O, and “Strategic Air Command” with “Moonfleet”: a good example of how a second feature could sometimes tower over the top billing (though Anthony Mann has his fans, as many currently at Lincoln Center will surely attest).
That’s a wonderful list of double features—I’d forgotten most of the second-billings. Did “Member of the Wedding” accompany “On the Waterfront” the first time around? or was it a re-issue for both? (I remember seeing “Waterfront” at the B'klyn Fox on New Year’s Eve ‘54, but definitely not with “Member”; sometimes Loew’s changed the second feature after the main attraction left the Fox or B'klyn Paramount.) And “Fear Strikes Out” was a pretty classy (though incongruous) accompaniment to “Funny Face” (I remember the latter as the Easter show at RCMH in '57—sublime!) As a Brooklyn kid, I never visited the Valencia, not even after I grew my own wings thanks to subway tokens. I definitely missed out on something good.
The Dale! I’d been trying to remember that name, but had confused it with the Beverly and the Valentine, which it certainly was not. Located near the RKO Marble Hill, it showed subsequent-run product that had made its way through the Loew’s and RKO chains. I remember it from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, when it also showed a fair amount of classic revivals and some foreign films. It never really competed for the latter with the wonderful Heights on W. 181 Street, but still it offered enough off-beat fare to attract the Riverdale crowd. (Um, I guess it got its name from the “Dale†in “Riverdale�) It had an attractively blue-draped, softly lit design, with a properly proportioned widescreen that was rare in small theaters whose proscenium was usually too narrow for post-’53 technology. You could see the marquee from the elevated B’way IRT train, often the best way to find out what was playing since the theater did not advertise in the NY Times. I went there with friends from school chiefly for the revivals, which were otherwise unavailable in the pre-VCR, pre-DVD era.
In the early ‘60s, the Crown showed an eclectic mix of first-run foreign films, classic revivals, and some lesser but often off-beat Hollywood product. The screen had an extra-wide ratio that worked to the disadvantage of registering sub-titles too low on the frame and of cropping too severely the tops and bottoms of classic revivals. But the theater was comfortable and well-lit, with a bluish light bouncing off the cream-colored plaster walls. It vied with the Lincoln for showing foreign and revival films. With its barn-like Tudor interior, the Lincoln was less comfortable than the Crown. Or so I thought. Both theaters lost out to their clientele when the hideous York Cinemas popped up in the 70s. Likely then the Crown turned to X-rated fare.
The Roger Sherman Theater (in the Roger Sherman Building) was located at 246 College Street. Formerly named the Palace (to which it has again reverted as the Palace Performing Arts Center), it belonged to the RKO chain in the early ‘60s, when it showed studio-films (Fox, Warner) typical of that circuit. I remember its interior design as typical of east-coast RKO theaters: flattened dome, fluted columns, rather spare Palladian classicism, ivory-colored plaster walls. Down the block at 70 College Street, Loew’s College had a marquee and entrance that replaced the original one (when it was named Loew’s Poli) on Chapel Street around the corner. By the early ’60s, drapery covered the walls, but I would have guessed that its original classical design had a more ornate Papal Italian-Renaissance treatment than the Palace had. At the time, it showed studio-films (MGM, Columbia) typical of the Loew’s circuit. Both theaters faced the hallowed pre-B’way-try-out Shubert on the other side of the street. Two streets over from the Shubert, between Temple and Church, was the Paramount, with a French Baroque design typical of its name. It showed a mix of lesser studio product, including Paramount if I remember correctly. That building was razed after 1970.
Yes, Bryan K— that’s a wonderful bunch of photos from Fall ‘55. The earlier CinemaScope screen dated from December '53, with “King of the Khyber Rifles,” a Tyrone Power TCF film that followed “The Robe” (at the Roxy) and “How to Marry a Millionaire” (at the Globe and Loew’s State) and then “Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef” (at the Roxy) into distribution. The Rivoli installed its MiracleMirror CinemaScope-capable screen in Summer '53, when I saw there Disney’s “Sword and the Rose” (with Glynis Johns as Mary Tudor — Bloody Mary!)in widescreen format. I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the Rivoli’s Cylcoramic screen, which antedated the ToddAO magnification by at least three decades. The first time I saw it was in December 1949, for CB DeMille’s “Samson and Delilah.†The film day-dated at the Paramount, which then offered stage-shows-cum-film. The advertising gimmick declared: “See Stage Show at Paramount, See Cycloramic Screen at Rivoli.†At the age of seven, I knew what a stage show was. I prevailed on my parents to take me to the Rivoli to see what a Cycloramic screen might be. The film started at 10:30 am. So far, no difference. I wondered what it was all about. Then, at 12:20 the screen opened to (at least) twice its size for the Destruction of the Temple scene. Wow! Some folks on this site have expressed their indelible memories of what happened when the screen opened at “This is Cinerama.†For me, the event was at the Rivoli when the screen blew up to an unimaginable size. My parents were not fazed: they had seen it before. I pressed their memories. They cited the climactic horse-race scene in “National Velvet†at Radio City. In the next few years, I recall seeing Magnascope at RCMH for the stampede in “King Solomon’s Mines,†the sea storm in “Plymouth Adventure,†and Busby Berkeley’s aquatic number in “Million Dollar Mermaid.†And, of course, “This Is Cinerama.†But nothing in my memory equals the Destruction of the Temple at the Rivoli. I know that Ben Hall et al. write about Magnascope screens in first-run theaters ca. 1920s-50s. But I know of no others on B’way in the 40s-early 50s, other than the Rivoli and RCMH (the Brooklyn Paramount had a Magnascope screen that it used for “Samson and Delilah,†but I know of no other film that the theater used it for at the turn of that decade). Certainly the Roxy did not use Magnascope. (Ask me why?)
