneath the loud sound of the music accompanying the movie. So I’m thinking that maybe this is why the cut outs might not have been thought of as such a problem.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, I thought the price of a “regular” ticket for a movie was $1.00 (50 cents for a child’s ticket)? So although those great standee prices ($1.50, $2.00) were cheaper than a real seat, they would still seem to be not quite the same price as a movie. And using the “rule of thumb” index for inflation (a movie today is approx. 10x the price of a $1.00 movie in the early 1960s), a $1.00 movie costs $10.00 today (which it more or less does), so $1.50 or $2.00 standing room would $15.00 or $20.00 today (don’t know if that is the case).
I also liked to compare my great theater bargains to the price of a movie also. Although I wasn’t aware of the Playbill program (too young then anyway), my junior high (I think?) had some kind of program in the early 1960s that allowed students to see a Broadway show for, I believe, a dollar — which happened to be (I think) the price of an adult ticket to a movie! Got to see “Carnival” (rear orchestra), “A Man for All Seasons” (rear orchestra), “Mary, Mary” (balcony or second balcony) this way.
Don’t know if all NYC public schools had this, or if my school was lucky. Also wonder if the fact that a fellow student’s father was the conductor for “The Sound of Music” had anything to do with it. (Like maybe he alerted the school authorities at my school to this program?)
I wonder if the Roxy ever had movies that allowed schools to use a trip to the Roxy as a class trip. (I know in junior high (?) our school had a class trip to see “El Cid” — an historical drama about the unification of Spain? — at either the Capitol or the Warner, I believe.) A trip to the Roxy could have been a TRULY educational experience (with talks about silent films and the impact of the “talkies,” movie “palaces” for people who weren’t rich, etc.).
Also saw many shows with standing room. Most memorable standing room experience?: “Camelot” (second to last performance) and “How to Succeed” (early in its run, when it was still a “hot” ticket).
Over the years, got a few front row center seats with TKTS or twofers too. Best twofer deal?: $1.00(?) to see Barbra Streisand in “I Can Get It For You Wholesale” (twofers, last row of the second balcony on a Saturday matinee).
“Ever afterward (or at least until the Roxy closed in ‘61), the name of Rothafel’s World Famous Theater provided a consoling by-word for a band of foot-weary standees in Gotham, eventually making its way into pages of fiction.”
This sounds interesting, please explain. Are you saying that one of the friends included this experience in a novel he/she wrote? Or do you mean something more prosaic?
The conversation about cut-outs near the rear orchestra seats of some early movie theaters, and the problems such cut-outs create, along with the fact that many of these theaters seem to have had especially small and unprotected lobbies, makes me wonder about the reasons for such design decisions in the first place.
What makes it especially interesting to me is the “fact” that I don’t believe “regular” theaters (“legit,” “opera,” etc.) built during this time, or before it, had such design features (at least to the same degree). So I wonder if the builders of these early movie theaters actually saw such new features as “improvements” over what was already being done in “regular” theater design or, at the very least, as innovations that would not pose the same problems in the new movie theaters that they would have posed in existing “regular” theaters?
A number of things come to mind as possible explanations that make these new architectural features more sensible:
1) Movies had just left the penny arcade. Movie theaters weren’t yet seen as worth the investment in real estate that would have allowed them to accommodate large “buffer” lobbies? Things like ceiling cut outs seemed like a fun way of making public spaces seem “grand”?
2) Less noise. People were more polite and street noises had less “punch,” making these innovations seem less problematic than they would be in later years? Or, looking at it the other way around, maybe a general public that was accustomed to frequenting music halls and beer gardens were less bothered by ambient noises? Kind of the way some audiences today ENJOY people talking — and shouting out — during a performance. (I remember going to see “Dream Girls” and getting the impression that both the audience And the performers desired the audience to shout out comments during certain songs. That was part of what this theater going experience was ABOUT.)
3) These early movie theaters played SILENT movies (although accompanied by some kind of live music). In silent movies, viewers are “listening” to the film in only a very general way; more important is the ability to “see” what is happening on screen — the moving visuals and the title cards that explain the dialogue and make the plot more comprehensible. In other words, unlike movie goers in the sound era, maybe movie goers in the silent era might have been less bothered by ambient sound — they weren’t straining to concentrate and hear dialogue explaining what was happening on the screen?
