Those are nice late afternoon photos on that August Sunday as the sun hits the western exposure of South Cayuga Street. Your shots of the marquee hit the decayed spots accurately. Restoration is underway, slowly to be sure, but underway nonetheless. It will happen all in good time.
Warren—
Splendid pix of the great old sign blazing with lights. The block-long newer version was a real disappointment with its harsh relected light. We can only wonder what colors the Ziegfeld and GWTW signs displayed, and what patterns of on-and-off blinking razzle-dazzle they sported.
Seeing “The Prince and the Showgirl†at the 10:30 am showing on opening day remains one of my favorite memories of RCMH. Maybe it’s because the school year had just ended the day before and I looked forward to an endless summer of reading and seeing movies, the last before I’d be tied down by seasonal jobs. Maybe it’s because at the age of fifteen I felt myself sprouting wings and entering a new kind of grown-up world. Only two years earlier I had lied to my parents about seeing the tsk-tsked “The Seven-Year Itch†at the RKO Dyker, though I really didn’t fathom the fuss over Monroe. Now in the summer of ’57, I understood.
I shall never forget the enormous roar from 6,000 patrons at RCMH during the first encounter between Olivier and Monroe when the strap on her dress breaks loose and his monacle pops into her cleavage. My friend and I stayed to see the film twice. I realize that both stars made much better movies, and that later reports about tensions on the set proved disheartening. But this film pleased me immensely. And the stage show celebrating NYC was an eye-popper.
As Vincent pointed out last week, Melissa Haydenâ€"a principal dancer from the City Balletâ€"joined the Corps de Ballet, already augmented by tutu-fitted Rockettes, to flood the stage with a Chopin extravaganza. Ronnie Ronalde, still performing today at the age of eighty-two, was an English music-hall star who’d been billed as the world’s greatest whistler and whose whistling-cum-accordion-playing was said to have made Marilyn Monroe shiver with excitementâ€"a kinky stage accompaniment for the film. The Morlidor Trio featured a male contortionist who wore a black mask and was assisted by two female attendants. Also kinky. A grotesquely garbed figure of Father Knickerbocker linked the various acts and swelled to unimaginable proportions at the Finale. Kinkiest.
If you walked from Collegetown to downtown via Buffalo Street, you’d make a left turn at Aurora Street and reach the Strand first on State Street (the near-near). But if before State Street you turned right on Seneca Street, you’d reach the Temple a block and a half away (the near-far). If instead you continued to State Street, then turned right and walked three blocks, you’d reach the State Theater at the corner of Cayuga (the far-near). To reach the Ithaca, you’d have to continue down State Street for four more blocks (the far-far).
You evidently attended Ithaca theaters before the fifth theater was built in the late ‘60s, the Triphammer at the Triphammer Mall: now that was really far (over a mile from CU’s North Campus) and I don’t believe that Tompkins Co. Transit ran buses there until the late 70’s. The construction of the much larger Pyramid Mall on Triphammer at Route 13 brought the Hoyt’s (now Regal) multiplex (first four, now eight screens). I don’t have it in me to volunteer a new listing for that outfit.
“The Sun Also Rises†was the first of a trio of films based on Hemingway’s novels that would hit the screen in rapid succession. “A Farewell to Arms†with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones opened at the Roxy the following January, and nine months after that “The Old Man and the Sea†with Spenser Tracy opened at the Criterion with reserved seats outrageously inflated in price for a one-set, one-character movie that lasted less than an hour-and-a-half. Meanwhile, a revival of “For Whom the Bell Tolls†took over the Normandie on E 57 Street for a few weeks. The overdose of Papa H alienated me from ever reading the Master again.
The stage show offered typical Roxy fare at the height of delirious fabrication. Pan Am collaborated with the management to produce this show about air travel. It opened on 23 August that year, just five weeks after RCMH had mounted its elaborate stage salute to the USAF accompanying “Silk Stockings.†All those planes occupying the two stages of East 50 Street exemplified the not-so-subtle rivalry waged between the theatrical titans at the time. I’m not sure that the singing career of the Sensational Elena Giusti went very far after her Dramatic And Climactic finale with the entire ensemble. Google offers no further information, though it does lead to a web site with pictures of the star modeling clothes ca. 1955.
On the rear page, Robert C. Rothafel writes himself speechless as he proclaims the presentation “in essence, containing perhaps more showmanship than many show business ventures,†etc. etc. etc. The fractured prose is truly one-of-a-kind. But though it promises more “Showplanes†to come, I don’t recall seeing any others. The sketch of the floor plan at the bottom suggests the theater’s unusual width. The auditorium was set at an angle between 50th and 51st Streets so as to permit an expanse greater than a city block. When you sat in the balcony for a bird’s-eye view of the ice stage, you found the amplitude staggeringly unreal.
That’s a swell picture of the Roxy’s early-50’s interior. If I might venture a date, I’d fix it between late April-late August 1953. A few months ago I posted a shot of the Roxy’s interior after its renovation in Dec. ’52. View link
In it, you’ll note an angled horizontal-teaser curtain with ghastly scalloped side-tormentors framing the screen. In Spring, 20C-Fox announced its development of CinemaScope and in late April at the theater (“Call Me Madam†was its film attraction, a hold-over Easter show) the studio offered a press demonstration of the new process (one demo-scene compared “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend†from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes†shot in conventional 1x1.33 with the same number reshot in CinemaScopeâ€"I’d love to see that one!). Clearly, the teaser and tormentors had to be removed to accommodate the enlarged screen, and your picture shows that they no longer hung in place. The following September, the CinemaScope screen permanently dislodged the conventional one and changed the proscenium yet again.
Your picture shows nicely how the Roxy projected its pre-CinemaScope films on a picture sheet suspended in front of a pale blue curtain, the latter dimly lit throughout the presentation, without the usual frames of black masking. The management claimed that this presentation was easier on the eyes. When Ice Colorama converted the entire stage to a skating ring in Dec. ’52, the glare from the ice shot up to the screen’s surface, and to remedy it, a rubber runner was placed over the permafrost in front of the screen: you can see that in the picture, too. It’s a wonderfully crisp shot, and greatly superior to the one I posted. Thanks.
Besides, in NYC “Vertigo” opened at the Capitol, not the Paramount. If Sorcese had shown up at the correct theater, I might have rubbed elbows with him when I saw that film on 51st and B'way in May ‘58. We were the same age, and though I probably couldn’t pass a blindfold test (an unusually cruel test to take for movies, in any event), I read the papers, knew the technology (or thought I did), and would look for clues to judge the presentation.
