Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
205 W. 46th Street,
New York,
NY
10036
205 W. 46th Street,
New York,
NY
10036
10 people
favorited this theater
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It was 75 years ago today that Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE premiered here.
Kirk Douglas’s breakthrough movie, “Champion,” opened its NYC premiere engagement at Brandt’s Globe on April 9th, 1949. Douglas appeared in person for the first two performances that day, with doors opening at 8:30 AM. Ad displayed here
Added this photo back in February, but here is the proper date and photo credit. Better scanned version of it too. Globe marquee on the far left. “The Man With Nine Lives” starring Boris Karloff.
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-pedestrian-and-street-traffic-in-times-square-new-news-photo/553039689
The first show I saw here was The Rothschilds. It was a big disappointment in that I had no idea they had stripped it of all its interior decoration. Of course bigger disappointments were to come with The Uris and The Minskoff but up until then it was the worst interior of a musical house I ever saw. I haven’t seen the restoration but I’m happy Disney did not rename the theater The Michael Eisner. Though it still could be The Bob Iger.
My wife does day work on
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and is a wardrobe attendant on Broadway Bandstand at the Bernard Jacobs.
Currently the home of the Broadway musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
February 26th 1940 photo added credit Duke University Collection.
The “last picture show” at the Globe Theatre was Elia Kazan’s “A Face In The Crowd,” which opened with a world premiere performance on May 28th, 1957, and ran for nine weeks, closing on July 28th, according to Variety. Images have been posted in the Photos Section.
This link about the history of the neighboring Automat may be of interest of some.
It also had a rendering of the intersection.
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/coin-op-cuisine/
I added a comment on the photo posted March 29, 2014…
Great photo! Thanks David & LIFE.
1945 photo added, credit LIFE Magazine.
New show due to open at the theater. Really miss the Automats though more than a lot of the theaters on this site.
Circa 1931 photo added courtesy of the Vintage Vortex Facebook page.
A February 1, 1998 NYT article on this theatre mentions that it opened with a feature unique to Broadway history. As a tribute to its namesake, the open-air Shakespeare Globe in London, this Globe had a sliding roof that could open up to the sky on hot weather days. They speculate that soot and litter may have limited the use as it was a problem for other nearby roof top operations.
The article also mentions that the theatre had “seats for fat men”.
I was just reading a 1989 NYT article about the Nederlander organization looking for a movie multiplex operator to split it up because the theatre was too narrow and therefore awkward for live musical theatre. Here we are twenty three years later.
I like that you can see a little bit of Horn & Hardart there on the right.
Re-posted from Vito’s post today on the Loew’s State page:
Nov. 10th: On this date in 1953 the second picture released in CinemaScope opened simultaneously at the Loew’s State and Brandt’s Globe.
I believe “How to Marry a Millionaire” was actually the first movie filmed in Scope but Zanuck in his wisdom decided to release “The Robe” first to introduce the miracle you see without glasses.
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Check out Stanley Kubrick’s “Killer’s Kiss” where one scene takes place at night in Times Square. The Globe is playing “How to Marry a Millionaire in 1953. The action goes indoors for a minute then is outside again and the Globe is now playing "Beachhead” with Tony Curtis, from 1954. Guess it didn’t take Kubrick two years to shoot the film, but apparently it did take a while.
“Forbidden Planet”, first-run, at the Globe.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1484101632/tt0049223
Although the intro correctly states that the Globe became a full-time cinema in 1935, from 1927 to 1935 it spent more time each year as a motion picture theatre than as a live venue.
Porno at the Globe all right then.
Cool find, LM. It appears these facts were always there if you know where to look.
I just found a blurb in an old copy of MARQUEE (Volume 18, 1986) that mentions the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s theatre which was showing films in 1976. It states that the RFK was actually the Walter Kerr/Ritz at 219 West 46th Street and not this location.
1971 LIFE image -
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