Although this news is bad, it is great that Lumenick is giving everyone a heads up on this.
As someone who’s been on the periphery of landmarks preservation for a while, I hope those who’ve expressed concern about the Beekman will try and make contact with established community and landmarks groups in order to spur these groups on in this fight and to give more force to their own voice. (More on this in a bit.)
Although I am not that familiar with the history of the these groups with regard to the Beekman, my gut feeling is that most members of these groups are already very ardent Beekman fans and have probably been stymied (so far) by those in positions of power who are opposed to its designation as a landmark (exterior or interior). (A building need only be, I believe, 25 years old to be eligible for consideration, and the Beekman has always had a very high profile among those in NYC concerned with landmarking.)
Why and how might they have been stymied?
There are groups and factions within the landmarking community, just as there are in other groups. Here are some of the arguments (not that I necessarily agree or disagree with them) that might have been preventing the Beekman’s designation so far:
You can’t landmark “everything.” A building should be significant either historically or architecturally to warrant designation. Landmarking shouldn’t be used to stop developments we may not like, nor to stop time and make the city into a “museum” — a latter day “Williamsburg.” So one should be very careful about what one designates as a landmark and how many landmarks the city designates over all. You don’t want to unnecessarily impede the City’s development. (Not that this prevents the same people from proposing their own favorites built in one of the sacrosanct styles — like the rather ordinary, except for it’s ugliness, SOCONY-MOBIL building on E. 42nd St. — from being designated landmarks!)
In terms of determining whether a building is architecturally significant:
Among those involved in landmarking and in positions of power, certain styles appear to be more sacrosanct, and more worthy of preservation, than others — e.g., the International Style is considered far more “important” than Art Deco. It seems to me that lowest on the totem pole are the modern styles that have not been approved, or have only been grudgingly approved, by the architectural congnescenti (sp?). Thus, it seems to me, buildings built in the more accessible and more popular modern styles (like the Beekman) are often not seen as architectually significant among the cognescenti in power and thus may be seen by them as less worthy of preservation.
When a building is not seen by those in power as worthy of landmark designation, one technique that is used to prevent its designation is a refusal to calendar it for a public hearing (i.e., don’t allow the landmarking process to begin in the first place). This technique is presently being used to cut short discussion on the possible designation of 2 Columbus Circle (originally built as the “Gallery of Modern Art”) — which has a number of distinguished architectural historians arguing in favor of a least a public hearing on its designation.
So my guess is that it is probably not worth the effort AT THE PRESENT MOMENT to contact the Landmarks Preservation Commission on behalf of the Beekman. Rather, it seems to me that it might be more helpful to contact an organiztion like the Municipal Art Society – the group that spearheaded the fight to save Grand Central (and the group that gave Woody Allen an award for his contribution to New York City). They could probably refer people to other groups, whose exact names escape me at the moment, as well.
(Although, it should be mentioned, that even the MAS has been lukewarm on certain theater preservation issues. I believe internal disagreement prevented them from getting involved in the fight to support the preservation of the Helen Hayes and Morosco theaters in the early 1980s.)
Although I don’t believe this theater was the one depicted in the Edward Hopper painting with the usherette by the stairway, whenever I would see this painting I would think of the Carnegie Hall Cinema because of the stairway you used to use to descend to this basement- level auditorium.
I had a very negative — but also somewhat funny — moviegoing experience at the Carnegie Hall Cinema in the mid-1980s. It was Easter Sunday, and they were playing “Gone With the Wind” — which I had never seen. Since the price was right, I decided to go to the first screening that day.
As it turns out, the print was the very worst print of any movie I have ever seen. There were blips and pops and scratches all over the place. I think we even missed the last few seconds of an entire scene at one point when the scene changed too abruptly at one point.
I felt that the entire audience, including me, was sitting there bracing itself and wondering what annoyance we would be subjected to next. But even while sitting there in disbelief at just how awful the print was, I don’t think any of us imagined that during the last few moments of the film, Rhett Butler would say to Scarlett, “Frankly, Scarlett, I d … [da-dee-da-da, da-dee-da-da …].”
As you can well imagine, this provoked a very substantial disbelieving groan from the audience — and after the movie there was quite a hub bub too. For those who stuck around long enough, which I did, the management ultimately gave out free future passes to the theater. They also posted a sign in the window telling cinema classic.
However, even with the sign, I wonder if the audiences during the rest of the day were prepared for what must be one of the most inopportune film breaks imaginable!
Thanks, Warren, for the fascinating information! It’s very thought provoking. And, of course, fascinating info like this provokes even more questions (readers of the Cinema Treasures website, like myself, being insaitiable and spoiled!).
You mention that LA theater owners already had such a system in operation. I wonder how/why it started there? (I’m thinking perhaps because of the way the city is laid out — so suburban and spread out to begin with — that it made a lot of sense for that market?)
I also wonder how/why it spread (as I assumed it did) to other cities with downtown movie palaces other than New York (e.g., Cleveland, Philly, etc.).
I’ve noticed that the “Premiere Showcase” concept has been mentioned before, mostly by you but perhaps by others also. Is there a succinct source of info on this apparently watershed “Premier Showcase” concept that would explain a little bit more about its background and influence?
Here are some of the questions that come to mind. (Since I’m not that familiar with the movie business, some of these questions may include misconceptions or info that is otherwise incorrect.):
Why did United Artists come up with this concept? Were they operating at some sort of competitive disadvantage, and did this concept somehow allow them to rectify this?
Why did no one else come up with it before they did? In other words, what conditions might have changed to make this way of doing business possible when United Artists did it in the early 1960s, while it might not have been possible to do before then? I’m thinking, maybe they had the (apparently successful) hunch that enough people were now willing to trade-in traveling downtown (or to a borough’s downtown) to see a movie in a grand movie palace for a visit to a closer neighborhood theater if the theater had easy parking and showed the film early enough in its run? Or maybe it was a decline in the number of films being released — such that the old system of a new film every week at a movie palace was no longer really feasible?
Why did U.A.’s “Premiere Showcase” concept force a change on the other movie companies — why couldn’t the Loew’s chain continued to show films the “old” way with the films that came their way? Or was the pool of available films so much smaller in the early 1960s that this was something that was no longer possible â€" so Loew’s had to directly compete for business with U.A. and their “Premiere Showcase” concept?
Another thought: perhaps the nature of movies and the movie going audience had begun to change â€" become more fragmented â€" so that fewer and fewer movies that were made were of the type that could comfortably fill a movie palace. In some ways this audience fragmentation would be similar to what happened to the big general interest magazines â€" they (Life, Look, the Saturday Evening Post, etc.) experienced trouble while a host of more specialized magazine proliferated.
Obviously, I’m guessing that something changed to make the “Premiere Showcase” concept a (financially) “better” way of doing business than the “old” system (with a movie first playing at a movie palace and then making its way down the hierarchy of theaters).
In other words, I’m guessing that the “Premiere Showcase” concept was probably analogous to the introduction of the multiplex that showed owners that given the world as it has become (suburban malls and people driving to movie theaters, etc.) they could make more money showing a number of films throughout the day in smaller auditoria than one film throughout the day in a very large movie auditorium (e.g., by selling popcorn throughout the day, having people arrive in a steady stream throughout the day; putting one auditorium on top of another to maximize land values, etc.).
I never saw a movie at the Hudson — although for a while, in the late 1960s, the Hudson did show a commercial(?) release of some Andy Warhol films I think. However, in the early 1960s, I did see at the Hudson a play called “Ross,” which was by Terrence Ratigan(?) and starred John Mills (father of the then very famous, Haley). The play was about Lawrence of Arabia and played in New York just prior to the film, “Lawrence of Arabia.”
As I mentioned in another post about the “Rivoli” theater, it’s interesting to see how theaters have often utilized their expensive parcels of land for maximum efficiency. It’s also interesting to note how irregular or weirdly shaped some of the land assemblages for theaters were — especially in mid-Manhattan — and how the theater owners and their architects accomodated the apparent economic necessity of less than optimally shaped or sized plots. (I was looking at floor plans for the Roxy yesterday, and its architect did just an incredible job squeezing this enormous theater onto that plot of land!)
