Palace Theatre

Apparently, it didn’t take all that long for the Elvis impersonators to crawl out of the woodwork… Here’s a winter 1978 ad for one such review that had been booked into the Palace Theater a mere 5 months after The King’s passing in August of 1977:
The Legend Lives – Daily News 1/25/78

Wow Warren, so you were talking about the this Palace. When did the last show close there, and what show was it? This is really a shame, because this theater shouldn’t be closed.
Why would it be such a long time for the Palace to find a new tenant?

Bway you must be very very young. Lucky you!

Warren,did RKO have a Broadway Movie House for first run films?

1962 Judgement at Nuremberg
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EdSolero: It’s been a couple of months since you asked about roadshow souvenir programs, but here’s what I know about them:

They were usually about nine by twelve inches or larger, contained 32 pages or more, were printed on heavy, glossy paper, with a slightly heavier paper cover. They contained pictures of the stars, stills from the movie, behind-the-scenes photos, text about the movie, the actors, the director and producer, the composer of the score, etc. There was no advertising in them, unlike the free playbills given out at legitimate theatres. The roadshow programs were not free. I only ever bought one of them, myself, at the roadshow of the original release of Lawrence of Arabia, at the Warner Theatre in Beverly Hills. I think it cost a dollar. (My balcony ticket for a Wednesday matinee was only a dollar fifty, if I recall correctly. The booklets would have been too costly to give away, with some ticket prices being that low.)

These souvenir programs are sometimes available in the movie memorabilia section of eBay, though the sellers' photographs of them don’t give a very good idea of what they are really like. I would suppose that retail shops specializing in movie memorabilia would also sometimes have them for sale, so if there is such a shop in your area, you might be able to get a close look at an example.

I am looking for info on Percival “Patty” Roberts, my great-grandfather, stage manager of Palace Theater in New York (not sure if Staten Island or Manhattan). I have old turn-of-century photos of him standing next to switchboard backstage which is about six feet wide by eight feet tall…, lots of “Frankenstein” switches.

He knew vaudeville stars Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, etc. My grandmather would fill in between acts singing opera onstage as a little girl. Can you help me?

Thanks, Rennie Miller

Check out this anti-Japanese ad from 1943
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1961 another Rock Hudson movie at the Palace, day and dating with Trans-Lux 85th Street.
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In 1960 the Palace went legit for a few months for this engagement of Belafonte.
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Don’t get me wrong, Vincent… I take issue with it as well. We all probably would have been very sad had the developers kept the Rivoli’s interior but obliterated it’s colonaded facade, but better to have the theater preserved to such a large degree than to have it permanently eradicated from existence as it was. Since most Times Square facades were (or would have been by now) completely obscured by billboards, electronic signage and other forms of over-the-top advertising, I’m quite satisfied to trade off the loss of the original neo-classical limestone facade for the preservation of the Palace’s gorgeously opulent interior appointments.

As for those free programs… were they like the Playbills you get at a Broadway theatrical show? Or like the programs at RCMH? Perhaps towards the end of the roadshow era, not every theater had them. Maybe only the Roxy and RCMH. Perhaps others can elaborate here?

Going back to Gustavelifting’s post in August… those souvenir booklets were not exclusive to classic “roadshow” engagements. I grew up and started going to movies after the “roadshow” era had ended and can recall being able to purchase souvenir booklets for all sorts of movies even at the local neighborhood twins and quartets. Throughout the 70’s and well into the 80’s I was able to purchase these booklets at the candy counters of theaters like the UA Midway, the Lynbrook, the Meadows, Century’s Green Acres Theater and other cinemas. I have booklets for movies like “Moonraker”, “Rocky 2”, “Hair”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and all three original “Star Wars” films.

Free programs are another matter alltogether and were probably restricted to the finest first-run theaters back in the “roadshow” heyday… but those souvenir booklets were definitely available on wide release with good regularity through, say, 1983 or 84 when they seemed to just tail off rather rapidly. I remember when I saw “Apocalypse Now!” at it’s first run engagement at the Ziegfeld, the film was presented without any credits or title sequences at all and, instead, patrons were handed a bi-fold that listed the full film credits. I don’t think “Apocalypse Now!” had an exclusive engagement at the Ziegfeld – at least not for long – but that was the only theater in NYC that presented the film in that way, as far as I can recall. The neighborhood showcases ran a version of the film that included the end titles sequence superimposed against the footage of nepalm explosions that you now see when the movie runs on TV (I assume the DVD presents it the same way).

Anyway, the Palace Theater presents a fine example of how developers were able to take advantage of a classic theater’s air rights yet still be able to build over and around to preserve the complete interior of the theater. The Liberty Theater on 42nd Street is another example, sitting silently within the structure of the recent Hilton Hotel and awaiting completion of renovations for adaptive re-use. Too bad the Rivoli Theater just up the road from the Palace couldn’t have been treated with as much respect. Or the old Strand across Duffy Square… Or the Capitol and Astor or ANY of the old palaces that once proudly anchored Times Square. Not to mention the RKO Keith’s in Flushing.