While I agree that the picture was not the second item at RCMN — that, for most of the year at least, people usually went to RCMH depending on what movie was being shown, and not depending upon what was in the stage show (the true details of which they probably didn’t know about most of the time anyway) — I think it’s important to remember that the Rodgers and Hart song is an affectionate send-up with a lot of teasing “zingers” along the lines of a Friar’s Club Roast. He’s joking about some of the “awful” things that make RCMH so “wonderful” (the performers twirling on their digits with the balconies so high that they look like midgets, etc.)!
In a sense, Hart even contradicts himself, saying that while the show is “worth the dough” one shouldn’t even bother looking at the ads — since the show is the same every time anyway. This would hardly be true if “the picture is a second item.”
Regarding the Roxy Music Hall Scene in “I Married an Angel.” As I understand it (from either Richard Rodgers' or Joshua Logan’s autobiography?), Hart originally got some flack for suggesting this scene, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with the storyline of “I Married an Angel” — which takes place in Hungary(?)!
But Hart said it would be a fun, light-hearted, satirical diversion, and he was right — people did enjoy it.
(Not only does it have a lot of great lines, the Rodgers' melody is a lot of fun too.)
By the way, how many other movie theaters/palaces have songs about them?
Re: Stadium seating vs. the sunken, gradual rake of RCMH
One of the interesting benefits of a stadium seating design, at least as shown by the current Ziegfeld (movie theater), the Majestic, the Richard Rodgers and the Virginia (“legit” theaters), is that a very steep rake allows a theater’s builder to save space and use his/her land more efficiently by tucking the theater’s lobby beneath the rear of the theater’s orchestra level (or its equivalent) seats. (The orchestra level then rakes downward, so that the front rows of the orchestra level are at or near ground level.)
In the case of at least two of these “legit” theaters (and perhaps all three), one actually first steps DOWN into the main lobby, before one must ascend a full flight of stairs again just to access the orchestra-level seating! And then, remember, all the “legit” theaters with stadium seating have balcony levels too, which involve even more stairs. Speak of being inconvenient! (And, as far as I know, none of the OLDER [pre-1960s] Broadway theaters [or concert halls, opera houses, etc.] — even the more conventional ones — had passenger elevators or escalators for ticket holders to use! Speak of being inconvenient for everyone — let alone inaccessible and inhospitable to the handicapped!)
So I think one reason this design didn’t catch on more in NYC, even in the pre-accessibility for the handicapped era, was because it did involve the introduction of a lot of stairs at a time when escalators (also, not seen as very classy) and elevators (in those days, with attendants!) were probably seen as being unnecessarily expensive. (As compared to the newer Broadway theaters and, I believe, the current Ziegfeld, which depend on escalators to get almost all patrons into the theater.) But I suppose, for certain theaters in the “old” days, where they really wanted to put a relatively big theater on a very small site, such a design probably was the only economically viable way to go.
In Radio City Music Hall, on the other hand, because of its enormous seating capacity (especially on the orchestra-level), the importance of its grand foyer to its overall presentation, the economic feasibility of elevators for grand movie palaces and the relative availability of a large parcel of land, a sunken and more modestly raked orchestra level was, quite understandably, a better way to go.
Re: photos of the interior of RCMH
The photos that I’m referring to, do not just show stage show, but also include a good deal of the “telescoping” interior of the auditorium PLUS the stage show. While these photos may have changed weekly, I’m guessing that this wasn’t the case, as it was probably too involved to do every week. So I’m guessing that the “Camera Highlights” that BoxOfficeBill refers to was probably more of a photograph of what was happening on the stage and didn’t include the auditorium with hundreds (thousands) of people filling the orchestra-level seats.
When I say I wished they had more photos of the interior of the auditorium, I am talking about a “greedy” little kid. (Same holds true for the wish for more movie stills, in general.) I’m just explaining why I think I so closely poured over the few photos that were available.
Of course, there is very little economic reason for the owners of the RCMH to provide more than just one stock shot of the interior (to acquaint those, who are otherwise unfamiliar with the theater, with its spectacular auditorium). For most potential customers, however, this one stock shot was probably sufficient to make them interested — if they had any interest in the first place — in seeing the theater.