It seems, for instance, that many theaters in the Times Sq. area have the main body of their property (the auditorium and stage house) on one street, and a lobby/ticket office “pavilion” — just barely and weirdly connected — on another street entirely. Also, to maximize the value of the land, there often seems to be a small office building over the lobby/ticket area (e.g., the New Amsterdam, the Palace, etc.).
I think the Hudson theater is another good case in point. The Hudson, like apparently a good number of theaters in the Times Sq. district, appears to have been built on land that orginally held individually owned brownstone residences — which were relatively difficult to assemble. In early pictures, like the one in Mary Henderson’s first edition of the “Theatre and the City,” the entrance “pavilion” to the Hudson is shown interrupting a row of brownstones. (The builders of other theaters, like the Winter Garden, the Roxy, etc. were fortuante enough to start with more regularly shaped parcels of land that had been things like horse trading arenas or trolley (?) car barns.) So the actual bulk of the Hudson Theater (the stage house and auditorium) are on 44th St., while only a small portion of the theater (the ticket office / lobby and small office building) is on 43rd St.
By the way, the 44th St. side of the theater is really the back wall of the stage and stage house. The opening in the wall is the loading dock for the stage. When it’s open you can see right onto the stage — a feature that was utilized on the original “Tonight Show” with Steve Allen (for more, see below).
What I found really interesting about the Hudson (and I think it is also true about the Imperial, a famous “legit” Brodway theater) is that the connection between the lobby and the theater is, if I remember correctly, rather awkward. Basically everyone entering the theater kind of enters along a lobby corridor that leads to the back of the left side of the orchestra level. Since I was in the theater ages ago — forty years! — I’m not sure exactly what it was, but something about this arrangement stuck me (at least as a kid) to be very, very strange. So much so, that I believe it eventually entered into an occasional dream / nightmare that I would have where I was sitting in a theater that would have virtually “impossible” sightlines — something like sitting in a deep alcove off of a main auditorium! (Stange things — like theaters with virtually impossible sightlines — happen in dreams!)
In any case, I’ve always had a special interest in the Hudson. Here are some miscellaneous tidbits of info.:
1) The theater is on what was widely known as the dark side of Broadway. For some reason the theaters on the east side of Broadway / Seventh Ave. have never been as popular as those on the West side.
2) The theater was one of the first, if not the first, to incorporate indirect lighting for its public areas. Indirect lighting first made a splash apparently at the Buffalo (?) World’s Fair that was held just prior to the construction of the theater. (I believe this info is from the Mary Henderson book about legitimate theaters in Manhattan.)
3) This theater was the site of the original “Tonight Show” with Steve Allen. Although this is a bit before my time, apparently one of Steve’s features was sitting at the back of the stage with the doors of the loading dock open and interviewing those passing by on 44th St.
4) After “Ross” played the Hudson, the theater was dark for a while, but eventually was home to the somewhat successful attemp by Ann Corio (a famous stipper of, I believe, the 1940s) to revitalize — and revitalize the image of — “true” burlesque.
5) I’m not sure about this, but I think the Hudson may be the oldest extant theater in New York City to have a cantilevered balcany. If it is, I believe this is because the other extant theaters from its time (I think one opened just a week before or a week after) had balconies that were held up from rods or columns from above or below.
We moved to Jamaica in 1958 and, although I went to the Valencia a number of times while we lived in Jamaica, I particularly remember going to the Valencia in the evening with my father to see, if I remember correctly, “One, Two, Three,” starring James Cagney. My father was a smoker in those days, so we sat in the balcony or loge, and my recollection is that the theater was just PACKED.
Since a number of posters seem to have worked in the Valencia, I have a question. Was there ever a particular point in time when you (or your co-workers) distinctly noticed that the era of the movie palace (and the Valencia) was on a downswing or coming to an end? I’m thinking of a specific event or series of events — e.g., a year when the crowds had noticeably declined; a sure-fire hit movie that somehow inexplicably “bombed.”; etc.
For instance, as I understand it, transatlantic ocean liners were doing extremely well as a business up until the late-1950s the trans-Atlantic Boeing 707s was introduced. Then within a period of a year or two there was a real noticable change.
I suppose the same might be said of long distance rail travel — or of neighborhoods that experience a steep sudden decline. (For instance, supposedly when Co-Op City opened in the Bronx, moving vans were virtually double-parked on the Grand Concourse.)
And of course, many people have mentioned how the emergence of Milton Berle as a TV star was a noticeable event in the history of TV.
Were there also noticeable events, or dates, in the decline of the movie palace (as experienced as a worker at the Valencia)?
I’m not sure if I ever got to see anything at the Rivoli, but for some reason or another this theater held a special spot in my movie going imagination ever since I first became aware of it as a grade schooler in the the late 1950s.
1) Maybe it was because of its strangely attractive (to me) clash between the fanciful and exuberant “Greek” facade and the sleek 50’s modern / “googie” (?) lobby and marquee? (I think the underside of its marquee had something similar to the “cheeseholes” that were a Morris Lapidus (Miami Fontainbleau) trademark.) And maybe it was because of this tastefully tasteless clash in design that the theater LOOKED (at least to me) the way a very glamorous 1950s “hard ticket” theater in Times Sq. SHOULD look?
(Generally speaking, I don’t think this kind of clash is good, but it did seem to work here. Perhaps it’s because the Rivoli was a theater, and theaters are “born” to be flashy and “incorrect”?)
2) Maybe another reason it held such a prominant spot in my imagination is because for some reason I had trouble keeping it’s name straight. I thought it had the “funny,” but at the same time distinctive and “high toned,” name: the “Ravioli” Theater. (To my child’s ear the “Loew’s State” [“Ben Hur,” “King of King’s,”(?) “Lawrence of Arabia”(?)] and — most of all — the “Criterion” [“Sleeping Beauty] were also very impressive sounding names.)
3) But more significantly, this theater probably loomed large in my imagination because the “Ravioli Theater” frequently did seem to be the home of the “biggest” and “best” movies of the time.
a) I remember walking by one time when “West Side Story” was letting out and observing a young woman sobbing onto the shoulder of her date and half-kiddingly and half-seriously saying, “Never take me to a movie like that again.”
b) I was so-o-o impressed when “Cleopatra” played there and greatly enjoyed the fortuitous circumstance that in New York City the much talked about “Cleopatra” was playing in a theater with a facade vaguely appropriate to the period of the movie.
In it’s waning days I may have actually seen a movie at the “Ravioli.” If so, I have a vague memory of being surprised (and disappointed) at the design of the inside of the theater — it being a much stodgier design that that of the facade or the marquee. (But I’m not sure if this is a reliable memory; it may be just my reaction from seeing photos of the original interior.)
Re: the size of the plot of land
One thing I’ve noticed about theaters in Times Square (“legitimate” theaters as well as movie theaters) is how efficiently they use their very expensive land. One way in which they do this is to have very small — sometimes near non-existent — lobbies. (Which is what I believe the Rivoli had.) (Another is to build a hotel or office building over a portion of the lobby like, respectively, the Roxy and Radio City Music Hall.)
What a theater with a near non-existent lobby does, in essence, is to temporarily “seize” the sidewalk outside the theater and use it as a temporary lobby. It “externalizes” the expense of running the theater. (You need a lobby?; you put it on someone else’s property.)
In the early days of the Rivoli, I don’t think this was a problem for anyone. And as a roadshow house, with people arriving with tickets in hand, I suppose this wasn’t much of a problem later on either.
But today municipal authorities tend to frown on this “externalization” of costs. They’re likely, I believe, to require a certain amount of holding space for a movie theater, in order for it to be built.
However, as I observe the way Broadway / Times Sq. has changed over the years (especially with regard to it “legitimate” theaters), I’m beginning to think that the “internalization” of costs (having theaters build larger lobbies) is not the unqualified “good” that people seem to believe it to be.