Gerard—,
molto bene! Yes, there was (is?) an Italian community in that neighborhood that could support an Italo double-bill. The neighborhood also supported a terrific restaurant that had moved in from the Old Bklyn Navy Yard (Navy Street), where Frank Sinatra (and Ava!!) ate in the early ‘50s. It was named La Palina, and it engineered (heh, heh) great meals before or after the show at the Walker.
Vincent—
Another literary reference to the Roxy occurs in Thomas Merton’s autobiographical Seven Storey Mountain, with a terrific description of a show at that theater ca. 1940.
Yo, RonS and YankeeMike—Not just at the Benson, but all around the Nabes, those matrons WERE a piece of work—that flashlight in the eyes could’ve blinded you. In ‘56 “The Bad Seed” played, with the stipulation that “No one under the age of 16 will be admitted!” Well, at the age of 14, I pompaded the two hairs on my upper lip to make myself look “sixteen” (must’ve appeared like a Salvador Dali moustache), I paid my cash, and was admitted. When the matron flashed her batteries at me, I said, “Hey, I couldn’t’ve gotten in here if I was under sixteen, so what the deal?” She said, “OK,” and we became great friends after that. That’s to say, I never sat in the Children’s Section again. I graduated to the balcony to smoke cigarettes.
Warren—
You are exactly right again—I just located a cryptic statement that “The Stanley Theater was built in the 1920s as the Colonial Theater,” along with a photo of it(advertising “Up in Arms” on the marquee, therefore datable to late Spring ‘44),in Brian Merlis and Lee A. Rosenzweig, Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton: A Photographic Journey, 1870-1970 (Brooklyn: Israelowitz Publishing, 1970), p. 126. The Stanley at 2075 86 Street was in the vicinity of the Bensonhurst Theater and Loew’s Oriental, no?, which doubtless overtook the area’s nickelodeons. Thanks for the bibliographical info about the Film Daily Yearbook—gotta take a look at those volumes.
I remember seeing “The Man With a Golden Arm” at the Stanley, at the age of fourteen, sitting in the balcony smoking cigarettes, thinking “Hey, this is great: this picture doesn’t have a Production Code Seal.” Who among us would today smoke cigarettes?
O, and I thought “The Ten Commandments” was great on its giant curved VistaVision screen. Who could forget the Criterion’s bright red traveller curtain?
sorry for the typos — gotta remember to write my comments on WORD so that I can edit them and then transfer them to the screen — molto imbarazzato — Bill
Warren—
thanks for a rapid posting— all my remarks come from memory, so test them out. But you got the exact address right, AND the exact number of seats (my guess was good, huh?). We would have thought that “Stanley” spelled “Warner” circuit, but my hunch is that it had no connections—it was too small and idiosyncratic for circuitry. The Stanley had a mate, the Electra on 3rd Avenue and 75 Street. The latter was known as “the first motion picture theater in Bay Ridge, built in 1913.” By the ‘50s, the Electra was so independent that it showed pictures at an erratic schedule—recent product alternated with revivals and with foreign films (which none of the locals attended). I remember “Breaking Through the Sound Barrier”(Dab=vid Lean’s '52 paean to modernity) ans “Bonnie Prince Charlie” (with David Niven as trhe imposter) and “Man in the Dinghy” (everybody wondered who Liz Taylor’s new husband was, so they showed this Michael Wilding feature) and “La Ronde” (Ophuls! Ophu;s! Ophjus!) (in my youth, I pronounced the title as “La ROD-ne”) showed there. I guess that’s why it closed around '53, before wide-screen came in.
As I recall, the Fortway had an Independent ownership. In the ‘40s and '50s, it was close to the bottom of the food chain because it got run offs from the Loew’s Alpine and RKO Dyker that had funneled through Loew’s Bay Ridge and RKO Shore Road before hitting Interboro’s Harbor, and then the Fortway (or simultaneously the Stanley westwards on 5th Avenue). To the east, the Marlboro in Boro Park and the College in Flatbush received hand-me-downs at roughly the same time. Before VCR and DVD, they were great places to catch films before they disappeared from the circuit. With the closing of most of the above-named, the Forway survives as a first-run house today. Though I could walk to it as a kid, I had never entered it. Gotta do that before it’s too late (for me, not for the Fortway: it’s like the bunny energizer that necveer gives out.)
Locals called it “The Tub o' Blood,” because rumor went that in the ‘20s a gangland-style execution related to Prohibition took place there (during a Lillian Gish feature?). When I knew it in the '50s, it was quite cozy. It showed many terrific revivals and some foreign films, arty stuff of the sort that the Plaza on Park Slope was beginning to cash in on.
