Radio City Music Hall

Barefoot is still a very funny film. Fonda and Redford are one of the best looking romantic couples ever in the movies. Maybe the last bright Technicolor New York comedy before they became gritty.

No Dolby Atmos installed.

As per CC’s posting of King Solomon’s Mines I believe I read once on here the magnascope screen was used for the stampede.

There should be a list of movies that used the screen and for which sequences. But I guess no one at this point would remember or that any record was kept.

The first Christmas show I ever saw at RCMH was in 1958. I was taking accordion lessons for only 2 months. In the stage show presentation Santa came out on stage playing the accordion. I turned to my mother and said that someday I’d do that. It took 34 years but I did perform on stage on keyboards in a show there and mom was in the audience. I am now curator of the Wurlitzer Organ at the old Brooklyn Paramount and one thing I’d like to do is play the 4/58 Wurlitzer at RCMH.

Hello vindanpar, Don’t know if this will help, but Leon Leonidoff became a senior producer in 1934 so maybe an Easter production was his idea, then of course Roxy also had an Easter pageant in 1933, so who knows?

I sat in the balcony below the booth and enjoyed What’s Up Doc. The matinee was full and The Whole crowed laughed so hard our side hurt.

Comfortably Cool posted the Up the Down Staircase ad from the summer of ‘67.

On the stage was one of the Music Hall’s spectacles unfortunately like all the rest lost forever called Court of Jewels. I had a Kodachrome slide of it once and it looked terrific.

By coincidence it is also the 50th anniversary of Balanchine’s great full length abstract ballet Jewels which is now being celebrated at the New York State Theater.

The summer of love certainly had rock on its mind.

Anybody know what happened to the beautiful 2 ton Cherry Blossom Doncho curtain that was given to the city of New York as a gift and was kept by the Music Hall to occasionally feature in their stage shows? I believe I saw it once in a stage show during the 70s.

When did RKO sell the theater?

I had never heard about the Godfather being offered to the Hall. And as an Easter show?

That seems pretty strange especially considering the NY rollout that Evans devised for it in Loew’s One and Two and other NY theaters which was a major profit making innovation at the time.

The Easter show that Year was What’s Up Doc which was a perfect holiday G rated film and a huge popular success both at the Hall and across the country. And they were considering an R rated violent epic? Especially after it presented the camorra cement brick The Brotherhood?

The first non G rated holiday film was Mame in ‘74.

People say that a problem with the Hall was they wouldn’t show any quality R rated films(which they never did during the stageshow era.) That is total bunk. The Music Hall couldn’t get quality PG rated films. THAT was the problem. Exhibitors didn’t want the sky high overhead or the old-fashioned Hall itself. There were plenty of films at the time that should have played at the Hall but the studios didn’t want the Hall to have them. I would look at the ads thinking why isn’t Cabaret, That’s Entertainment, Murder on the Orient Express, The Way We Were…playing at the Hall? Because by then it was turning into an embarrassment. The stageshows were beyond dire. Cheap flimsy sets, hardly anyone on stage, the Rockettes reduced to 30, no ballet company, the great gold curtain opening getting smaller and smaller. And the Hall was playing one astonishing turkey after another. You would sit there in a complete stupor watching things like Hennessy or The Girl from Petrovka. Not only were you shocked the Music Hall was playing them you were shocked that anybody was making them.

And then in 1976 the Music Hall presents what certainly is keen competition for the worst film in cinema history-The Bluebird. Some people actually consider it the worst and I wouldn’t argue with them. You should have seen the tourists flooding into the foyer during the film. New Yorkers had thrown up their hands by that point and couldn’t be bothered.

And Play it Again Sam flopped at the Hall(I read somewhere Allen never wanted another film of his presented there. Same thing with George Roy Hill after Henry Orient. I wouldn’t count the revival of The Sting-which was a terrific presentation by the way.It probably never looked or sounded so good. It should have opened there. A perfect Music Hall film.) Then turned into a long run east side hit. That helped to seal the Music Hall’s fate.

Yes, along with 5.1 sound. (That’s ironic since the original release was in mono in most, if not all theatres.) Following the picture the stage presentation was done on a set that copied Brando’s office in the film.

“Godfather and Part 11” was screened digitally at the Hall (one of our Dolby engineers was there for the sound E.Q.) “Reservoir Dogs” did screen on 35mm at the Beacon the same weekend. Since it was Tarantino’s personal print it was screened on two projectors with changeovers.

The hall turns 85 this christmas. Any chance they’ll have an anniversary event or will they wait until 90 in 2022 and perhaps 2032 when it turns 100?