Part of the good livliness of “old” Broadway used to be people spilling out into the street, beneath the marquee, at intermission time. Not only does such a spillover intertwine a theater more intimately with the sidewalks around it, lending life to the streets, but patrons are also more likely to go next door for a drink, etc. during intermission — thus, making the surrounding streets, at least for certain times of the day, one big theater lobby!
This is probably more true for “legitimate” theaters, but the Rivoli may be one of the few Times Sq. movie theaters for which this might also have been true.
I agree with much of what was said about how the “dinosaur” movie palaces were inevitably doomed by changing movies and movie going habits (e.g., DRIVING — instead of taking the subway — to multiplexes at malls in the suburbs). And although I don’t think every movie palace, or movie palace facade, should have been saved, I do think that alternative uses for the theaters and facades were often possible and that some of them were too hastily demolished.
I also think that the owners of the Rivoli appear to have shamefully worked the system to their advantage and to the public’s disadvantage.
Also I agree that the big black building that replaced it is really awful — one of the most repellent skyscraper ever built in New York City. The black skin of the building, plus the sloping (slight irredescent) setbacks, somehow evoke reptilian scales. And it’s the only skyscraper I can think of that seems to have a prominent smokestake as part of the design. (And ususually I like the work of the architects, who I believe were Roche and Dinkeloo — designers of the Ford Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art additions, etc.)
I think the most noticeable thing about the Guild (at least for me as a kid) was its turnstyle entrance — which was very unusual for a movie theater. Now that I think about it, it seems this system was common for the newsreel theaters. I guess it’s adequate for their needs and is less expensive than a ticket taker. But I think once they switch from newsreels, the Guild still continued with the turnstyle entrance.
Although I realize that this is probably a very minor, minor consideration, I think the turnstyle — which in my mind was associated with “low class” facilities and entertainments — might have been a subtle turn off to prospective movie patrons. Kind of like, “What kind of theater and movie experience will this be — they don’t even have a ticket taker?! If I want to see this movie, I think I’ll go see it in a "real” movie theater.“ Again, I don’t think this was a major problem, but I wonder if it had a slightly subtle negative effect nevertheless.
I always wondered what the inside of this theater with the unusual entrance was like, and if memory serves I was surprised by how “normal” it was when I finally saw a movie there. In the late 1960s, I saw the Beatles “Yellow Submarine” there. I think it had already been playing all over the place for a while, and this was the last place that was contining to show it.
If I recall correctly, while not an unpleasant experience, it was something less that the “full” movie theater experience — even for a small movie theater. For instance, the small movie theaters on the Eastside have/had coffee bars, etc. — I think the Beekman even had one where you could see the movie through a window. So in some ways, I guess, it was a lesser movie experience.
Re: the underground entrance to Radio City Music Hall
As a curious kid, I always wanted to use this entrance, and if memory serves I believe I got the chance in the late 1970s when I used to escort tour groups to the Music Hall. I think we were assigned to that entrance a few times.
In it’s earlier days (1950s, 1960s, early 1970s), I have a vague recollection of seeing “knowing” patrons of the Music Hall use it as a quick and easy exit to the subway after the show, especially when it was raining. But this is just a vague recollection and maybe it’s a false “memory.”
Re: the stairways around the underground entrance to the Music Hall
Someone asked where did they lead to? It depends on which stairways are being talking about.
Unfortunately that whole area has been rebuilt — desecrated (sp?), in my opinion — and there used to be additional stairways (and additional hallways) to the ones that are there now. (For instance the grandest passageway and stairway, the one directly on axis with the subway, was replaced by income producing retail space.)
But I don’t think any of the stairways in the area lead directly to the Museum that was mentioned in a previous post. (My earliest recollections of the underground concourse, however, are mostly from the mid-1960s. And since the Museum is before my time, this is only a guess on my part.)
My recollection is that most of the stairways around that area were intended as additional passageways up to the main lobby. There was also a very small stairway opposite to the Music Hall entrance that was a stairway to, I think, a mechanical area. It was too small to appear to be a public passageway of some sort. And above that mechanical area would have been a large, movie set-like pharmacy with lunch counters, I believe. Even if this pharmacy had been the location of the Museum, it’s hard to imagine the small stairway that I think people are referring to as being a public passageway to it.
One of the great things about stairways from those times — something that architects seem to have forgotten — is that they often were designed to be an interesting “experience” in one way or another. Some of them, including I think some of the ones we are talking about, had “windows” into storefronts etc. And the larger ones, designed as main entrances for large crowds, were worthy of the Queen Mary or a Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers movie.
One problem, however, is that they were built for a different “safer” age. So some of the smaller ones, even perhaps those with windows into shops, had I believe “blind” spots that might have made them somewhat dangerous in this day and age.
And the larger ones took up “too much” valuable space and were thus made into rentable, income producing areas.
One of my early childhood memories is waiting at more or less the front of the line to get into Radio City Music Hall on a very cold day in the mid-1950s. Since it was near the front of the line we, obviously, just missed getting into the show and had a l-o-n-g time to wait out in the cold. At one point, the people behind us graciously saved our spot while my father took me across the street to Whelan’s(?) drug store to warm up. (Maybe a hot chocolate?)
Of course I remember being very impressed with the theater (and have visited it a number of times since over the years), but here’s one negative note — I have to say that even from the very beginning as a child I felt that the tall lobby felt much too narrow for its vast height.
On a more positive note, I also couldn’t believe my eyes when the orchestra rose from the basement, rolled back on the stage and disappeared.
Also loved the way the performers climbed up those stepped side stages and disappeared, and the way the bands of light illuminating the auditorium would magically shift colors.
I also remember thinking at one point that the pile in the carpeting was so deep that my feet felt as though they were shifting a millemeter or two whenever I took a step!
Sometime in the 1960s, I believe, when the Music Hall was still in its heyday, there was a wonderful article about it in Reader’s Digest that went into all the superlatives about the the theater and the way it was run. Looking back, this article in Reader’s Digest really goes to show what a place this theater has in American culture.
To briefly answer a question asked by someone above about what the Music Hall was saved from. Sometime in the late 1970s(?), Rockefeller Center (which was still owned in part by members of the Rockefeller family) planned to replace the theater with office space — the way the Center Theater had been replaced with office space in the early 1950s. There was such an uproar that they decided to explore other ideas — including the idea of using it the way it is used today.
Although I can’t say I am as throughly familiar with the theater as some of the previous posters (with their really fascinating time capsule posts!), I can say that I had a really wonderful unusual Radio City Music Hall experience in the Spring of 2000(?) when I worked as an office temporary / word processor for an event that ABC held at the theater for its affiliates(?) and/or advertisers.
The original plan was for people like myself to type in stuff for the teleprompters, I believe. But they over-ordered the office temporaries and only four or five people (who had done this work before) were actually asked to do this work. The rest of us, maybe fifteen or twenty people?! — this aspect of the event was, happily for us, very poorly organized! — just lounged around with full run of the auditorium AND THE BACKSTAGE FACILITIES. It was an amazing experience.
Although the theater had supposed had a top to bottom refurbishment, much of the backstage area was apparently untouched. For instance, we were based in a dressing room that had obviously been carved out of a hallway leading from the wings. There were wires etc. still on the walls for things from the 1930s, 1940s that were no longer functional.
We also had access to the cafeteria, which had apparently only been superficially remodeled. (There were free meals and a free buffet between the meals!)
Sadly, there were some parts of the theater that were very much in need of repair that had obviously been untouched by the renovation. For instance, the locker room and showers that I suppose were for the ushers were a “slum” with missing tiles etc.
But what I really loved about this experience — and feel privlidged to have experienced — was the time capsul aspect of it. Not only did I feel like I was backstage at the Music Hall in the 1930s or 1940s, but I felt I was transported back to any big city movie palace of the 1930s or 1940s — that I could be backstage in Cleveland, Philly, Chicago, etc. (In my mind I could see the old-fashioned luggage of the traveling performers, and imagine the old railroad stations. Here the talk about upcoming engagements on the radio and in hotel ballrooms, etc.)
It was really unbelievable that they just let us wander about like that (obviously this was pre 9/11!). And it was funny too, because after a certain hour, say 6:00 p.m., they did indeed become very strict and wouldn’t even let us a few feet out of our assigned space without a special pass. But before 6:00 p.m. you could wander on the stage (and watch them rehearse from the wings) or below the stage (and watch the elevators go up or down), etc.