Warrenâ€"
Thanks for the ’36 photos of the Criterion’s debut. I wondered how they could have twinned it upstairs/downstairs in the ‘80s, since the balcony was so shallow. The pics confirmed my memory of that shelf-like space. Loew’s had a share in ownership through the late ‘40s, no? The films through the mid-‘50s were mostly mediocre. I recall as a kid seeing there “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein†and William Bendix in “The Life of Riley.†Disney favored it in the early ‘50sâ€"I remember being brought to “Snow White†(’52 revival), “Robin Hood†(the live-action one), “Alice in Wonderland.†They also showed several 3-D schlockersâ€"“Fort Ti†and “I, the Jury†(parents wouldn’t take me to “The French Line,†‘cause the Legion of Decency condemned it). As a high-school kid, I sought it out for mature fareâ€"I recall “Anatomy of a Murder†and “Advise and Consent.†My visit to “The Ten Commandments†in ’56 left me with wounds still borne today: To accommodate an extra reserved-seat showing, they ran an early-bird 9am screening that suited my teen-age wallet. I arrived at 8:59:99 and sprinted past the usher-women to find my seat (knowing where it was, thanks to Stubs). The lights were already down and Mr. DeMille’s prologue had begun. I crashed loudly into an industrial-size trash-can left in the far aisle after the previous night’s showing. A thousand eyes turned to me in the darkness, lit only by light shining from the screen. The can rolled toward the proscenium. Usher-women fanned out down the aisle on a witch-hunt. I darted into my seat, terror-stricken that I’d be ejected for causing a ruckus (not the least for being an unaccompanied 14-y.o.). I survived ejection, but limped for several weeks with what might have been a fractured shin. Shoudda sued ‘em.
Vincent, Warren, and ErwinM:
Absolutely, Cinerama at the Broadway in ‘52-’53 did use curtainsâ€"deep blue at the Broadway, then burgundy at the Warner. But the Broadway did not use a top or bottom mask for the prologue. That offered the first hint to this ten-year-old that the newpaper reviews might be trusted, that the curtains would part and the screen would burst into color with stereo sound. I too felt a letdown when Lowell Thomas began to drone in b&w, but when his talk turned to the history of film and its technology, it enthralled me almost as much as the main event did eighteen minutes later. When Cinerama moved to the Warner in Spring ’53, the new theater provided top and bottom masks for the prologue. In both cases, the opening of the curtains proved essential to the new medium’s overwhelming effect. Sorry for my mistake in terminology: I thought “float†referred to a free-standing screen positioned in front of the proscenium
BoxOfficeBill
Warren and RobertR—
Time plays tricks with memory — I’ll concede that. But my sense of the floor plan is that the long lobby hallway ran along the north wall of the auditorium to the center, then opened to a wide entrance aisle cutting horizontally across the house, allowing an upward acent to the raked rear or a downward progression to the lower orchestra. Since the late 50’s, I’ve been to the theater only once, in 1987 to see John Badham’s “Stakeout” with a raucous Saturday night crowd (whew!)—by that time it had been subdivided. As for the Soviet knock-off of Cinerama, it was a “float” (again, subject to the tricks of memory), if by that term you mean that the screen stood free-style in front of the theater’s regular screen. Or o I remember. I recall the first Cinerama screen at the Broadway (before the attraction moved to the Warner) in winter 52-53: that was a “fload.” The Cinerama at the Warner had a lot of drapery that gave it a more permanent look.
Bill
The “balcony” was not a true balcony in the sense of overhanging the orchestra. It was instead a raked portion at the theater’s rear, divided from the lower orchestra by a wide aisle that admitted patrons from the long entrance lobby flanking the left side of the house. The Mayfair showed some pretty important 20-Century Fox films, such as “Gentlemen’s Agreement.” And “High Noon” premiered there in ‘52. I saw “Wizard of Oz” there in its 1949 revival (and at the age of seven, cringed from fright at the Wicked Witch). It also showed Disney features (I recall being brought “Cinderella” there). As a high-schooler, I caught a revival of the Brando-Leigh “Streetcar Named Desire” in the late 50s. Finally, a Soviet-Union knock-off of Cinerama played there, featuring a travelogue of the USSR on a giant curved screen, assembled and disassembled specially for the film’s run.
That’s right about the Globe’s films. Some of its 40s films were OK. It showed first -run of Hitchcock’s “Rope” before its product improved in the 1950s. It premiered Marilyn Monroe’s “Don’t Bother to Knock.” And “How to Marry a Millionaire day-dated at Loew’s State, diagonally across the street. In the mid-50s I saw (the now classic) "Forbidden Planet” there, and also “A Face in the Crowd."I believe its first play after reverting to live theater was Durrenmatt’s "The Visit,” with M. Lunt and Mme Fontaine themselves starring in it. I remember seeing Sid Caesar in Neil Simon’s “Little Me” ca. 1963 there. Oh, and of course, the famous Richard Burton in “Hamlet” in 1964 — yee gads, the block was lined with autograph hunters then.
Simon L— On the Radio City Music Hall page, you again bring up a terrific recall of the Roxy’s stage shows when you mention the NY Philharmonic’s appearance with “The Black Rose.†Another orchestra that filled the Roxy’s pit was Phil Spitalny’s all-woman philharmonic orchestra, appearing several times in the late 40’s and early 50’s. The Roxy offered some classical and modern ballet from time to time, but didn’t have a resident ballet company, right?
