William: The L.A. run of “Windjammer” must be the longest of any in the country. They did run it recently (relatively) at the AMC Cinerama in Seattle. I can never remember whether it was at the Dome or Seattle, but I did find the pictures on Film-Tech today. While the Dome listed as the Cinerama Dome, the Seattle listing is preceded by “AMC”. The pictures are pretty impressive, including one of the screen showing the effect of the dyes fading on the picture and the attempt to counteract it by using a gel. Considering the age of the print, the film must have the flexibility of cardboard by now. I’m amazed that they were able to get all three panels through the projectors!
Joseph, thanks for the information. That makes sense, but judging from the picture it was still a really cramped booth. I would really like to have seen Cinemiracle there (or for that matter in Chicago). “Windjammer” is kind of the “lost” three strip film, although I think they have run it at the Dome in L.A. It must have had the shortest run of any of the three-strip pictures, possibly because the houses they used had other commercial commitments (it played the Opera House in Chicago which limited its run there, although Micael Coate indicates it did move over to the McVickers at one point).
mjc: I don’t know about the Roxy, but there were three projectionists on a shift at the Hall, with one being an “inside man” who brought reels to the operating projectionists, and then hand rewound the reel that just finished. He also answered the phone and was used during the stage show. There was a rule that if the booth had spotlights adjacent to film projectors they were operated by projectionists (in fact the B.A. of Local #306 once told me that the walls dividing the Music Hall booth to separate the North and South spot booths from the film booth were put in because it was cheaper to use stagehands to operate spots than projectionists). The Roxy booth looks as if it might accomodate a couple of spots, as well as a Brenograph or slide/effect projector for effects in the stage show. (Even that operation was subject to jurisdictional politics: if there was no motion-picture projector nearby the slide projector would fall under stage jurisdiction — after all — projectionists were MOTION PICTURE operators. We got involved in some nifty jurisdictional discussions at the Hall over some of the newer lighting instruments that used “scrollers” to move an image on a large piece of transparent material across the stage. There was “motion” but it was being used in a large format slide projector.)
Maybe Joseph would know if the Roxy had a private screening room, but if so that would have accounted for another two projectionists on a shift, and there were two shifts a day (at least) in the main Roxy booth. In addition, at the Hall the operators all put in less than a 40 hour week, so there was a complex schedule equalizing the shifts so that all operators had the same number of openings, closings and weekend shifts over the year. That could account for the 16 projectionists you see listed.
Vito: Thanks for posting that article. I had seen it — there was a section in the booth filing cabinet for articles about the projection at the Hall most of the wider read trades such as Boxoffice and Motion Picture Herald and from Intrnational Projectionist. I have a few of them but not that article. Fortuately, Boxoffice is in the process of putting its past articles on line, which is really something to look forward to.
Vito: I would have loved to have seen that booth. There was a picture on the wall at Local #306 which showed what was probably the Roxy booth with the three projectors set up for Cinemiracle and it did seem pretty cramped. Of course when the theatre opened at the end of the silent era, the projectors and lamps themselves were much smaller, so it must have seemed roomy at the time. Was the booth at the Fox H.Q. you refer to in the large screening room? I think there were two there: the big room and a small room for reviewing newsreels. One of the operators on the crew at Radio City worked the big screening room, and I spent time in the booth while waiting to go down for screenings. It was very spacious indeed. Ironically, I now live just down the street from that building (now the High School of Enviorenmental Science) and see it every day from my apartment window.
The comment above about the location of the booth at the Roxy being capable of creating “sharper, more detailed and perhaps larger images than at Radio City” is not quite correct. Image sharpness, detail and size is purely a function of the quality and focal length of the lenses, projectors and light source used to project it. Assuming the booth at the Roxy was about 90' from the screen it would require lenses half the focal length of those at Radio City where the throw is 180' from the screen to achieve the same picture size. There are a whole set of qualifications that determine picture quality. Shorter focal length lenses, since they are magnifying the image much more can have problems with holding the film image in focus since the film is constantly fluttering in the gate due to the heat of the lamp (much like 35mm slides tended to “pop” into focus when they dropped in front of the light). What the booth at the Roxy did share with most of the Rothaphel booths almost a zero angle in relation to the screen which eliminated “keystoning” or making the picture trapezoidal because of the downward angle from a high booth. It also was advantageous when showing Cinemiracle since all three projectors could be locate in the same booth maintaining the zero angle for all three panels. Ben Hall commented in “The Best Remaining Seats” that the first thing Roxy did when he took over the Regent in Harlem was to relocate the booth to the main floor. Spotlight booths have an advantage in a large downward angle since it keeps the light on the performer rather than on the backdrop. Thus the Roxy had a high spot booth at the back of the house. In the Beacon, the spot booth is located above the projection booth. In the Center Theatre, which was intended to run movies, the projection booth was again located at a lower angle. Joseph is right in saying that the Hall wasn’t really supposed to run feature films, but rather the equipment was for projected film effects and perhaps “filler” material. Indeed, the rear projection booth at the Hall is at a better projection angle than the main booth.
DavidM: When I stopped to remember the carpeting, the “Singing Ladies” hair becomes the “waves” under the “fish”. Try turning your carpet sideways (talk about a new angle on things!) I hadn’t thought about the carpet being blue (it was usually kind of gummy when I was laying cable down along side the aisles), but that would also make “sea theme” sense. I had a piece of the original wall covering at the back of the house, but sacrificed it for the sake of acoustic analysis. The original treatment was acoustically pourous like speaker grille cloth. When they redid it in 1979, they just printed the pattern on cloth. The difference in absorbtion was impressive. The new material reflected the P.A. system sound, rather than let it be absorbed through perforated metal grill work behind the original fabric. In additon, the metal work which was like ceiling tiles had been backed with sound absorbant filler, which had all decayed and fallen to the bottom. Thus there was a huge sound reflection from the curved wall area behind the 3rd Mezzanine. That resulted in an echo so prominant that if I turned my head while screening new show film prints in an empty house at Midnight, I heard two distinct soundtracks — one from the screen and one from the back wall. When an acoustician analyzed it he found that the sound from the back wall was actully focussed in such a way that it was louder than the original sound from the screen at some frequencies. Once you sat under the shadow of the First Mezzanine the echo disappeared. Afte listening to a bit of mono film soundtrack which I played for him he came up to the booth saying, “Why haven’t they FIXED that?” Hopefully, that’s all been corrected in the last redo of the auditorium.
RCDTJ: That was a pretty good run for the projectors. I don’t think the 70mm machines had been rebuilt since they were taken out to National Theatre Supply in Paramus in 1974 when I started there. Considering that they were adaptations of the Simplex X-L projector head, we always felt that they weren’t as stable as say a Norelco DP-70 or AAII would have been. The fact that they ran as long as they did was a tribute to the head of National Theatre Supply’s head machinist (Leo Lucas?) who did the rebuild.
It would be interesting to know if the shutter drive gear was replaced. Originally the X-L drive gear was rubber centered to give less vibration. Those centers rotted out from the projector oil, and the shutter would stop rotating. The 35/70 machines had standard fiber gears, but when Leo rebuilt the ones for the Hall he put rubber centered gears in since they were military spec. I could see them going after 34 years, particularly running at 30 F.P.S. for the Christmas Show 70mm footage.
DavidM: are those really “Singing Ladies”? I know the tour guides list them as such, but I was also told that they represent fish in water. Since Roxy was supposed to have been inspired to create the coves by a sunrise while on an ocean liner, the pattern in the aisle carpeting was of fish in the waves in the ocean, and the effect was enhanced by the “wave” image of the aisle lights at the end of the seat standards which gave a “wave” appearance looking down from the Mezzanines. If you turn the Singing Ladies sidways, the image is kind of like fish fins with an eye at one end.
Bill,
“Airport” was the first film shown in 70mm at the Hall, and was the most traumatic. I heard stories about that series of events even before I worked there. The only reason 70mm was installed was that Ross Hunter insisted that “Airport” be shown in 70mm, and Universal had fourl-walled the theatre, so what they wanted they got. There were no Simplex 35/70mm machines available on short notice, so the Hall got three of them from the Gulf & Western (Paramount) building. Both the Paramount theatre in the basement, and the two screening rooms were equipped with 35/70, and they weren’t ready to open so the Hall made the deal. They had to be Simplex machines, since all of the apertures for the film effects in the stage show were cut for Simplex XL projectors, and they needed the flexibility.
The former head of the MGM camera department had converted the original XL’s to 70mm (actually 65mm) use for “Ben Hur” and “Raintree County” Camera 65, and offered to do the same for the Hall, but was frozen out of his company in a divorce settlement. Word had it that the machines the Hall got were assembled by his accountant, and they weren’t put together well. (We later took them out to the Simplex shop in New Jersey and had them rebuilt.)
Bill Nafash, who had the knowledge to rebuild them was at a World’s Fair at the time of the installation and wasn’t available to help. There were a host of other problems so severe, that after the first screening of “Airport” on opening day, they had to go back to 35mm for the next screening.
Ben Olevsky, who was chief, didn’t want 70mm to begin with and hated them and the sound system that was installed. The machines damaged so much 70mm film that when I told the crew we were going to run 70mm in 1974, one of them put his hands around my neck as if to choke me and said, “We don’t want to run 70mm!” It took the rebuilding of the machines and installation of some replacement units like the feed and take-up assemblies before they were “tamed”. If you saw “Airport” there in 70mm, you were at a classic moment in Music Hall history!