In my memory, the Capitol took the unusual turn of reducing the size of its screen from the nearly full-proscenium curved screen of Summer ‘53 (“From Here to Eternity”) to a flatter, more modestly sized one by Summer '56 (“War and Peace”). On the page for the Capitol, Warren has noted Bosley Crowther’s criticism of the screen’s dizzying dimensions when it debuted with “Never Let Me Go” in Spring '53; perhaps that’s why the theater eventually settled for diminished proportions.
In the late ‘50s, even though the Capitol never offered horizontal VistaVision, its projection was flawless—better, I’d argue, than the Roxy’s whose page I’m using. 'Scuse me, Roxy.
Many thanks for your posts here, and on the Woolaston Theater page. Yes, last Dec. 30 and Jan. 1-3 on the Wollaston page I raised questions about Quincy’s theaters based on a heated memory from fifty-five years ago. Now it would be great to start a page for each of Quincy’s Lincoln (originally Casino), Strand, and Art theaters you’ve uncovered for us. I’ll go out of my way, meanwhile, to get my hands on the Patriot-Ledger of 30 April 1960.
“Don’t Go Near the Water” was the Thanksgiving attraction that year(see my post of 13 Oct above). Yes, “Peyton Place” was the Roxy’s Christmas rival that year, and its lurid reputation possibly pushed the family crowd into the gloom of “Sayonara” at RCMH— better suicide than (gasp) teen-age sex. But the show at the Roxy was wonderful— I remember its stage presentation as one of its best, though I no longer have the program.
Thanks for the clarification in your splendid post. Daniel Okrent, until last June the Public Editor of the NY Times (appointed in 2003), has written generalist books on such topics as baseball and New England, and he gets his stuff right. Carol Krinsky, an architectural historian of distinction who teaches at NYU, sorted out the problems and issues in her 1978 book. She recounts that the design of Rockefeller Center was thoroughly collaborative as it enlisted the talents of several companies (Todd, Robertson, and Todd; Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray)under the combined name of The Associated Architects. Harrison designed the building and appointed Stone as design supervisor of the auditorium. Ground was broken in summer ‘31 and construction was well underway by the following June when Deskey won the competition for interior decorating, which itself had enlisted the talents of mural, furniture, fabric, and lighting artists. The rapidity of its completion is staggering.
Here’s a Program from September, 1957, a quarter-century later when RCMH was at its height of day-to-day operating success:
View link
RCMH was flooded with long-running musicals that year. “The Pajama Game†opened as its Labor Day attraction, the rare Warner Brothers musical that could stand up to the MGM competition flanking it. This program does not note that Bob Fosse did the choreography, but who could ever forget “Steam Heat†or “Hernando’s Hideway†after seeing Carol Haney performing them? Four years earlier Fosse and Haney had both appeared on the RCMH screen in the amazing “From This Moment On†number in “Kiss Me Kate.†Rich stuff.
The stage show matched the tune fest on the screen, from the Gershwin overture to the featured appearance of India Adams in two segments. Adams had dubbed the singing voice of Cyd Charisse in “The Band Wagon†and held a steady career performing B’way pop in supperclubs and variety shows. The Foursome who accompanied her as an opener to the Rockettes was not likely the original group that had introduced “Biding My Time†in “Girl Crazy†and had appeared with Eleanor Powell in “Born to Dance,†but it quite possibly revived the latter’s style in the ‘50s. In ’57 their sort of pop music was still holding sway after more than a quarter-century of dominance. Then, within a couple of years, it would suddenly seem horribly anachronistic to most tastes.
Georgie Kaye was a stand-up comedian who appeared regularly on the Ed Sullivan TV show. He offered a nice balance to the Ponchielli ballet. You could always predict that the RCMH stage show would build to a jazzy climax when the overture was by Gershwin and the opening segment featured a classical ballet such as “The Dance of the Hours.†The latter, elegant and refined and sumptuously staged as it was, seemed extravagant barrier to get through in completing the trajectory from Gershwin to the Rockettes. In a way, RCMH spoiled me for ballet. The company was super disciplined and super precise (a bit in the manner of the precision of the Rockettes) and super large. When, a few years later, I found myself attending Sadler’s Wells and Bolshoi, I thought them smaller and less pointedly in-synch than Margaret Sande’s and Florence Rogge’s dancers. For all its exaggeration, RCMH’s Corps de Ballet introduced serious dance to hundreds of thousands of us who otherwise would not have bothered to seek it out.
The notice for “Sayonara†as an up-coming attraction does not indicate that it would be the Christmas show. I wonder whether the management had planned it for an earlier release, perhaps as the Thanksgiving show. Its length and brooding content had always struck me as inappropriate for the holiday season. Heaven knows that the hold-over runs of musicals such as “The Pajama Game†that year would have pushed back its opening in any event.
That’s a great front cover for the “Guys and Dolls†program. But its rear cover is atrocious. Who decided to use a monochrome still from the brawl in a Havana bar? Here it is:
In one staggering leap, it just hit me that I picked up this program at the Capitol almost exactly fifty years ago on a cold mid-December Saturday afternoon. It proved yet another occasion to use guest passes proffered by a family friend who had worked in the corporate offices at Loew’s State. Only now I was a high-school Freshman with down on my upper lip and slowly descending sideburns, and it was getting to be pretty embarrassing to accompany my folks to the Capitol for an MGM tune fest.
It might have pained less if we had taken in a war movie or some action romp. But I just couldn’t face the guys in the cafeteria and say that I had seen a musical with my parents, even if it offered a mock strip-tease with “Take Back Your Mink.†As it turned out, I would share just one more family trip to the Capitol, and that took place the following summer with “War and Peace†(now that was a war movie, so I could hold my head high with the lip I’d already shaved once). After that, I was on my own when it came to attending first-ruin movies. Meanwhile, at Easter “Guys and Dolls†had hit the Loew’s nabes after playing at the Capitol for almost three-and-a-half months as Warren has mentioned. On Good Friday I went to see it again, this time with a friend, at Loew’s Kameo on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. We nearly got thrown out of the house for our wisecracks, exactly as Damon Runyon and Joseph Mankiewicz would have wanted it to be.
Now that I think of it, another first-run film that I skipped at the Rivoli and saw out-of-town was “West Side Story.†The film opened in October ’61, but I had already stood twice through the play at the Winter Garden a block north and the Rivoli’s price-scale and advance sell-out deterred me. As it happened, I saw it the following Spring in Brussels during a break in my foreign studies. The dialogue had been dubbed into French and presented with Flemish sub-titles; the songs remained in English, with a line of French sub-titles added to the Flemish ones. Quite a bit of alphabet competed with Natalie on the screen. I remember its roadshow presentation at a large, modern theater with an impressively curved screenâ€"a somewhat scaled down version of the one at the Rivoli. The price was well within my $4.00 per day travel budget, though it might have pressed me to forego a Belgian beer or two to stretch my wallet that night. The theater could have been the Acropole or the Vendôme or the De Brouckère before any of them was cut into a maze of mini-theaters. The Varieties at the time was showing Cinerama.