It seems to me that in her book Krinksy (pg. 180) is implying that this photo, and others like it, are the work of the Radio City Music Hall publicity department — meant to show off the theater rather than the stage show. In any case, as far as I know, almost all the shows produced at RCMH were done by RCMH itself, anyway. (The one exception that I can think of is I believe Disney was invited one time to put on a stage show to accompany one of his own films.) So I don’t think the photo was altered to highlight the glories of a particular production. (Plus even with the enlargement, the photo doesn’t really tell you much about what is happening on stage anyway.)
Although it is true that enterprises like RCMH are often run by MBA types rather than theater people, etc., I think this is very much more of a current day phenomenon — something that wasn’t true as much when Roxy “built” the theater, and probably wasn’t all that true even when this photo was re-touched either. Reading various things about the history of RCMH, the history of the movies (with a lot of garment entrepreneurs become movie titans) and the history of business in general (prior to the 1960s), a surprising number of “big-time” businesses in the “old” days seem to be entrepreneurial operations (with non-college graduates running the show) or even “Mom and Pop” family operations.
Although RCMH management may, indeed, have been making the right decision regarding enlarging the Rockettes and the stage shows in these photos (my feelings could be the exception), it seems to me that they were being misguided and somewhat overly sensitive. To the limited extent that the photo makes any difference in the first place, I think they would probably be attracting more potential customers than they would lose.
Aside from being “fake” and “inauthentic” such photos seems to rob RCMH of some of its wonderful grandeur. How disappointing that, in the photo the world’s largest stage, it is barely big enough to fit all 36 Rockettes! (It looks like you can squeeze in an additional two Rockettes on stage right and one more on stage left — but that’s it.) It would be like having an interior shot of the RCMH auditorium where they take out some of the seats and enlarge the rest of them to fill out the space!
Also, it seems to me that the kind of stage shows they had — especially the ones that were the most effective — did not depend upon theatergoers seeing the faces of the performers up close. Now my memories of these stage shows are a bit fuzzy (it was a long time ago and I was just a kid for most of them), but it seems to me that the actual appeal of the shows was in their overscaled pageantry — something that is enhanced not diminished in a photo of a gigantic stage brimming over with spectacular scenery and dozens upon dozens of costumed performers.
Actually, as much as I know I enjoyed the stage shows at RCMH, I remember only one specific scene from, maybe, the five to ten shows I saw at RCMH: the Rockettes falling down like dominos during their “March of the Toy Soldiers” routine. (As far as I know, I never got to see gems such as the “Underwater Ballet” mentioned in previous posts.) So I don’t think of these shows as conventional shows — something to be seen, heard and understood — but rather as shows intended to entertain through spectacle.
I hope those older than myself will correct me if I’m wrong. But aside from the Rockettes and some other clever and truly theatrical spectacles, it seems to me that the live shows at RCMH were bright, cheery, melodic and insipid (genuine) entertainments. While the shows were genuinely entertaining in the 1950s and 1960s, they were an entertainment world equivalent of 1950s and 1960s “comfort food”! (As was much of show business in the 1950s?!) The shows at RCMH were kind of a fancifully done up, spectacularly presented, feast of “Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup,” “Wonder Bread,” “Peter Pan Peanut Butter,” “Welch’s Grape Juice” and “Hostess Twinkies” all presented in an unparalleled environment! I don’t think such entertainment, “suffers” from being seen on a giant, far away stage, but actually is enhanced by the theaters vast spaces, its echoy sound, its warm glow, the boomy rumbling organ, the mass of fellow spectators, and the giant, far away stage with tons of scenery and a virtual small town of costumed performers.
By the way, I suspect that this was true of the Music Hall in the 1930s as well as the 1950s. As mentioned previously there is a wonderful 1938 Rodgers and Hart song, “At the Roxy Music Hall” which is an affectionate send-up of Radio City Music Hall. The Lorenz Hart lyrics say that you don’t have to read the ads to decide whether or not to go to the Roxy Music Hall:
“It’s always worth the dough.
Any week you go,
It’s the same old show!”