Actually, that is a “real” photo. Radio City did a stage show which paid tribute to its motion-picture past, and opened with the contour going up to reveal the screen, and had the Rockettes positioned in front of it. The show probably dated back to 1953 when the Hall first started showing CinemaScope and wanted to “wow” the audiences with the screen size. The announcer had copy which read something like, “Now that’s a screen!”
If you saw the screen in in the ‘70’s and thought it looked different, it was probably because the aspect ratio was changed between CinemaScope and Panavision 70. It is the same screen, fitted into the original truss work from the house opening which also carried the Magnascope masking. Both the sides and top masking move, thus enablng any aspect ratio to be shown. The screen as shown in the photo is showing a 2.55:1 original Scope ratio, which was later reduced in the days of Magoptical and optical Scope soundtracks to 2.35:1. While I did inherit 2.55 plates, we never used them in the '70’s since there were no 2:55 prints available. (The discussion came up during our screening of the restoration of “A Star Is Born”, since it was originally 2.55. The only decent print in terms of picture was a 2.35 optical print. The 4-track magnetic stereo print had a decent enough track, but the picture was scratched. It was suggested that we crop the top and bottom of the picture to regain the 2.55 ratio, but I thought that Cukor would probably want as much of his original picture seen as possible, and the sides were already being cropped. We ended up running the 4 track mag from interlocked mag dubbers rather than composite on film).
For Panavision 70, the aspect ratio is 2.21:1, and thus the picture which is 30' high looks less wide than scope even though it is the full 70' wide as opposed to 2.35 Scope’s 64' width. (The original 2.55 magnetic 35mm prints would have filled the whole 70' screen width although stil being less high than 70mm. Also remember that at the time the photo was taken the Hall had yet to install 70mm equipment, so the screen height would be limited to the 35mm Scope size, although newsreels were run at a 1.37 aspect ratio which would have used a 30' x 40' size.)
If you measure the height of the Rockettes in the photo the screen height would appear to about 26' high. As I recall when we repeated the show the feture masking was for Scope so the contour was just pulled up to show how big the screen really was in comparison to the girls' height. The same photo was also used in promotional material for the Hall including their Pictorial and in a booklet on carbons for arc lighting for motion pictures put out by National Carbons.
One final note: none of the ratios at the Hall are 100% accurate, since with a 19 degree downward angle, the picture elongates somewhat. We always used SMPTE target test film to ensure that we were projecting the image as intended, but because of the downward angle the screen height was always taller than it would have been if the booth were located on the 1st Mezzanine (that was one of the reasons theatres like the Rivoli repositioned their booths to a lower angle when projecting on a curved screen. In that case the distoriton from an old high booth would have been too noticeable.)
StanMalone:
For someone who claims not to be from the technical side of the field you are very knowledgeable about projection conditions at the Fox and very good at explaining them in an understandable way. The Fox is lucky to have you and your chief projectionist (I ran into a similar combination in Champaign, Illinois last year at the Virginia Theatre which has been restored and run by the Parks Department. It is the site of Roger Ebert’s “Ebertfest” each year, and the venue has a manager and a projectionist that take great pride in the theatre. The 70mm booth is one of the best maintained and equipped I’ve seen. It’s good to know that there are people like you tending our restored classic theatres.)
According to Martin Hart’s American Widescreen Museum, there was an optical soundtrack version of “Ben Hur” that was reased which was slightly letterboxed on anamporphic 35mm film to preserve the 2.55/2.76 ratio. He has a picture of the clip on his site. My laserdisc version of “Ben Hur” was also 2.76 aspect ratio at a time when letterboxing was fairly rare even on laserdisc which more or less created the concept.
The Martin Cinerama mention brings up something that has begun to disturb me. The most impressive of the Cinerama/D-150 theatres, which were as much a symbol of their time as the Fox is of its time, are all disappearing. It’s as if we’ve learned something about preservation, but only consider the oldest examples of something worthy of preservation. I was surprised when I found that until Bob Harris started focusing on some of the 70mm Roadshow epics, that spectacular boxoffice successes of my generation were endangered. (At one point when I was at the Hall, I heard that Fox had misplaced the 65mm negative of “The Sound of Music”. They’ve since used it for the DVD release, and the studios are starting, thanks to ancillary markets, to be more aware of the value of their libraries.) Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to extend to theatres. I worry the great examples of S.Charles Lee’s theatres will all be gone, since they were built specifically for movie use and didn’t have the stage facilities of the Fox and Music Hall which make them suitable for other performing arts.
The best and most effective sites for large screen presentation of the type Mr. Wade refers to above weren’t the theatres that were adapted for them such as the Rivoli in New York and Eitel’s Palace in Chicago, but rather the Martin and Cooper Cineramas, and the U.A. and River Oaks D-150’s. Of those, almost the only survivors are the Seattle Cinerama and the Dome in L.A. Someday we may look back and regret the demolishing of those sites, even though not as grand, as we now do the Roxy in New York.
They did. The father of the public relations director at Radio City when I was there managed the Fox and I guess became an exec for the circuit that ran it. Patricia always said that he was the one that put CinemaScope in the Fox over the initial objections of higher management. The standard was for a curved screen at the time. That curve is always a problem for theatres that do stage shows and have to fly the sheet. It kept Radio City from showing CinemaScope for a year after its development because the depth of the curve would have eliminated at least a couple of the fly lines used for scenery in the stage show. In essence a frame would have to be built around the whole screen to stabilize it and provide fly points, and that means giving up line set space.
A big curved Todd-AO screen would look great, but if you check out the Rivoli N.Y. page for the last couple of weeks, you’ll find a number of negative comments about what the installation of U. A.’s D-150 did to the classic architecture. Purists object (with good reason in many cases) about what those screens cost in terms of keeping a theatre’s unique design, as with the Egyptian in Hollywood. I liked those screens, and being much younger at the time, didn’t mind what they had done to the structure. Now I would say, “Fine”, but only if the screen could be removed at the end of a run and the theatre retain its unique features. Judging from what StanMalone said, they would still have to kill a number of rows of seats in the orchestra under the balcony or the height would be restricted. (Some of that would be done automatically by placing a booth at the back of the orchestra under the balcony .) I believe Atlanta had a Martin Cinerama at one time, and that would be a more appropriate venue for Todd-AO or D-150 had it been saved since those formats were a product of that time, and as has been pointed out on the Rivoli page, were better adapted to achieve the effect you’re looking for. Disney’s restoration of the Paramount into the El Capitan shows how great those theatres looked when the wrap around curtains were taken down. The Atlanta Fox is glorious as is — we’re so lucky it was saved.
Terry Wade: There are a couple of things about “Ben Hur” that may have affected how you felt about the width of the image you saw, and StanMalone can probably verify them. “Ben Hur” was shot in MGM’s proprietary process Camera 65, which was an anamorphic 65mm process. Thus as with CinemaScope, the image was squeezed slightly on the 65mm film. Normal 70mm release prints have an aspect ratio of 2.21:1 which is less than the Scope print you saw at the Fox, but Camera 65 with its squeeze had a 2.76:1 ratio which was the widest of the 35 or 70mm formats. As Stan mentioned above, the sightlines at the Fox under the balcony limit the height of the picture. Thus if you had seen a Camera 65 70mm print projected there, the screen would have been much wider side to side than the 2.35 print you saw. It’s doubtful that the 70mm “Ben Hur” prints today are anamorphic, since the lenses to show them aren’t available (I did have one 70mm reel of the Camera 65 “Ben Hur” to use as a test reel at Radio City, and was always perplexed by the slight squeeze in the image.) The original 35mm prints were 4 track magnetic stereo, and had a 2.55:l ratio. You could well have seen one of those at the Fox, and it too would have been wider than the 35mm print with optical track they just showed. If they do strike a new 70mm print for the 50th Anniversary, they could keep the original ratio without the squeeze by “letterboxing” the image on the 70mm frame although the image quality wouldn’t be quite the same since they would be using less of the full frame. If you look at the DVD of “Ben Hur” you’ll notice that the image is “skinnier” across the frame than other Scope titles. This caused a furor when Turner ran a letterboxed version on its movie channel in the days before letterboxing was a familiar as it is now, since it really produced a small image on the tv screens of those days. StanMalone: any comment?
Stan — Bravo for your comments above. You did a great job of explaining the issue of sightlines and their affect on screen size, something we lived with to some extent at Radio City. I was in your beautiful theatre once with my boss from Radio City when we attended a NATO conference in Atlanta. We walked over to the Fox to see if we could get a peek inside, and met Alex Cooley (?)outside who was the promoter for a BTO concert going on at the time. We asked if we could take a look and he let us in and gave us the run of the place. Warren and I wandered up to the booth, but the operators (were you one of them?) were busy manning the spots. We did take a quick look around so as not to bother anybody, and left. I believe you still had Motiograph projectors at that time before the 70mm install. That has to be one of the deepest booths in the country, as I recall the rewind bench and film cabinets were actually in the middle of the room a long way from the back wall which is where they would normally be. Very impressive!
