Go Warren you said it like it is. As I’ve said many a time but never enough I remember when this was literally a hole in the ground in ‘68 and it’s always remained one. Now lets hope that Toys R Us goes bust and we can rebuild the great Criterion.(by the way it used to get the second runs after the Astor Plaza because the idiots that be never gave it the first runs. Superman looked so good on that screen.) New York is not the same without you Criterion.
Gerald, thank you for correcting the spelling of Riefenstahl.
However the film is being sold and labeled in papers and magazines as a documentary. And as many people have pointed out Moore’s harangue is the flip side of Mel’s catholic fundamentalist gay(Caravaggio anyone?) S and M fantasy. Moore just as much as Mel wants this to be a black and white world and my concerns relate to the chords which they are striking in millions of people in this ever more frightened world.
Hussein and his family were monters and our Democratic Kerry voted for the war. He his also being funded by his wife’s Republican millions.
I am no Bush advocate by any stretch of the imagination. I just wish our filmmakers had more imagination and were able to create popular films which would reach a wide audience that could encompass all these staggering contradictions in a dramatic and entertaining way.
Above I said “perceived” as anti-American. And let’s face it many of the quote, unquote filmmaking and Hollywood liberals are just as high handed, elitest, and arrogant(read this as anti-American) as the staunchest Rebulicans. This is what so many Americans understand and this is why Bush will win again. It is called the spite vote and God help us all.
Basta cosi.
Could it be that the manager of the Polk has a sense of proportion and refuses to exhibit a highly aggressive political rant by a self consumed monster ego. Now I’m not saying that Bush doesn’t deserve every kick in the butt we can give him(and Kerry too!) but to make what you call a documentary so biased, shrill, and distorted(anything perceived as slightly anti American automatically wins the palme d'or at Cannes, it’s a slam dunk) seems to me your gunning for the Leni Reifenstal prize in cinematic misrepresentation.
Bravo for the Polk.
Vito, I can’t I just can’t.It would take me years to get the image out of my head, if ever.
Maybe if they have a swimming competition using a pool on stage which they can then use for the old Eleanor Holmes number.
Hey guys lay off Warren!
Vito, when are we getting those 1st Mezz, 1st row center tickets to the basketball games at the Music Hall? Spike Lee wants to come too! And we all know what a great filmmaker he is and what a great contribution he’s made to american culture.
I urge everyone to write the Ziegfeld and request that they show a 70mm print of My Fair Lady to celebrate it’s 40th anniversary in October.
Also request that they hold a Todd AO 50th Anniversary festival next year kicking it off with a Todd AO print of Sound of Music to celebrate its 40th birthday.
I hope that Robert Wise is already preparing prints for this milestone.
No Sing-a-alongs please though I went to the finale night of this at the Ziegfeld and it was one of the best cinema experieces. It was demented and people behaved as if they were at an absolutely electrifying rock concert. Except of course during the wedding when the entire audience stood in respectful silence as Maria walked down the aisle.
Do you think Impossible Years(yes pretty awful and I have a taste for mindless 60’s comedies) was worse than No No Nanette which didn’t even make it to New Years or Balalaika?
And yes Lanza was an ideal RCMH star.
Any other nominees for worst holiday films? (The 70’s dont'count.)
Father of the Bride makes sense for the Music Hall but The Next Voice You Hear?!(You can read about it in the current Vanity Fair with the Reagans on the cover.) This was obviously a favor to Dory Schary.
Annie would have been great at the Hall. And Meet Me in St Louis would have been a much better choice than National Velvet and what about them playing a Date with Judy instead of Easter Parade?
And what was it with the lousy Green Mansions as the ‘59 Easter show?
And then the violent, brutal, action World War 2 film Operation Crossbow as the 65 Easter show?
Even Charade was a pretty dark and violent film for a Christmas show.
I believe you left out Porgy and Bess, Camelot, and Finians Rainbow.
You listed South Pacific in ‘78 which was a week revival. There were other films presented here in 70mm in revival at this time that did not open originally at this theater including My Fair Lady, Paint Your Wagon, Hello Dolly, and Oklahoma. Seeing them here on the cinerama screen was a revelation. Those films will never be seen that way in NY again. And I may be one of three people who considers it a loss.
I believe according to Pauline Kael it was booked for the Hall but then Hearst put pressure on the Rockefellers to pull it.
Another great movie that the Hall was planning to show was Streetcar Named Desire which was pulled when the Catholic church was considering giving the film a C rating.
Occasionally the Hall had name talent but this was pretty rare.
Annette Funicello appeared on stage with the film Pollyana.