This lyric can be heard by the same performer who introduced it on Broadway on track 19 of the “Ultimate Rodgers & Hart, Vol. II” which is produced by the Pearl division of Pavilion Records Ltd. in England. (I got it at a local chain store.) But I noticed in the published version (from the “Complete Lyrics of Lorenz Hart” by Hart and Kimball, Knopf, 1986) that there is even more that isn’t on the CD.
“The ballet that you saw is called "Othello”,
though it might as well have been some other fellow.
The stuff’s been here so long it’s good and mellow."
Hart says that on the stage of RCMH you can see the Grand Canal and the Bridge of Sighs of Venice — “They do Venice swell, and without the smell.”
He also says:
“Where the spectacle goes on ad infinitum, and the picture is a second item.”
Box Office Bill: Apparently the Hagstrom map you refer to is a full scale version of the one that I have — I think mine must be an “excerpt” from this larger one. It is included in a terrific little picture guidebook to New York City, published by Hagstrom in the very early 1960s. The guidebook is about 5 inches wide, 9 inches long and bound with wires (kind of like a spiral notebook).
It also includes some nice photos of the Times Sq. area at night, including one of a crowd scene outside the Loew’s State (which looks like the premiere of Ben-Hur); one of Times Sq. looking south, which shows the marquee of the Astor Theater (Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Felicia Farr in “3rd(?) to Yuma” — the Criterion marquee is off in the distance); and one that includes the vertical Loew’s State sign up the side of the adjacent skyscraper.
This version of the map only goes from the north side of 41st St. to the south side of 51st (so, disappointingly, no Warner Hollywood/Mark Hellinger) and goes from a little west of Eighth Ave. to a little west of Sixth Ave.
I didn’t notice the Loew’s State goof until after I submitted my post, and had never been in the De Mille, so wasn’t sure how accurate that one was.
However, there are a number of cutouts that are so “improbable” that I’m assuming that they must be “real” — would cartographers go out of their way to make such weird mistakes? For instance, I’m assuming that the Victoria cut-out is pretty accurate. The main body of the theater was indeed located on 46th St. (a great photo of it is included in the Mary Henderson book on Broadway Theaters), and it did have a tunnel lobby to Broadway. The only weird thing about the cut-out is that it shows that parts of the Astor Theater (to the south) and the Victoria Theater (to the north) seem to be interleafed. This is such a “weird” mistake, I’m thinking there must be something to it — it’s so much easier to just draw a straight line!
Another example is the cutout for the Lyceum, which seems to show a tunnel loading dock (instead of the usual tunnel lobby) that goes from the stage, located in the middle of the block, all the way to 46th St.
Also enjoy the fact that they show various hotel nightclubs, restaurants (Jack Dempsy’s, Toffenetti’s, Brass Rail), retail stores (Bond’s, Woolworth’s) and garages (some of which were the location of demolished theaters). I wonder if the nightclubs are accurately placed within the hotels? I think the Green Room in the Edison is. (I believe it later became an off-Broadway theater that housed the long-running “Oh, Calcutta.”)
I’m surprised that you’re surprised that Florsheim locations are shown. I thought it was an upscale shoe chain that would belong with the other kinds of stores shown on the map: Weber & Heilbroner, I. Miller.
What’s particularly great about the fact that they show all this is that it very often shows, at least by the process of elimination, the actual footprint of a theater “camouflaged” by adjacent office buildings, etc.
Re: rear wall of Rivoli
What I find interesting about the Seventh Ave. wall of the Rivoli is how plain and “ugly” it was (although the giant billboard helped a great deal) compared to the wonderfully elaborate Broadway facade of the building. This “schizophrenia” is not uncommon among builders (at least in New York), and I understand the economic reasons behind it — but I do find it “funny” and interesting when it happens nevertheless. It’s kind of like wearing clothes that are beautiful and spotlessly clean in the front, but ugly, worn and dirty when seen from the back!
Some of the 42nd St. theaters do the same thing (e.g., the New Amsterdam), while others go all out with their secondary facade (the Lyric).
Both the Roxy and Radio City Music Hall have rear facades that are consistent with their main facade — although the Roxy did have an extra lot line wall that they left “undesigned.”
I have a circa 1960 Hagstom’s map of the Theatre District that shows the approximate footprints of the various theaters in the Times Sq. area. While the map is not STRICTLY to scale (the roadbeds of the street, for instance, are larger than they should be), the “land” portion of the map does seem to be pretty accurate for the most part.