Your comments about digital are also interesting, in that Mr. Wade was complaining about what he thought was bad digital projection, but which was 35mm projection with a normally used print. It’s too bad he didn’t get a chance to see your presentation of “Enchanted”, since good digital projection can really alter misconceptions. I work in a screening room which has done split screen comparisons with digital and film, and they can be almost identical. What is perhaps more enlightening howerver is that we run a lot of first edits transferred from 4K servers to D-5 H.D. You tend to forget you’re looking at digital, until months later when you screen the same thing on film, and even with a new print, you tend to see occasional specks of dust that you never would have noticed in the days before digital.
Most of the material we work with either film or digitally originated is transferred to 4K servers for post production work, and now the discussion in the industry is whether or not to archive at 4K. The studios have been archiving at 2K, but there’s a growing sympathy to save the “best” version of the material just as they saved the camera negative with 35 and 65mm. Be assured that digital material is being archived, its just a case of at what level of quality. (And now Bob Harris who restored “Lawrence” is pushing for 6K archiving, and NHK is demonstrating their 8K capture and projection system in Japan — “the times they are a-changin”.
DavidM: Yes, masking hides a plethora of picture “sins”. Projector aperture plates always sit a little behind the film plane less they scratch the film and as a result, depending on the format and lens, project a “fuzz line” which the masking covers. To clarify the statement above, there was a little cropping in that the picture at the angle mentioned “keystones” and becomes trapezoidal (think the “Star Wars” chapter introductions). The plates are also cut as trapezoidal, but in the opposite direction thus giving a straight edge to the picture, but cutting off the image that would fall outside the straight line. The only director to call us on the issue was Bryan Forbes who did “The Slipper & The Rose”. He had placed his end credits close to the edge of the frame, and when they crawled the first and last letters of the lines were cropped until they got about a quarter of the way up the screen. He asked if something could be done, but we said only if the projectors were moved to the 1st Mezzanine! (One of the advantages of the current use of digital projectors is that they are on the 1st Mezzanine.)
These days there are computer programs for lens calculations that will figure the actual picture size for any degree of projection angle, so it isn’t necessary to go onstage with a tape measure anymore. We are a bit envious of that capability, as opposed to having to work with a lens slide rule calculator, a sectional drawing of the theatre and a ruler (that method did work pretty well though, and never crashed.)
I remember the Westinghouse Bulb well, and when they finished that meeting, I was able to fire up a projector and project a trailer on the back side of it just for fun. George LeMoine, who took photographs of the shows, was in the house and got a photo for me just as the “bulb” was deflating. I kept it in my desk for years.
Warren: you’re right about the deep curvature screens working best in houses of 2000 or so. I as told that at one point someone did come in to look at the possibility for the Hall. Perhaps it was the Cinemiracle staff, and they decided the Roxy would be a better place. The screen would have been in front of the proscenium and extend into the house. They might not have had to do too much to the house, since the 1st Mezzanine would have been an ideal place for the three booths. When Bob Jani started doing shows there in 1979 he looked at the possibilities of doing IMAX there, and I went to Toronto to talk to their executives. They would have put the screen in front of the light console, and would have extended it all the way up to the top of the 2nd cove, completely covering the 1st cove and proscenium. The insurmountable problem was that they couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of it after morning screenings in time to do a stage presentation in the afternoon or evening.
MikeJW: The screen at the Music Hall is (give or take a couple of inches to account for grommets for lacing) is 35'high by 70' wide. It has movable top and side masking that flies with the sheet. Thus any format can be shown without cropping depending upon the lens focal length. There is a limit on the size you can get with a 35mm 1.85 image since if you blow it up too much there isn’t enough light. Thus our 1.85 image when I started there was roughly 50' wide by 27' high. The Scope image was also about 27' high but about 65' wide (by the time I started we were screening Scope with an optical track which reduced the width from the orignal 2.55:1 to 2.35:1. With mag tracks the image was probably the full width. I was able to get a full H. 35' on 1.85 70mm, since I had a bigger film image to work with, thus for “Lion King” we were 35' H x about
65' wide. 2.21 70 such as “Airport” was lensed to about 70' x 30'. The other pictures you mentioned were all 35mm “Scope”. The only caveat to all of this is that there is a slight elongation of the picture due to the roughly 19 degree downward projection angle. (I once got into an argument with a tech representative from the west coast when he walked in and looked at our screen which was set for 1.85 projection and said, “Ah 1.66”. I said no, and took him up to the booth where I pulled the aperture plate from the projector and showed him the 1.85 opening.) While I figured literally hundreds of projection screen sizes for everything from rock concert video to features, I never actually measured each actual screen h. since it would have meant going on stage with a Genii hoist and a tape measure and there was never enough time to have the picture sheet in long enough. We always tried to project the correct picture information as determined by SMPTE standards rather than have a “pure” screen masking aspect ratio which would have meant slightly cropping the top and bottom of the pictue. (The one exception was “Black Cauldron”, which was full width 70 and followed “Return To Oz” which was 1.85 70. The Disney rep so liked the full height 1.85 image he asked us to run “Cauldron” same way. To do that we would have needed a 73' w. screen, but Disney O.K.d the 1.5' crop at the ends of the picture. Later for the “Santa” footage which opened the Christmas Spectacular, I did have a 73' built. Hope this answers your question.)
MikeJW: The letterboxing on your DVD’s is probably pretty close. All of those films were shot on 65mm film, and when magnetic tracks were overlayed the aspect ratio should be 2.21:l, as opposed to CinemaScope’s 2.55:1 aspect ratio with magnetic tracks and “Foxhole” perfs., or 2.35:1 with optical or mag/optical soundtracks. The picture area on 65mm without the inside two mag tracks would be closer to 35mm, and perhaps a bit of cropping top and bottom was done to fill out the 35mm ratio. Of course, “Oklahoma” was shot with both 35mm and 65mm cameras (since Todd-AO originally used a 30frame/sec. speed vs. 35mm.24 frame/sec) so those aspect ratios would automatically be correct for each format. My laserdisc (remember those?) copy of “Oklahoma” has an extra with both versions placed one over the other so you can see the difference between the formats. If you want more information, Martin Hart’s “Widescreen Museum” mentioned above has tons of fascinating material.
The bandcar still does move unless the video wall blocks an entrance from the third elevator. What DavidM was referring to was the positioning of the band car at the top of the elevator shaft before the show. It does go back down to load the orchestra on, and then does come back up for the overture, but if you’re an early arriver the illusion is lessened. That’s probably to protect the audience as much as the staff. Kids love to look over the edge of the pit elevator shaft when they hear the orchestra tuning up below. Can you imagine the furor if one of them toppled over the edge? Then the Hall would be blamed for not caring about audience safety.
I don’t know why the organ needs major work. It was refurbished before I left. The toy counter was augmented with digital effects since replacement for the original Wurlitzer instruments had to be custom made and with digital effects the organ can be augmented with files from other theatre organs around the country. They also gained the ability to move the consoles around which really interested me. I’d love to see them playing a silent film with both consoles coming up on the pit elevator to stage level. It would be an interesting change, and replicate the majority of consoles on pit lifts around the country. Perhaps the Bishops can comment — that’s another multi-generation family at the Hall who have been caring for the organ for a long time.
I also thought of saying just what TheatreOrgan just said —people are more litigious these days. (By the way — the railings on the sidewalks around the Center at 50th & 6th and on 5th Ave. weren’t to protect people. Rudy put them in to facilitate the movement of traffic onto those avenues. While we wished they would go away, the electric crew that changes the letters on the Music Hall marquee says they actually make sign changes safer.)
Actually crew at Radio City is extremely talented and competent. The Local #1 members have been there through (now) up to three generations, and in many cases grow up, marry, and have children who in turn grow up and join the crew there. I was in awe of both their ability and their dedication to the house. People don’t realize how dangerous any stage is. I remember the crew talking about a stagehand that was killed in a fatal fall at the Palace Theatre during the run of a legit musical. Stages with elevators up the ante. Even in the days of the movie stage show policy, I remember hearing about a dancer who got a toe cut off at the Hall, and if the story isn’t apocryphal, lost a lawsuit because he had been warned not to stand that close to the elevator while waiting to go on. That wouldn’t happen with OSHA today. Indeed, Leon Leonidoff had a staircase onstage with the Rockettes standing on it collapse during a rehearsal, scattering Rockettes all over the stage while he yelled at them to get up and go on with the rehearsal. That story made the national wire services and I read about it while still in Illinois.
As I mentioned above, the super spectacular award shows raised the ante. There you have additional crew to supplement the house crew, and an enormous amount of material being moved into the theatre under tight time constraints. The stage elevators are used to move the material into storage spaces both in the wings and on the two lower levels. In years past a routine developed because the format was unchanging. With the concerts and other types of shows, there is a house crew working with a road crew, and no time to develop familiarity with some of the hazards of working on a stage with four moving elevators. A roadie once claimed that a religious broadcaster in the Midwest (no—I have no idea who) who had an elevator stage and cut a choir boy in half in an accident. Well maybe — but I also remember Martyn (?) Greene, a Gilbert & Sullivan performer who lost a leg in an elevator move in Japan. IATSE has initiated a series of safety programs for its members that are in place even in my home local in Illinois which handles arena shows that are bigger than Radio City’s. Remember the shows are incredibly more complex than they used to be. Its probably a tribute to those in charge at the Hall (and certainly to the crew) that there aren’t more serious accidents.
