RKO Proctor's 58th Street Theatre

My father worked as an usher there as a teenagerin the 40s. I still have his ushers jacket and hat! It has Warner Brothers buttons and Warner Brothers patch on the sleeve. Complete With his business card in the inside pocket.Very cool

Hello-

to Mike(saps)I give you an A+ for the wit of your reply. but as stated in my original post having come of age after Stonewall I am fascinated as to why certain spots became gay cruising spots.

Too bad that vaudeville is dead. “Mike” and “bigjoe59” would have made a great double act.

Hello-

I am currently reading Razzle Dazzle by Michael Reidel. a fascinating book for any Bway show devotee. it also states that in the early 50s the men’s room here was a top gay cruising spot. having come of age after Stonewall I am fascinated by how any stop became a gay cruising spot.

“AlexNYC,” that photo shows the exterior of the original Proctor’s on that site just before it was demolished to make way for the Thomas Lamb atmospheric.

I remember this at the end of its natural life in the mid 60’s…Mostly Warner Bros and Universal product…As an 8 or 9 year old was taken to fare such as Not With My Wife You Don’t and The Spy with the Cold Nose

I have a photo of the original Proctor’s Pleasure Palace Theatre which stood on this site from 1895 to 1928 in my Flickr photostream if anyone is interested.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/charmainezoe/10873852866/

Grand opening ad uploaded in the photo section for this cinema.

I remember some of the promos – Godzilla was coming, or maybe the Beast from 20,000 fathoms, but it breathed fire. A few weeks before hand a large cardboard cutout was erected inside the Orchestra lobby where you would see it after your ticket was taken. Its jaw moved via an electric motor and it breathed smoke. The smoke was generated by a small pan with asbestos? on the bottom. You poured a SMALL" amount of titanium tetrachloride in the pan and it would spontaneously smoke and be blown out when the jaws opened. Inevitable occurred, too much fluid added and some spilled. The resulting cloud was awesome and smoke out the Lady’s Room on the second level. We had to rush Godzilla outside in front of the theater where he fumed and smoked for an hour probably getting more attention than inside. After that he gave up smoking in the house.

I was asked to go around Manhattan schools with two artists from Disney Studios for, was it Alice in Wonderland. I carried easels, large paper books and they would set up on a stage in the school and draw some of the favorites. They were uninhibited characters, took me to lunch and gave me a twenty for helping them. I heard quite a bit about Walt, how he was a genius but a hard boss, etc. Then there was the “Prettiest Baby” promotion. Parents submitted baby pictures which were posted in numbered order. For two weeks each patron was given a paper ballot to vote for the prettiest. Women of course spent twenty minutes studying the pictures before voting. Men weren’t that interested until they saw one bald headed lad, big ears sticking out and an inane smile. They all voted for him. The female vote being split, the prettiest baby was chosen and certainly wasn’t but he had his five minutes of fame.

RKO 58th did a steady business but rarely sold out. Occasionally a blockbuster came along like the Robe or House of Wax in 3d. The upper balcony was normally closed and on the few occasions when it became necessary to open it it was a panic operation to dust the seats. On occasion I donned a heavy cape that matched my dark blue uniform with red piping and stood outside on Third Avenue saying: “There is a twenty minute wait for seating” scaled down progressively as needed. Cape was a real show piece, lined and proof against winter winds, with epaulets and gold tassels and you felt like an idiot wearing it. I also stood inside the door where the tickets were taken, no cape there, just the regular usher’s uniform chanting a litany, The best remaining seats are Upstairs Stairway to your left, There is no waiting for seating Upstairs, Stairway to your left" Try repeating that for an hour or two, yo go to sleep that night with it still ringing in your head. You had to modulate your voice so it wouldn’t carry to the orchestra. You got quite a run of characters as patrons. One lady, obviously suffering from paranoia would demand that you opened the candy machine so she could select a candy bar at random, not the next one that would come out the slot. That would have been the poisoned one of course. Another lady would come in a seat herself in the orchestra. After five minutes she would come out and demand that we shut off “the rays” that we directed at her. Don Brown who was Chief of Service when I started at RKO 58th showed me how to satisfy her. He went to a house phone box built into the wall near the dooman. It had many buttons, most going to long disused dressing rooms backstage. He would press a button and then say; “Shut off the Rays – she knows about them”. She would then resume her seat with a triumphant smile having outwitted her special enemies once again. Three D movies were a pain. We had to distribute the polarized spectacles. Some were single use disposable, others had to be collected and sent out for cleaning and sterilization. I endured six years of sleep deprivation between school and working but it was worth it and undertook a long career in airline maintenance. I did not go to a movie again until after I was married.