You also mention “Dancing Waters†at RCMH in January ’53 (yup, I saw it then too). I’d always thought that show was designed to out-rival the Roxy, which had remodelled its procenium and stage the previous December. At that time, Roxy introduced Ice Colorama, a full ice stage with blinking multi-colored flourescent lights embedded beneath its translucent surface. Its debut came with the Christmas show featuring the boom-ba-boom “Stars and Stripes Forever†with Clifton Webb, followed by the scarlet-and-black (what do you call a Technicolor film-noir?) of “Niagara†with Marilyn Monroe. To set down a gauntlet, RCMH brought on “Dancing Waters,†with the Minnelli-style Hollywood-noir, “Bad and the Beautiful.†The Roxy then responded with Disney’s “Peter Pan,†filling the house with thousands of kids and their parents.
I remember that the Ice Colorama stage show for the latter featured a clone of the Wizard-of-Oz narrative, concerning a Wicked Witch (performed by a male ice-skater) who hurtled across the stage at enormous speed, pursued by the good-guy Ice Blades and Roxyettes, with flashing flourescent lights in tempestuous neon hues, accompanied by off-stage thunder and a crashing orchestral score (it might have been “A Night on Bald Mountain,†no?). We stayed to see the stage show a second time, moving up to the vast balcony for a better view of the Colorama effects.
My nominees for sub-standard holiday movies are “Easy to Love†(Christmas ’53) and “RoseMarie†(Easter ’54). As an eleven-year-old, I found it unbearable to watch the tight-teethed Esther Williams and stolid Van Johnson in the first, and the diminutive Ann Blythe and stage-Latin Fernando Lamas in the second. The best thing about the Christmas movie was that finally RCMH had installed a reasonable (though flat, not curved) wide screen. The Thanksgiving movie, “Kiss Me Kate,†was shown on the flat, square-ish old MagnaScope sheet that RCMH had used instead of a proper new Miracle Mirror screen in 1953. And they famously declined to project it in 3D. Hoping against hope, I crossed my fingers that on the day I saw it, the management might finally come to its senses and distribute polaroid glasses. But, alas, no such luck. The thrill of the Christmas show for me was that, as a movie-mad kid, I had just received the most extravagant Xmas present any kid could ever imagine, an 8mm movie camera, and so I brought it to film the Nativity pageant. My biggest disappointment was that not a single image developed at all, except for a blurry head of Mary spotlighted briefly in the final creche tableau. Of course, the Nativity’s dimly lit nocturnal set was not good for any photo-shoot at all. Someone has asked whether anyone took movies of early RCMH stage shows, and this might explain why. The 2.8 aperture on my camera simply couldn’t pick up even a fully-lit stage from the audience’s distance.
The Christmas show’s new screen had been installed in anticipation of the first MGM CinemaScope film, “Knights of the Round Table,†which followed in January. Again hoping against hope, I kept my fingers that the stage-crew might curve this vast screen for the new format (perhaps with a giant crowbar, or some such thing). But, alas, flat projection was here to stay at RCMH. I anticipated that the stage show would be stripped down to highpoint the movie (after all, the Roxy had dropped stage shows altogether when it brought in CinemaScope). As things turned out, it was one of the best stage shows that I ever remembered seeing at RCMH. The Rockettes’ number was set against a perspectival backdrop of RCMH’s 50th Street façade, and began with a stage-door Johnny greeting each dancer with flowers and chocolates as she emerged from the set’s stage-door. An announcer named each dancer as she stepped out, and the audience applauded for every one of them. As the stage filled up with all thirty-six, the effect proved tremendous when the lineup reached completion and broke into precision dance. The music with its sultry jazzy-blues rhythm, “Amy Doesn’t Dance Here Any More,†struck my pre-pubescent imagination as really sexy.
The following attraction was “Long, Long Trailer,†and I recall its stage show as the height of sophistication, thinking that when I grew up, this would be the kind of showmanship I’d truly appreciate. It was a Russell Markert production, which meant less spectacle and more art, and the music offered an all-Cole Porter score. The opening choral number was “Another Opening of Another Show,†and it dawned on me that the producers must have been sketching their program a few months earlier when “Kiss Me Kate†was playing, and that they took inspiration from the film. It offered me a good lesson in planning ahead. The Easter show that April was a disaster, and not just because of the movie. I recall on stage enormous pastel-colored Easter eggs in tones of yellow, green, and pink that really didn’t coordinate, with a kind of cheap cardboard look to it. But by that time I was already into staging my own 8mm spectacles of some quality (mostly poor quality) and could think myself a critic who’d earned the right to judge even the best work of others.
During the ‘40s and ‘50s a family friend worked in the Loews’ business office above the lobby, and she provided us with passes for everything at the State and the Capitol as well as for all the MGM debuts on B’way. She was a very prim, church-going spinster lady, and she voiced a particular antipathy for the fleshy vulgarity of Marilyn Monroe. When “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes†played at the Roxy, she proudly declared, “I’m glad I don’t work there!†and “I’m glad the State is showing a decent Jimmy Stewart picture [Thunder Bay] instead.†Barely two years later, the State played “Seven Year Itch,†with its famous billboard of MM in her wind-blown skirt covering the building’s tall façade. Our friend’s office window was just below the panties. She peremptorily took off for a three-week vacation during the film’s run.