Almost all the stars of the upcoming ABC season were there rehearsing their lines, and as they left the stage they all would file past our dressing room “office.” (You’d see them leaving the stage on the monitor and then five seconds, or so later, you would see them filing past you.
(One enterprising office temp [a young college student] decided to become an impromptu guide/usher for all the stars who were getting lost backstage trying to go under the stage to get back to stage right[?] from their exit at stage left. So he got to personally meet and guide almost all the stars at the event [Heather Locklear, Regis Philbin, Barbara Walters, etc.].)
Two other random notes:
The grand lounge / waiting area and men’s room in “the basement” is really just a shadow of what it once was. This has been true for quite a while, however — before the most recent renovation, but I don’t remember exactly when they began carving it up. So anyone visiting the Music Hall today should be aware that these areas were VERY different in the Music Hall’s heyday.
If I recall correctly, the lighting system under the marquee has also been changed and “cheapened.” Orginally they had naked light bulbs with half the bulb “painted” to provide a built in light shade. These lights fitted nicely within the honeycomb underside of the marquee to provide a simple but striking lighting effect. I’m don’t recall exactly what they’ve done with it, but I vaguely remember being disappointed when I saw it. (I believe the Whitney Museum has places where they still use this lighting effect.)
P.S. — Sorry, I meant the Earl Carroll Theater, not the George Carroll Theater. By the way, this magnificent art deco theater, which I believe was built for revues along the lines of the Ziegfeld Follies, stood across the street from the (original) Roxy and was only relatively recently torn down. (For many years after it closed, its ground floor held a Woolworth’s while the upper stories may have held a parking garage or been sealed off.) There are pictures of this theater, which I don’t believe ever was a movie theater, in “Lost New York” and, maybe, “Lost Broadway” by Hoogstraten (which someone else mentioned above). (I think Hoogstraten or Christopher Grey, from the New York Times, talked the owners into letting him see the ghostly interior of the theater before it was torn down
I could not follow the link posted by Warren (Hi! from Benjamin of the Nostalgia Boards) on Sept. 19th about this theater supposedly being intended to be the new home of the Metropolitan Opera, so I can’t comment on the info on that website. BUT having read a number of histories of Rockefeller Center, I believe this is very much a mistake — this theater was NOT designed to be a new home for the Metropolitan Opera.
(Two good books and a monograph I’ve read are 1) a popular history of Rockerfeller Center by … (the name escapes me for the moment, but it was written in the 1960s); 2) a more scholarly one by Carol Krinsky (from the mid-1970s); and 3) a scholarly monography by James Marston Fitch of the Historic Preservation program at Columbia. (Plus there is a relatively new comprehensive history, the Okrent book(?), which I haven’t looked at yet.)
My guess, is that the misundertanding boils down to differing interpretations of the meaning of the phrase “built for.”
The generally accepted story is that the original impetus for the ENTIRE CENTER was the desire of the Metropolitan Opera to have a new home. They got John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to buy up the leases on the land for them (he was to sell part of it and donate part of it, I believe) so they could build a grand opera house with a plaza in front (like the Paris Opera) and arcades and stores, etc. to provide a grand setting. But for a variety of reasons, including the stock market crash of 1929, this scheme didn’t work out. So John D. Rockefeller who had already started working on this scheme — and was left holding the bag, so to speak — had to “fish or cut bait” and he decided to build Rockefeller Center instead of just letting the property just stay as it was (“low rent”) while he was shelling out a premium to get all those leases under one ownership.
Had the original plans been followed, the Metropolitan Opera House would likely have been designed to stand on what was to become the centrally located site of the GE (originally RCA) Building — facing a magnificent, large public square (which would have been located where the ice skating rink is today).
By the time plans were developed for Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater at Rockefeller Center, the Metropolitan was long, long gone from the picture and these theater were designed with different objectives in mind — and at locations more in keeping with their functions. Remember, although the Sixth Ave. “el” was scheduled to be torn down, Sixth Ave. was still a very seedy street — not the greatest location for an opera house, while a location behind a large public square facing Fifth Ave. would have been considered ideal for an opera house.
As I understand it, the Center Theater was originally designed to function as Radio City Music Hall ultimately functioned during its heyday (a film interspersed with a stage show), and Radio City Music Hall was originally intended to be just that, an enormous “music hall,” along the lines of the fabled “Palace Theater” (or the 3,000 seat, or so, George Carroll Theater, just a block down the street from Radio City Music Hall).
When the Music Hall flopped as a “music hall,” it took over the film/stage show function and the Center Theater was left to search for a new format/use.
P.S. — Carol Krinsky is trained as an art historian and, if I remember correctly, her book has nice little histories and pictures of Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater.
In the late 1950s, I used to walk by this theater when I was visiting a relative who lived in the neighborhood. As far as I know I never went inside this theater, but as a kid I found the outside of this theater really fascinating — and “funny” — because it had two entrances, each of which looked like it could have been a “main” entrance. For that reason, I kind of wished that I would be taken to see a movie in it, just to see what the inside of this “funny” theater looked like.
P.S. — I believe there was a supermarket or foodstore across the street (the south side of 23rd St.?) that that had what I’ll call a “sky railway” for deliveries. It was similar to those roller bearing “chutes” that you still see today — where the boxes are rolled into the basement of a store from a truck parked on the street — but these “chutes” were hung from the ceiling I think. It reminded me of something I had seen in, I believe, a Betty Boop cartoon, and as a kid I wanted to ride in this grocery store “roller coaster.”
Wonder if anyone more familiar with the neighborhood than I remembers this store?
If this store with the “roller coaster” delivery system was indeed across the street from the double-entrance movie theater, this was some delightfully bizarre part of town!
Sorry, I left out the most amusing part of this story: I had read the reviews of “2001” and apparently one of the big criticism of the time was that it was a very slow-paced movie. So at first (the first 30-45 seconds?), while I was sitting there “watching the movie,” I thought to myself, “Boy, the critics were certainly right about this being one slow-paced movie!” And then for a while I was thinking to myself, “Nothing is happening — what’s going on here?” And, finally, there was the embarrasment of realizing that this was only the break between showings!
Despite the fact that I lived not all that far away from the Parsons for about ten years (and during my childhood, moviegoing “prime” at that), I think I only went to the Parsons twice. Looking back, and judging from the info that I’ve been reading on this site, I suppose this was because I probably saw the films I wanted to see at the Merrick, Alden or Valencia, etc., first — before they ever played the Parsons.
But, if I remember correctly, the Parsons was part of a handsome “ensemble” of small buildings (the other buildings in the ensemble — if there indeed was one — housing retail stores). In my memory, at least, the theater is part of an ensemble that was similar in concept to that of another really special theater, the “Beekman”(?), on the Upper East Side of Manhattan — but smaller and in a different, more modest, style.
In any case, I had always seen the Parsons as a small, “special” and “glamorous” Queens theater and, as a kid, was eager to see movies there.
[This didn’t show up the first time I submitted it, so I am resubmitting. I hope it doesn’t wind up being posted twice!]
I missed 2001 Space Odysey (sp?) when it was playing uptown at the Capitol, so I went to see it at the Loew’s Sheridan instead — probably just before it closed in 1969. When I walked into the auditorium, music from the film was being played and the screen was dark with all these pinpoints of light. I probably had planned to get to the movie at its scheduled showing time, but when I entered the auditorium I assumed I had arrived late. But then this “scene” of a starfield with that music just kept on going on forever — and then after an interminably long time, the movie actually began! So my guess is that someone in the management had probably decided that this would be a “cool” way to entertain patrons during breaks between showings and had somehow found a way to project a “junk” starfield on the screen while playing the “2001” music. This was my only visit to the Loew’s Sheridan, so I never really got a chance to look at and appreciate whatever the inside of the theater was like!
Although this news is bad, it is great that Lumenick is giving everyone a heads up on this.
