Comments from BoxOfficeBill

Benjamin— here’s M. Rooney’s filmography for ‘53-'57: “Off Limits” (a Bob Hope service comedy), “Drive a Crooked Road” (M as race-car driver), “Atomic Kid” (M filled-up with uranium), “Bridges at Toko-Ri,” “Bold and the Brave” (war action), “Francis in the Haunted House,” “Operation Mad Ball” (Jack Lemmon service comedy),“Baby Face Nelson” (gangster bio). None of these fits your description. In 1950, Rooney acted in “Quicksand” as a hapless car mechanic needled by Peter Lorree, who runs a penny arcade. I don’t know whether the arcade bursts into flame at the end, or whether there’s a child actor involved.

Cheers to Ithacans and all Cornellians, past and present, on Green Dragon Day ‘05.

Paul: I never understood how or why the grungy Temple trumped the beautiful State or Strand in booking the biggest-budget films of the early ‘70s. Perhaps because it was small, it could count on showing the films for long runs even as audiences diminished during those runs.

One of the first films I saw there was the truly awful “Love Story,” in which an early scene depicts a Cornell-Harvard hockey game at Cornell. The audience went predictably wild, not the least because the campus used for filming was clearly not Cornell. After that scene, the film went downhill quickly.

When the Catholic Legion of Decency gave “The Moon Is Blue” a Condemned rating in Summer ’53, the Loew’s and RKO circuits declined to show the film. It was left to the Harbor to make a killing by running it for a week. Parochial schools in Brooklyn ran a contest for kids to draw posters denouncing the movie. I began by sketching an exquisitely detailed cut-off view of the interior and exterior sides of the Harbor, with a projection of the film’s title on the screen, subsequently engulfed by flames from hell. I soon nixed the idea, because the detail I wanted was beyond my ability but mostly because I couldn’t abide the idea of incinerating such a nice theater. I wound up sketching a hill with a bunch of people at the top pushing a book named “The Moon Is Blue” off its sharp cliff. But my heart wasn’t in it, and I came nowhere close to getting recognition for my work. Besides, the nuns knew all along that I was a movie-mad subversive who would watch anything (well, practically anything) projected on a screen, even and especially off-color comedies and musicals with suggestive costuming.

The sounds of construction also interfered with my viewing of a double-bill comprising “Titanic” and “Destination Gobi” on the last day of its run in Summer ’53. I quickly deduced, however, that they came from backstage as builders were mounting a new Miracle Mirror wide screen. Since that prospect pleased me, I didn’t complain. Instead, I kept peering at glimmers of light from beneath the old screen for hints about how big the new screen might be. The next day I returned for the opening of a 3-D schlocker, “The Maze,” and registered profound disappointment at how small it had turned out. I had all along wanted Cinerama to come to Bay Ridge, and now had to settle for a viewing surface that didn’t even fill the proscenium. How could the newspaper ads lie as they did?

My attendance at the Dyker dropped off dramatically when, thanks to subway tokens, I grew wings and began searching the metropolitan area for more sophisticated fare than RKO offered. I believe the last film I saw there might have been “The Bad Seed” in Fall ’56. Advertised as “For Mature Audiences Only; No One under 16 Admitted,” it prompted me at the age of fourteen to darken the hair (the single one) on my upper lip and on my sideburns (irregular at best) and to drop my voice an octave before buying a ticket (I might’ve looked like Salvador Dali). I then proceeded to the balcony beneath the theater’s recessed dome to smoke cigarettes in the glow of the screen. I see from the post by Jody527 that the Dyker closed for good on the night of my thirty-fifth birthday. By then I was too busy raising a family to notice.

I believe I first attended the RKO Dyker in early spring, 1946, when my maternal grandmother and one of my aunts took me to see “The Bells of St. Mary’s.” I was approaching my fourth birthday. A few months earlier, my grandfather had shepherded my mom and me to see that picture at Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas show. As generous as he was gregarious, he was also something of a self-styled socialist who thought it good to avoid corporate middlemen at all costs. Accordingly, he brought us to the side doors of RCMH on E 51 Street, timing our arrival to occur during a break in the show, whence he slipped a white-gloved usher a five spot that took us directly into the Grand Foyer. (Considering prices in those days, he could have gotten us in through the box office with something less than three dollars, no?) His word of mouth about the film no doubt prompted my grandmother and aunt to take me to see it at the Dyker during its run there.