The only hope for the Music Hall would for the city and various sponsers to take over. It needs to be treated and maintained as a city landmark as much as Grants Tomb or Central Park. It needs to be managed by people who appreciate its history and resources. I believe the last year the Hall showed a profit was ‘55. After that I imagine it was propped up by the Rockefellers.
But this is a city that will spend a fortune of the taxpayers money on a sports stadium in Manhattan something that they wouldn’t even do in the beginning of the last century when the city was a fraction of its current density. This will cause us great security risks , congestion, and financial burdens while its very rich sponsers become even richer.
So I guess we won’t be seeing football games at the Music Hall but how about a golf range?
The very last hard ticket film as far as I know was Little Dorrit(I don’t remember the year) at the 57th St playhouse
The reserved seat box office windows at the State 1 and 2 and the Criterion remained closed from their last reserved seat films in ‘70 and '72 respectively until they were torn down . The reserved seat box office for the Rivoli was often used as the main box office after La Mancha closed there. You would see behind the ticket seller all the small cubby holes that used to hold advance tickets.
So Paint Your Wagon Was already gone by early February of '70. Only 3 months! Probably the last reserved seat movie I liked(though I didn’t see it until it played the Warner in '78.)
Strange but true. For some reason, which none of us alive now will ever know, someone in the Hall in ‘59 thought a fitting accompaniment to “The Nun’s Story” would be the destruction and devastation of Nome. So they burned the place 4 times a day. Now I wasn’t there so I can’t confirm any of this but I believe they threw in an earthquake as well.
Erwin
How lucky you were you got to see a Cagney, Day Cinemascope film at the Hall along with the Bolero. You might envy those who were there opening night(I wish I had been there too though from all accounts it was a very long, tedious vaudeville show, kind of like the current xmas show( midgets too!)
But I have to say I also envy those who were going there on a regular basis in the 50’s and 60’s. All those wonderful movies(and the Bolero, Undersea Ballet, Serenade to the Stars, the burning of Nome, Alaska…)
Darling Lili was the last time the Florence Rogge Bolero was done at the Hall. I kept hoping to see it at some point during the early ‘70s as I had missed it that summer of '70. They never did it again and then decided in the bizarre thinking that has continued to plague the Hall ever since to stage Bolero in a summer show called Encore but with completely new sets, costumes and choreography by Geoffrey Holder. I didn’t bother to go because I knew it would be a travesty and I ask for the millionth time can somebody tell me why they don’t do Leonidoff’s wonderful Nativity anymore which would open the stage show and then lead into the secular part allowing for a grand Christmas finale? Which of course they wouldn’t do now because the clowns who run the place(yes you are)have no sense of showmanship.
Maybe they’ll use the place this autumn for football games?
Vito, If you went back in time to Christmas ‘54 I’m afraid you would have blown it. You would have seen Deep in my Heart with Jose Ferrar.
I hope that you would not have been too bummed and you got a second chance to go back to Thanksgiving '54. Then you would have see it.
The Nov/Dec Christmas show only started in '70 when the Thanksgiving show that year was such a bomb(Wilders cut to shreds “Private Life of Sherlock Holmes”) they had to pull it and open the Christmas show early. They never had a Thanksgiving movie again.
I thought Charlie Brown was pretty awful as well(They should have had the O'Toole Goodbye Mr Chips for the Christmas Show)but it was probably one of the most successful films to ever play the Hall. The stage show for it however was the best I ever saw there.
Ron-Thanks for the great work but now I’m reminded of all the great films that I would have loved to see at the Hall but couldn’t because I was too young. As you can see the list in the 70’s gets pretty pathetic(with a rare gem every now and then.) And of course most of them I did get to see while regreting the fact that the Music Hall was stuck with such mediocrity to show on its screen(like watching paint dry as they say.)
Well either the Hall couldn’t get anything else because of studio execs or the people choosing the films had pretty horrendous taste. I remember when Wanda Hale was lamenting the fact that a mindless gore fest like See No Evil was playing there. They might have well shown Night of the Living Dead which is a better film.
Films the Hall should have shown from this era;
The Boy Friend
The Way We Were
Prisoner of Second Avenue
Murder on the Orient Express
The Poseiden Adventure
That’s Entertainment 1 and 2
Funny Lady
Lost Horizon(yes, a seriously bad movie but it would have packed the place)
I’m sure there are others I have left out. But PG product was plentiful during this era and every time I saw the ad for the next Music Hall film my heart would sink.
Jim-In terms of the Roxy being immortalized how can you not include Frank Loesser’s wonderful opening for the song “Guys and Dolls” which begins “What’s playing at the Roxy? I’ll tell you what’s playing at the Roxy…” where he quite ably rhymes Roxy with Biloxi?