Here are pages from a souvenir program for the third Cinerama film, “Seven Wonders of the World.†It opened at the Warner on 10 April, 1956, displacing the second Cinerama film, “Cinerama Holiday,†which had run for over a year. By now the travelogue formula was becoming a bit pat, and it would meet serious and imaginative competition the following October when Michael Todd’s “Around the World in Eighty Days†opened at the Rivoli across the street two blocks to the north.
I was surprised to find that Tay Garnett had a hand in the direction, less surprised to find that Andrew Marton did. Garnett’s career ended shortly afterwards with “Night Fighters.†Marton is perhaps best known for his work on the astonishing location sequences of the 1950 “King Solomon’s Mines.â€
Yes, Vincent: I wonder whether it would have been feasible for RCMH to pick up the ‘60s musicals and other spectacles after their roadshow runs? Here’s a Program from October ’57:
Some film historians claim that “Les Girls†was the last great Hollywood (read: MGM) musical to be made. After it, Gene Kelly retired from starring in song-and-dance films, just as Fred Astaire did a few months earlier upon finishing “Silk Stockings.†Future musicals might be bigger and splashier, but from one to another there would be no continuity in talent and craft such as the old studio system had nourished. And most of them would open as hard-ticket roadshows, which removed immediacy and spontaneity from seeing them and prevented RCMH from booking them. Little did we know this would happen when we saw “Les Girls†in October ’57. I don’t believe that at the time I was aware of either Kelly’s or Astaire’s retirement. Their swan songs, both deploying music and lyrics by Cole Porter, were just two in a stream of hit musicals that poured forth from several studios that year. So what if “Les Girls†seemed a little flat in its score and a bit depressive in its plot (a musical about a cad and attempted suicide?). We were sure that there would be new musicals to see in the coming months and new chances for Kelly and others to prove their stuff. Only later did we realize that it wouldn’t happen.
The stage show was exceptional for its emphasis on dance, and particularly colorful for a Russell Markert production, which tended to be more reserved and high-brow than Leonidorf’s spectaculars. The Ballet danced twice, and the highlight of the program came with the dazzlingly athletic star turn of Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade in a Caribbean setting. They might have stolen the show from the Rockettes who followed, though that’s hard to imagine. The steam curtain and feathers topped it all off. Eye-popping.
Here are two links to the Purdue.edu website with information about the Elliott Hall of Music. The first opens with a sharp color picture of the Hall (yes, its floor plan resembles that of RCMH) and includes a virtual tour of the facility (if you download to software to make it happenâ€"I didn’t):
The second includes an excerpt from the Hall’s original mission statement (“this new Hall of Music, then, will serve Purdue University’s first purpose-the building of its students into adequate and cultured citizens of the worldâ€) and from its current function (directed by the superb film historian Ben Lawton, it serves as a program venue for the university’s departments of Theatre, Dance, University Bands, Liberal Arts, and Computer Graphics Technology as well as for students in the entertainment technology and production support industry).
Oddly, however, I was unable to connect with a schedule of “current productions†when I clicked the button for that topic. Until now, I had never heard of this auditorium and its connection with RCMH. Thanks for the post.
I just noticed that the ad for the “Hungry Pilgrim” at the Statler Hilton implies that the restaurant served an After Theater supper up until noon the next day. Now, we all know that “Cleopatra” is egregiously over-long and that patrons would have been famished after it; but did restaurants discover that the After Theater crowd would keep arriving until the following day’s lunch hour? All those hungry women no doubt created a niche market, too.
Vincent: instead of seeing “Lizpatra” at the Rivoli, I travelled to Boston to see it at the Wang Center (then called the Music Hall) in July ‘63. There the prices were cheaper and the waiting time for tickets was shorter. (Never mind the expense and the time it took to get to Boston.) I just posted a Playbill program for that event on the page for the Wang Center of the Performing Arts (Boston) on this site. The Todd-AO presentation at that huge theater was superb.
The Playbill runs to twenty-four pages, and I reproduce only six of them, but I like the ads, especially the one on the title page that implies the “Hungry Pilgrim” restaurant at the Statler Hilton Hotel served an After Theater supper up until noon the next day. Now, we all know that the film is egregiously over-long and that patrons would have been famished after it; but did restaurants discover that the After Theater crowd would keep arriving until the following day’s lunch hour?
Though my NYC origins should have dictated that I’d see the film at Manhattan’s Rivoli Theater, the elevated price scale and the difficulty of getting reserved seats there prompted me and a friend to see it in Boston. As a college student at the time, I had a network of undergrad pals in Bean Town, so we used our contacts there to get tickets and crash-out overnight. It proved surprisingly easy: if I remember correctly, we bought the tickets on the day of performance (the Rivoli required a wait of several weeks). The size of the theater no doubt allowed for the availability of seats even in the cheap sections at peak times.
I remember that the film’s presentation was superbâ€"grander and more impressive than it would have been at the smaller Rivoli. The orchestral overture thundered through the huge house, and as the lights dimmed, the sweeping curtains parted majestically on the Fox logo. Splendid. Though the film was laughable, right down to Hermes Pan’s crowd-scene choreography, we enjoyed it immensely, even as we began to nod off around midnight with almost an hour of the nonsense left to go.
The ads in this program are a thrill in themselves. I thought you’d especially like the one of features at other Sack theaters. But my favorite notice comes on the title page with the “Thirsty Pilgrim†at the Statler Hilton, “serving light lunches for men only.†Boston famously offered such places at the time, from the sublime Locke-Ober to ridiculous street-corner bars. For each one, so many hungry women. When my aunt had lived in the area a decade or so earlier, many (all?) local taverns allowed women to enter only when accompanied by men. On family visits, I remember playing with my cousin outside drinking spots while my grandfather escorted my mom and her sister inside for a highball or two. Fathers debauching daughters! Children left to their own devices! And all in the name of propriety! But who could complain when the Music Hall was showing “Cleopatra.â€
I know that Leonard Maltin rates “Don’t Go Near the Water†as a dud, but as a gutter-minded fifteen-year-old connoiseur of double entendre in the late ‘50s, I found this film unexpectedly hilarious and still think of it fondly today. Part of the delight might have come from the sharp contrast between the rowdy, adolescent tenor of the film and the stately, sublime, ever-so-tasteful demeanor of RCMH. This contrast shapes up in the stage show that accompanied the film: the theme focused on the music of Victor Herbert from start to finish, beginning with the Overture’s “Herbert Melodies†and ending with the Rockettes’ “March of the Wooden Soldiers [here transvestized to ‘Wooden Toys’].†It was a turn-of-the-century show that my grandparents would have loved as much as the film moved my potty-mouthed pals to spasms of laughter. The “Wooden Soldiers,†was of course a routine that usually accompanied Christmas shows with a Tannenbaum set. For this Thanksgiving production, Leonidoff used a toy-shop set and clad the seventy-two legs in rag-doll costumes.