(By the way, what’s particularly great about this map is that it clearly shows how theater lobbies in the area were often appendages to the main body of an auditorium. So, for instance, from the map one gets a really clear idea of how six theaters were squeezed into a very small area of one block on the north side of 42nd St. and how five theaters were squeezed into a slightly larger area on one block on the south side of 42nd St.)
In any case, the footprint of the Rivoli on this map actually appears to be a little bit LARGER than average when compared to most of the “legit” theaters in the area — but, of course, much smaller than those for two grand Times Sq. movie “palaces”: The Capitol and the Warner.
The footprint for the the other great, then existing, movie palace in the area, the Paramount, is slightly “botched,” as the map makers try to show the footprint of the Parmount within that of the footprint of the Paramount office building, and wind up making the theater much smaller than it actually was — they were getting a bit too cute with this particular rendering.
As for the Roxy, only the outlines of the footprint — with no label — are shown on the map. It almost appears as though they just erased the name of the theater, and its eastern boundary, before reprinting the map. (But you can still see where the ticket lobby occupies the ground floor of the Taft.)
I was looking at “Best Remaining Seats” which has quite a bit of info about the Rivoli. Unfortunately, as wonderful as the book is, it also very chaotically organized in my opinion, and at the moment I don’t have the patience to search through it. But, if I remember correctly, although the Rivoli had live entertainment, it was mostly orchestral music — and thus the theater probably did not have much in the way of a stage, stage house, dressing rooms, etc. I believe, in fact, that along with its earlier Rothapfel sibling, the Rialto, it was one of the first theaters in NYC to be built withOUT facilities for stage productions (without a stage house, etc.).
I believe the Hall book, whose writing can also be frustratingly too “cute,” even jokes about the musicians running up Broadway from one Rothapfel theater (e.g., the Rialto) to another (the Rivoli).
By the way, on pgs. 46 and 47 of the book, there are some great photos of interior of the Rialto Theater which, I believe was Roxy’s “baby” just before the Rivoli (and before the Capitol, before the “Roxy,” and before the Center and Radio City Music Hall). These photos seem to show a situation quite similar to — although, perhaps, just a bit different from — the one described for the Rivoli.
In the photo you can see a grand, almost enormous domed auditorium with a very large, steeply raked balcony and a small stage (with, I believe no true proscenium and stage house).
The photo of the “foyer” shows the area at the back of the orchestra level seating, with a glass screen separating the seats from the “foyer,” and a semi-oval “cutout” in the back of the balcony lounge area (apparently under the steep rake of the balcony) which allows those in the second floor lounge to look down upon and see where the “standees” (if there were “standees”) would be standing at the back of the orchestra.
This photo also shows, I believe, how theaters in those days had almost non-existant lobby/foyer space to serve as a barrier between the auditorium and the street. I believe the doors shown on the left of the photo lead almost directly to the street.
I once went to an old neighborhood theater in Washington Heights that had been made into an art/revival house in the late 1960s, and it seemed to be quite similar in certain ways to what is shown in the Rialto photo (but much less grand). It also appeared to be a theater from that era and, and it was amazing how “basic” the theater was in terms of lobby space, etc.
So it would seem to me that one reason the auditorium of the Rivoli could be so grand on such a small site is that a lot of what we associate with movie palaces was left out — and the actual auditorium probably took up a “disproportionate” amount of the footprint (“disproportionate” at least when compared to more modern theaters).
On the Hagston map, the site of the Rialto theater (a later, different, structure than that which is shown in the photo — but still presumably occupying the same footprint) is even smaller than that of the Rivoli!
Another thought: I think theater spaces appear deceptively large when they have seats in them — because each of the seats represent one person, and seated people are much closer to each other, for long periods of time, then they would be in “normal” circumstances. Take the seats out (as is done when a theater becomes a disco, etc.) and the theater space appears to be its “true” size — a lot smaller.
While I think most theaters — especially large older ones — probably try to use a “sunken” arrangement, I can quickly think of quite a few theaters (in New York City at least) that, for one reason or another, haven’t.