And what’s so funny is the fact that the mini summation sounds like the plot of a movie that might have played at the Roxy.
Also do people know that todays Broadway composer Steven Sondheim speaks with great nostalgia about seeing movies at the Roxy when he was young.
We can only envy him.
Well yes. But think if the city powers that be instead had restored the entire block retaining all the original facades getting sponserships for each individual theater and used some imagination.
Both the Met and the City opera could have used theaters for smaller Mozart and the like. Why does anything play in the Gershwin(Frank Rich called it George and Ira’s boobie prize)or the Minskoff? They’re architectural monstrosities.
This would have maintained an entire historic neighborhood and would have been the jewel in the crown for the city.
The city tore down Penn Station again. Which it never seems tired of doing.
Now they should demolish the plex and restore the Empire. It is a small gem. Gilbert and Sullivan and Offenbach would be perfect there and there is no other theater that size in the city for that kind of operetta. Kind of like the Opera Comique still standing in Paris.
I guess though we have to wait a while before the plexes become white elephants(to me they already are)and start collapsing from their own economic weight. Let’s hope it’s sooner than we think.
Simon much to my chagrin I must agree with you and yes rock(not pop) and rap have eradicated classical culture from society(pace those of you who love rock and rap. Even those of you who love them have to admit that we’ve paid a terribly high price culturally and socially their success. Now don’t get all bent out of shape and be defensive and angry. It’s just the natures of those beasts.)
The Music Hall for all intensive purposes is a white elephant. Just think that it was used for the Kerry camapign and it is about to house basketball games! And by that I mean you don’t need the Music Hall’s resources for much of anything that goes on there now.
There was a large middle class audience that enjoyed a classical ballet and classical overture along with the Rockettes and acrobats and didn’t find it laughable or tedious.
But our society and culture have coarsened and been polarized 10 times over from when The Odd Couple played there in ‘68. The hit movies of that year were in addition to that film 2001, Lion in Winter and Funny Girl. Today they are Passion of the Christ, Farenheit 9/11, and Spiderman. Read it and weep.
Go Warren you said it like it is. As I’ve said many a time but never enough I remember when this was literally a hole in the ground in ‘68 and it’s always remained one. Now lets hope that Toys R Us goes bust and we can rebuild the great Criterion.(by the way it used to get the second runs after the Astor Plaza because the idiots that be never gave it the first runs. Superman looked so good on that screen.) New York is not the same without you Criterion.
Gerald, thank you for correcting the spelling of Riefenstahl.
However the film is being sold and labeled in papers and magazines as a documentary. And as many people have pointed out Moore’s harangue is the flip side of Mel’s catholic fundamentalist gay(Caravaggio anyone?) S and M fantasy. Moore just as much as Mel wants this to be a black and white world and my concerns relate to the chords which they are striking in millions of people in this ever more frightened world.
Hussein and his family were monters and our Democratic Kerry voted for the war. He his also being funded by his wife’s Republican millions.
I am no Bush advocate by any stretch of the imagination. I just wish our filmmakers had more imagination and were able to create popular films which would reach a wide audience that could encompass all these staggering contradictions in a dramatic and entertaining way.
Above I said “perceived” as anti-American. And let’s face it many of the quote, unquote filmmaking and Hollywood liberals are just as high handed, elitest, and arrogant(read this as anti-American) as the staunchest Rebulicans. This is what so many Americans understand and this is why Bush will win again. It is called the spite vote and God help us all.
Basta cosi.
Could it be that the manager of the Polk has a sense of proportion and refuses to exhibit a highly aggressive political rant by a self consumed monster ego. Now I’m not saying that Bush doesn’t deserve every kick in the butt we can give him(and Kerry too!) but to make what you call a documentary so biased, shrill, and distorted(anything perceived as slightly anti American automatically wins the palme d'or at Cannes, it’s a slam dunk) seems to me your gunning for the Leni Reifenstal prize in cinematic misrepresentation.
Bravo for the Polk.
To close the theater how about a festival of movies from the grammatically challenged Spike Lee?
Vito, I can’t I just can’t.It would take me years to get the image out of my head, if ever.
Maybe if they have a swimming competition using a pool on stage which they can then use for the old Eleanor Holmes number.
Hey guys lay off Warren!
Vito, when are we getting those 1st Mezz, 1st row center tickets to the basketball games at the Music Hall? Spike Lee wants to come too! And we all know what a great filmmaker he is and what a great contribution he’s made to american culture.
