Loew's Capitol Theatre
1645 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10019
1645 Broadway,
New York,
NY
10019
47 people
favorited this theater
Showing 326 - 350 of 1,086 comments
During the demolition Marlene Dietrich was appearing across the street in her stage show in the Mark Hellinger Theatre (itself a former movie palace). During Dietrich’s Wednesday matinees the demolition crew stopped work so as not to interrupt Miss Dietrich’s performance.
So could you compare for us the experience of 2001 at the Uptown versus the Capitol? Where did you enjoy it more? Though I never saw the Capitol(torn down before I knew it ever existed) I would imagine it really was the ultimate Cinerama theater.
Which had the larger screen? The better sound system?
If they show it there again is it worth the trip from Jersey?
Hello-
I always associate reserve seat or to use the trade term roadshow engagements with souvenir programs. so can anyone remember a roadshow engagement at the Capitol that did not have a souvenir program?
I found that picture and I just posted it on the Photos page.
Vindanpar: The Capitol had a big New York premiere, though. Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke were all in attendance. There’s a photo of it somewhere – I’ll try to find it. Stanley came over from England by ship because he wouldn’t fly on commercial airlines.
The Uptown in Washington, DC still has their Cinerama screen intact, I believe. I saw “2001” there 4 times.
Getting back to the Times Renata Adler it never had the best critics. At this time it had Clive Barnes who is roundly criticized as one of the worst theater critics ever. Read William Goldman’s The Season. How he continued years after this means only that Barnes knew where the bodies were buried.
You wanted serious theater and film criticism you went to the New Yorker or Village Voice. People still wonder what its reviewers are thinking.
By the way Adler’s put down of Kael in I think The New York Review of Books from years ago is a must read whether you are pro or anti Pauline.
So the 50th anniversary is coming up.
I always had it in my head the world premiere was here. How disappointed I was to find out after many years it was not.
I just added 5 photos from the Sunday New York Times, 2/25/1968: the first advance ad for “2001”.
I remember showing this ad to my dad on that long-ago Sunday afternoon. I didn’t have to sneak around like Ralphie with his BB gun ad. I just asked him straight out, “Can we go see this?” I think he said maybe, and I didn’t ask him again, but a couple of weeks later he showed me the tickets he bought at our nearest Loew’s theater. We saw it at the Capitol, in Cinerama, on June 15, 1968.
According to an item (about the indoor Japanese garden created underneath the balcony) in The New Yorker, Aug 11, 1962 p.16, the Capitol’s conversion to Cinerama involved reducing its seating capacity from a previous 3,662 to 1,552.
Successor to the Capitol Theatre described here
What was the Capitol’s successor?
Also it would be interesting to see the number of seats for 2001 or Dr Zhivago compared to Planet or In the Heat of the Night to see if they made more seats available for a continuous run film.
To see what the Capitol seating was at the time of Planet one would have to look at Variety at the time to see the weekly grosses. They always included # of seats available. And I’m sure the official number of seats were far less than either 4 or 5 thousand .Road show houses were most likely in the 1,400 to 1,600 range. Yes I know Planet was not roadshow but by this point the theater was a roadshow house. The seats in the Capitol curtained off would not have been for sale or included in available seats.
But then Bill Heulbig was there and I was not(alas.)Anybody have access to Variety on microfilm? A major university would have it like NYU.
Hello-
at the time of Renata Alder’s hiring by the N Y Times as their head film critic I remember reading an article in another area paper that was interesting. the gist of ‘ the article was simple- the author was rather perplexed by her hiring by the Times considering her aversion to “pop culture”. I remember her review of the Julie Andrews pic “Star”. it wasn’t pretty.
Here is the ad Al Alvarez mentioned. Thanks, Al, for steering us to it. Renata Adler, who is still alive at age 80, seemed to have an aversion to popular movies which later became classics, but she did like “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.
She wasn’t crazy about “2001” either. She complained that its purely visual storytelling should be “verbalized”. But she did include it in her list of the best of 1968 at year’s end (not in the top 10, though). A lot of critics changed their feelings about that movie as time went on.
Renata Adler was the chief film critic for the NYT in 1968. According to an ad in the March 22, 1968 NYT for “HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH”, she also disliked “THE GRADUATE”, “BONNIE & CLYDE”, and “GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER” along with “PLANET OF THE APES”. She was fired in 1969.
Interesting! Thanks guys
Thanks for the excellent retrospective on Planet of the Apes. A great way to kick off the exceptional movie year 1968.
For a typically snooty, dismissive New York Times review of this classic, click here. They even got the running time wrong.
I can back up what Joseph said. I saw 2001 here in June 1968. I’d say there were at least 1200 seats in the balcony alone.
to Mark: I saw 2001 at the NYC Capitol; a few days before it closed. The seating capacity was immense, easily 4,000 plus. Portions of the auditorium were curtained off. The seats in the closed off sections were not available for sale during the Cinerama roadshow engagement of 2001.
For what it’s worth, wasn’t the Capitol’s seating capacity more like 1200 in 1968? (This from a guy (me) who was never even in the city when the Capitol existed, let alone inside, or even walked by it.)
Here’s a related retrospective article that might interest some of you: Something Better Than Man: Remembering “Planet of the Apes” On Its 50th Anniversary
It’s a little weird that it opened at both the 5000+ seat Capitol and the 599 seat 72nd St. Playhouse.
(By the way, it’s a little annoying that the search feature is so specific that it took me three tries to locate the 72nd St. Playhouse because I didn’t have the name exactly right.)
And MSC77, why don’t you put the Planet of the Apes ad on the 72nd St. Playhouse page also. Thanks in advance.
I get Eastern Time on my page and I’m in New Jersey. Happy 50th to Planet of the Apes!
There’s no need to correct me regarding my “Planet of the Apes” comment, Comfortably Cool, since I posted my comment on the 8th. I posted the comment at 9:39pm PST which is what shows up in the time and date stamp when I view this page. Perhaps my comment displays on your computer with an Eastern Time Zone posting?