DavidM: I suspect the reason the bandcar is in a raised position prior to the start of the show goes back a decade or so when a stagehand (who I believe was also the Presiden of Local #1) was severely injured in a fall into the pit. The “Santa” sheet for the opening of the show on 70mm film lies in between the contour and (I believe) the house picture sheet. Originally that pipe held the gold traveller that was taken out for “Snow White” so they could use it for a scenic piece. To bring the Santa sheet in, the contour had to be breasted back over the footlights since it drifts upstage due to the house draft. The deck crew would stand in a row onstage and move the contour back so the sheet could be lowered. At one performance the stagehand backed up too far and went over the edge into the pit. I believe his injuries made him a quadrapalegic if I remember correctly. We had had several injuries around that time that were severe enough to involve OSHA, and they insisted changes be made. Probably keeping the bandcar just below stage level was one. Another was lowering a fence behind the Rockettes as they moved from the third elevator to the second to prevent a fall if one of them accidentally backed up as the third elevator was being lowered behind them. When the Hall was in the movie/stage show policy, injuries were probably fewer because everyone was there all day almost every day, and the routine, once set, remained the same. When the big award shows started coming in there was less familiarity with the stage, and the elevators were being moved bringing pieces in and taken to the shop or basement levels while the crew would be working on the next elevaor over. OSHA put a stop to that. Now all activity is stopped on stage when an elevator moves. Even the ledge in front of rear projection now has a safety line across it, and when we worked up there we were supposed to be tied to it. As a practical matter, the changes may not result in the most impressive stagecraft, but they may prevent fatalities.
DavidM: I gather the original fire curtain is still in place and in use. Cutting it up to get it out of the building would probably create more of an evnviornmental issue than leaving it.
Re: the Doncho — the story is that Japan gave that drop to the City of New York for the ‘64 World’s Fair Exhibition in a pavillion which featured a show produced by — Leon Leonidoff. He specified the size, knowing that when the fair was over, there was only one place in New York that could handle a drop that size. You guessed it — that place was the Hall. (Leon was pretty wily!) I don’t know whether its still in the flies or not. It is so heavy that it is tied to two pipes, which is valuable line set space. (At least it used to be before the video wall came into place.) I think there was some talk of moving it to Weehauken warehouse, but as with the fire curtain, getting it out of the building without damage would have been a major challenge.
On another note — one of the passenger elevators may have been a place to store deceased audience members, but I remember Fred Kellers telling me about at least one body that was stored in his very tiny office at the back of the orchestra, and which was shared with his secretary. He said he had to step over it until the amubulance arrived. Perhaps that episode led to the later storage on the elevator.
Michael: Thanks for the info. I didn’t think even if the “Fiddler” story were true that the two theatres were owned by the same firm at the same time. The idea was that if Lubliner was involved, they let Nederlander have the theatre for the tourning company of “Fiddler” in return for the exclusive first run of the film version at the McClurg. It’s still a good story — wonder where it originated? I am glad that I did accurately remember Trans-Beacon. I thought they were involved at one point along with (perhaps) the Micael Todd and the Cinestage. Considering the number of 70mm roadshow houses they were involved with, I wonder if the demise of the roadshow was responsible for them going out of business in a relatively short time. I guess by the last time I was in the McVickers it was during the Diana years (another odd company), and the house was getting pretty run down.
Creating the website envisioned above would take an enormous amount of effort, since the archives (when still in the Hall) filled a room under the stage with filing cabinets and storage space from floor to what was probably a 12' ceiling (I’m 6'4" and had to climb up a tall ladder to get to some of the film footage that was stored there.)
One of the disappointments I had was failing to return Leon’s 16mm footage to him after he left the Hall. He wrote an extremely kind and complimentary letter to me saying that he enjoyed working with me more than any other projectionist (we didn’t have the chance to work together long enough in all probability for him to get annoyed with me!) I looked through the film footage which was stored behind the screen in Preview A, but couldn’t find what he was looking for (not realizing at the time he was talking about 16mm film).
A few years later for the 50th Anniversary show, I found the case containing his footage. I sent it out to the west coast to be included in a montage of stage shows and historical footage, asking that the footage be put back together when returned. Instead, they sent it back in a jumble of edited pieces used to make the montage. I would never have the time to reassemble them properly. That footage may still be in the archives, although it was shot by Leon with available light on relatively slow 16mm reversal stock, so the images are pretty grainy.
Vito: If you think the fire curtain is impressive as it came in at the end of the day, you ought to see a “fire drop” which is truly awesome! The rule is that NOTHING is ever to sit on or be wired across the fire curtain line. There are brads in the stage floor to stake out its position when dropped. At one point there was a sign referring to the curtain as DavidM does above as being made of the material which dare not speak its name in this day and age. By the sign there was a rope and a knife, which could be used to cut the rope and put the curtain into free-fall. That curtain is in two sections, since the proscenium is 60' high at the top, so the sections have to fit in the fly space above the stage. Thus you have two pieces of heavy material 30'+ by 100'+. As recently as this week they did a fire drop, which releases the curtain just as if the ropes had been cut. It comes in with a roar that you can hear before you actually see it emerge at the top of the proscenium, and comes crashing toward the deck. At about 12' above the deck, plungers hit hydraulic stops that slows it to a pace similar to that which you see when it is lowered at night. After the test it is raised, but you can hear fluid dripping in the hydraulic cylinders for minutes afterward. The stage is cleared before a drop, and crew members and stage managers stand on either side of the line to make sure no one is near the drop area. Several times I was allowed to stand on the pit elevator to watch the drop, and that’s really about as close as I wanted to be. (The story — probably apocryphal — was that someone once left a briefcase on the drop line and it was crushed as the curtain landed.) It’s quite a piece, and DavidM, it really was part of the 50th Anniversary Show in 1982, when it was lowered as the audience came in, and we projected the 50th Anniversary Logo on it from the booth.
If you thought sitting through them once was bad, you should have had to watch them several times a day for the run after check screening both of the show prints at 1 in the morning after the previous show ended for the day!
In all due fairness to the “Petrovka” stage show, that may have been the one where Peter Gennaro had the corps de ballet pulled out from under him not long before the show was to open. The ballet staffing was fixed, and the Hall wanted more flexibility, so they simply dropped the ballet from the shows. After that they were able to hire dancers as needed. This left Peter (who’s forte was dance after all) with only singers and the Rockettes to work with. He later did some pretty decent shows considering the budget he had to work with. I particularly remember a 1776 tribute he did using the “Love” theme arranged in styles to accompany dance from 1776 to 1976.
By the way “Leon”, I did get to work on your namesake’s last show at the Hall which was a tribute to Colombia. I think Leon got to see the world by staging those shows, all of which were built around performers from various countries at a time when, for most of the Hall’s audience, travel there in person was unattainable. Thus I had film footage in the vault of Leon in Israel, Leon in Italy, Leon weaving baskets with the natives “somewhere”. He had arranged co-sponsorship of the show with the airline of Colombia, and had spectacular footage of the performers arriving on a plane which buzzed the Statue of Liberty and flew under the Brooklyn Bridge, with the narration going something like, “look out for that Statue!” Unfortunately the airline of Colombia wanted you to believe that their planes were so safe that they taxied all the way here, and they went into shock at the opening performance. They insisted the best footage be cut over Leon’s objections. We were also to return all of the footage to them, but somehow, an original print survived and may still be in the Music Hall archives somewhere.
Warren in a post above mentions wishing he had details about the stage shows. Cablevision may have pitched them, but when I was there the Music Hall library had extensive documentation on all of the shows, with multiple photos of each of the sets and all of the costumes. The numbers ran into the 100’s, and filled books. Since the numbers were often repeated, particularly for such hits as “Rhapsody In Blue”, “The Undersea Ballet” and “Bolero”, not to mention the “Nativity” and “Glory of Easter” prologues, the documentation was essential. I know they still do have an historian who was featured in the documentary on the Hall recently run on the MSG Network, and judging from that program they still keep an archive, so the stage show documentation is probably there. (According to Fred Kellers, the Vice President of House Operations, there was an agreement with the press not to review the stage shows when reviewing the films. I have the list of all the films that played and their dates and the names of the stage productions which accompanied them, but that’s all.)
While I didn’t get a chance to see CinemaScope at the Roxy, I have seen pictures of the screen, which was indeed within the proscenium, so no seats would have been cut off as with the Capitol’s Cinerama. That may not have been the case with Cinemiracle at the Roxy. In that case, since the screen was deeply curved for three projector projection, my bet would be that it was extended beyond the proscenium for effect.
According to Warren’s comment above the screen was 68' x 24' which would have made it almost exactly the width of the Music Hall screen (70' x 35'). The Roxy’s screen was slightly curved however, which may have made for a more impressive picture, and which would have met the Fox CinemaScope standards. Because a curved screen at the Hall would have involved taking up too many fly lines, the Hall stayed with a flat screen, and thus couldn’t show any of the first Fox CinemaScope product. It was a year later when MGM ran “Knights of the Roundtable” at the Hall that the first CinemaScope picture was shown there. MGM said they didn’t care if the screen was curved or not.
BWChicago: Just checked your 2/1/2008 comments on the McVickers. Even if B&K held the lease I’m sure they were not operating it during the Todd-AO, Cinerama days. If you have any more information, post it on that link and I’ll look for it there, so as to not muddy up this one. Thanks.