I urge everyone to write the Ziegfeld and request that they show a 70mm print of My Fair Lady to celebrate it’s 40th anniversary in October.
Also request that they hold a Todd AO 50th Anniversary festival next year kicking it off with a Todd AO print of Sound of Music to celebrate its 40th birthday.
I hope that Robert Wise is already preparing prints for this milestone.
No Sing-a-alongs please though I went to the finale night of this at the Ziegfeld and it was one of the best cinema experieces. It was demented and people behaved as if they were at an absolutely electrifying rock concert. Except of course during the wedding when the entire audience stood in respectful silence as Maria walked down the aisle.
Do you think Impossible Years(yes pretty awful and I have a taste for mindless 60’s comedies) was worse than No No Nanette which didn’t even make it to New Years or Balalaika?
And yes Lanza was an ideal RCMH star.
Any other nominees for worst holiday films? (The 70’s dont'count.)
Father of the Bride makes sense for the Music Hall but The Next Voice You Hear?!(You can read about it in the current Vanity Fair with the Reagans on the cover.) This was obviously a favor to Dory Schary.
Annie would have been great at the Hall. And Meet Me in St Louis would have been a much better choice than National Velvet and what about them playing a Date with Judy instead of Easter Parade?
And what was it with the lousy Green Mansions as the ‘59 Easter show?
And then the violent, brutal, action World War 2 film Operation Crossbow as the 65 Easter show?
Even Charade was a pretty dark and violent film for a Christmas show.
I believe you left out Porgy and Bess, Camelot, and Finians Rainbow.
You listed South Pacific in ‘78 which was a week revival. There were other films presented here in 70mm in revival at this time that did not open originally at this theater including My Fair Lady, Paint Your Wagon, Hello Dolly, and Oklahoma. Seeing them here on the cinerama screen was a revelation. Those films will never be seen that way in NY again. And I may be one of three people who considers it a loss.
I believe according to Pauline Kael it was booked for the Hall but then Hearst put pressure on the Rockefellers to pull it.
Another great movie that the Hall was planning to show was Streetcar Named Desire which was pulled when the Catholic church was considering giving the film a C rating.
Occasionally the Hall had name talent but this was pretty rare.
Annette Funicello appeared on stage with the film Pollyana.
The only hope for the Music Hall would for the city and various sponsers to take over. It needs to be treated and maintained as a city landmark as much as Grants Tomb or Central Park. It needs to be managed by people who appreciate its history and resources. I believe the last year the Hall showed a profit was ‘55. After that I imagine it was propped up by the Rockefellers.
But this is a city that will spend a fortune of the taxpayers money on a sports stadium in Manhattan something that they wouldn’t even do in the beginning of the last century when the city was a fraction of its current density. This will cause us great security risks , congestion, and financial burdens while its very rich sponsers become even richer.
So I guess we won’t be seeing football games at the Music Hall but how about a golf range?
The very last hard ticket film as far as I know was Little Dorrit(I don’t remember the year) at the 57th St playhouse
The reserved seat box office windows at the State 1 and 2 and the Criterion remained closed from their last reserved seat films in ‘70 and '72 respectively until they were torn down . The reserved seat box office for the Rivoli was often used as the main box office after La Mancha closed there. You would see behind the ticket seller all the small cubby holes that used to hold advance tickets.
So Paint Your Wagon Was already gone by early February of '70. Only 3 months! Probably the last reserved seat movie I liked(though I didn’t see it until it played the Warner in '78.)
Strange but true. For some reason, which none of us alive now will ever know, someone in the Hall in ‘59 thought a fitting accompaniment to “The Nun’s Story” would be the destruction and devastation of Nome. So they burned the place 4 times a day. Now I wasn’t there so I can’t confirm any of this but I believe they threw in an earthquake as well.
Erwin
How lucky you were you got to see a Cagney, Day Cinemascope film at the Hall along with the Bolero. You might envy those who were there opening night(I wish I had been there too though from all accounts it was a very long, tedious vaudeville show, kind of like the current xmas show( midgets too!)
But I have to say I also envy those who were going there on a regular basis in the 50’s and 60’s. All those wonderful movies(and the Bolero, Undersea Ballet, Serenade to the Stars, the burning of Nome, Alaska…)
Darling Lili was the last time the Florence Rogge Bolero was done at the Hall. I kept hoping to see it at some point during the early ‘70s as I had missed it that summer of '70. They never did it again and then decided in the bizarre thinking that has continued to plague the Hall ever since to stage Bolero in a summer show called Encore but with completely new sets, costumes and choreography by Geoffrey Holder. I didn’t bother to go because I knew it would be a travesty and I ask for the millionth time can somebody tell me why they don’t do Leonidoff’s wonderful Nativity anymore which would open the stage show and then lead into the secular part allowing for a grand Christmas finale? Which of course they wouldn’t do now because the clowns who run the place(yes you are)have no sense of showmanship.