As someone who’s been on the periphery of landmarks preservation for a while, I hope those who’ve expressed concern about the Beekman will try and make contact with established community and landmarks groups in order to spur these groups on in this fight and to give more force to their own voice. (More on this in a bit.)
Although I am not that familiar with the history of the these groups with regard to the Beekman, my gut feeling is that most members of these groups are already very ardent Beekman fans and have probably been stymied (so far) by those in positions of power who are opposed to its designation as a landmark (exterior or interior). (A building need only be, I believe, 25 years old to be eligible for consideration, and the Beekman has always had a very high profile among those in NYC concerned with landmarking.)
Why and how might they have been stymied?
There are groups and factions within the landmarking community, just as there are in other groups. Here are some of the arguments (not that I necessarily agree or disagree with them) that might have been preventing the Beekman’s designation so far:
You can’t landmark “everything.” A building should be significant either historically or architecturally to warrant designation. Landmarking shouldn’t be used to stop developments we may not like, nor to stop time and make the city into a “museum” — a latter day “Williamsburg.” So one should be very careful about what one designates as a landmark and how many landmarks the city designates over all. You don’t want to unnecessarily impede the City’s development. (Not that this prevents the same people from proposing their own favorites built in one of the sacrosanct styles — like the rather ordinary, except for it’s ugliness, SOCONY-MOBIL building on E. 42nd St. — from being designated landmarks!)
In terms of determining whether a building is architecturally significant:
Among those involved in landmarking and in positions of power, certain styles appear to be more sacrosanct, and more worthy of preservation, than others — e.g., the International Style is considered far more “important” than Art Deco. It seems to me that lowest on the totem pole are the modern styles that have not been approved, or have only been grudgingly approved, by the architectural congnescenti (sp?). Thus, it seems to me, buildings built in the more accessible and more popular modern styles (like the Beekman) are often not seen as architectually significant among the cognescenti in power and thus may be seen by them as less worthy of preservation.
When a building is not seen by those in power as worthy of landmark designation, one technique that is used to prevent its designation is a refusal to calendar it for a public hearing (i.e., don’t allow the landmarking process to begin in the first place). This technique is presently being used to cut short discussion on the possible designation of 2 Columbus Circle (originally built as the “Gallery of Modern Art”) — which has a number of distinguished architectural historians arguing in favor of a least a public hearing on its designation.
So my guess is that it is probably not worth the effort AT THE PRESENT MOMENT to contact the Landmarks Preservation Commission on behalf of the Beekman. Rather, it seems to me that it might be more helpful to contact an organiztion like the Municipal Art Society – the group that spearheaded the fight to save Grand Central (and the group that gave Woody Allen an award for his contribution to New York City). They could probably refer people to other groups, whose exact names escape me at the moment, as well.
(Although, it should be mentioned, that even the MAS has been lukewarm on certain theater preservation issues. I believe internal disagreement prevented them from getting involved in the fight to support the preservation of the Helen Hayes and Morosco theaters in the early 1980s.)
Although I don’t believe this theater was the one depicted in the Edward Hopper painting with the usherette by the stairway, whenever I would see this painting I would think of the Carnegie Hall Cinema because of the stairway you used to use to descend to this basement- level auditorium.
I had a very negative — but also somewhat funny — moviegoing experience at the Carnegie Hall Cinema in the mid-1980s. It was Easter Sunday, and they were playing “Gone With the Wind” — which I had never seen. Since the price was right, I decided to go to the first screening that day.
As it turns out, the print was the very worst print of any movie I have ever seen. There were blips and pops and scratches all over the place. I think we even missed the last few seconds of an entire scene at one point when the scene changed too abruptly at one point.
I felt that the entire audience, including me, was sitting there bracing itself and wondering what annoyance we would be subjected to next. But even while sitting there in disbelief at just how awful the print was, I don’t think any of us imagined that during the last few moments of the film, Rhett Butler would say to Scarlett, “Frankly, Scarlett, I d … [da-dee-da-da, da-dee-da-da …].”
As you can well imagine, this provoked a very substantial disbelieving groan from the audience — and after the movie there was quite a hub bub too. For those who stuck around long enough, which I did, the management ultimately gave out free future passes to the theater. They also posted a sign in the window telling cinema classic.
However, even with the sign, I wonder if the audiences during the rest of the day were prepared for what must be one of the most inopportune film breaks imaginable!
Thanks, Warren, for the fascinating information! It’s very thought provoking. And, of course, fascinating info like this provokes even more questions (readers of the Cinema Treasures website, like myself, being insaitiable and spoiled!).
You mention that LA theater owners already had such a system in operation. I wonder how/why it started there? (I’m thinking perhaps because of the way the city is laid out — so suburban and spread out to begin with — that it made a lot of sense for that market?)
I also wonder how/why it spread (as I assumed it did) to other cities with downtown movie palaces other than New York (e.g., Cleveland, Philly, etc.).
Thanks Warren for the information!
I’ve noticed that the “Premiere Showcase” concept has been mentioned before, mostly by you but perhaps by others also. Is there a succinct source of info on this apparently watershed “Premier Showcase” concept that would explain a little bit more about its background and influence?
Here are some of the questions that come to mind. (Since I’m not that familiar with the movie business, some of these questions may include misconceptions or info that is otherwise incorrect.):
Why did United Artists come up with this concept? Were they operating at some sort of competitive disadvantage, and did this concept somehow allow them to rectify this?
Why did no one else come up with it before they did? In other words, what conditions might have changed to make this way of doing business possible when United Artists did it in the early 1960s, while it might not have been possible to do before then? I’m thinking, maybe they had the (apparently successful) hunch that enough people were now willing to trade-in traveling downtown (or to a borough’s downtown) to see a movie in a grand movie palace for a visit to a closer neighborhood theater if the theater had easy parking and showed the film early enough in its run? Or maybe it was a decline in the number of films being released — such that the old system of a new film every week at a movie palace was no longer really feasible?
Why did U.A.’s “Premiere Showcase” concept force a change on the other movie companies — why couldn’t the Loew’s chain continued to show films the “old” way with the films that came their way? Or was the pool of available films so much smaller in the early 1960s that this was something that was no longer possible â€" so Loew’s had to directly compete for business with U.A. and their “Premiere Showcase” concept?
Another thought: perhaps the nature of movies and the movie going audience had begun to change â€" become more fragmented â€" so that fewer and fewer movies that were made were of the type that could comfortably fill a movie palace. In some ways this audience fragmentation would be similar to what happened to the big general interest magazines â€" they (Life, Look, the Saturday Evening Post, etc.) experienced trouble while a host of more specialized magazine proliferated.
Obviously, I’m guessing that something changed to make the “Premiere Showcase” concept a (financially) “better” way of doing business than the “old” system (with a movie first playing at a movie palace and then making its way down the hierarchy of theaters).
In other words, I’m guessing that the “Premiere Showcase” concept was probably analogous to the introduction of the multiplex that showed owners that given the world as it has become (suburban malls and people driving to movie theaters, etc.) they could make more money showing a number of films throughout the day in smaller auditoria than one film throughout the day in a very large movie auditorium (e.g., by selling popcorn throughout the day, having people arrive in a steady stream throughout the day; putting one auditorium on top of another to maximize land values, etc.).
P.S. — Whoops! In my above post, references to 43rd St. should have been to 44th St. and references to 44th St. should have been to 45th St.
For instance, the entrance pavilion is on 44th St., not 43rd, and the back wall of the stage and the loading dock are on 45th St., not 44th St.
I never saw a movie at the Hudson — although for a while, in the late 1960s, the Hudson did show a commercial(?) release of some Andy Warhol films I think. However, in the early 1960s, I did see at the Hudson a play called “Ross,” which was by Terrence Ratigan(?) and starred John Mills (father of the then very famous, Haley). The play was about Lawrence of Arabia and played in New York just prior to the film, “Lawrence of Arabia.”
As I mentioned in another post about the “Rivoli” theater, it’s interesting to see how theaters have often utilized their expensive parcels of land for maximum efficiency. It’s also interesting to note how irregular or weirdly shaped some of the land assemblages for theaters were — especially in mid-Manhattan — and how the theater owners and their architects accomodated the apparent economic necessity of less than optimally shaped or sized plots. (I was looking at floor plans for the Roxy yesterday, and its architect did just an incredible job squeezing this enormous theater onto that plot of land!)
