Radio City Music Hall
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
118 people
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Vincent: I was 13 years old at the time. I don’t recall the exact reaction to the FU joke but I do remember that many of the lines of dialogue couldn’t be heard at all because the audience was still laughing so hard from the previous jokes. FU probably got a huge laugh that drowned out the next few lines in the script.
My other big memory of seeing “The Odd Couple” at Radio City involved my family walking back to the Port Authority Bus Terminal after the movie. My mom and sister wanted to go shopping on 7th Ave., but I did my best to get us to take a detour to Broadway and 50th St. so I could get one more look at the Capitol’s marquee featuring “2001” (which I’d seen a few weeks earlier. It’s still my all-time favorite movie). Since it wasn’t really on our way, I wasn’t successful. But now I have a picture of that marquee on my computer desktop, and I can see it every day.
I only wish the prices for good event seating at the Hall would come down. Top price is $200 for the upcoming Chinese New Year show. I understand there is a scale and one can get in for as little as $49, if you don’t mind the third tier, you can’t touch the orchestra for less than $85 – and that’s all the way at the rear. That starts piling up pretty high if you want to bring the family along. Those ridiculous “Premium Seat” schemes aside, $100 will get you a top notch seat in the more intimate legitimate theaters of Broadway.
I suppose its what the market will bear, however. As long as they keep selling tickets at that level, the prices will never be lowered. I noticed that top price tickets for the current Rolling Stones stint at the Madison Square Garden are going for $454!!! Imagine that! I can recall seeing the Stones at the Garden in 1981 for something like $17.50. Never mind that back in the late ‘70’s you got the stage show AND a movie at RCMH for very popular prices.
The recent hit revival of the Odd Couple got me to thinking about one of its funnier jokes.
For those of you who were lucky enough to have seen the film during its run at the Hall what kind of response did FU get?
Did people get it? Did it get a big laugh? Or did it go over the heads of most of the Music Hall audience?
Is this video wall that you all talk about just at RCMH or is perhaps a smaller version of it taken on the road tours? Also, in Charlotte there were 18 Rockettes and so I wonder how many are on the RCMH stage….twice that number?
Denpiano:
How can you say that “staging will not change?” It already has. The backdrop for “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” was the video wall, instead of the whimsical Lisanby set. A blue video wall certainly did not coujure up thoughts of a toy shop. I always thought “Here Comes Santa Claus” worked so well with that mirrored backdrop, which also gave a thrill to those of us in the audience who could see ourselves. Not anymore with a video wall full of projected Santas. And during the reindeer number, the moon had video lines all the way through it. As I said, the wall looked great in the opening number, but after that it didn’t. The wall has it’s merits, but nothing takes the place of wonderful scenery. BTW, Denpiano, what do you do at the hall?
The video wall is a high tech L.E.D. unit placed very close to the back wall,this is where it will remain. My understanding is that when Jim Dolan was in Las Vegas, he was very impressed with its capabilities and ordered one for the Music Hall. Everyone should relax!! staging will not change because of “THE WALL”, this unit is
used in addition to the regular sets. I’ve seen some tests to be used for the upcoming Chinese New Year show and their effects and
graphics are stunning. This is in addition to regular sets. I suspect
this unit will bring more business to the Hall in that those that wouldn’t come here before, will come now. I believe we will see some
very nice shows this year, keep your fingers crossed!
Ed: Oh yes, the RCMH Christmas show tours and has been touring for several years. I saw the show on Dec. 30th at Ovens Auditorium in Charlotte. It was my first time to see the show and when the Rockettes first appeared on stage a tear fell among my cheek as I had waited all my life to see them, in person! Though if I had had a choice I would have chosen to see them for the first time on stage at RCMH with a live orchestra! Sorry about your Rockettes meeting up with your dog!
Patsy… I had the Dept 56 RCMH under my tree this year. I love the lights! This year, we picked up the Ed Sullivan Theater as well as the dancing Rockettes (there are 3 not 4) which my dog got hold of and decapitated! So, we’ll have to pick it up again. I love the Christmas in the City set. We buy a new one every year. The Ed Sullican isn’t exactly an accurate representation (much like the Yankee Stadium model which makes the concrete facade appear as if it is constructed of red brick) but it makes for a nice Holiday decoration. I’m curious… where in NC did you catch the Christmas Spectacular? I didn’t know that it toured.