Geoffrey: Thanks for the info about the RMCH recordings. In this program, look at the notation on the “Announcing… the Great Christmas Show†page. It entices us to buy any of three LP recordings offered by three competing record companies: “Showplace of the Nation†by Roulette, “RCMH†by Columbia, and “Holiday Music†by Columbia. The subsequent recording of the “Sayonara†stage show music evidently updated the lot. The stage show with “Sayonara†was an abbreviated one because the film ran twenty-seven minutes over two hours. Stage shows conventionally began with an organ intermezzo after the film, then the newsreel under dimly blue-lit arches as crowds still searched for seats, often a cartoon, and finally the “Announcing our next attraction†strip accompanied by the organ. The orchestra would rise while tuning up as the curtain descended on the strip. In the case of this Christmas show, the organ intermezzo segued directly into the tuned-up orchestral strains, skipping the rest. Every fraction of a minute counted.
Thanks for another splendid list. I saw none of those shows there then, but as a compulsive newspaper reader at the time, I recall ads for most of them. Your list retrospectively explains why some particular come-ons remain in memory. The “China Doll” stage show with “Under My Skin” evidently prompted the Roxy mgt to push for extra publicity at the time. Likewise the Easter competition for “Cheaper By the Dozen” encouraged lavish advertising.
The contemporary fame of Faye Emerson, now a largely unknown minor movie star and major TV variety show hostess celebrated for her marriages (Eliot Roosevelt, Skitch Henderson) no doubt boosted “Love That Brute,” but the then-dim star of Lucy and Desi (just before exploding to superior magnitude) did little to brighten the run of “Night and the City” (now a cult favorite). What irony.
I remember that “The Gunfighter” and “Broken Arrow” got strong publicity at the time, when current competition with RCMH had already fallen by default to the Roxy’s favor: “The Next Voice You Hear” was one of the worst films ever to play at RCMH, while “The Men” featured a Marlon Brando who was practically unknown outside of B'way live theater: Marlon who?
And Martha Stewart! I had to research this one. You can Google “Martha Stewart singer 1950” to find data about her tragic early widowhood and a brief film career that included playing the murdered hat-check girl in Nicholas Ray’s “In a Lonely Place.” She was an add-on for the fabulous stage show with “Wabash Avenue,” one of the few shows to run beyond two weeks, and carried the stage show with “All About Eve” which ran a record six weeks, even with the bizarre opening policy of not seating patrons after the start of the film. What was Roxy thinking of?
I wound up seeing “Sayonara†twice at RCMH. It wasn’t the first nor the last time that that happenedâ€"I ‘ll spare the details, ‘cept to say that in later years when I reported to my friends that I saw a terrific show at RCMH, they wanted to see it too, and I invariably caved in and went back to see it with them. With “Sayonara,†the situation was more delicate. I had seen it with high-school friends in the first week of its run, and thought it exotic and wonderfully liberating in a United-Nations sort of way (whatever happened to the UN now that that troglodyte Bolton is, um, representing us?).
The time-frame occurred when, according to my parents, I was seeing far too many movies, growing far too thin and pale from spending too much time in front of the screen, and developing alarmist pink views about the world and the state of the nation. So, naturally, I did not report to my folks that I had entered the golden arches to see Marlon Brando and Miiko Take fornicate hours after the film had opened. Then, one day in mid-December, my mom said, “You’re so thin and pale. Let’s get rid of your pink cast. Marlon Brando is such a wonderful actor. Let’s go to RCMH to see the Christmas show!†I gulped and said, “Sure, I won’t turn down a trip to RCMH.â€
The first time, I thought the film explored a part of Japan that George Hersey had written about (you gotta think mid-‘50s to fathom what that means). The second time, I thought the film was dull (and I’d stand by that verdict today). What I most remember was that, during the dual-suicide (Red Buttons of TV clown fame and the wasted Miyoshi Umeki, an AA winner cited in eighth place on the Showplace Programâ€"an awful scene for a Christmas show at RCMH)â€"an roar emanated from backstage, behind the screen. The first time, I figured that stagehands were bringing out the nativity creche for the stage show that would begin approximately twenty minutes later. The second time, I knew that the stagehands were doing exactly that. A year later, with “Auntie Mame,†the same roar went up: it co-incided with the scene twenty minutes from the end of the film when Roz Russell delicately accepts an sticky-sweet cocktail from prospective in-lawsâ€"“O, diaquiries, how nice.†Roar. I’m sure that the stagehands were awfully busy at that point, four times each day. Butâ€"camels and magi be damned—the noise interfered with the film.
After the show, my mom brought me to Ho Ho’s Chinese Pavilion on W 50 Street to fatten me up. But at the age of fourteen, I couldn’t dare tell my friends that I’d accompanied her to see “Sayonara†a second time at RCMH. “Mu gu gai pan†barely added poundage to my frameâ€"I starved to save money to see filmsâ€"but I thought it worth the subterfuge to find out what a second viewing of “Sayonara†at RCMH might reveal.
“The Stranger†was everybody’s favorite Existentialist novel, but Visconti’s photogenic, operatic style seemed to swamp the bleakness of Camus. Somehow even the Italian title (“Lo stranieroâ€) didn’t appear right. Anway, the briefly-lived Showbills distributed in art theaters during the early ‘60s made a short comeback in the winter of ‘67-’68, and this—now renamed “Showcase‗is one of them. By comparison with the earlier version, it was quite stripped downâ€"no photo from the film, no full credits list (you’d never know Visconti was involved in it), but mainly a lot of ads for restaurants and art galleries and imported aperitifs.
Right— this listing is a duplicate. The original listing offers more detail.
TC—
Those are nice late afternoon photos on that August Sunday as the sun hits the western exposure of South Cayuga Street. Your shots of the marquee hit the decayed spots accurately. Restoration is underway, slowly to be sure, but underway nonetheless. It will happen all in good time.
Warren—
Splendid pix of the great old sign blazing with lights. The block-long newer version was a real disappointment with its harsh relected light. We can only wonder what colors the Ziegfeld and GWTW signs displayed, and what patterns of on-and-off blinking razzle-dazzle they sported.
Here’s a Program from June, 1957:
View link
View link
Seeing “The Prince and the Showgirl†at the 10:30 am showing on opening day remains one of my favorite memories of RCMH. Maybe it’s because the school year had just ended the day before and I looked forward to an endless summer of reading and seeing movies, the last before I’d be tied down by seasonal jobs. Maybe it’s because at the age of fifteen I felt myself sprouting wings and entering a new kind of grown-up world. Only two years earlier I had lied to my parents about seeing the tsk-tsked “The Seven-Year Itch†at the RKO Dyker, though I really didn’t fathom the fuss over Monroe. Now in the summer of ’57, I understood.