It seems, for instance, that many theaters in the Times Sq. area have the main body of their property (the auditorium and stage house) on one street, and a lobby/ticket office “pavilion” — just barely and weirdly connected — on another street entirely. Also, to maximize the value of the land, there often seems to be a small office building over the lobby/ticket area (e.g., the New Amsterdam, the Palace, etc.).
I think the Hudson theater is another good case in point. The Hudson, like apparently a good number of theaters in the Times Sq. district, appears to have been built on land that orginally held individually owned brownstone residences — which were relatively difficult to assemble. In early pictures, like the one in Mary Henderson’s first edition of the “Theatre and the City,” the entrance “pavilion” to the Hudson is shown interrupting a row of brownstones. (The builders of other theaters, like the Winter Garden, the Roxy, etc. were fortuante enough to start with more regularly shaped parcels of land that had been things like horse trading arenas or trolley (?) car barns.) So the actual bulk of the Hudson Theater (the stage house and auditorium) are on 44th St., while only a small portion of the theater (the ticket office / lobby and small office building) is on 43rd St.
By the way, the 44th St. side of the theater is really the back wall of the stage and stage house. The opening in the wall is the loading dock for the stage. When it’s open you can see right onto the stage — a feature that was utilized on the original “Tonight Show” with Steve Allen (for more, see below).
What I found really interesting about the Hudson (and I think it is also true about the Imperial, a famous “legit” Brodway theater) is that the connection between the lobby and the theater is, if I remember correctly, rather awkward. Basically everyone entering the theater kind of enters along a lobby corridor that leads to the back of the left side of the orchestra level. Since I was in the theater ages ago — forty years! — I’m not sure exactly what it was, but something about this arrangement stuck me (at least as a kid) to be very, very strange. So much so, that I believe it eventually entered into an occasional dream / nightmare that I would have where I was sitting in a theater that would have virtually “impossible” sightlines — something like sitting in a deep alcove off of a main auditorium! (Stange things — like theaters with virtually impossible sightlines — happen in dreams!)
In any case, I’ve always had a special interest in the Hudson. Here are some miscellaneous tidbits of info.:
1) The theater is on what was widely known as the dark side of Broadway. For some reason the theaters on the east side of Broadway / Seventh Ave. have never been as popular as those on the West side.
2) The theater was one of the first, if not the first, to incorporate indirect lighting for its public areas. Indirect lighting first made a splash apparently at the Buffalo (?) World’s Fair that was held just prior to the construction of the theater. (I believe this info is from the Mary Henderson book about legitimate theaters in Manhattan.)
3) This theater was the site of the original “Tonight Show” with Steve Allen. Although this is a bit before my time, apparently one of Steve’s features was sitting at the back of the stage with the doors of the loading dock open and interviewing those passing by on 44th St.
4) After “Ross” played the Hudson, the theater was dark for a while, but eventually was home to the somewhat successful attemp by Ann Corio (a famous stipper of, I believe, the 1940s) to revitalize — and revitalize the image of — “true” burlesque.
5) I’m not sure about this, but I think the Hudson may be the oldest extant theater in New York City to have a cantilevered balcany. If it is, I believe this is because the other extant theaters from its time (I think one opened just a week before or a week after) had balconies that were held up from rods or columns from above or below.
We moved to Jamaica in 1958 and, although I went to the Valencia a number of times while we lived in Jamaica, I particularly remember going to the Valencia in the evening with my father to see, if I remember correctly, “One, Two, Three,” starring James Cagney. My father was a smoker in those days, so we sat in the balcony or loge, and my recollection is that the theater was just PACKED.
Since a number of posters seem to have worked in the Valencia, I have a question. Was there ever a particular point in time when you (or your co-workers) distinctly noticed that the era of the movie palace (and the Valencia) was on a downswing or coming to an end? I’m thinking of a specific event or series of events — e.g., a year when the crowds had noticeably declined; a sure-fire hit movie that somehow inexplicably “bombed.”; etc.
For instance, as I understand it, transatlantic ocean liners were doing extremely well as a business up until the late-1950s the trans-Atlantic Boeing 707s was introduced. Then within a period of a year or two there was a real noticable change.
I suppose the same might be said of long distance rail travel — or of neighborhoods that experience a steep sudden decline. (For instance, supposedly when Co-Op City opened in the Bronx, moving vans were virtually double-parked on the Grand Concourse.)
And of course, many people have mentioned how the emergence of Milton Berle as a TV star was a noticeable event in the history of TV.
Were there also noticeable events, or dates, in the decline of the movie palace (as experienced as a worker at the Valencia)?
I’m not sure if I ever got to see anything at the Rivoli, but for some reason or another this theater held a special spot in my movie going imagination ever since I first became aware of it as a grade schooler in the the late 1950s.
1) Maybe it was because of its strangely attractive (to me) clash between the fanciful and exuberant “Greek” facade and the sleek 50’s modern / “googie” (?) lobby and marquee? (I think the underside of its marquee had something similar to the “cheeseholes” that were a Morris Lapidus (Miami Fontainbleau) trademark.) And maybe it was because of this tastefully tasteless clash in design that the theater LOOKED (at least to me) the way a very glamorous 1950s “hard ticket” theater in Times Sq. SHOULD look?
(Generally speaking, I don’t think this kind of clash is good, but it did seem to work here. Perhaps it’s because the Rivoli was a theater, and theaters are “born” to be flashy and “incorrect”?)
2) Maybe another reason it held such a prominant spot in my imagination is because for some reason I had trouble keeping it’s name straight. I thought it had the “funny,” but at the same time distinctive and “high toned,” name: the “Ravioli” Theater. (To my child’s ear the “Loew’s State” [“Ben Hur,” “King of King’s,”(?) “Lawrence of Arabia”(?)] and — most of all — the “Criterion” [“Sleeping Beauty] were also very impressive sounding names.)
3) But more significantly, this theater probably loomed large in my imagination because the “Ravioli Theater” frequently did seem to be the home of the “biggest” and “best” movies of the time.
a) I remember walking by one time when “West Side Story” was letting out and observing a young woman sobbing onto the shoulder of her date and half-kiddingly and half-seriously saying, “Never take me to a movie like that again.”
b) I was so-o-o impressed when “Cleopatra” played there and greatly enjoyed the fortuitous circumstance that in New York City the much talked about “Cleopatra” was playing in a theater with a facade vaguely appropriate to the period of the movie.
In it’s waning days I may have actually seen a movie at the “Ravioli.” If so, I have a vague memory of being surprised (and disappointed) at the design of the inside of the theater — it being a much stodgier design that that of the facade or the marquee. (But I’m not sure if this is a reliable memory; it may be just my reaction from seeing photos of the original interior.)
Re: the size of the plot of land
One thing I’ve noticed about theaters in Times Square (“legitimate” theaters as well as movie theaters) is how efficiently they use their very expensive land. One way in which they do this is to have very small — sometimes near non-existent — lobbies. (Which is what I believe the Rivoli had.) (Another is to build a hotel or office building over a portion of the lobby like, respectively, the Roxy and Radio City Music Hall.)
What a theater with a near non-existent lobby does, in essence, is to temporarily “seize” the sidewalk outside the theater and use it as a temporary lobby. It “externalizes” the expense of running the theater. (You need a lobby?; you put it on someone else’s property.)
In the early days of the Rivoli, I don’t think this was a problem for anyone. And as a roadshow house, with people arriving with tickets in hand, I suppose this wasn’t much of a problem later on either.
But today municipal authorities tend to frown on this “externalization” of costs. They’re likely, I believe, to require a certain amount of holding space for a movie theater, in order for it to be built.
However, as I observe the way Broadway / Times Sq. has changed over the years (especially with regard to it “legitimate” theaters), I’m beginning to think that the “internalization” of costs (having theaters build larger lobbies) is not the unqualified “good” that people seem to believe it to be.