I remember two things about the event that supplemented my yet more vivid recall of the show at RCMH. First, I wondered whether Bing Crosby spent his entire life acting out the same words behind screens at different theaters for our viewing pleasure, and how did it happen that he and the rest of the cast looked black-and-white instead of normal? And second, I wondered why all those women in the picture wore dark robes with such oddly starched headdresses, a feature that had evidently escaped my attention at the Showplace of the Nation. Some years later, I would get in thick with the nuns who taught me at St. Anselm’s School a few blocks away, and who told me that I would lose my soul if I continued to patronize such Legion of Decency Class II (Objectionable in Part) movies as “The Greatest Show on Earth” and “Singin’ in the Rain.”

That visit to the Dyker initiated a childhood pattern of re-seeing certain films that I had already seen at first-run Manhattan theaters. My parents enjoyed moviesâ€"my dad went for comedies and historical spectacles with heroes clad in tights or togas and my mom for musicals and serious drama with academy awards displayed in the adsâ€"and took me frequently to mid-town to see the latest stuff (it helped that a family friend could provide passes for the State, Capitol, Criterion, and all MGM openers). Someone else would take me a second time to see a film that had particularly enthralled me (“Joan of Arc” had sparked my unquenchable interest in the fifteenth century). My parents often took me to the Dyker to ferret out the rest. I remember enjoying there “Sinbad the Sailor,” “Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House,” “Gentleman’s Agreement,” “Humoresque,” and Hitchcock’s “Under Capricorn” (the last of which so deeply compelled me with its gothic obsessions that the family began to tisk-tisk).

The Dyker managed to keep itself looking spiffy and well-run during those years, with several state-of-the-art facelifts. I remember that its earlier cream-colored traveler curtain soon gave way to a billowing green traveler curtain that opened with impressive effect. The cream-colored plaster walls came also to be repainted in pale green, which sounds awful but somehow complemented the auditorium’s spare Palladian design. In the late ‘40s and throughout the Korean War years, performances began with an image of the American flag waving in the breeze, accompanied by a rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” for which the audience stood (an echo, perhaps, of live London theater through the 1960s when curtain calls ended with cast and patrons singing “God Save the Queen”). By the entrance, a small table offered blue-paper programs with the cast and credits of both features, studio photos of the movie stars, and publicity about coming attractions. At some point in early summer ’51, the big old white-letters-on-black-background marquee, framed with blinking yellow lights, was replaced by a sleek black-letters-on-white marquee, framed with red and blue neon tubing. The various display cases were modernized and enlarged, and the box-office was moved from the lobby (where it had resembled box-offices on legit B’way) to a street-side glass-fronted cubicle. If I’m correct, this happened when a Loretta Young-Joseph Cotton froth called “Half Angel” played there. I remember the sounds of construction interfering with the movie.

For twenty-five years of my young life, I lived within walking distance of the Fortway. But I never went to it. (Q.v. my post of last 7 August—I thought of it as the bunny energizer that never gives out.) It sounds like a great theater that deserves to survive.

Warren— no shame: that’s how business was done in those days. Both my mom and my wife’s mom were “comparison shoppers,” mine for Best and Co., hers for Macy’s. Their jobs were to shop ‘till they dropped at other dept. stores, then report back to their managers about what the competition was doing. Occasionally they were supposed to gush exuberantly about inferior products in hopes that rival stores would stock up on those products and infuriate their regular customers.

Warren— thanks for the details and your fine-grained distinctions between “all ice shows” and combo “ice/stage” shows. Yes, the Roxy did make that distinction. Performers without the benefit of skates did their turns on a marley mat spread out upon the stage apron.

In the days of Ice Colorama, I remember that between performances the stage crew had rolled out a rubber mat in front of the film sheet to reduce the glare shining up from the ice in the face of its screen. You can see this mat in the late ‘52 photo of the Roxy’s renovated proscenium in Theatre Catalog 1953. I wonder why the Roxy didn’t commission more photos of its stage in those days?