O, and “Strategic Air Command” with “Moonfleet”: a good example of how a second feature could sometimes tower over the top billing (though Anthony Mann has his fans, as many currently at Lincoln Center will surely attest).
That’s a wonderful list of double features—I’d forgotten most of the second-billings. Did “Member of the Wedding” accompany “On the Waterfront” the first time around? or was it a re-issue for both? (I remember seeing “Waterfront” at the B'klyn Fox on New Year’s Eve ‘54, but definitely not with “Member”; sometimes Loew’s changed the second feature after the main attraction left the Fox or B'klyn Paramount.) And “Fear Strikes Out” was a pretty classy (though incongruous) accompaniment to “Funny Face” (I remember the latter as the Easter show at RCMH in '57—sublime!) As a Brooklyn kid, I never visited the Valencia, not even after I grew my own wings thanks to subway tokens. I definitely missed out on something good.
The Dale! I’d been trying to remember that name, but had confused it with the Beverly and the Valentine, which it certainly was not. Located near the RKO Marble Hill, it showed subsequent-run product that had made its way through the Loew’s and RKO chains. I remember it from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, when it also showed a fair amount of classic revivals and some foreign films. It never really competed for the latter with the wonderful Heights on W. 181 Street, but still it offered enough off-beat fare to attract the Riverdale crowd. (Um, I guess it got its name from the “Dale†in “Riverdale�) It had an attractively blue-draped, softly lit design, with a properly proportioned widescreen that was rare in small theaters whose proscenium was usually too narrow for post-’53 technology. You could see the marquee from the elevated B’way IRT train, often the best way to find out what was playing since the theater did not advertise in the NY Times. I went there with friends from school chiefly for the revivals, which were otherwise unavailable in the pre-VCR, pre-DVD era.
In the early ‘60s, the Crown showed an eclectic mix of first-run foreign films, classic revivals, and some lesser but often off-beat Hollywood product. The screen had an extra-wide ratio that worked to the disadvantage of registering sub-titles too low on the frame and of cropping too severely the tops and bottoms of classic revivals. But the theater was comfortable and well-lit, with a bluish light bouncing off the cream-colored plaster walls. It vied with the Lincoln for showing foreign and revival films. With its barn-like Tudor interior, the Lincoln was less comfortable than the Crown. Or so I thought. Both theaters lost out to their clientele when the hideous York Cinemas popped up in the 70s. Likely then the Crown turned to X-rated fare.
The Roger Sherman Theater (in the Roger Sherman Building) was located at 246 College Street. Formerly named the Palace (to which it has again reverted as the Palace Performing Arts Center), it belonged to the RKO chain in the early ‘60s, when it showed studio-films (Fox, Warner) typical of that circuit. I remember its interior design as typical of east-coast RKO theaters: flattened dome, fluted columns, rather spare Palladian classicism, ivory-colored plaster walls. Down the block at 70 College Street, Loew’s College had a marquee and entrance that replaced the original one (when it was named Loew’s Poli) on Chapel Street around the corner. By the early ’60s, drapery covered the walls, but I would have guessed that its original classical design had a more ornate Papal Italian-Renaissance treatment than the Palace had. At the time, it showed studio-films (MGM, Columbia) typical of the Loew’s circuit. Both theaters faced the hallowed pre-B’way-try-out Shubert on the other side of the street. Two streets over from the Shubert, between Temple and Church, was the Paramount, with a French Baroque design typical of its name. It showed a mix of lesser studio product, including Paramount if I remember correctly. That building was razed after 1970.
Yes, Bryan K— that’s a wonderful bunch of photos from Fall ‘55. The earlier CinemaScope screen dated from December '53, with “King of the Khyber Rifles,” a Tyrone Power TCF film that followed “The Robe” (at the Roxy) and “How to Marry a Millionaire” (at the Globe and Loew’s State) and then “Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef” (at the Roxy) into distribution. The Rivoli installed its MiracleMirror CinemaScope-capable screen in Summer '53, when I saw there Disney’s “Sword and the Rose” (with Glynis Johns as Mary Tudor — Bloody Mary!)in widescreen format. I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the Rivoli’s Cylcoramic screen, which antedated the ToddAO magnification by at least three decades. The first time I saw it was in December 1949, for CB DeMille’s “Samson and Delilah.†The film day-dated at the Paramount, which then offered stage-shows-cum-film. The advertising gimmick declared: “See Stage Show at Paramount, See Cycloramic Screen at Rivoli.†At the age of seven, I knew what a stage show was. I prevailed on my parents to take me to the Rivoli to see what a Cycloramic screen might be. The film started at 10:30 am. So far, no difference. I wondered what it was all about. Then, at 12:20 the screen opened to (at least) twice its size for the Destruction of the Temple scene. Wow! Some folks on this site have expressed their indelible memories of what happened when the screen opened at “This is Cinerama.†For me, the event was at the Rivoli when the screen blew up to an unimaginable size. My parents were not fazed: they had seen it before. I pressed their memories. They cited the climactic horse-race scene in “National Velvet†at Radio City. In the next few years, I recall seeing Magnascope at RCMH for the stampede in “King Solomon’s Mines,†the sea storm in “Plymouth Adventure,†and Busby Berkeley’s aquatic number in “Million Dollar Mermaid.†And, of course, “This Is Cinerama.†But nothing in my memory equals the Destruction of the Temple at the Rivoli. I know that Ben Hall et al. write about Magnascope screens in first-run theaters ca. 1920s-50s. But I know of no others on B’way in the 40s-early 50s, other than the Rivoli and RCMH (the Brooklyn Paramount had a Magnascope screen that it used for “Samson and Delilah,†but I know of no other film that the theater used it for at the turn of that decade). Certainly the Roxy did not use Magnascope. (Ask me why?)