William: The L.A. run of “Windjammer” must be the longest of any in the country. They did run it recently (relatively) at the AMC Cinerama in Seattle. I can never remember whether it was at the Dome or Seattle, but I did find the pictures on Film-Tech today. While the Dome listed as the Cinerama Dome, the Seattle listing is preceded by “AMC”. The pictures are pretty impressive, including one of the screen showing the effect of the dyes fading on the picture and the attempt to counteract it by using a gel. Considering the age of the print, the film must have the flexibility of cardboard by now. I’m amazed that they were able to get all three panels through the projectors!
Joseph, thanks for the information. That makes sense, but judging from the picture it was still a really cramped booth. I would really like to have seen Cinemiracle there (or for that matter in Chicago). “Windjammer” is kind of the “lost” three strip film, although I think they have run it at the Dome in L.A. It must have had the shortest run of any of the three-strip pictures, possibly because the houses they used had other commercial commitments (it played the Opera House in Chicago which limited its run there, although Micael Coate indicates it did move over to the McVickers at one point).
mjc: I don’t know about the Roxy, but there were three projectionists on a shift at the Hall, with one being an “inside man” who brought reels to the operating projectionists, and then hand rewound the reel that just finished. He also answered the phone and was used during the stage show. There was a rule that if the booth had spotlights adjacent to film projectors they were operated by projectionists (in fact the B.A. of Local #306 once told me that the walls dividing the Music Hall booth to separate the North and South spot booths from the film booth were put in because it was cheaper to use stagehands to operate spots than projectionists). The Roxy booth looks as if it might accomodate a couple of spots, as well as a Brenograph or slide/effect projector for effects in the stage show. (Even that operation was subject to jurisdictional politics: if there was no motion-picture projector nearby the slide projector would fall under stage jurisdiction — after all — projectionists were MOTION PICTURE operators. We got involved in some nifty jurisdictional discussions at the Hall over some of the newer lighting instruments that used “scrollers” to move an image on a large piece of transparent material across the stage. There was “motion” but it was being used in a large format slide projector.)
Maybe Joseph would know if the Roxy had a private screening room, but if so that would have accounted for another two projectionists on a shift, and there were two shifts a day (at least) in the main Roxy booth. In addition, at the Hall the operators all put in less than a 40 hour week, so there was a complex schedule equalizing the shifts so that all operators had the same number of openings, closings and weekend shifts over the year. That could account for the 16 projectionists you see listed.
Vito: Thanks for posting that article. I had seen it — there was a section in the booth filing cabinet for articles about the projection at the Hall most of the wider read trades such as Boxoffice and Motion Picture Herald and from Intrnational Projectionist. I have a few of them but not that article. Fortuately, Boxoffice is in the process of putting its past articles on line, which is really something to look forward to.
Vito: I would have loved to have seen that booth. There was a picture on the wall at Local #306 which showed what was probably the Roxy booth with the three projectors set up for Cinemiracle and it did seem pretty cramped. Of course when the theatre opened at the end of the silent era, the projectors and lamps themselves were much smaller, so it must have seemed roomy at the time. Was the booth at the Fox H.Q. you refer to in the large screening room? I think there were two there: the big room and a small room for reviewing newsreels. One of the operators on the crew at Radio City worked the big screening room, and I spent time in the booth while waiting to go down for screenings. It was very spacious indeed. Ironically, I now live just down the street from that building (now the High School of Enviorenmental Science) and see it every day from my apartment window.
The comment above about the location of the booth at the Roxy being capable of creating “sharper, more detailed and perhaps larger images than at Radio City” is not quite correct. Image sharpness, detail and size is purely a function of the quality and focal length of the lenses, projectors and light source used to project it. Assuming the booth at the Roxy was about 90' from the screen it would require lenses half the focal length of those at Radio City where the throw is 180' from the screen to achieve the same picture size. There are a whole set of qualifications that determine picture quality. Shorter focal length lenses, since they are magnifying the image much more can have problems with holding the film image in focus since the film is constantly fluttering in the gate due to the heat of the lamp (much like 35mm slides tended to “pop” into focus when they dropped in front of the light). What the booth at the Roxy did share with most of the Rothaphel booths almost a zero angle in relation to the screen which eliminated “keystoning” or making the picture trapezoidal because of the downward angle from a high booth. It also was advantageous when showing Cinemiracle since all three projectors could be locate in the same booth maintaining the zero angle for all three panels. Ben Hall commented in “The Best Remaining Seats” that the first thing Roxy did when he took over the Regent in Harlem was to relocate the booth to the main floor. Spotlight booths have an advantage in a large downward angle since it keeps the light on the performer rather than on the backdrop. Thus the Roxy had a high spot booth at the back of the house. In the Beacon, the spot booth is located above the projection booth. In the Center Theatre, which was intended to run movies, the projection booth was again located at a lower angle. Joseph is right in saying that the Hall wasn’t really supposed to run feature films, but rather the equipment was for projected film effects and perhaps “filler” material. Indeed, the rear projection booth at the Hall is at a better projection angle than the main booth.
DavidM: When I stopped to remember the carpeting, the “Singing Ladies” hair becomes the “waves” under the “fish”. Try turning your carpet sideways (talk about a new angle on things!) I hadn’t thought about the carpet being blue (it was usually kind of gummy when I was laying cable down along side the aisles), but that would also make “sea theme” sense. I had a piece of the original wall covering at the back of the house, but sacrificed it for the sake of acoustic analysis. The original treatment was acoustically pourous like speaker grille cloth. When they redid it in 1979, they just printed the pattern on cloth. The difference in absorbtion was impressive. The new material reflected the P.A. system sound, rather than let it be absorbed through perforated metal grill work behind the original fabric. In additon, the metal work which was like ceiling tiles had been backed with sound absorbant filler, which had all decayed and fallen to the bottom. Thus there was a huge sound reflection from the curved wall area behind the 3rd Mezzanine. That resulted in an echo so prominant that if I turned my head while screening new show film prints in an empty house at Midnight, I heard two distinct soundtracks — one from the screen and one from the back wall. When an acoustician analyzed it he found that the sound from the back wall was actully focussed in such a way that it was louder than the original sound from the screen at some frequencies. Once you sat under the shadow of the First Mezzanine the echo disappeared. Afte listening to a bit of mono film soundtrack which I played for him he came up to the booth saying, “Why haven’t they FIXED that?” Hopefully, that’s all been corrected in the last redo of the auditorium.
RCDTJ: That was a pretty good run for the projectors. I don’t think the 70mm machines had been rebuilt since they were taken out to National Theatre Supply in Paramus in 1974 when I started there. Considering that they were adaptations of the Simplex X-L projector head, we always felt that they weren’t as stable as say a Norelco DP-70 or AAII would have been. The fact that they ran as long as they did was a tribute to the head of National Theatre Supply’s head machinist (Leo Lucas?) who did the rebuild.
It would be interesting to know if the shutter drive gear was replaced. Originally the X-L drive gear was rubber centered to give less vibration. Those centers rotted out from the projector oil, and the shutter would stop rotating. The 35/70 machines had standard fiber gears, but when Leo rebuilt the ones for the Hall he put rubber centered gears in since they were military spec. I could see them going after 34 years, particularly running at 30 F.P.S. for the Christmas Show 70mm footage.
DavidM: are those really “Singing Ladies”? I know the tour guides list them as such, but I was also told that they represent fish in water. Since Roxy was supposed to have been inspired to create the coves by a sunrise while on an ocean liner, the pattern in the aisle carpeting was of fish in the waves in the ocean, and the effect was enhanced by the “wave” image of the aisle lights at the end of the seat standards which gave a “wave” appearance looking down from the Mezzanines. If you turn the Singing Ladies sidways, the image is kind of like fish fins with an eye at one end.
Bill,
“Airport” was the first film shown in 70mm at the Hall, and was the most traumatic. I heard stories about that series of events even before I worked there. The only reason 70mm was installed was that Ross Hunter insisted that “Airport” be shown in 70mm, and Universal had fourl-walled the theatre, so what they wanted they got. There were no Simplex 35/70mm machines available on short notice, so the Hall got three of them from the Gulf & Western (Paramount) building. Both the Paramount theatre in the basement, and the two screening rooms were equipped with 35/70, and they weren’t ready to open so the Hall made the deal. They had to be Simplex machines, since all of the apertures for the film effects in the stage show were cut for Simplex XL projectors, and they needed the flexibility.
The former head of the MGM camera department had converted the original XL’s to 70mm (actually 65mm) use for “Ben Hur” and “Raintree County” Camera 65, and offered to do the same for the Hall, but was frozen out of his company in a divorce settlement. Word had it that the machines the Hall got were assembled by his accountant, and they weren’t put together well. (We later took them out to the Simplex shop in New Jersey and had them rebuilt.)
Bill Nafash, who had the knowledge to rebuild them was at a World’s Fair at the time of the installation and wasn’t available to help. There were a host of other problems so severe, that after the first screening of “Airport” on opening day, they had to go back to 35mm for the next screening.
Ben Olevsky, who was chief, didn’t want 70mm to begin with and hated them and the sound system that was installed. The machines damaged so much 70mm film that when I told the crew we were going to run 70mm in 1974, one of them put his hands around my neck as if to choke me and said, “We don’t want to run 70mm!” It took the rebuilding of the machines and installation of some replacement units like the feed and take-up assemblies before they were “tamed”. If you saw “Airport” there in 70mm, you were at a classic moment in Music Hall history!