I shall never forget the enormous roar from 6,000 patrons at RCMH during the first encounter between Olivier and Monroe when the strap on her dress breaks loose and his monacle pops into her cleavage. My friend and I stayed to see the film twice. I realize that both stars made much better movies, and that later reports about tensions on the set proved disheartening. But this film pleased me immensely. And the stage show celebrating NYC was an eye-popper.
As Vincent pointed out last week, Melissa Haydenâ€"a principal dancer from the City Balletâ€"joined the Corps de Ballet, already augmented by tutu-fitted Rockettes, to flood the stage with a Chopin extravaganza. Ronnie Ronalde, still performing today at the age of eighty-two, was an English music-hall star who’d been billed as the world’s greatest whistler and whose whistling-cum-accordion-playing was said to have made Marilyn Monroe shiver with excitementâ€"a kinky stage accompaniment for the film. The Morlidor Trio featured a male contortionist who wore a black mask and was assisted by two female attendants. Also kinky. A grotesquely garbed figure of Father Knickerbocker linked the various acts and swelled to unimaginable proportions at the Finale. Kinkiest.
MichaelWeinstein—
If you walked from Collegetown to downtown via Buffalo Street, you’d make a left turn at Aurora Street and reach the Strand first on State Street (the near-near). But if before State Street you turned right on Seneca Street, you’d reach the Temple a block and a half away (the near-far). If instead you continued to State Street, then turned right and walked three blocks, you’d reach the State Theater at the corner of Cayuga (the far-near). To reach the Ithaca, you’d have to continue down State Street for four more blocks (the far-far).
You evidently attended Ithaca theaters before the fifth theater was built in the late ‘60s, the Triphammer at the Triphammer Mall: now that was really far (over a mile from CU’s North Campus) and I don’t believe that Tompkins Co. Transit ran buses there until the late 70’s. The construction of the much larger Pyramid Mall on Triphammer at Route 13 brought the Hoyt’s (now Regal) multiplex (first four, now eight screens). I don’t have it in me to volunteer a new listing for that outfit.
Vincent— yes— I’ll be posting the program next week.
Here’s a program from August, 1957:
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“The Sun Also Rises†was the first of a trio of films based on Hemingway’s novels that would hit the screen in rapid succession. “A Farewell to Arms†with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones opened at the Roxy the following January, and nine months after that “The Old Man and the Sea†with Spenser Tracy opened at the Criterion with reserved seats outrageously inflated in price for a one-set, one-character movie that lasted less than an hour-and-a-half. Meanwhile, a revival of “For Whom the Bell Tolls†took over the Normandie on E 57 Street for a few weeks. The overdose of Papa H alienated me from ever reading the Master again.
The stage show offered typical Roxy fare at the height of delirious fabrication. Pan Am collaborated with the management to produce this show about air travel. It opened on 23 August that year, just five weeks after RCMH had mounted its elaborate stage salute to the USAF accompanying “Silk Stockings.†All those planes occupying the two stages of East 50 Street exemplified the not-so-subtle rivalry waged between the theatrical titans at the time. I’m not sure that the singing career of the Sensational Elena Giusti went very far after her Dramatic And Climactic finale with the entire ensemble. Google offers no further information, though it does lead to a web site with pictures of the star modeling clothes ca. 1955.
On the rear page, Robert C. Rothafel writes himself speechless as he proclaims the presentation “in essence, containing perhaps more showmanship than many show business ventures,†etc. etc. etc. The fractured prose is truly one-of-a-kind. But though it promises more “Showplanes†to come, I don’t recall seeing any others. The sketch of the floor plan at the bottom suggests the theater’s unusual width. The auditorium was set at an angle between 50th and 51st Streets so as to permit an expanse greater than a city block. When you sat in the balcony for a bird’s-eye view of the ice stage, you found the amplitude staggeringly unreal.
Here’s a Program from August 1957:
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“Carefree” might have lasted only a week, but “Silk Stockings†ran for six weeks in ‘57. It was yet another in a quartet of big musicals that played at RCMH that year, ushering the two named to follow on the announcement page. I’m not sure anyone knew that it would be Astaire’s last musical. The stage show’s salute to the USAF brought a Wright Bros.’ model B to the footlights, along with an original Sousa-like composition by RCMH’s music arranger Rayburn Wright (no relation to the Bros.?); athletic high leaps by Conrad Ludlow, a Balanchine protégé and principal dancer from the NY City Ballet; a full range of sound effects mouthed by Wes Harrison, who regularly deployed his lip-talent for Disney and Tom ‘n’ Jerry cartoons; accompanying mimes by circus-clown George Carl; andâ€"staggering if true, a show to wake the deadâ€"an appearance (on film?) by Robert Goddard, a contemporary of Lindbergh and a pioneer rocket scientist who died in 1945. But what I remember most was a series of blasts that rocked the huge auditorium every fifteen minutes or so. On the NW corner of 50th and Sixth, excavations were underway for the foundation of the Time-Life Building which would rise within the year. Ker-Bam. Ker-Boom. Ker-Shudder.
Warrenâ€"
That’s a swell picture of the Roxy’s early-50’s interior. If I might venture a date, I’d fix it between late April-late August 1953. A few months ago I posted a shot of the Roxy’s interior after its renovation in Dec. ’52.
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In it, you’ll note an angled horizontal-teaser curtain with ghastly scalloped side-tormentors framing the screen. In Spring, 20C-Fox announced its development of CinemaScope and in late April at the theater (“Call Me Madam†was its film attraction, a hold-over Easter show) the studio offered a press demonstration of the new process (one demo-scene compared “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend†from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes†shot in conventional 1x1.33 with the same number reshot in CinemaScopeâ€"I’d love to see that one!). Clearly, the teaser and tormentors had to be removed to accommodate the enlarged screen, and your picture shows that they no longer hung in place. The following September, the CinemaScope screen permanently dislodged the conventional one and changed the proscenium yet again.
Your picture shows nicely how the Roxy projected its pre-CinemaScope films on a picture sheet suspended in front of a pale blue curtain, the latter dimly lit throughout the presentation, without the usual frames of black masking. The management claimed that this presentation was easier on the eyes. When Ice Colorama converted the entire stage to a skating ring in Dec. ’52, the glare from the ice shot up to the screen’s surface, and to remedy it, a rubber runner was placed over the permafrost in front of the screen: you can see that in the picture, too. It’s a wonderfully crisp shot, and greatly superior to the one I posted. Thanks.