The two that come to mind the quickest are the main auditorium of Carnegie Hall and the now demolished Helen Hayes on 46th St. I believe in both of them you had to go up a steep, but small flight of stairs to get into the theater at the orchestra level (the back of the orchestra). Since both of these theaters also had box offices in their very small “stairway” lobbies, it made for very lobbies that were awkwardly memorable. (The renovation of Carnegie Hall somehow did away with the awkwardness — can’t remember exactly how.)
Plus there are two big old Broadway theaters (from the 1920s?), the Majestic and the Richard Rodgers, that have early versions of stadium seating in which the back of the orchestra level is a between a half-story and a full story above street level. (I believe in the Richard Rodgers you first go down a few steps to get into the lobby and then you go up a full flight of stairs for the back of the orchestra). I believe the Virginia (which used to be called the ANTA?), also from around the same time, has a similar set-up. Plus there are the more modern Broadway theaters (the ones that were built as part of office buildings) that really only begin after you get one or more flights off the ground: the Minskoff, the Uris, and the Mariott Marquis (correct name?).
Getting back to movie theaters, I think in the current Ziegfeld Theater, the entire (single screen) seating area of the theater is on the second floor. Plus in Manhattan and all over the country there are all those small multiplex theaters, probably very few of which are sunken.
But generally speaking, putting the back of the orchestra level at the same grade as the surrounding sidewalks does often seem to make the most sense, especially for a large theater.
P.S. — Of course I could understand the management wanting the audience to think that they could see performers up close when RCMH was truly a “music hall.” But, of course, RCMH was a true music hall only for a few weeks when the theater first opened.
Finally got around to re-reading the early posts in this listing — great to see that RCMH listing has so many posts!
Especially loved reading the July posts from SimonL (explaining how the theater operated, and the practical difficulties of moving people in and out of a 5,945 seat theater), BoxOfficeBill (on the way the curtains were used to present a movie), and the post listing movies that played the Music Hall that was compiled by Ron3853(?) (which helped me remember when I saw certain movies there).
If I remember correctly, when I went to see “Crossed Swords” at the Music Hall (another poster mentions seeing it there in 1978) it was after it had been announced that they were considering closing the theater for good. It was such an emotional experience each time that the Rockettes came on — everyone thinking that this might be the last series of shows that the Rockettes might ever do.
Around 1978 and 1979, I was a tourgroup leader who used to escort out-of-town tour groups to see the movie and the stage show at RCMH as part of a multi-day NYC tour package. If I remember correctly, RCMH was ususally scheduled for Sunday evening (the last evening of a multi-day visit), and it was great because there was actually very little else that one could do with a tour group in NYC on a Sunday evening.
I believe I saw “The Promise” with Kathleen Quinlan with one of these tour groups. Didn’t realize that (according to another poster) this was the last regular movie shown at RCMH.
I think I also took a tour group to the first edition of the Christmas Spectacular after the Music Hall switched to its new format. I remember thinking to myself that the show wasn’t all that good — or, at least, that it needed a lot of work (although I was, of course, rooting for it to be good enough to “save” the Music Hall).
Perhaps the show wasn’t that good, but to be fair perhaps I was also overcritical because I so wanted it to succeed. (My tour group liked it.)
One very strange “act” in the first edition that I believe they did drop though: at one point in the first of the new Christmas Spectaculars, they had a singer dressed as a homeless bag lady come out to sing a ballad. The idea, I assume, was to make a poignant statement about the disadvantaged at Christmastime.
I thought this was strange scene for the RCMH Christmas Spectacular, however, in part because homeless bag ladies were relatively new in New York City (with the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill in the mid-1970s[?]) and I didn’t think out of town tourists would really get what was happening. (If I remember correctly, the one or two people in my group that mentioned this scene didn’t really know what it was supposed to be about, but more or less got the general gist — rememember the disadvantaged at Christmastime, too — anyway.)
I also thought it seemed to be too severe a departure from the tone of the rest of the show.
Re: why the Music Hall doesn’t look so big from outside
I’ve wondered about this too, and here are some thoughts:
1) Some of the theater’s public spaces are concealed in the office building fronting on Sixth Ave. (the ticket lobby and the lounges, etc. above it);
2) Most of the great size of the auditorium is in it’s block long (200' wide) width, rather than it’s length. And since the theater’s width is concealed by the office building on Sixth and the office building on Rockefeller Plaza, you never really get to see from the outside how wide the theater is.