’53 was evidently a prosperous year for the Roxy, and my parents contributed more than they might have wanted to. I recall that we saw “The Robe” uncharacteristically at a late afternoon rather than early morning showing, despite higher prices for the later viewing. In years past, after abandoning the long lines at RCMH for three Christmas shows in a row (’49, ’50, ’51), my mom asked an usher at the corner of E 51st and 6th (the line had stretched that far) on what time of day we could best bet to avoid another disappointing shut-out. He replied that after the family crush at morning and noon, 4:00 pm might give us a chance before the evening crowds set in. So four-ish it was when we succeeded in scaling the lobby at RCMH in ’52. The same logic figured when we planned our assault on the Roxy for “The Robe” ten months later.

Earlier in ’53 we had also endured long lines at the Roxy. For Disney’s “Peter Pan” on the Lincoln’s Birthday holiday, we stood on E 50th Street yards from the box office with only a view of the Rivoli’s rear-wall billboard for any consolation. In April, my mom announced that we would not submit to the lines at RCMH that Easter (the film was a sappy Doris Day filler and, besides, a year earlier we had seen “Singin’ in the Rain” there, which was enough for at least two Easter shows). Instead, we’d try our luck at the Roxy, where Ethel Merman’s “Call Me Madam” was packing ‘em in. Apparently others thought the same, and so we endured yet another long line at the Roxyâ€"only worse, perhaps, because after doing your time on the street, you had to face yet more time in the labyrinthine interior, especially if you wanted choice balcony seats to enjoy the ice show with neon tubing buried in the permafrost floor.

So it seemed sensible to opt for a four-ish arrival when “The Robe” began breaking records in September. You’d pay a few nickles more for afternoon prices, but you’d avoid the frustration of dealing with throngs. On the day appointed, I rushed home from school at 3 pm, walked the dog, changed my clothes, dodged a hundred other obstacles, and finally descended the BMT stairs for an hour’s ride into midtown. The street line at the Roxy proved fairly short and time flew as it moved along. When we reached the closest box office, a white-gloved usher stopped my dad. As my mom and I gazed at the display cases, another usher approached with a two-foot-ladder, mounted it, withdrew a sign declaring the $1.50 afternoon price, and replaced it at the stroke of 5 pm with one demanding a $2.25 evening feeâ€"a steep increase in those days. My mom asked my dad why he bothered to stop for the usher in the first placeâ€"she wouldn’t haveâ€"and he answered that he thought we were going to receive a dish or a door prize for being such good customers. And so the Roxy managed to squeeze nine more quarters from his pocket before allowing us to pass onward. My dad repeated this tale for decades afterwards.

(I’m going to check Variety for the exact “top” price at the time—I recall mostly that it seemed outrageous, especially to those who usually paid ninety cents for morning shows.)

Right— As for “Shane,” I believe that it had been finished early in ‘52, a full year before its release. If it could sit in the cans that long before being shown, it could surely wait a few weeks before jumping into the neighborhood circuit.

Odder delays occurred. “The Glass Menagerie” opened at RCMH in Sept ‘50, but took until mid-Feb '51 to reach the Loew’s circuit. At that, it received second billing to a Van Johnson-Kathryn Grayson frolic, “Grounds for Marriage.” Oddly too, “Menagerie” was released by Warner Bros, whose product always went to the RKO nabes. Were the circuits experimenting with distribution in the wake of the studio breakup decision? Or was “Menagerie” perceived as a huge flop? Gertrude Lawrence, where are you when we need you?

“Ivanhoe” opened at RCMH in August ‘52, but did not reach the Loew’s neighborhood chain until Easter '53. Did RCMH have such pre-release privileges? Was Loew’s trying to build anticipation for its expensive wares? Was the picture thought to be disappointing, so that by holding it back people might forget the tepid reviews? “Ivanhoe” played at RCMH for eight peak weeks in '52 (31 July-24 Sept, and kids like me loved it: there could have been worse ways to be introduced to the twelfth century.

Right, Warren— Gimbel’s cleared the space completely, and then, in just return, Gimbel’s itself was cleared completely. The current building sprouted in the late 1980’s? Whatever. It bears no relationship to what my spouse knew of the site. She grew up a few unfashionable blocks away, and last weekend we found ourselves unexpectedly there, tracing the past palimpsestically. She still can’t understand why I’m so obsessesed about what movie palace stood where. There couldn’t have been a theater in the building where Duane Reade now stands— but the marquee of Duane Reade (whoever heard of a drug store with a marquee?) roughly shades the spot darkened by the marquee of RKO Proctor’s 86 Street.