Gerard—,
molto bene! Yes, there was (is?) an Italian community in that neighborhood that could support an Italo double-bill. The neighborhood also supported a terrific restaurant that had moved in from the Old Bklyn Navy Yard (Navy Street), where Frank Sinatra (and Ava!!) ate in the early ‘50s. It was named La Palina, and it engineered (heh, heh) great meals before or after the show at the Walker.
Vincent—
Another literary reference to the Roxy occurs in Thomas Merton’s autobiographical Seven Storey Mountain, with a terrific description of a show at that theater ca. 1940.
Yo, RonS and YankeeMike—Not just at the Benson, but all around the Nabes, those matrons WERE a piece of work—that flashlight in the eyes could’ve blinded you. In ‘56 “The Bad Seed” played, with the stipulation that “No one under the age of 16 will be admitted!” Well, at the age of 14, I pompaded the two hairs on my upper lip to make myself look “sixteen” (must’ve appeared like a Salvador Dali moustache), I paid my cash, and was admitted. When the matron flashed her batteries at me, I said, “Hey, I couldn’t’ve gotten in here if I was under sixteen, so what the deal?” She said, “OK,” and we became great friends after that. That’s to say, I never sat in the Children’s Section again. I graduated to the balcony to smoke cigarettes.
Warren—
You are exactly right again—I just located a cryptic statement that “The Stanley Theater was built in the 1920s as the Colonial Theater,” along with a photo of it(advertising “Up in Arms” on the marquee, therefore datable to late Spring ‘44),in Brian Merlis and Lee A. Rosenzweig, Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton: A Photographic Journey, 1870-1970 (Brooklyn: Israelowitz Publishing, 1970), p. 126. The Stanley at 2075 86 Street was in the vicinity of the Bensonhurst Theater and Loew’s Oriental, no?, which doubtless overtook the area’s nickelodeons. Thanks for the bibliographical info about the Film Daily Yearbook—gotta take a look at those volumes.
I remember seeing “The Man With a Golden Arm” at the Stanley, at the age of fourteen, sitting in the balcony smoking cigarettes, thinking “Hey, this is great: this picture doesn’t have a Production Code Seal.” Who among us would today smoke cigarettes?
O, and I thought “The Ten Commandments” was great on its giant curved VistaVision screen. Who could forget the Criterion’s bright red traveller curtain?
sorry for the typos — gotta remember to write my comments on WORD so that I can edit them and then transfer them to the screen — molto imbarazzato — Bill
Warren—
thanks for a rapid posting— all my remarks come from memory, so test them out. But you got the exact address right, AND the exact number of seats (my guess was good, huh?). We would have thought that “Stanley” spelled “Warner” circuit, but my hunch is that it had no connections—it was too small and idiosyncratic for circuitry. The Stanley had a mate, the Electra on 3rd Avenue and 75 Street. The latter was known as “the first motion picture theater in Bay Ridge, built in 1913.” By the ‘50s, the Electra was so independent that it showed pictures at an erratic schedule—recent product alternated with revivals and with foreign films (which none of the locals attended). I remember “Breaking Through the Sound Barrier”(Dab=vid Lean’s '52 paean to modernity) ans “Bonnie Prince Charlie” (with David Niven as trhe imposter) and “Man in the Dinghy” (everybody wondered who Liz Taylor’s new husband was, so they showed this Michael Wilding feature) and “La Ronde” (Ophuls! Ophu;s! Ophjus!) (in my youth, I pronounced the title as “La ROD-ne”) showed there. I guess that’s why it closed around '53, before wide-screen came in.
As I recall, the Fortway had an Independent ownership. In the ‘40s and '50s, it was close to the bottom of the food chain because it got run offs from the Loew’s Alpine and RKO Dyker that had funneled through Loew’s Bay Ridge and RKO Shore Road before hitting Interboro’s Harbor, and then the Fortway (or simultaneously the Stanley westwards on 5th Avenue). To the east, the Marlboro in Boro Park and the College in Flatbush received hand-me-downs at roughly the same time. Before VCR and DVD, they were great places to catch films before they disappeared from the circuit. With the closing of most of the above-named, the Forway survives as a first-run house today. Though I could walk to it as a kid, I had never entered it. Gotta do that before it’s too late (for me, not for the Fortway: it’s like the bunny energizer that necveer gives out.)
Locals called it “The Tub o' Blood,” because rumor went that in the ‘20s a gangland-style execution related to Prohibition took place there (during a Lillian Gish feature?). When I knew it in the '50s, it was quite cozy. It showed many terrific revivals and some foreign films, arty stuff of the sort that the Plaza on Park Slope was beginning to cash in on.