Actually, that is a “real” photo. Radio City did a stage show which paid tribute to its motion-picture past, and opened with the contour going up to reveal the screen, and had the Rockettes positioned in front of it. The show probably dated back to 1953 when the Hall first started showing CinemaScope and wanted to “wow” the audiences with the screen size. The announcer had copy which read something like, “Now that’s a screen!”
If you saw the screen in in the ‘70’s and thought it looked different, it was probably because the aspect ratio was changed between CinemaScope and Panavision 70. It is the same screen, fitted into the original truss work from the house opening which also carried the Magnascope masking. Both the sides and top masking move, thus enablng any aspect ratio to be shown. The screen as shown in the photo is showing a 2.55:1 original Scope ratio, which was later reduced in the days of Magoptical and optical Scope soundtracks to 2.35:1. While I did inherit 2.55 plates, we never used them in the '70’s since there were no 2:55 prints available. (The discussion came up during our screening of the restoration of “A Star Is Born”, since it was originally 2.55. The only decent print in terms of picture was a 2.35 optical print. The 4-track magnetic stereo print had a decent enough track, but the picture was scratched. It was suggested that we crop the top and bottom of the picture to regain the 2.55 ratio, but I thought that Cukor would probably want as much of his original picture seen as possible, and the sides were already being cropped. We ended up running the 4 track mag from interlocked mag dubbers rather than composite on film).
For Panavision 70, the aspect ratio is 2.21:1, and thus the picture which is 30' high looks less wide than scope even though it is the full 70' wide as opposed to 2.35 Scope’s 64' width. (The original 2.55 magnetic 35mm prints would have filled the whole 70' screen width although stil being less high than 70mm. Also remember that at the time the photo was taken the Hall had yet to install 70mm equipment, so the screen height would be limited to the 35mm Scope size, although newsreels were run at a 1.37 aspect ratio which would have used a 30' x 40' size.)
If you measure the height of the Rockettes in the photo the screen height would appear to about 26' high. As I recall when we repeated the show the feture masking was for Scope so the contour was just pulled up to show how big the screen really was in comparison to the girls' height. The same photo was also used in promotional material for the Hall including their Pictorial and in a booklet on carbons for arc lighting for motion pictures put out by National Carbons.
One final note: none of the ratios at the Hall are 100% accurate, since with a 19 degree downward angle, the picture elongates somewhat. We always used SMPTE target test film to ensure that we were projecting the image as intended, but because of the downward angle the screen height was always taller than it would have been if the booth were located on the 1st Mezzanine (that was one of the reasons theatres like the Rivoli repositioned their booths to a lower angle when projecting on a curved screen. In that case the distoriton from an old high booth would have been too noticeable.)
StanMalone:
For someone who claims not to be from the technical side of the field you are very knowledgeable about projection conditions at the Fox and very good at explaining them in an understandable way. The Fox is lucky to have you and your chief projectionist (I ran into a similar combination in Champaign, Illinois last year at the Virginia Theatre which has been restored and run by the Parks Department. It is the site of Roger Ebert’s “Ebertfest” each year, and the venue has a manager and a projectionist that take great pride in the theatre. The 70mm booth is one of the best maintained and equipped I’ve seen. It’s good to know that there are people like you tending our restored classic theatres.)
According to Martin Hart’s American Widescreen Museum, there was an optical soundtrack version of “Ben Hur” that was reased which was slightly letterboxed on anamporphic 35mm film to preserve the 2.55/2.76 ratio. He has a picture of the clip on his site. My laserdisc version of “Ben Hur” was also 2.76 aspect ratio at a time when letterboxing was fairly rare even on laserdisc which more or less created the concept.
The Martin Cinerama mention brings up something that has begun to disturb me. The most impressive of the Cinerama/D-150 theatres, which were as much a symbol of their time as the Fox is of its time, are all disappearing. It’s as if we’ve learned something about preservation, but only consider the oldest examples of something worthy of preservation. I was surprised when I found that until Bob Harris started focusing on some of the 70mm Roadshow epics, that spectacular boxoffice successes of my generation were endangered. (At one point when I was at the Hall, I heard that Fox had misplaced the 65mm negative of “The Sound of Music”. They’ve since used it for the DVD release, and the studios are starting, thanks to ancillary markets, to be more aware of the value of their libraries.) Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to extend to theatres. I worry the great examples of S.Charles Lee’s theatres will all be gone, since they were built specifically for movie use and didn’t have the stage facilities of the Fox and Music Hall which make them suitable for other performing arts.
The best and most effective sites for large screen presentation of the type Mr. Wade refers to above weren’t the theatres that were adapted for them such as the Rivoli in New York and Eitel’s Palace in Chicago, but rather the Martin and Cooper Cineramas, and the U.A. and River Oaks D-150’s. Of those, almost the only survivors are the Seattle Cinerama and the Dome in L.A. Someday we may look back and regret the demolishing of those sites, even though not as grand, as we now do the Roxy in New York.
They did. The father of the public relations director at Radio City when I was there managed the Fox and I guess became an exec for the circuit that ran it. Patricia always said that he was the one that put CinemaScope in the Fox over the initial objections of higher management. The standard was for a curved screen at the time. That curve is always a problem for theatres that do stage shows and have to fly the sheet. It kept Radio City from showing CinemaScope for a year after its development because the depth of the curve would have eliminated at least a couple of the fly lines used for scenery in the stage show. In essence a frame would have to be built around the whole screen to stabilize it and provide fly points, and that means giving up line set space.
A big curved Todd-AO screen would look great, but if you check out the Rivoli N.Y. page for the last couple of weeks, you’ll find a number of negative comments about what the installation of U. A.’s D-150 did to the classic architecture. Purists object (with good reason in many cases) about what those screens cost in terms of keeping a theatre’s unique design, as with the Egyptian in Hollywood. I liked those screens, and being much younger at the time, didn’t mind what they had done to the structure. Now I would say, “Fine”, but only if the screen could be removed at the end of a run and the theatre retain its unique features. Judging from what StanMalone said, they would still have to kill a number of rows of seats in the orchestra under the balcony or the height would be restricted. (Some of that would be done automatically by placing a booth at the back of the orchestra under the balcony .) I believe Atlanta had a Martin Cinerama at one time, and that would be a more appropriate venue for Todd-AO or D-150 had it been saved since those formats were a product of that time, and as has been pointed out on the Rivoli page, were better adapted to achieve the effect you’re looking for. Disney’s restoration of the Paramount into the El Capitan shows how great those theatres looked when the wrap around curtains were taken down. The Atlanta Fox is glorious as is — we’re so lucky it was saved.
Terry Wade: There are a couple of things about “Ben Hur” that may have affected how you felt about the width of the image you saw, and StanMalone can probably verify them. “Ben Hur” was shot in MGM’s proprietary process Camera 65, which was an anamorphic 65mm process. Thus as with CinemaScope, the image was squeezed slightly on the 65mm film. Normal 70mm release prints have an aspect ratio of 2.21:1 which is less than the Scope print you saw at the Fox, but Camera 65 with its squeeze had a 2.76:1 ratio which was the widest of the 35 or 70mm formats. As Stan mentioned above, the sightlines at the Fox under the balcony limit the height of the picture. Thus if you had seen a Camera 65 70mm print projected there, the screen would have been much wider side to side than the 2.35 print you saw. It’s doubtful that the 70mm “Ben Hur” prints today are anamorphic, since the lenses to show them aren’t available (I did have one 70mm reel of the Camera 65 “Ben Hur” to use as a test reel at Radio City, and was always perplexed by the slight squeeze in the image.) The original 35mm prints were 4 track magnetic stereo, and had a 2.55:l ratio. You could well have seen one of those at the Fox, and it too would have been wider than the 35mm print with optical track they just showed. If they do strike a new 70mm print for the 50th Anniversary, they could keep the original ratio without the squeeze by “letterboxing” the image on the 70mm frame although the image quality wouldn’t be quite the same since they would be using less of the full frame. If you look at the DVD of “Ben Hur” you’ll notice that the image is “skinnier” across the frame than other Scope titles. This caused a furor when Turner ran a letterboxed version on its movie channel in the days before letterboxing was a familiar as it is now, since it really produced a small image on the tv screens of those days. StanMalone: any comment?
Stan — Bravo for your comments above. You did a great job of explaining the issue of sightlines and their affect on screen size, something we lived with to some extent at Radio City. I was in your beautiful theatre once with my boss from Radio City when we attended a NATO conference in Atlanta. We walked over to the Fox to see if we could get a peek inside, and met Alex Cooley (?)outside who was the promoter for a BTO concert going on at the time. We asked if we could take a look and he let us in and gave us the run of the place. Warren and I wandered up to the booth, but the operators (were you one of them?) were busy manning the spots. We did take a quick look around so as not to bother anybody, and left. I believe you still had Motiograph projectors at that time before the 70mm install. That has to be one of the deepest booths in the country, as I recall the rewind bench and film cabinets were actually in the middle of the room a long way from the back wall which is where they would normally be. Very impressive!