And whose idea was it to put in this video wall? Sounds too high-tech to me.
What is this video wall? Where is it placed and how is it used?
Here’s a Program from May, 1956:
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“Bhowani Junction†showed off Ava Gardner, Pakistan, Northern India, and George Cuckor’s eye for spectacle all at once. 1956 was a year of great competition for RCMH with the Roxy as the latter had booked blockbuster Fox musicals (“Carousel,†“The King and Iâ€) ordinarily associated with MGM and the Music Hall. “Junction†seemed an answer to Fox’s “Rains of Ranchipur†which had played at the Roxy the previous Christmas, just as the sophisticated sexiness of Ava seemed an alternative to the spontaneous sex-appeal of Marilyn Monroe, whose “Bus Stop†was slated to park at the Roxy.
The stage show, too, revealed competitive ambitions. The Rock-’n-Roll number in the “Block Party†sequence marked the first time in my experience that such barbarous noise (introduced to teen-aged America only a year earlier) was heard at RCMH, briefly displacing the hitherto canonical Gershwin, Porter, Kern, et al. Chopin’s melodies in any case ended the show with a divertissement by the Corps de Ballet augmented by toe-dancing Rockettes. In between that and the Rockette’s earlier high kicks performed against a Times Square setting, we thrilled to the Three Houcs, a trio of jugglers, and Pat Henning, a stand-up commedian.
My grandfather had heard that the show was sensational, and he popped me five dollars to take a friend to see it. With the money left over (the 10:30 am show cost 90 cents in those days), we went afterwards to MoMA (50 cents in those days) to see a screening of “The Lady Vanishes,†and still had enough to spend on movies the following week.
I hope to someday tour and see a show at Radio City, but many CT members/New Yorkers who have a history of going there over the years seem to express many changes that have occurred over the years. I guess with time comes change and not always for the good though there will always only be one Radio City Music Hall and it is a special theatre. Santa brought me the Dept 56 RCMH this year and I plan to leave it on display all year long as I just love it. I didn’t get the 4 kicking Rockettes that come separately, but may sometime. Dept. 56 also offers the Ed Sullivan Theatre.
Can’t help thinking about the new “video wall” installed in the Music Hall. It looked good in the opening number and looked like a video screen in every other number it was used in. I have a feeling that eventually, we will not see any scenery at the Music Hall. Pity.
Wow, so many lovers of Radio City. I live an hour away in New Jersey but still want to get back in there. My most recent memory is of a Theatre Organ Society gathering there back in the late 70’s. It was a demonstration of the theatre’s wonderfully flexible capabilities AND a concert of organ music — including a duet by two organists actually playing the master and slave consoles on both sides of the stage. So much better to hear a real concert than the way it used to be played between movie and stage show while the audience could come and go making almost as much noise as the organ was making music!
BoxOfficeBill: I can’t compete with your astounding memory, but as a Roxy usher in 1956/57, I was occasionally sent to do an attendance check at the Hall. What always astonished me was how quickly the Roxy would fill up once the last stage show at the Hall had begun and the door men began announcing that there was waiting in the lobby for the last feature only. You could see hundreds of disappointed people heading back to 7th Avenue to see the last complete show at the Roxy which began around 10 pm. The last stage show at the Hall began, except on rare occasions, shortly after 9pm. The Roxy was never noted as a matinee theater, it appealed to a more middle brow audience who liked a star turn, a big band sound, and no highfallutin dancing. It was only during the war years (1942-45) that the Roxy came close to rivaling the Hall. The Hall, however, is where many of us of a certain age who couldn’t afford the Met or Carnegie Hall learned to appreciate classical music, dance, opera, etc. in a classy setting. What a legacy!
SimonL— Yes, you’ve documented it exactly. In the mid-to-late ‘50s, Variety consistently reported weekly grosses of $120,000-to-$150,000 at RCMH, and double that by the time prices had doubled in the mid-'60s. Christmas and Easter weeks in the mid-'50s would reach $180,000. Weekends always brought packed houses, and summers would also register a rise in daily attendance.
The famous lines at Christmas and Easter grew primarily at morning and early afternoon performances, packed with families and children, but prices were lower at those times. On ordinary weekends, however, long lines regularly formed for evening performances when prices were higher. Consequently, the grosses for a couple of solid weekend evenings could approach or equal those for an entire week of mornings and matinees at holiday times.