Warrenâ€"
Thanks for the ’36 photos of the Criterion’s debut. I wondered how they could have twinned it upstairs/downstairs in the ‘80s, since the balcony was so shallow. The pics confirmed my memory of that shelf-like space. Loew’s had a share in ownership through the late ‘40s, no? The films through the mid-‘50s were mostly mediocre. I recall as a kid seeing there “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein†and William Bendix in “The Life of Riley.†Disney favored it in the early ‘50sâ€"I remember being brought to “Snow White†(’52 revival), “Robin Hood†(the live-action one), “Alice in Wonderland.†They also showed several 3-D schlockersâ€"“Fort Ti†and “I, the Jury†(parents wouldn’t take me to “The French Line,†‘cause the Legion of Decency condemned it). As a high-school kid, I sought it out for mature fareâ€"I recall “Anatomy of a Murder†and “Advise and Consent.†My visit to “The Ten Commandments†in ’56 left me with wounds still borne today: To accommodate an extra reserved-seat showing, they ran an early-bird 9am screening that suited my teen-age wallet. I arrived at 8:59:99 and sprinted past the usher-women to find my seat (knowing where it was, thanks to Stubs). The lights were already down and Mr. DeMille’s prologue had begun. I crashed loudly into an industrial-size trash-can left in the far aisle after the previous night’s showing. A thousand eyes turned to me in the darkness, lit only by light shining from the screen. The can rolled toward the proscenium. Usher-women fanned out down the aisle on a witch-hunt. I darted into my seat, terror-stricken that I’d be ejected for causing a ruckus (not the least for being an unaccompanied 14-y.o.). I survived ejection, but limped for several weeks with what might have been a fractured shin. Shoudda sued ‘em.
Vincent, Warren, and ErwinM:
Absolutely, Cinerama at the Broadway in ‘52-’53 did use curtainsâ€"deep blue at the Broadway, then burgundy at the Warner. But the Broadway did not use a top or bottom mask for the prologue. That offered the first hint to this ten-year-old that the newpaper reviews might be trusted, that the curtains would part and the screen would burst into color with stereo sound. I too felt a letdown when Lowell Thomas began to drone in b&w, but when his talk turned to the history of film and its technology, it enthralled me almost as much as the main event did eighteen minutes later. When Cinerama moved to the Warner in Spring ’53, the new theater provided top and bottom masks for the prologue. In both cases, the opening of the curtains proved essential to the new medium’s overwhelming effect. Sorry for my mistake in terminology: I thought “float†referred to a free-standing screen positioned in front of the proscenium
BoxOfficeBill
Warren and RobertR—
Time plays tricks with memory — I’ll concede that. But my sense of the floor plan is that the long lobby hallway ran along the north wall of the auditorium to the center, then opened to a wide entrance aisle cutting horizontally across the house, allowing an upward acent to the raked rear or a downward progression to the lower orchestra. Since the late 50’s, I’ve been to the theater only once, in 1987 to see John Badham’s “Stakeout” with a raucous Saturday night crowd (whew!)—by that time it had been subdivided. As for the Soviet knock-off of Cinerama, it was a “float” (again, subject to the tricks of memory), if by that term you mean that the screen stood free-style in front of the theater’s regular screen. Or o I remember. I recall the first Cinerama screen at the Broadway (before the attraction moved to the Warner) in winter 52-53: that was a “fload.” The Cinerama at the Warner had a lot of drapery that gave it a more permanent look.
Bill
The “balcony” was not a true balcony in the sense of overhanging the orchestra. It was instead a raked portion at the theater’s rear, divided from the lower orchestra by a wide aisle that admitted patrons from the long entrance lobby flanking the left side of the house. The Mayfair showed some pretty important 20-Century Fox films, such as “Gentlemen’s Agreement.” And “High Noon” premiered there in ‘52. I saw “Wizard of Oz” there in its 1949 revival (and at the age of seven, cringed from fright at the Wicked Witch). It also showed Disney features (I recall being brought “Cinderella” there). As a high-schooler, I caught a revival of the Brando-Leigh “Streetcar Named Desire” in the late 50s. Finally, a Soviet-Union knock-off of Cinerama played there, featuring a travelogue of the USSR on a giant curved screen, assembled and disassembled specially for the film’s run.
That’s right about the Globe’s films. Some of its 40s films were OK. It showed first -run of Hitchcock’s “Rope” before its product improved in the 1950s. It premiered Marilyn Monroe’s “Don’t Bother to Knock.” And “How to Marry a Millionaire day-dated at Loew’s State, diagonally across the street. In the mid-50s I saw (the now classic) "Forbidden Planet” there, and also “A Face in the Crowd."I believe its first play after reverting to live theater was Durrenmatt’s "The Visit,” with M. Lunt and Mme Fontaine themselves starring in it. I remember seeing Sid Caesar in Neil Simon’s “Little Me” ca. 1963 there. Oh, and of course, the famous Richard Burton in “Hamlet” in 1964 — yee gads, the block was lined with autograph hunters then.
Simon L— On the Radio City Music Hall page, you again bring up a terrific recall of the Roxy’s stage shows when you mention the NY Philharmonic’s appearance with “The Black Rose.†Another orchestra that filled the Roxy’s pit was Phil Spitalny’s all-woman philharmonic orchestra, appearing several times in the late 40’s and early 50’s. The Roxy offered some classical and modern ballet from time to time, but didn’t have a resident ballet company, right?