Your comments about digital are also interesting, in that Mr. Wade was complaining about what he thought was bad digital projection, but which was 35mm projection with a normally used print. It’s too bad he didn’t get a chance to see your presentation of “Enchanted”, since good digital projection can really alter misconceptions. I work in a screening room which has done split screen comparisons with digital and film, and they can be almost identical. What is perhaps more enlightening howerver is that we run a lot of first edits transferred from 4K servers to D-5 H.D. You tend to forget you’re looking at digital, until months later when you screen the same thing on film, and even with a new print, you tend to see occasional specks of dust that you never would have noticed in the days before digital.
Most of the material we work with either film or digitally originated is transferred to 4K servers for post production work, and now the discussion in the industry is whether or not to archive at 4K. The studios have been archiving at 2K, but there’s a growing sympathy to save the “best” version of the material just as they saved the camera negative with 35 and 65mm. Be assured that digital material is being archived, its just a case of at what level of quality. (And now Bob Harris who restored “Lawrence” is pushing for 6K archiving, and NHK is demonstrating their 8K capture and projection system in Japan — “the times they are a-changin”.
DavidM: Yes, masking hides a plethora of picture “sins”. Projector aperture plates always sit a little behind the film plane less they scratch the film and as a result, depending on the format and lens, project a “fuzz line” which the masking covers. To clarify the statement above, there was a little cropping in that the picture at the angle mentioned “keystones” and becomes trapezoidal (think the “Star Wars” chapter introductions). The plates are also cut as trapezoidal, but in the opposite direction thus giving a straight edge to the picture, but cutting off the image that would fall outside the straight line. The only director to call us on the issue was Bryan Forbes who did “The Slipper & The Rose”. He had placed his end credits close to the edge of the frame, and when they crawled the first and last letters of the lines were cropped until they got about a quarter of the way up the screen. He asked if something could be done, but we said only if the projectors were moved to the 1st Mezzanine! (One of the advantages of the current use of digital projectors is that they are on the 1st Mezzanine.)
These days there are computer programs for lens calculations that will figure the actual picture size for any degree of projection angle, so it isn’t necessary to go onstage with a tape measure anymore. We are a bit envious of that capability, as opposed to having to work with a lens slide rule calculator, a sectional drawing of the theatre and a ruler (that method did work pretty well though, and never crashed.)
I remember the Westinghouse Bulb well, and when they finished that meeting, I was able to fire up a projector and project a trailer on the back side of it just for fun. George LeMoine, who took photographs of the shows, was in the house and got a photo for me just as the “bulb” was deflating. I kept it in my desk for years.
Warren: you’re right about the deep curvature screens working best in houses of 2000 or so. I as told that at one point someone did come in to look at the possibility for the Hall. Perhaps it was the Cinemiracle staff, and they decided the Roxy would be a better place. The screen would have been in front of the proscenium and extend into the house. They might not have had to do too much to the house, since the 1st Mezzanine would have been an ideal place for the three booths. When Bob Jani started doing shows there in 1979 he looked at the possibilities of doing IMAX there, and I went to Toronto to talk to their executives. They would have put the screen in front of the light console, and would have extended it all the way up to the top of the 2nd cove, completely covering the 1st cove and proscenium. The insurmountable problem was that they couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of it after morning screenings in time to do a stage presentation in the afternoon or evening.
MikeJW: The screen at the Music Hall is (give or take a couple of inches to account for grommets for lacing) is 35'high by 70' wide. It has movable top and side masking that flies with the sheet. Thus any format can be shown without cropping depending upon the lens focal length. There is a limit on the size you can get with a 35mm 1.85 image since if you blow it up too much there isn’t enough light. Thus our 1.85 image when I started there was roughly 50' wide by 27' high. The Scope image was also about 27' high but about 65' wide (by the time I started we were screening Scope with an optical track which reduced the width from the orignal 2.55:1 to 2.35:1. With mag tracks the image was probably the full width. I was able to get a full H. 35' on 1.85 70mm, since I had a bigger film image to work with, thus for “Lion King” we were 35' H x about
65' wide. 2.21 70 such as “Airport” was lensed to about 70' x 30'. The other pictures you mentioned were all 35mm “Scope”. The only caveat to all of this is that there is a slight elongation of the picture due to the roughly 19 degree downward projection angle. (I once got into an argument with a tech representative from the west coast when he walked in and looked at our screen which was set for 1.85 projection and said, “Ah 1.66”. I said no, and took him up to the booth where I pulled the aperture plate from the projector and showed him the 1.85 opening.) While I figured literally hundreds of projection screen sizes for everything from rock concert video to features, I never actually measured each actual screen h. since it would have meant going on stage with a Genii hoist and a tape measure and there was never enough time to have the picture sheet in long enough. We always tried to project the correct picture information as determined by SMPTE standards rather than have a “pure” screen masking aspect ratio which would have meant slightly cropping the top and bottom of the pictue. (The one exception was “Black Cauldron”, which was full width 70 and followed “Return To Oz” which was 1.85 70. The Disney rep so liked the full height 1.85 image he asked us to run “Cauldron” same way. To do that we would have needed a 73' w. screen, but Disney O.K.d the 1.5' crop at the ends of the picture. Later for the “Santa” footage which opened the Christmas Spectacular, I did have a 73' built. Hope this answers your question.)
MikeJW: The letterboxing on your DVD’s is probably pretty close. All of those films were shot on 65mm film, and when magnetic tracks were overlayed the aspect ratio should be 2.21:l, as opposed to CinemaScope’s 2.55:1 aspect ratio with magnetic tracks and “Foxhole” perfs., or 2.35:1 with optical or mag/optical soundtracks. The picture area on 65mm without the inside two mag tracks would be closer to 35mm, and perhaps a bit of cropping top and bottom was done to fill out the 35mm ratio. Of course, “Oklahoma” was shot with both 35mm and 65mm cameras (since Todd-AO originally used a 30frame/sec. speed vs. 35mm.24 frame/sec) so those aspect ratios would automatically be correct for each format. My laserdisc (remember those?) copy of “Oklahoma” has an extra with both versions placed one over the other so you can see the difference between the formats. If you want more information, Martin Hart’s “Widescreen Museum” mentioned above has tons of fascinating material.
The bandcar still does move unless the video wall blocks an entrance from the third elevator. What DavidM was referring to was the positioning of the band car at the top of the elevator shaft before the show. It does go back down to load the orchestra on, and then does come back up for the overture, but if you’re an early arriver the illusion is lessened. That’s probably to protect the audience as much as the staff. Kids love to look over the edge of the pit elevator shaft when they hear the orchestra tuning up below. Can you imagine the furor if one of them toppled over the edge? Then the Hall would be blamed for not caring about audience safety.
I don’t know why the organ needs major work. It was refurbished before I left. The toy counter was augmented with digital effects since replacement for the original Wurlitzer instruments had to be custom made and with digital effects the organ can be augmented with files from other theatre organs around the country. They also gained the ability to move the consoles around which really interested me. I’d love to see them playing a silent film with both consoles coming up on the pit elevator to stage level. It would be an interesting change, and replicate the majority of consoles on pit lifts around the country. Perhaps the Bishops can comment — that’s another multi-generation family at the Hall who have been caring for the organ for a long time.
I also thought of saying just what TheatreOrgan just said —people are more litigious these days. (By the way — the railings on the sidewalks around the Center at 50th & 6th and on 5th Ave. weren’t to protect people. Rudy put them in to facilitate the movement of traffic onto those avenues. While we wished they would go away, the electric crew that changes the letters on the Music Hall marquee says they actually make sign changes safer.)
Actually crew at Radio City is extremely talented and competent. The Local #1 members have been there through (now) up to three generations, and in many cases grow up, marry, and have children who in turn grow up and join the crew there. I was in awe of both their ability and their dedication to the house. People don’t realize how dangerous any stage is. I remember the crew talking about a stagehand that was killed in a fatal fall at the Palace Theatre during the run of a legit musical. Stages with elevators up the ante. Even in the days of the movie stage show policy, I remember hearing about a dancer who got a toe cut off at the Hall, and if the story isn’t apocryphal, lost a lawsuit because he had been warned not to stand that close to the elevator while waiting to go on. That wouldn’t happen with OSHA today. Indeed, Leon Leonidoff had a staircase onstage with the Rockettes standing on it collapse during a rehearsal, scattering Rockettes all over the stage while he yelled at them to get up and go on with the rehearsal. That story made the national wire services and I read about it while still in Illinois.
As I mentioned above, the super spectacular award shows raised the ante. There you have additional crew to supplement the house crew, and an enormous amount of material being moved into the theatre under tight time constraints. The stage elevators are used to move the material into storage spaces both in the wings and on the two lower levels. In years past a routine developed because the format was unchanging. With the concerts and other types of shows, there is a house crew working with a road crew, and no time to develop familiarity with some of the hazards of working on a stage with four moving elevators. A roadie once claimed that a religious broadcaster in the Midwest (no—I have no idea who) who had an elevator stage and cut a choir boy in half in an accident. Well maybe — but I also remember Martyn (?) Greene, a Gilbert & Sullivan performer who lost a leg in an elevator move in Japan. IATSE has initiated a series of safety programs for its members that are in place even in my home local in Illinois which handles arena shows that are bigger than Radio City’s. Remember the shows are incredibly more complex than they used to be. Its probably a tribute to those in charge at the Hall (and certainly to the crew) that there aren’t more serious accidents.