Late-winter months always marked the slowest business. Between mid-January and mid-March in the post-WWII years through the mid-60s, RCMH usually turned over three bookings(and turned over four during those weeks in 1950).
Vincent: “Giant” opened at the Roxy in mid October and had a super fine opening week of $162,000 (Its final ninth week only grossed $37,000). (“Anastasia” pulled in a bit more during the Christmas/New Years weeks in its eight-week run). By the time “Friendly Persuasion” opened in November at the Hall, “Giant” was slipping badly and grossing under $100,000. It did not sustain itself as well as “The King and I” (the previous film) over its nine-week run. Opening round for The King and I was $158,000, with subsequent weeks pulling in $130,000, $124,000, $126,000, $105,000 etc. “Friendly Persuasion” was no world beater but its four-week run began with a moderate $140,000 and ended its four-week run with a similar gross in its final Thanksgiving week. The Roxy had a hard time pulling in $100,000 while the Hall consistantly stayed above that figure.
Well, I can now say that I have finally seen the RCMH Christmas Spectacular. Though it was in Charlotte NC and not NYC, I enjoyed it as the tears flowed when I first caught a glimpse of the 18 Rockettes enter the stage. I would have liked a live orchestra and I thought the live nativity scene was a bit ‘over the top'though it was beautifully portrayed and in keeping with the overall 'over the top’ production. My favorite part of the show was the march of the wooden soldiers and their famous collapse which is depicted on the mugs sold before and during intermission. Happy New Year to All!
If Giant and Persuasion were playing against each other was the Roxy outgrossing the Hall?
Perhaps the Hall at this point knew that only Holiday and summer shows would bring in the crowds. And this would only last til ‘68.
“Friendly Persuasion” was the first and I believe the only Allied Artists production to ever play at the Hall. Getting a Hall booking was a coup. It was supposed to inaugurate a new era for this B studio. It didn’t. It did only moderate business and issued in a rather long spell of poor business. Except for the Christmas show (“Teahouse…”) the Hall had to take it on the chin with two weeks of “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” (the lowest grossing film since “The Hills of Home”), followed by a tepid three weeks of “The Wings of Eagles,” and then “The Spirit of St. Louis,” which was very disappointing at the box office despite a strong Washington’s Birthday opener. Bravo to Boxoffice Bill for bringing back the memory of the organ chiming in with film’s finale as the great contour curtain fell. Luckily audiences returned for “Funny Face and the Easter show. There were always dry spells but that one in 1956-57 gave a preivew of things to come and proved that audiences were beginning to get very selective even when going to the Hall.
Here’s a Program from November, 1956:
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“Friendly Persuasion†came to us with a lot of misleading advertising: Tony Perkins, America’s latest heartthrob; Pat Boone singing the hit theme, “Thee I Love.†Who could have the stomach for Pat Boone? Somehow, friends persuaded me to go, and I found it hugely entertaining. I’m not sure that I knew what “A Wyler Film†meant in those days, but its quality surely touched me. The same could be said for “The George Stevens’ Production†then playing down the block at the Roxy. And as with “Giant†at that theater, the extended length of “Friendly Persuasion†(two hours and twenty minutes) at RCMH made for an abbreviated stage show. I recall nothing specific from it, but the title of the Rockettes’ musical number is undeniably evocative.
The balconies at the Hall are also set very far back from the stage, so they still afford a more level viewing angle than smaller theaters where the angles are much more steep.
I agree with BoxOfficeBill about the third mezzanine being a better choice than the first or second. I sat in the first for the 50th anniversary showing of “Gone With the Wind”, and it seemed very closed-off and restricted. You got no sense of the huge scale of the Hall, which you very definitely get from the third mezzanine.
Right—but I bet the rear of the third mezzanine is at least as good as and possibly better than the rear of the second. In the first and second mezzanines, as well as in the rear orchestra, the overhanging upper structures would muffle the sound, whereas in the third mezzanine the sound rolls gently off the curved ceiling. I sat in the third balcony several times, but never in the first or second; rear orchestra seats under the first mezzanine are terrible.
Right—but I bet the rear of the third mezzanine is at least as good as and possibly better than the rear of the second. In the first and second mezzanines, as well as in the rear orchestra, the overhanging upper structures would muffle the sound, whereas in the third mezzanine the sound rolls gently off the curved ceiling. I sat in the third balcony several times, but never in the first or second; rear orchestra seats under the first mezzanine are terrible.