Maybe they’ll use the place this autumn for football games?
Vito, If you went back in time to Christmas ‘54 I’m afraid you would have blown it. You would have seen Deep in my Heart with Jose Ferrar.
I hope that you would not have been too bummed and you got a second chance to go back to Thanksgiving '54. Then you would have see it.
The Nov/Dec Christmas show only started in '70 when the Thanksgiving show that year was such a bomb(Wilders cut to shreds “Private Life of Sherlock Holmes”) they had to pull it and open the Christmas show early. They never had a Thanksgiving movie again.
I thought Charlie Brown was pretty awful as well(They should have had the O'Toole Goodbye Mr Chips for the Christmas Show)but it was probably one of the most successful films to ever play the Hall. The stage show for it however was the best I ever saw there.
Ron-Thanks for the great work but now I’m reminded of all the great films that I would have loved to see at the Hall but couldn’t because I was too young. As you can see the list in the 70’s gets pretty pathetic(with a rare gem every now and then.) And of course most of them I did get to see while regreting the fact that the Music Hall was stuck with such mediocrity to show on its screen(like watching paint dry as they say.)
Well either the Hall couldn’t get anything else because of studio execs or the people choosing the films had pretty horrendous taste. I remember when Wanda Hale was lamenting the fact that a mindless gore fest like See No Evil was playing there. They might have well shown Night of the Living Dead which is a better film.
Films the Hall should have shown from this era;
The Boy Friend
The Way We Were
Prisoner of Second Avenue
Murder on the Orient Express
The Poseiden Adventure
That’s Entertainment 1 and 2
Funny Lady
Lost Horizon(yes, a seriously bad movie but it would have packed the place)
I’m sure there are others I have left out. But PG product was plentiful during this era and every time I saw the ad for the next Music Hall film my heart would sink.
Jim-In terms of the Roxy being immortalized how can you not include Frank Loesser’s wonderful opening for the song “Guys and Dolls” which begins “What’s playing at the Roxy? I’ll tell you what’s playing at the Roxy…” where he quite ably rhymes Roxy with Biloxi?
And what’s so funny is the fact that the mini summation sounds like the plot of a movie that might have played at the Roxy.
Also do people know that todays Broadway composer Steven Sondheim speaks with great nostalgia about seeing movies at the Roxy when he was young.
We can only envy him.
Well yes. But think if the city powers that be instead had restored the entire block retaining all the original facades getting sponserships for each individual theater and used some imagination.
Both the Met and the City opera could have used theaters for smaller Mozart and the like. Why does anything play in the Gershwin(Frank Rich called it George and Ira’s boobie prize)or the Minskoff? They’re architectural monstrosities.
This would have maintained an entire historic neighborhood and would have been the jewel in the crown for the city.
The city tore down Penn Station again. Which it never seems tired of doing.
The Victoria was originally the Gaiety which lives on today as the Gaiety male burlesque house(I am not making this up) across the street.
I was there when the plex first opened and the auditorium was intact being used as the lobby. Am I mistaken or have the destroyed that as well?
Now they should demolish the plex and restore the Empire. It is a small gem. Gilbert and Sullivan and Offenbach would be perfect there and there is no other theater that size in the city for that kind of operetta. Kind of like the Opera Comique still standing in Paris.
I guess though we have to wait a while before the plexes become white elephants(to me they already are)and start collapsing from their own economic weight. Let’s hope it’s sooner than we think.
Simon much to my chagrin I must agree with you and yes rock(not pop) and rap have eradicated classical culture from society(pace those of you who love rock and rap. Even those of you who love them have to admit that we’ve paid a terribly high price culturally and socially their success. Now don’t get all bent out of shape and be defensive and angry. It’s just the natures of those beasts.)
The Music Hall for all intensive purposes is a white elephant. Just think that it was used for the Kerry camapign and it is about to house basketball games! And by that I mean you don’t need the Music Hall’s resources for much of anything that goes on there now.
There was a large middle class audience that enjoyed a classical ballet and classical overture along with the Rockettes and acrobats and didn’t find it laughable or tedious.
But our society and culture have coarsened and been polarized 10 times over from when The Odd Couple played there in ‘68. The hit movies of that year were in addition to that film 2001, Lion in Winter and Funny Girl. Today they are Passion of the Christ, Farenheit 9/11, and Spiderman. Read it and weep.