DavidM: I suspect the reason the bandcar is in a raised position prior to the start of the show goes back a decade or so when a stagehand (who I believe was also the Presiden of Local #1) was severely injured in a fall into the pit. The “Santa” sheet for the opening of the show on 70mm film lies in between the contour and (I believe) the house picture sheet. Originally that pipe held the gold traveller that was taken out for “Snow White” so they could use it for a scenic piece. To bring the Santa sheet in, the contour had to be breasted back over the footlights since it drifts upstage due to the house draft. The deck crew would stand in a row onstage and move the contour back so the sheet could be lowered. At one performance the stagehand backed up too far and went over the edge into the pit. I believe his injuries made him a quadrapalegic if I remember correctly. We had had several injuries around that time that were severe enough to involve OSHA, and they insisted changes be made. Probably keeping the bandcar just below stage level was one. Another was lowering a fence behind the Rockettes as they moved from the third elevator to the second to prevent a fall if one of them accidentally backed up as the third elevator was being lowered behind them. When the Hall was in the movie/stage show policy, injuries were probably fewer because everyone was there all day almost every day, and the routine, once set, remained the same. When the big award shows started coming in there was less familiarity with the stage, and the elevators were being moved bringing pieces in and taken to the shop or basement levels while the crew would be working on the next elevaor over. OSHA put a stop to that. Now all activity is stopped on stage when an elevator moves. Even the ledge in front of rear projection now has a safety line across it, and when we worked up there we were supposed to be tied to it. As a practical matter, the changes may not result in the most impressive stagecraft, but they may prevent fatalities.
DavidM: I gather the original fire curtain is still in place and in use. Cutting it up to get it out of the building would probably create more of an evnviornmental issue than leaving it.
Re: the Doncho — the story is that Japan gave that drop to the City of New York for the ‘64 World’s Fair Exhibition in a pavillion which featured a show produced by — Leon Leonidoff. He specified the size, knowing that when the fair was over, there was only one place in New York that could handle a drop that size. You guessed it — that place was the Hall. (Leon was pretty wily!) I don’t know whether its still in the flies or not. It is so heavy that it is tied to two pipes, which is valuable line set space. (At least it used to be before the video wall came into place.) I think there was some talk of moving it to Weehauken warehouse, but as with the fire curtain, getting it out of the building without damage would have been a major challenge.
On another note — one of the passenger elevators may have been a place to store deceased audience members, but I remember Fred Kellers telling me about at least one body that was stored in his very tiny office at the back of the orchestra, and which was shared with his secretary. He said he had to step over it until the amubulance arrived. Perhaps that episode led to the later storage on the elevator.
Michael: Thanks for the info. I didn’t think even if the “Fiddler” story were true that the two theatres were owned by the same firm at the same time. The idea was that if Lubliner was involved, they let Nederlander have the theatre for the tourning company of “Fiddler” in return for the exclusive first run of the film version at the McClurg. It’s still a good story — wonder where it originated? I am glad that I did accurately remember Trans-Beacon. I thought they were involved at one point along with (perhaps) the Micael Todd and the Cinestage. Considering the number of 70mm roadshow houses they were involved with, I wonder if the demise of the roadshow was responsible for them going out of business in a relatively short time. I guess by the last time I was in the McVickers it was during the Diana years (another odd company), and the house was getting pretty run down.
Creating the website envisioned above would take an enormous amount of effort, since the archives (when still in the Hall) filled a room under the stage with filing cabinets and storage space from floor to what was probably a 12' ceiling (I’m 6'4" and had to climb up a tall ladder to get to some of the film footage that was stored there.)
One of the disappointments I had was failing to return Leon’s 16mm footage to him after he left the Hall. He wrote an extremely kind and complimentary letter to me saying that he enjoyed working with me more than any other projectionist (we didn’t have the chance to work together long enough in all probability for him to get annoyed with me!) I looked through the film footage which was stored behind the screen in Preview A, but couldn’t find what he was looking for (not realizing at the time he was talking about 16mm film).
A few years later for the 50th Anniversary show, I found the case containing his footage. I sent it out to the west coast to be included in a montage of stage shows and historical footage, asking that the footage be put back together when returned. Instead, they sent it back in a jumble of edited pieces used to make the montage. I would never have the time to reassemble them properly. That footage may still be in the archives, although it was shot by Leon with available light on relatively slow 16mm reversal stock, so the images are pretty grainy.
Vito: If you think the fire curtain is impressive as it came in at the end of the day, you ought to see a “fire drop” which is truly awesome! The rule is that NOTHING is ever to sit on or be wired across the fire curtain line. There are brads in the stage floor to stake out its position when dropped. At one point there was a sign referring to the curtain as DavidM does above as being made of the material which dare not speak its name in this day and age. By the sign there was a rope and a knife, which could be used to cut the rope and put the curtain into free-fall. That curtain is in two sections, since the proscenium is 60' high at the top, so the sections have to fit in the fly space above the stage. Thus you have two pieces of heavy material 30'+ by 100'+. As recently as this week they did a fire drop, which releases the curtain just as if the ropes had been cut. It comes in with a roar that you can hear before you actually see it emerge at the top of the proscenium, and comes crashing toward the deck. At about 12' above the deck, plungers hit hydraulic stops that slows it to a pace similar to that which you see when it is lowered at night. After the test it is raised, but you can hear fluid dripping in the hydraulic cylinders for minutes afterward. The stage is cleared before a drop, and crew members and stage managers stand on either side of the line to make sure no one is near the drop area. Several times I was allowed to stand on the pit elevator to watch the drop, and that’s really about as close as I wanted to be. (The story — probably apocryphal — was that someone once left a briefcase on the drop line and it was crushed as the curtain landed.) It’s quite a piece, and DavidM, it really was part of the 50th Anniversary Show in 1982, when it was lowered as the audience came in, and we projected the 50th Anniversary Logo on it from the booth.
If you thought sitting through them once was bad, you should have had to watch them several times a day for the run after check screening both of the show prints at 1 in the morning after the previous show ended for the day!
In all due fairness to the “Petrovka” stage show, that may have been the one where Peter Gennaro had the corps de ballet pulled out from under him not long before the show was to open. The ballet staffing was fixed, and the Hall wanted more flexibility, so they simply dropped the ballet from the shows. After that they were able to hire dancers as needed. This left Peter (who’s forte was dance after all) with only singers and the Rockettes to work with. He later did some pretty decent shows considering the budget he had to work with. I particularly remember a 1776 tribute he did using the “Love” theme arranged in styles to accompany dance from 1776 to 1976.
By the way “Leon”, I did get to work on your namesake’s last show at the Hall which was a tribute to Colombia. I think Leon got to see the world by staging those shows, all of which were built around performers from various countries at a time when, for most of the Hall’s audience, travel there in person was unattainable. Thus I had film footage in the vault of Leon in Israel, Leon in Italy, Leon weaving baskets with the natives “somewhere”. He had arranged co-sponsorship of the show with the airline of Colombia, and had spectacular footage of the performers arriving on a plane which buzzed the Statue of Liberty and flew under the Brooklyn Bridge, with the narration going something like, “look out for that Statue!” Unfortunately the airline of Colombia wanted you to believe that their planes were so safe that they taxied all the way here, and they went into shock at the opening performance. They insisted the best footage be cut over Leon’s objections. We were also to return all of the footage to them, but somehow, an original print survived and may still be in the Music Hall archives somewhere.
Warren in a post above mentions wishing he had details about the stage shows. Cablevision may have pitched them, but when I was there the Music Hall library had extensive documentation on all of the shows, with multiple photos of each of the sets and all of the costumes. The numbers ran into the 100’s, and filled books. Since the numbers were often repeated, particularly for such hits as “Rhapsody In Blue”, “The Undersea Ballet” and “Bolero”, not to mention the “Nativity” and “Glory of Easter” prologues, the documentation was essential. I know they still do have an historian who was featured in the documentary on the Hall recently run on the MSG Network, and judging from that program they still keep an archive, so the stage show documentation is probably there. (According to Fred Kellers, the Vice President of House Operations, there was an agreement with the press not to review the stage shows when reviewing the films. I have the list of all the films that played and their dates and the names of the stage productions which accompanied them, but that’s all.)
While I didn’t get a chance to see CinemaScope at the Roxy, I have seen pictures of the screen, which was indeed within the proscenium, so no seats would have been cut off as with the Capitol’s Cinerama. That may not have been the case with Cinemiracle at the Roxy. In that case, since the screen was deeply curved for three projector projection, my bet would be that it was extended beyond the proscenium for effect.
According to Warren’s comment above the screen was 68' x 24' which would have made it almost exactly the width of the Music Hall screen (70' x 35'). The Roxy’s screen was slightly curved however, which may have made for a more impressive picture, and which would have met the Fox CinemaScope standards. Because a curved screen at the Hall would have involved taking up too many fly lines, the Hall stayed with a flat screen, and thus couldn’t show any of the first Fox CinemaScope product. It was a year later when MGM ran “Knights of the Roundtable” at the Hall that the first CinemaScope picture was shown there. MGM said they didn’t care if the screen was curved or not.
BWChicago: Just checked your 2/1/2008 comments on the McVickers. Even if B&K held the lease I’m sure they were not operating it during the Todd-AO, Cinerama days. If you have any more information, post it on that link and I’ll look for it there, so as to not muddy up this one. Thanks.