Besides, in NYC “Vertigo” opened at the Capitol, not the Paramount. If Sorcese had shown up at the correct theater, I might have rubbed elbows with him when I saw that film on 51st and B'way in May ‘58. We were the same age, and though I probably couldn’t pass a blindfold test (an unusually cruel test to take for movies, in any event), I read the papers, knew the technology (or thought I did), and would look for clues to judge the presentation.
In my memory, the Capitol took the unusual turn of reducing the size of its screen from the nearly full-proscenium curved screen of Summer ‘53 (“From Here to Eternity”) to a flatter, more modestly sized one by Summer '56 (“War and Peace”). On the page for the Capitol, Warren has noted Bosley Crowther’s criticism of the screen’s dizzying dimensions when it debuted with “Never Let Me Go” in Spring '53; perhaps that’s why the theater eventually settled for diminished proportions.
In the late ‘50s, even though the Capitol never offered horizontal VistaVision, its projection was flawless—better, I’d argue, than the Roxy’s whose page I’m using. 'Scuse me, Roxy.
Ron—
Many thanks for your posts here, and on the Woolaston Theater page. Yes, last Dec. 30 and Jan. 1-3 on the Wollaston page I raised questions about Quincy’s theaters based on a heated memory from fifty-five years ago. Now it would be great to start a page for each of Quincy’s Lincoln (originally Casino), Strand, and Art theaters you’ve uncovered for us. I’ll go out of my way, meanwhile, to get my hands on the Patriot-Ledger of 30 April 1960.
“Don’t Go Near the Water” was the Thanksgiving attraction that year(see my post of 13 Oct above). Yes, “Peyton Place” was the Roxy’s Christmas rival that year, and its lurid reputation possibly pushed the family crowd into the gloom of “Sayonara” at RCMH— better suicide than (gasp) teen-age sex. But the show at the Roxy was wonderful— I remember its stage presentation as one of its best, though I no longer have the program.
Geoffrey—
Thanks for the clarification in your splendid post. Daniel Okrent, until last June the Public Editor of the NY Times (appointed in 2003), has written generalist books on such topics as baseball and New England, and he gets his stuff right. Carol Krinsky, an architectural historian of distinction who teaches at NYU, sorted out the problems and issues in her 1978 book. She recounts that the design of Rockefeller Center was thoroughly collaborative as it enlisted the talents of several companies (Todd, Robertson, and Todd; Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray)under the combined name of The Associated Architects. Harrison designed the building and appointed Stone as design supervisor of the auditorium. Ground was broken in summer ‘31 and construction was well underway by the following June when Deskey won the competition for interior decorating, which itself had enlisted the talents of mural, furniture, fabric, and lighting artists. The rapidity of its completion is staggering.
Here’s a Program from September, 1957, a quarter-century later when RCMH was at its height of day-to-day operating success:
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RCMH was flooded with long-running musicals that year. “The Pajama Game†opened as its Labor Day attraction, the rare Warner Brothers musical that could stand up to the MGM competition flanking it. This program does not note that Bob Fosse did the choreography, but who could ever forget “Steam Heat†or “Hernando’s Hideway†after seeing Carol Haney performing them? Four years earlier Fosse and Haney had both appeared on the RCMH screen in the amazing “From This Moment On†number in “Kiss Me Kate.†Rich stuff.
The stage show matched the tune fest on the screen, from the Gershwin overture to the featured appearance of India Adams in two segments. Adams had dubbed the singing voice of Cyd Charisse in “The Band Wagon†and held a steady career performing B’way pop in supperclubs and variety shows. The Foursome who accompanied her as an opener to the Rockettes was not likely the original group that had introduced “Biding My Time†in “Girl Crazy†and had appeared with Eleanor Powell in “Born to Dance,†but it quite possibly revived the latter’s style in the ‘50s. In ’57 their sort of pop music was still holding sway after more than a quarter-century of dominance. Then, within a couple of years, it would suddenly seem horribly anachronistic to most tastes.
Georgie Kaye was a stand-up comedian who appeared regularly on the Ed Sullivan TV show. He offered a nice balance to the Ponchielli ballet. You could always predict that the RCMH stage show would build to a jazzy climax when the overture was by Gershwin and the opening segment featured a classical ballet such as “The Dance of the Hours.†The latter, elegant and refined and sumptuously staged as it was, seemed extravagant barrier to get through in completing the trajectory from Gershwin to the Rockettes. In a way, RCMH spoiled me for ballet. The company was super disciplined and super precise (a bit in the manner of the precision of the Rockettes) and super large. When, a few years later, I found myself attending Sadler’s Wells and Bolshoi, I thought them smaller and less pointedly in-synch than Margaret Sande’s and Florence Rogge’s dancers. For all its exaggeration, RCMH’s Corps de Ballet introduced serious dance to hundreds of thousands of us who otherwise would not have bothered to seek it out.
The notice for “Sayonara†as an up-coming attraction does not indicate that it would be the Christmas show. I wonder whether the management had planned it for an earlier release, perhaps as the Thanksgiving show. Its length and brooding content had always struck me as inappropriate for the holiday season. Heaven knows that the hold-over runs of musicals such as “The Pajama Game†that year would have pushed back its opening in any event.
Warren—
That’s a great front cover for the “Guys and Dolls†program. But its rear cover is atrocious. Who decided to use a monochrome still from the brawl in a Havana bar? Here it is:
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Page 3 offers a few more flattering shots:
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And p. 10 assures us that Brando performed his own singing:
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In one staggering leap, it just hit me that I picked up this program at the Capitol almost exactly fifty years ago on a cold mid-December Saturday afternoon. It proved yet another occasion to use guest passes proffered by a family friend who had worked in the corporate offices at Loew’s State. Only now I was a high-school Freshman with down on my upper lip and slowly descending sideburns, and it was getting to be pretty embarrassing to accompany my folks to the Capitol for an MGM tune fest.
It might have pained less if we had taken in a war movie or some action romp. But I just couldn’t face the guys in the cafeteria and say that I had seen a musical with my parents, even if it offered a mock strip-tease with “Take Back Your Mink.†As it turned out, I would share just one more family trip to the Capitol, and that took place the following summer with “War and Peace†(now that was a war movie, so I could hold my head high with the lip I’d already shaved once). After that, I was on my own when it came to attending first-ruin movies. Meanwhile, at Easter “Guys and Dolls†had hit the Loew’s nabes after playing at the Capitol for almost three-and-a-half months as Warren has mentioned. On Good Friday I went to see it again, this time with a friend, at Loew’s Kameo on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. We nearly got thrown out of the house for our wisecracks, exactly as Damon Runyon and Joseph Mankiewicz would have wanted it to be.
