Radio City Music Hall

The first film I saw at Radio City was “High Society” in 1956, so they may have gone to a seamless screen then as I don’t remember seeing seams. I was told that the screens the Hall used were Hurley screens and Mel Hurley almost gave them to the Hall for the publicity. At that point they changed the screen every six months. They may have tried to use a gain screen when Scope came in. I do remember being told that the screens were lenticulated, and that the lenticulations were embossed in the fabric at an angle to bring the reflected light up 5 degrees or so. That was a standard practice with the “MiracleMirror” screens Fox developed for CinemaScope for houses with a sharp downward projection angle. The curvature of the screen also helped distribute the light more evenly horizontally. Since the Hall couldn’t use a curved screen because of the loss of lines for scenery in the stage shows, a gain screen would have a hot spot and any deformation where the seams were would be more obvious. We did try a gain screen once when I was there, but it really displayed the faults BoxOfficeBill mentions — obvious seams and the hot spot that shifted as you changed seats. We switched to Technikote screens which were matte white, and although they were made up of panels, the seams weren’t noticeable from the audience. Ben Olevsky always pointed out that the Hall with its 19 degree downward projection angle and block wide width wasn’t suited for a gain screen. It may have been the experience with the screens that BoxOfficeBill is commenting about that convinced management of that.

I’m the crank who brought up the topic of visible seams in the screen several times in the past, notably in my post of 1 September 2004. I’ll stand by that claim to my last breath. Those seams enraged me as a kid in the early ‘50s.

The defiantly flat screen at RCMH in 1953 consisted of eight panels @ 4'x70' sewn horizontally so that when the masking dropped for CinemaScope, the viewing measured 28'x70', and when the side masking moved in for regular projection, the surface measured 32'x55' or so.

You cannot see the dark lines in Warren’s picture because the screen’s whiteness bleaches out those details. But if you sat close enough to that screen at the time, you’d go mad looking at them.

The same was true of enlarged screens everywhere in the mid-‘50s, except that to achieve curvature, the panels were sewn vertically on frames set at slight angles to one another to yield an arc of 12:1. If I remember correctly, the Roxy’s CinemaScope screen consisted of sixteen such panels (= 64’ total width), and masking closed in to allow ten panels (= 40' width) of viewing surface for conventional projection.

I further recall that around the time of “Friendly Persuasion” (Nov. ‘56), RCMH finally installed a truly seamless screen. Or perhaps I was just going blind from teenage activities and didn’t notice the familiar old horizontal lines so much. Today, I’d be thrilled to see any screen at all.

Vincent—-
I saw many Cinemascope films at the Roxy and the Music Hall and never noticed any horizontal strips (even with my discerning eyes) at either theater. I would be interested in reading others views on this.

does any one know if they will put out the tv movis “legs” I have it on cassette, but really want it on dvd, thanks

The F word is used once in the stage version of “The Producers”, in a song (“The King of Broadway”) that wasn’t included in the film. “The Producers” hasn’t been rated yet; the version tested this week was a rough cut. For the record, only one of Brooks' films was rated R (“Blazing Saddles”).

From the Wishful Thinking Dept. Several internet sites, including Ain’t It Cool News, have reported that there was a test screening of “The Producers” in Edgewater, NJ several days ago. The posted comments have been very favorable, noting that the film comes across as a faithful adaptation of the Broadway hit as well as a throwback to old fashioned movie musicals (no “Moulin Rouge” here); the audience apparently applauded after the end of each number. Assuming these comments are accurate, what an ideal RCMH Christmas attraction this would have made.

Rockettes, the Schola Cantorum, the Corps de Ballet, or all of them is more than I remember. But I can barely imagine any of them dashing around in the spidery shift that the film’s star wore on screen. Not the Rockettes kicking, nor the Schola chanting from “Prince Igor,” nor the Ballet dancing to Offenbach. Whew.

Warren reports the inventor of Panavision’s crediting the film for the success of that process, which MGM introduced because Hepburn thought that CinemaScope made her look like a balloon in close-ups. The Program gets it wrong and lists the process as “Metrocolor and CinemaScope.” I can only hope that the Program also got it wrong about the stage show’s use of “Radium effects by Stroblite Co. and Black Light Eastern Corp.” If not, we all might have glowed in the dark after leaving the theater. Perhaps we did? What I most remember about the stage show, again mimicking the film, was the jungle scent of “Perfume, ‘Antilope’ by Parfums Weil, Paris,” blown in under the seats during the finale. Folks with serious allergies might have had trouble staying on for the picture that followed.

But then following you had two hit them out of the ball park with steroids home runs. I would have been thrilled with the equivilant of just one in all of the 70’s.

Here’s a Program from April, 1959:

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You can’t win ‘em all. Despite its great cast (with Chevalier direct from “Gigi”) and ads that promised a “really riotous romantic comedy,” I found the film a huge dud and completely forgettable. About a year ago, I tuned into TCM while it was being shown and asked myself in disbelief, “I saw that at RCMH?” The scene I watched exposed Kerr in a shower scene full-length nude behind an opaque tub enclosure, totally gratuitously and without any relevance to the plot. Gasp.

In his admirable, lucid, cranky New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson writes of the director and the late ‘50s that they represent “the worst of cinema, when production schedules had not shrunk to the new, smaller audience or begun to aspire to its higher standards. For a few years, major studios still churned out a pale version of their blithe past” (p. 627). We all have our prejudices, and I for one find many films from that era simply wonderful; but as a description of “Count Your Blessings,” I think Thomson’s estimate is right on target.

The Helvetian stage show provided its own whiff of decadence. Advertised as a “gigantic spectacle … featuring singers, dancers, native musicians, folk entertainers, especially brought from Switzerland for this extravaganza,” it has left no trace in my memory. Not even of the “Rock ‘n Yodel” by the Smeed Trio. It seems symptomatic that the Showplace Program abandoned its usual end-page announcement of the next attraction to offer instead a promotional raffle sponsored by laundry and dish detergent. The ad revenues likely offered some subvention for the stage extravaganza.

Myrtleave – Great ads. I love seeing this stuff.

north by northwest-1959
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reluctant debutante-1958
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