Part of the good livliness of “old” Broadway used to be people spilling out into the street, beneath the marquee, at intermission time. Not only does such a spillover intertwine a theater more intimately with the sidewalks around it, lending life to the streets, but patrons are also more likely to go next door for a drink, etc. during intermission — thus, making the surrounding streets, at least for certain times of the day, one big theater lobby!
This is probably more true for “legitimate” theaters, but the Rivoli may be one of the few Times Sq. movie theaters for which this might also have been true.
I agree with much of what was said about how the “dinosaur” movie palaces were inevitably doomed by changing movies and movie going habits (e.g., DRIVING — instead of taking the subway — to multiplexes at malls in the suburbs). And although I don’t think every movie palace, or movie palace facade, should have been saved, I do think that alternative uses for the theaters and facades were often possible and that some of them were too hastily demolished.
I also think that the owners of the Rivoli appear to have shamefully worked the system to their advantage and to the public’s disadvantage.
Also I agree that the big black building that replaced it is really awful — one of the most repellent skyscraper ever built in New York City. The black skin of the building, plus the sloping (slight irredescent) setbacks, somehow evoke reptilian scales. And it’s the only skyscraper I can think of that seems to have a prominent smokestake as part of the design. (And ususually I like the work of the architects, who I believe were Roche and Dinkeloo — designers of the Ford Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art additions, etc.)
Re: The Guild
I think the most noticeable thing about the Guild (at least for me as a kid) was its turnstyle entrance — which was very unusual for a movie theater. Now that I think about it, it seems this system was common for the newsreel theaters. I guess it’s adequate for their needs and is less expensive than a ticket taker. But I think once they switch from newsreels, the Guild still continued with the turnstyle entrance.
Although I realize that this is probably a very minor, minor consideration, I think the turnstyle — which in my mind was associated with “low class” facilities and entertainments — might have been a subtle turn off to prospective movie patrons. Kind of like, “What kind of theater and movie experience will this be — they don’t even have a ticket taker?! If I want to see this movie, I think I’ll go see it in a "real” movie theater.“ Again, I don’t think this was a major problem, but I wonder if it had a slightly subtle negative effect nevertheless.
I always wondered what the inside of this theater with the unusual entrance was like, and if memory serves I was surprised by how “normal” it was when I finally saw a movie there. In the late 1960s, I saw the Beatles “Yellow Submarine” there. I think it had already been playing all over the place for a while, and this was the last place that was contining to show it.
If I recall correctly, while not an unpleasant experience, it was something less that the “full” movie theater experience — even for a small movie theater. For instance, the small movie theaters on the Eastside have/had coffee bars, etc. — I think the Beekman even had one where you could see the movie through a window. So in some ways, I guess, it was a lesser movie experience.
Re: the underground entrance to Radio City Music Hall
As a curious kid, I always wanted to use this entrance, and if memory serves I believe I got the chance in the late 1970s when I used to escort tour groups to the Music Hall. I think we were assigned to that entrance a few times.
In it’s earlier days (1950s, 1960s, early 1970s), I have a vague recollection of seeing “knowing” patrons of the Music Hall use it as a quick and easy exit to the subway after the show, especially when it was raining. But this is just a vague recollection and maybe it’s a false “memory.”
Re: the stairways around the underground entrance to the Music Hall
Someone asked where did they lead to? It depends on which stairways are being talking about.
Unfortunately that whole area has been rebuilt — desecrated (sp?), in my opinion — and there used to be additional stairways (and additional hallways) to the ones that are there now. (For instance the grandest passageway and stairway, the one directly on axis with the subway, was replaced by income producing retail space.)
But I don’t think any of the stairways in the area lead directly to the Museum that was mentioned in a previous post. (My earliest recollections of the underground concourse, however, are mostly from the mid-1960s. And since the Museum is before my time, this is only a guess on my part.)
My recollection is that most of the stairways around that area were intended as additional passageways up to the main lobby. There was also a very small stairway opposite to the Music Hall entrance that was a stairway to, I think, a mechanical area. It was too small to appear to be a public passageway of some sort. And above that mechanical area would have been a large, movie set-like pharmacy with lunch counters, I believe. Even if this pharmacy had been the location of the Museum, it’s hard to imagine the small stairway that I think people are referring to as being a public passageway to it.
One of the great things about stairways from those times — something that architects seem to have forgotten — is that they often were designed to be an interesting “experience” in one way or another. Some of them, including I think some of the ones we are talking about, had “windows” into storefronts etc. And the larger ones, designed as main entrances for large crowds, were worthy of the Queen Mary or a Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers movie.
One problem, however, is that they were built for a different “safer” age. So some of the smaller ones, even perhaps those with windows into shops, had I believe “blind” spots that might have made them somewhat dangerous in this day and age.
And the larger ones took up “too much” valuable space and were thus made into rentable, income producing areas.
One of my early childhood memories is waiting at more or less the front of the line to get into Radio City Music Hall on a very cold day in the mid-1950s. Since it was near the front of the line we, obviously, just missed getting into the show and had a l-o-n-g time to wait out in the cold. At one point, the people behind us graciously saved our spot while my father took me across the street to Whelan’s(?) drug store to warm up. (Maybe a hot chocolate?)
Of course I remember being very impressed with the theater (and have visited it a number of times since over the years), but here’s one negative note — I have to say that even from the very beginning as a child I felt that the tall lobby felt much too narrow for its vast height.
On a more positive note, I also couldn’t believe my eyes when the orchestra rose from the basement, rolled back on the stage and disappeared.
Also loved the way the performers climbed up those stepped side stages and disappeared, and the way the bands of light illuminating the auditorium would magically shift colors.
I also remember thinking at one point that the pile in the carpeting was so deep that my feet felt as though they were shifting a millemeter or two whenever I took a step!
Sometime in the 1960s, I believe, when the Music Hall was still in its heyday, there was a wonderful article about it in Reader’s Digest that went into all the superlatives about the the theater and the way it was run. Looking back, this article in Reader’s Digest really goes to show what a place this theater has in American culture.
To briefly answer a question asked by someone above about what the Music Hall was saved from. Sometime in the late 1970s(?), Rockefeller Center (which was still owned in part by members of the Rockefeller family) planned to replace the theater with office space — the way the Center Theater had been replaced with office space in the early 1950s. There was such an uproar that they decided to explore other ideas — including the idea of using it the way it is used today.
Although I can’t say I am as throughly familiar with the theater as some of the previous posters (with their really fascinating time capsule posts!), I can say that I had a really wonderful unusual Radio City Music Hall experience in the Spring of 2000(?) when I worked as an office temporary / word processor for an event that ABC held at the theater for its affiliates(?) and/or advertisers.
The original plan was for people like myself to type in stuff for the teleprompters, I believe. But they over-ordered the office temporaries and only four or five people (who had done this work before) were actually asked to do this work. The rest of us, maybe fifteen or twenty people?! — this aspect of the event was, happily for us, very poorly organized! — just lounged around with full run of the auditorium AND THE BACKSTAGE FACILITIES. It was an amazing experience.
Although the theater had supposed had a top to bottom refurbishment, much of the backstage area was apparently untouched. For instance, we were based in a dressing room that had obviously been carved out of a hallway leading from the wings. There were wires etc. still on the walls for things from the 1930s, 1940s that were no longer functional.
We also had access to the cafeteria, which had apparently only been superficially remodeled. (There were free meals and a free buffet between the meals!)
Sadly, there were some parts of the theater that were very much in need of repair that had obviously been untouched by the renovation. For instance, the locker room and showers that I suppose were for the ushers were a “slum” with missing tiles etc.
But what I really loved about this experience — and feel privlidged to have experienced — was the time capsul aspect of it. Not only did I feel like I was backstage at the Music Hall in the 1930s or 1940s, but I felt I was transported back to any big city movie palace of the 1930s or 1940s — that I could be backstage in Cleveland, Philly, Chicago, etc. (In my mind I could see the old-fashioned luggage of the traveling performers, and imagine the old railroad stations. Here the talk about upcoming engagements on the radio and in hotel ballrooms, etc.)