Vincent—
Now that I think of it, another first-run film that I skipped at the Rivoli and saw out-of-town was “West Side Story.†The film opened in October ’61, but I had already stood twice through the play at the Winter Garden a block north and the Rivoli’s price-scale and advance sell-out deterred me. As it happened, I saw it the following Spring in Brussels during a break in my foreign studies. The dialogue had been dubbed into French and presented with Flemish sub-titles; the songs remained in English, with a line of French sub-titles added to the Flemish ones. Quite a bit of alphabet competed with Natalie on the screen. I remember its roadshow presentation at a large, modern theater with an impressively curved screenâ€"a somewhat scaled down version of the one at the Rivoli. The price was well within my $4.00 per day travel budget, though it might have pressed me to forego a Belgian beer or two to stretch my wallet that night. The theater could have been the Acropole or the Vendôme or the De Brouckère before any of them was cut into a maze of mini-theaters. The Varieties at the time was showing Cinerama.
Here are pages from a souvenir program for the third Cinerama film, “Seven Wonders of the World.†It opened at the Warner on 10 April, 1956, displacing the second Cinerama film, “Cinerama Holiday,†which had run for over a year. By now the travelogue formula was becoming a bit pat, and it would meet serious and imaginative competition the following October when Michael Todd’s “Around the World in Eighty Days†opened at the Rivoli across the street two blocks to the north.
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I was surprised to find that Tay Garnett had a hand in the direction, less surprised to find that Andrew Marton did. Garnett’s career ended shortly afterwards with “Night Fighters.†Marton is perhaps best known for his work on the astonishing location sequences of the 1950 “King Solomon’s Mines.â€
Yes, Vincent: I wonder whether it would have been feasible for RCMH to pick up the ‘60s musicals and other spectacles after their roadshow runs? Here’s a Program from October ’57:
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Some film historians claim that “Les Girls†was the last great Hollywood (read: MGM) musical to be made. After it, Gene Kelly retired from starring in song-and-dance films, just as Fred Astaire did a few months earlier upon finishing “Silk Stockings.†Future musicals might be bigger and splashier, but from one to another there would be no continuity in talent and craft such as the old studio system had nourished. And most of them would open as hard-ticket roadshows, which removed immediacy and spontaneity from seeing them and prevented RCMH from booking them. Little did we know this would happen when we saw “Les Girls†in October ’57. I don’t believe that at the time I was aware of either Kelly’s or Astaire’s retirement. Their swan songs, both deploying music and lyrics by Cole Porter, were just two in a stream of hit musicals that poured forth from several studios that year. So what if “Les Girls†seemed a little flat in its score and a bit depressive in its plot (a musical about a cad and attempted suicide?). We were sure that there would be new musicals to see in the coming months and new chances for Kelly and others to prove their stuff. Only later did we realize that it wouldn’t happen.
The stage show was exceptional for its emphasis on dance, and particularly colorful for a Russell Markert production, which tended to be more reserved and high-brow than Leonidorf’s spectaculars. The Ballet danced twice, and the highlight of the program came with the dazzlingly athletic star turn of Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade in a Caribbean setting. They might have stolen the show from the Rockettes who followed, though that’s hard to imagine. The steam curtain and feathers topped it all off. Eye-popping.
Warrenâ€"
Here are two links to the Purdue.edu website with information about the Elliott Hall of Music. The first opens with a sharp color picture of the Hall (yes, its floor plan resembles that of RCMH) and includes a virtual tour of the facility (if you download to software to make it happenâ€"I didn’t):
http://1061web22.itap.purdue.edu/HTML/HallOfMusic/
The second includes an excerpt from the Hall’s original mission statement (“this new Hall of Music, then, will serve Purdue University’s first purpose-the building of its students into adequate and cultured citizens of the worldâ€) and from its current function (directed by the superb film historian Ben Lawton, it serves as a program venue for the university’s departments of Theatre, Dance, University Bands, Liberal Arts, and Computer Graphics Technology as well as for students in the entertainment technology and production support industry).
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Oddly, however, I was unable to connect with a schedule of “current productions†when I clicked the button for that topic. Until now, I had never heard of this auditorium and its connection with RCMH. Thanks for the post.
I just noticed that the ad for the “Hungry Pilgrim” at the Statler Hilton implies that the restaurant served an After Theater supper up until noon the next day. Now, we all know that “Cleopatra” is egregiously over-long and that patrons would have been famished after it; but did restaurants discover that the After Theater crowd would keep arriving until the following day’s lunch hour? All those hungry women no doubt created a niche market, too.
Vincent: instead of seeing “Lizpatra” at the Rivoli, I travelled to Boston to see it at the Wang Center (then called the Music Hall) in July ‘63. There the prices were cheaper and the waiting time for tickets was shorter. (Never mind the expense and the time it took to get to Boston.) I just posted a Playbill program for that event on the page for the Wang Center of the Performing Arts (Boston) on this site. The Todd-AO presentation at that huge theater was superb.
The Playbill runs to twenty-four pages, and I reproduce only six of them, but I like the ads, especially the one on the title page that implies the “Hungry Pilgrim” restaurant at the Statler Hilton Hotel served an After Theater supper up until noon the next day. Now, we all know that the film is egregiously over-long and that patrons would have been famished after it; but did restaurants discover that the After Theater crowd would keep arriving until the following day’s lunch hour?
Here’s a Playbill for “Lizpatra†at the Wang Center, aka Music Hall, in July ’63.
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Though my NYC origins should have dictated that I’d see the film at Manhattan’s Rivoli Theater, the elevated price scale and the difficulty of getting reserved seats there prompted me and a friend to see it in Boston. As a college student at the time, I had a network of undergrad pals in Bean Town, so we used our contacts there to get tickets and crash-out overnight. It proved surprisingly easy: if I remember correctly, we bought the tickets on the day of performance (the Rivoli required a wait of several weeks). The size of the theater no doubt allowed for the availability of seats even in the cheap sections at peak times.
I remember that the film’s presentation was superbâ€"grander and more impressive than it would have been at the smaller Rivoli. The orchestral overture thundered through the huge house, and as the lights dimmed, the sweeping curtains parted majestically on the Fox logo. Splendid. Though the film was laughable, right down to Hermes Pan’s crowd-scene choreography, we enjoyed it immensely, even as we began to nod off around midnight with almost an hour of the nonsense left to go.