You also mention “Dancing Waters†at RCMH in January ’53 (yup, I saw it then too). I’d always thought that show was designed to out-rival the Roxy, which had remodelled its procenium and stage the previous December. At that time, Roxy introduced Ice Colorama, a full ice stage with blinking multi-colored flourescent lights embedded beneath its translucent surface. Its debut came with the Christmas show featuring the boom-ba-boom “Stars and Stripes Forever†with Clifton Webb, followed by the scarlet-and-black (what do you call a Technicolor film-noir?) of “Niagara†with Marilyn Monroe. To set down a gauntlet, RCMH brought on “Dancing Waters,†with the Minnelli-style Hollywood-noir, “Bad and the Beautiful.†The Roxy then responded with Disney’s “Peter Pan,†filling the house with thousands of kids and their parents.
I remember that the Ice Colorama stage show for the latter featured a clone of the Wizard-of-Oz narrative, concerning a Wicked Witch (performed by a male ice-skater) who hurtled across the stage at enormous speed, pursued by the good-guy Ice Blades and Roxyettes, with flashing flourescent lights in tempestuous neon hues, accompanied by off-stage thunder and a crashing orchestral score (it might have been “A Night on Bald Mountain,†no?). We stayed to see the stage show a second time, moving up to the vast balcony for a better view of the Colorama effects.
My nominees for sub-standard holiday movies are “Easy to Love†(Christmas ’53) and “RoseMarie†(Easter ’54). As an eleven-year-old, I found it unbearable to watch the tight-teethed Esther Williams and stolid Van Johnson in the first, and the diminutive Ann Blythe and stage-Latin Fernando Lamas in the second. The best thing about the Christmas movie was that finally RCMH had installed a reasonable (though flat, not curved) wide screen. The Thanksgiving movie, “Kiss Me Kate,†was shown on the flat, square-ish old MagnaScope sheet that RCMH had used instead of a proper new Miracle Mirror screen in 1953. And they famously declined to project it in 3D. Hoping against hope, I crossed my fingers that on the day I saw it, the management might finally come to its senses and distribute polaroid glasses. But, alas, no such luck. The thrill of the Christmas show for me was that, as a movie-mad kid, I had just received the most extravagant Xmas present any kid could ever imagine, an 8mm movie camera, and so I brought it to film the Nativity pageant. My biggest disappointment was that not a single image developed at all, except for a blurry head of Mary spotlighted briefly in the final creche tableau. Of course, the Nativity’s dimly lit nocturnal set was not good for any photo-shoot at all. Someone has asked whether anyone took movies of early RCMH stage shows, and this might explain why. The 2.8 aperture on my camera simply couldn’t pick up even a fully-lit stage from the audience’s distance.
The Christmas show’s new screen had been installed in anticipation of the first MGM CinemaScope film, “Knights of the Round Table,†which followed in January. Again hoping against hope, I kept my fingers that the stage-crew might curve this vast screen for the new format (perhaps with a giant crowbar, or some such thing). But, alas, flat projection was here to stay at RCMH. I anticipated that the stage show would be stripped down to highpoint the movie (after all, the Roxy had dropped stage shows altogether when it brought in CinemaScope). As things turned out, it was one of the best stage shows that I ever remembered seeing at RCMH. The Rockettes’ number was set against a perspectival backdrop of RCMH’s 50th Street façade, and began with a stage-door Johnny greeting each dancer with flowers and chocolates as she emerged from the set’s stage-door. An announcer named each dancer as she stepped out, and the audience applauded for every one of them. As the stage filled up with all thirty-six, the effect proved tremendous when the lineup reached completion and broke into precision dance. The music with its sultry jazzy-blues rhythm, “Amy Doesn’t Dance Here Any More,†struck my pre-pubescent imagination as really sexy.
The following attraction was “Long, Long Trailer,†and I recall its stage show as the height of sophistication, thinking that when I grew up, this would be the kind of showmanship I’d truly appreciate. It was a Russell Markert production, which meant less spectacle and more art, and the music offered an all-Cole Porter score. The opening choral number was “Another Opening of Another Show,†and it dawned on me that the producers must have been sketching their program a few months earlier when “Kiss Me Kate†was playing, and that they took inspiration from the film. It offered me a good lesson in planning ahead. The Easter show that April was a disaster, and not just because of the movie. I recall on stage enormous pastel-colored Easter eggs in tones of yellow, green, and pink that really didn’t coordinate, with a kind of cheap cardboard look to it. But by that time I was already into staging my own 8mm spectacles of some quality (mostly poor quality) and could think myself a critic who’d earned the right to judge even the best work of others.
Jim— many thanks for the technical info —
During the ‘40s and ‘50s a family friend worked in the Loews’ business office above the lobby, and she provided us with passes for everything at the State and the Capitol as well as for all the MGM debuts on B’way. She was a very prim, church-going spinster lady, and she voiced a particular antipathy for the fleshy vulgarity of Marilyn Monroe. When “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes†played at the Roxy, she proudly declared, “I’m glad I don’t work there!†and “I’m glad the State is showing a decent Jimmy Stewart picture [Thunder Bay] instead.†Barely two years later, the State played “Seven Year Itch,†with its famous billboard of MM in her wind-blown skirt covering the building’s tall façade. Our friend’s office window was just below the panties. She peremptorily took off for a three-week vacation during the film’s run.