After a long lapse, let me continue my recollections on RKO 58th, I worked there from 1948 to 1954 as usher and later Chief of Service while going to school. As mentioned in the theater description, the balcony was huge, The lower section were the premium loge seats providing the best view in the house. Ushers were stationed at Loge Left and at night at Loge Right to inspect and seat the premium paying patrons. The loge seats were bigger and softer than the normal orchestra and balcony seats and hence commanded the premium price. Ushers had to be alert to prevent regular patrons from taking loge seats. The upper balcony was normally closed and in fact, when needed because of a hit film, had to be specially cleaned. It was really very high up and very distant from the screen although the Synchro Screen that was installed was much larger than the previous one. The main lobby had a very high ceiling and two chandeliers were suspended from it. Periodically they had to be relamped. The house electrician had to go up in the loft area above it and use two hand-cranked winches to lower them for relamping. These were old and hard to crank and he got into a somewhat jerky way. Yhis set up some vibration and several large pieces of plaster from the ornate ceiling came loose and fell smashing on the lobby floor. It was after closing of course so it scared only the cleaners. Off the lobby on the house left side was the Managers and Chief of Service offices and a stair leading down to the basement area where the changing room for the ushers and the engineering spaces ad storeroom s were. There was also a passage leading to backstage and lots of deserted rooms and spaces. In some of them were stored boxes of large glass projection slides dating back to the forties at least and maybe earlier. These had the words to songs that the organist used to play. Wish I had taken some of them as many had cartoon drawings on them. It was very spooky down there and backstage as well as no one worked or ever went back there. We wereen’t supposed to go back there but the manager left at ten, the assistant manager left after the end of the last showing you had checked balcony and house for sleepers. So after you changed your uniform it was only the cleaners there. One feature of the 58th Street theater was the Lodge Building attached on 58th Street and part of same structure. Various fraternal orders had meeting rooms. It was all very mysterious as there was a doorman there who kept everyone out who had no business there. Although part of the same building and having some ties to it (maybe owned by RKO?) it was still off-limits even to ushers. Backstage, there were a lot of dressing rooms and offices, all empty and full of boxes and debris. It must have been very busy in the heyday of Vaudville. Ushering was mind-numbing most of the time. Daytimes only one usher would be on duty in the loges. Evenings and on weekends one would be on duty on the center aisle (aisle 3) and two in the loges. A doorman took tickets, even more mind-numbing than ushering as he couldn’t see the screen. These were usually retired men. (a Mr. Conti was a long serving doorman) One peculiar duty of the Chief of Service was to go each evening to Loews Lexington Theater and check the house for the number of patrons. You would come back and report it to the manager who called in. Loews didn’t mind and you would go to their doorman and announce you were from RKO and he would admit you. A look at the orchestra, then to the balcony and loges and a long walk back to RKO. Ushers were issued a uniform including a cardboard dickey and cardboard collar held together with a collar pin stud. It took a while to be able to slip a tie and knot it properly. Cardboard collars are not comfortable and chaffed the neck. I saw a lot of movies of course since we showed double-features. Most were forgettable, lots of grade B Westerns mysteries, etc but better than the tripe on TV now. And I will never forget the magnificence of that theater.

Here’s a link to a scan of an article about the RKO 58th Street in Boxoffice, August 6, 1956. There are photos of the John J. McNamara-designed remodeling job, and a couple of “before” shots.