3) The theater has a plain exterior and the two buildings that bookend it also have the same plain exterior which blurrs the dimensions of the theater — where does the theater begin and where does it end?
4) I’m not sure about this, but I believe RCMH has a somewhat sunken auditorium that lessens the apparent height of the theater.
Explanation: when I went by the theater the other day, the door to the loading dock that leads onto the stage was open and you could see onto the stage. If I remember correctly, this loading dock was flush with the sidewalk, which means parts of the auditorium are below street level.
The same holds, true, by the way with the Hudson Theater (which I’m more sure of). The loading dock to the stage is only inches above the sidewalk, which would mean the the first rows of the orchestra level are probably below sidewalk level.
(This is also common, I believe, in atheletic stadia [when a low water table permits it]. The playing field is below street level, and when patrons enter the field boxes from the surrounding street, they find themselves going down to the level of the playing field. Otherwise a lot of stadiums would be much taller — like Shea Stadium with its high water table — than they are now.)
5) The size of the theater might be camouflaged a bit by the beautiful grills that cover the firescapes and by the windows (to the executive offices and the dressing rooms) which, again, might help blur the difference between where the theater ends and the other buildings begin.
BoxOfficeBill: Thanks for the fascinating info about how the RCMH contour curtain was used. I wish I had thought of observing and counting the folds like that!
I’m not sure, however, if that is what the touch-up artist did in the photo that Krinsky shows and comments upon in her book — but, then again, maybe it is? Let me describe the photo.
First, a brief description to identify it: the photo in the book, and on the back cover, shows 36 (I counted!) towering Rockettes lined up before scenery that … well, is hard to describe. On stage right, there seem to be three enormous circles (hula-hoops?) covered in flowers. (The hoops are about twice the size of the people standing infront of them.) On stage left, there seems to be the top three quarters of a rising moon that is just a bit taller than the performers in front of it. And in the background there seems to be an elevated swan boat. Above the scene there appears to be two floral moons connected by a garland of flowers (or lights) hung from the sky, with more flowers (or lights) in some sort of pattern in the background.
In this photo the contour curtain has 10 “genuine” folds that are fitted within the portion of the arch that contains 9 of the radiating grilles (sunbursts). This is about three-quarters of the way up the arch — which I suspect is much higher than the curtain would really go?
To the left and right of the 10 “genuine” folds, there are very elogated, droopy folds that appear to me to be painted in! Behind these painted in folds, there is a traveling curtain, that also looks to me to be painted in! (For one thing, they seem to be “lighted” differently.) Also the end Rockettes on either end of the line seem to be partially cut off by the traveling curtain.
The clues for me in this photo that the Rockettes are larger than life — and the performers BEHIND the Rockettees make the Rockettes themselves look as big as large dolls! — was that the end Rockettees on stage left(?) not only seem much, much larger than both the people in the orchestra pit and in the audience just in front of them (and closer to the camera, yet), but they also look a bit too big to fit behind those curtains on the stepped stages going up the side of the auditorium.
(By the way, I didn’t notice how large the performers behind the Rockettes were [!] or that the curtains seem painted-in until just now.)
As a kid, I use to love to look at the movie stills outside a theater (there never seemed to be enough of them), and I remember wishing that RCMH, in particular, had more photos (and a greater variety of them) in the display cases along 50th St. I also remember being disappointed that this one photo of the Music Hall’s interior (or a similar photo) seemed to be the one and only photo of the interior of RCMH that they ever showed in the display case — and actually the one and only one of the interior of RCMH that you ever seemed to see anywhere.
Looking at “this” photo as a kid, I wanted to be overwhelmed by the giganticism of RCMH and its stage and was thus disappointed that the performers were so big and that the stage seemed so “small” (judging by the way the performers so easily filled it up) for such a large theater. Examining the photo as carefully as I could, I could sense that something seemed wrong about “the” photo, but couldn’t put my finger on it — couldn’t find the smoking gun, so to speak.