The ads in this program are a thrill in themselves. I thought you’d especially like the one of features at other Sack theaters. But my favorite notice comes on the title page with the “Thirsty Pilgrim†at the Statler Hilton, “serving light lunches for men only.†Boston famously offered such places at the time, from the sublime Locke-Ober to ridiculous street-corner bars. For each one, so many hungry women. When my aunt had lived in the area a decade or so earlier, many (all?) local taverns allowed women to enter only when accompanied by men. On family visits, I remember playing with my cousin outside drinking spots while my grandfather escorted my mom and her sister inside for a highball or two. Fathers debauching daughters! Children left to their own devices! And all in the name of propriety! But who could complain when the Music Hall was showing “Cleopatra.â€
Here’s a Program from November, 1957:
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I know that Leonard Maltin rates “Don’t Go Near the Water†as a dud, but as a gutter-minded fifteen-year-old connoiseur of double entendre in the late ‘50s, I found this film unexpectedly hilarious and still think of it fondly today. Part of the delight might have come from the sharp contrast between the rowdy, adolescent tenor of the film and the stately, sublime, ever-so-tasteful demeanor of RCMH. This contrast shapes up in the stage show that accompanied the film: the theme focused on the music of Victor Herbert from start to finish, beginning with the Overture’s “Herbert Melodies†and ending with the Rockettes’ “March of the Wooden Soldiers [here transvestized to ‘Wooden Toys’].†It was a turn-of-the-century show that my grandparents would have loved as much as the film moved my potty-mouthed pals to spasms of laughter. The “Wooden Soldiers,†was of course a routine that usually accompanied Christmas shows with a Tannenbaum set. For this Thanksgiving production, Leonidoff used a toy-shop set and clad the seventy-two legs in rag-doll costumes.
Geoffrey: Thanks for the info about the RMCH recordings. In this program, look at the notation on the “Announcing… the Great Christmas Show†page. It entices us to buy any of three LP recordings offered by three competing record companies: “Showplace of the Nation†by Roulette, “RCMH†by Columbia, and “Holiday Music†by Columbia. The subsequent recording of the “Sayonara†stage show music evidently updated the lot. The stage show with “Sayonara†was an abbreviated one because the film ran twenty-seven minutes over two hours. Stage shows conventionally began with an organ intermezzo after the film, then the newsreel under dimly blue-lit arches as crowds still searched for seats, often a cartoon, and finally the “Announcing our next attraction†strip accompanied by the organ. The orchestra would rise while tuning up as the curtain descended on the strip. In the case of this Christmas show, the organ intermezzo segued directly into the tuned-up orchestral strains, skipping the rest. Every fraction of a minute counted.
Warren—
Thanks for another splendid list. I saw none of those shows there then, but as a compulsive newspaper reader at the time, I recall ads for most of them. Your list retrospectively explains why some particular come-ons remain in memory. The “China Doll” stage show with “Under My Skin” evidently prompted the Roxy mgt to push for extra publicity at the time. Likewise the Easter competition for “Cheaper By the Dozen” encouraged lavish advertising.
The contemporary fame of Faye Emerson, now a largely unknown minor movie star and major TV variety show hostess celebrated for her marriages (Eliot Roosevelt, Skitch Henderson) no doubt boosted “Love That Brute,” but the then-dim star of Lucy and Desi (just before exploding to superior magnitude) did little to brighten the run of “Night and the City” (now a cult favorite). What irony.
I remember that “The Gunfighter” and “Broken Arrow” got strong publicity at the time, when current competition with RCMH had already fallen by default to the Roxy’s favor: “The Next Voice You Hear” was one of the worst films ever to play at RCMH, while “The Men” featured a Marlon Brando who was practically unknown outside of B'way live theater: Marlon who?
And Martha Stewart! I had to research this one. You can Google “Martha Stewart singer 1950” to find data about her tragic early widowhood and a brief film career that included playing the murdered hat-check girl in Nicholas Ray’s “In a Lonely Place.” She was an add-on for the fabulous stage show with “Wabash Avenue,” one of the few shows to run beyond two weeks, and carried the stage show with “All About Eve” which ran a record six weeks, even with the bizarre opening policy of not seating patrons after the start of the film. What was Roxy thinking of?
Here’s a Program from December 1957:
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I wound up seeing “Sayonara†twice at RCMH. It wasn’t the first nor the last time that that happenedâ€"I ‘ll spare the details, ‘cept to say that in later years when I reported to my friends that I saw a terrific show at RCMH, they wanted to see it too, and I invariably caved in and went back to see it with them. With “Sayonara,†the situation was more delicate. I had seen it with high-school friends in the first week of its run, and thought it exotic and wonderfully liberating in a United-Nations sort of way (whatever happened to the UN now that that troglodyte Bolton is, um, representing us?).
The time-frame occurred when, according to my parents, I was seeing far too many movies, growing far too thin and pale from spending too much time in front of the screen, and developing alarmist pink views about the world and the state of the nation. So, naturally, I did not report to my folks that I had entered the golden arches to see Marlon Brando and Miiko Take fornicate hours after the film had opened. Then, one day in mid-December, my mom said, “You’re so thin and pale. Let’s get rid of your pink cast. Marlon Brando is such a wonderful actor. Let’s go to RCMH to see the Christmas show!†I gulped and said, “Sure, I won’t turn down a trip to RCMH.â€
The first time, I thought the film explored a part of Japan that George Hersey had written about (you gotta think mid-‘50s to fathom what that means). The second time, I thought the film was dull (and I’d stand by that verdict today). What I most remember was that, during the dual-suicide (Red Buttons of TV clown fame and the wasted Miyoshi Umeki, an AA winner cited in eighth place on the Showplace Programâ€"an awful scene for a Christmas show at RCMH)â€"an roar emanated from backstage, behind the screen. The first time, I figured that stagehands were bringing out the nativity creche for the stage show that would begin approximately twenty minutes later. The second time, I knew that the stagehands were doing exactly that. A year later, with “Auntie Mame,†the same roar went up: it co-incided with the scene twenty minutes from the end of the film when Roz Russell delicately accepts an sticky-sweet cocktail from prospective in-lawsâ€"“O, diaquiries, how nice.†Roar. I’m sure that the stagehands were awfully busy at that point, four times each day. Butâ€"camels and magi be damned—the noise interfered with the film.
After the show, my mom brought me to Ho Ho’s Chinese Pavilion on W 50 Street to fatten me up. But at the age of fourteen, I couldn’t dare tell my friends that I’d accompanied her to see “Sayonara†a second time at RCMH. “Mu gu gai pan†barely added poundage to my frameâ€"I starved to save money to see filmsâ€"but I thought it worth the subterfuge to find out what a second viewing of “Sayonara†at RCMH might reveal.
Here’s a Showcase program from December, 1967:
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“The Stranger†was everybody’s favorite Existentialist novel, but Visconti’s photogenic, operatic style seemed to swamp the bleakness of Camus. Somehow even the Italian title (“Lo stranieroâ€) didn’t appear right. Anway, the briefly-lived Showbills distributed in art theaters during the early ‘60s made a short comeback in the winter of ‘67-’68, and this—now renamed “Showcase‗is one of them. By comparison with the earlier version, it was quite stripped downâ€"no photo from the film, no full credits list (you’d never know Visconti was involved in it), but mainly a lot of ads for restaurants and art galleries and imported aperitifs.