It was really unbelievable that they just let us wander about like that (obviously this was pre 9/11!). And it was funny too, because after a certain hour, say 6:00 p.m., they did indeed become very strict and wouldn’t even let us a few feet out of our assigned space without a special pass. But before 6:00 p.m. you could wander on the stage (and watch them rehearse from the wings) or below the stage (and watch the elevators go up or down), etc.
Almost all the stars of the upcoming ABC season were there rehearsing their lines, and as they left the stage they all would file past our dressing room “office.” (You’d see them leaving the stage on the monitor and then five seconds, or so later, you would see them filing past you.
(One enterprising office temp [a young college student] decided to become an impromptu guide/usher for all the stars who were getting lost backstage trying to go under the stage to get back to stage right[?] from their exit at stage left. So he got to personally meet and guide almost all the stars at the event [Heather Locklear, Regis Philbin, Barbara Walters, etc.].)
Two other random notes:
The grand lounge / waiting area and men’s room in “the basement” is really just a shadow of what it once was. This has been true for quite a while, however — before the most recent renovation, but I don’t remember exactly when they began carving it up. So anyone visiting the Music Hall today should be aware that these areas were VERY different in the Music Hall’s heyday.
If I recall correctly, the lighting system under the marquee has also been changed and “cheapened.” Orginally they had naked light bulbs with half the bulb “painted” to provide a built in light shade. These lights fitted nicely within the honeycomb underside of the marquee to provide a simple but striking lighting effect. I’m don’t recall exactly what they’ve done with it, but I vaguely remember being disappointed when I saw it. (I believe the Whitney Museum has places where they still use this lighting effect.)
P.S. — Sorry, I meant the Earl Carroll Theater, not the George Carroll Theater. By the way, this magnificent art deco theater, which I believe was built for revues along the lines of the Ziegfeld Follies, stood across the street from the (original) Roxy and was only relatively recently torn down. (For many years after it closed, its ground floor held a Woolworth’s while the upper stories may have held a parking garage or been sealed off.) There are pictures of this theater, which I don’t believe ever was a movie theater, in “Lost New York” and, maybe, “Lost Broadway” by Hoogstraten (which someone else mentioned above). (I think Hoogstraten or Christopher Grey, from the New York Times, talked the owners into letting him see the ghostly interior of the theater before it was torn down
I could not follow the link posted by Warren (Hi! from Benjamin of the Nostalgia Boards) on Sept. 19th about this theater supposedly being intended to be the new home of the Metropolitan Opera, so I can’t comment on the info on that website. BUT having read a number of histories of Rockefeller Center, I believe this is very much a mistake — this theater was NOT designed to be a new home for the Metropolitan Opera.
(Two good books and a monograph I’ve read are 1) a popular history of Rockerfeller Center by … (the name escapes me for the moment, but it was written in the 1960s); 2) a more scholarly one by Carol Krinsky (from the mid-1970s); and 3) a scholarly monography by James Marston Fitch of the Historic Preservation program at Columbia. (Plus there is a relatively new comprehensive history, the Okrent book(?), which I haven’t looked at yet.)
My guess, is that the misundertanding boils down to differing interpretations of the meaning of the phrase “built for.”
The generally accepted story is that the original impetus for the ENTIRE CENTER was the desire of the Metropolitan Opera to have a new home. They got John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to buy up the leases on the land for them (he was to sell part of it and donate part of it, I believe) so they could build a grand opera house with a plaza in front (like the Paris Opera) and arcades and stores, etc. to provide a grand setting. But for a variety of reasons, including the stock market crash of 1929, this scheme didn’t work out. So John D. Rockefeller who had already started working on this scheme — and was left holding the bag, so to speak — had to “fish or cut bait” and he decided to build Rockefeller Center instead of just letting the property just stay as it was (“low rent”) while he was shelling out a premium to get all those leases under one ownership.
Had the original plans been followed, the Metropolitan Opera House would likely have been designed to stand on what was to become the centrally located site of the GE (originally RCA) Building — facing a magnificent, large public square (which would have been located where the ice skating rink is today).
By the time plans were developed for Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater at Rockefeller Center, the Metropolitan was long, long gone from the picture and these theater were designed with different objectives in mind — and at locations more in keeping with their functions. Remember, although the Sixth Ave. “el” was scheduled to be torn down, Sixth Ave. was still a very seedy street — not the greatest location for an opera house, while a location behind a large public square facing Fifth Ave. would have been considered ideal for an opera house.
As I understand it, the Center Theater was originally designed to function as Radio City Music Hall ultimately functioned during its heyday (a film interspersed with a stage show), and Radio City Music Hall was originally intended to be just that, an enormous “music hall,” along the lines of the fabled “Palace Theater” (or the 3,000 seat, or so, George Carroll Theater, just a block down the street from Radio City Music Hall).
When the Music Hall flopped as a “music hall,” it took over the film/stage show function and the Center Theater was left to search for a new format/use.
P.S. — Carol Krinsky is trained as an art historian and, if I remember correctly, her book has nice little histories and pictures of Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater.
In the late 1950s, I used to walk by this theater when I was visiting a relative who lived in the neighborhood. As far as I know I never went inside this theater, but as a kid I found the outside of this theater really fascinating — and “funny” — because it had two entrances, each of which looked like it could have been a “main” entrance. For that reason, I kind of wished that I would be taken to see a movie in it, just to see what the inside of this “funny” theater looked like.
P.S. — I believe there was a supermarket or foodstore across the street (the south side of 23rd St.?) that that had what I’ll call a “sky railway” for deliveries. It was similar to those roller bearing “chutes” that you still see today — where the boxes are rolled into the basement of a store from a truck parked on the street — but these “chutes” were hung from the ceiling I think. It reminded me of something I had seen in, I believe, a Betty Boop cartoon, and as a kid I wanted to ride in this grocery store “roller coaster.”
Wonder if anyone more familiar with the neighborhood than I remembers this store?
If this store with the “roller coaster” delivery system was indeed across the street from the double-entrance movie theater, this was some delightfully bizarre part of town!
Sorry, I left out the most amusing part of this story: I had read the reviews of “2001” and apparently one of the big criticism of the time was that it was a very slow-paced movie. So at first (the first 30-45 seconds?), while I was sitting there “watching the movie,” I thought to myself, “Boy, the critics were certainly right about this being one slow-paced movie!” And then for a while I was thinking to myself, “Nothing is happening — what’s going on here?” And, finally, there was the embarrasment of realizing that this was only the break between showings!
Despite the fact that I lived not all that far away from the Parsons for about ten years (and during my childhood, moviegoing “prime” at that), I think I only went to the Parsons twice. Looking back, and judging from the info that I’ve been reading on this site, I suppose this was because I probably saw the films I wanted to see at the Merrick, Alden or Valencia, etc., first — before they ever played the Parsons.
But, if I remember correctly, the Parsons was part of a handsome “ensemble” of small buildings (the other buildings in the ensemble — if there indeed was one — housing retail stores). In my memory, at least, the theater is part of an ensemble that was similar in concept to that of another really special theater, the “Beekman”(?), on the Upper East Side of Manhattan — but smaller and in a different, more modest, style.
In any case, I had always seen the Parsons as a small, “special” and “glamorous” Queens theater and, as a kid, was eager to see movies there.
[This didn’t show up the first time I submitted it, so I am resubmitting. I hope it doesn’t wind up being posted twice!]
I missed 2001 Space Odysey (sp?) when it was playing uptown at the Capitol, so I went to see it at the Loew’s Sheridan instead — probably just before it closed in 1969. When I walked into the auditorium, music from the film was being played and the screen was dark with all these pinpoints of light. I probably had planned to get to the movie at its scheduled showing time, but when I entered the auditorium I assumed I had arrived late. But then this “scene” of a starfield with that music just kept on going on forever — and then after an interminably long time, the movie actually began! So my guess is that someone in the management had probably decided that this would be a “cool” way to entertain patrons during breaks between showings and had somehow found a way to project a “junk” starfield on the screen while playing the “2001” music. This was my only visit to the Loew’s Sheridan, so I never really got a chance to look at and appreciate whatever the inside of the theater was like!