It’s ironic that the management of RCMH specifically wanted the performers to appear large (and thus have the stage appear “small”). I suppose they knew what they were doing, and perhaps my kid’s mentality was the exception. But I would think that most people going to RCMH were not going to see live performers up close, anyway, but were going for the spectacle of it all — enormous scenery, large crowd scenes, etc. — in which case a stage full of tiny scenery and tiny, tiny performers would seem to me to be an asset in a publicity photo rather than a liablity.
To bring in another example: when I was a pre-schooler, and before I ever went to visit the Empire State Building, I remember being thrilled by the tales told to me by my slightly older friends who had been there. “The people on the sidewalk are so tiny, they look like little ants!” When I finally went to the Empire State Building, however, I was disappointed because the people on the sidewalk really didn’t look all that small (and the Empire State Building, itself, didn’t really look all that tall either)!
There are certain experiences where you want to be overwhelmed by enormous scale of things — so seeing large crowds of tiny people, in these instances, would seem to me not to be a liablity but an asset! (At least if the sound applification was good enough for you to hear what is going on.) Now if RCMH management chose to enlarge the image of a movie screen in a photo of the interior, that would be a different story!
I noticed that the Ziegfeld was mentioned in yesterday’s (1/20/05) “USA Today” article written by Ross Melnick and Andreas Fuchs, “Ten Great Places to Revel in Cinematic Grandeur.” While, in a sense, I can understand why they included the Ziegfeld in the article (I can see how, in a narrow sense, it meets their criteria), the listing of it in such an article made me think of the concept and the expression, “defining deviance down.”
I believe it was the late New York Senator and former Harvard professor (among other things), Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who coined this phrase. And if I understand it correctly, the idea of the phrase is to point out that a lot of behavior that was once considered bad is now considered “OK” because we have been unconsciously lowering our standards — “defining deviance down.”
So, in connection with the Ziegfeld, it seems to me that this theater is now considered a “great” place for seeing movies only because we have re-defined “cheap,” “tasteless,” and “uninspired” downward — thus enabling the Ziegfeld to now be considered “great.”
I’ve only been to the Ziegfeld a few times, and even the last time was probably many years ago. (I saw “That’s Entertainment” there in the early 1970s, and I went there a time or two after that for movies I can’t remember at the moment.) So my memories of it are probably a bit fuzzy. But when I first saw the theater I was kind of embarrassed at just how “tacky” it was — even as a public space on its own, without even beginning to compare it with the truly beautiful, grand and imaginatively designed movie theaters and movie palaces that used to be the norm.
In a way this is strange for me to say, because I am all for exuberant decoration and the breaking of the “rules” of “good” modern design. But rather than being in “poor” taste (poor taste being the aesthetic preferences of a minority that happens to be out of favor with the taste “establishment”), the Ziegfeld struck me as being a place where nobody really cared about taste, and thus little real thought was given to its design. It seems to me that the owners/“designers” of the Ziegfeld just decided to use left-over materials from a “Gay ‘90s” steak house and to indiscriminately plaster the stuff around the inside of a plain “modern” box. (If I remember correctly, there was also some kind of New Orleans balcony type grill work also stuck up on some of the walls.)
When I noticed that the Ziegfeld began to be used for premieres, I believe I was embarrassed that such a “tacky” theater would be used for such functions in New York City and thus represent to Hollywood the “best” that the city had to offer — when L.A. had (at least in my imagination, don’t know if it actually was used for premieres) the magnificent Graumann’s Chinese!
I realize, especially from reading the posts on this site, that movie theaters are more than just their architecture and design. Just as important — actually, even more so — is the way a theater presents a movie (e.g., the quality of the picture, the quality of the sound, etc.). And I don’t mean to include this aspect in my comments about the Ziegfeld. As far as I can recall, I don’t remember any problems in this regard.
While I realize the title of the piece was “Ten Great Places to Revel in Cinematic Grandeur,” and thus implied theaters of a certain seating capacity (and pomposity), I wish the authors had chosen a slightly different title (say, “Ten Great Places to Revel in a Special Cinematic Experience”) which would have allowed them to include smaller, luxurious (but less pompous) theaters in their article also. In that case, they could have included the endangered “Beekman” theater — a handsome art moderne theater that offers, in my opinion, a truly special single-screen movie going experience in Manhattan.