I haven’t seen the movie since I saw it on the dimension 150 screen at the Rivoli. It seems pointless. However for some reason I have the 4K. it was one of my great Cinema experiences. Unhappily the Capital was torn down before I even knew it existed. Maybe it was just as well. I bet that in back of all the walling for the smaller Cinerama auditorium there was still all the original decoration of the auditorium and the stage and all the stage rigging and equipment and dressing rooms. A time capsule of when the theater was built in the teens. This is when all the great buildings were being torn down in midtown leading to its miserable days in the 70s and 80s and even worse days today.
The actual Easter film was Mr. Billion(I think that was the name.) It’s receipts were so abysmal the Hall quickly replaced it with this. I saw this and I don’t remember a thing about it.
I believe FF still shows film classics however the once ubiquitous double features are a thing of the long ago past. Between the cost of traveling there and the cost of a ticket for one movie I gave up when I was once an avid member.
That Cinerama(though as I said actually 70MM) screen would have been so great for their presentations of films like Spartacus, My Fair Lady, Lawrence and other 70MM films. I guess I’m the last person alive who saw This is Cinerama there. Nobody else has remarked on it for quite a while. It is exactly 50 years ago and I was pretty young but old enough to have been knocked out by it. The film itself not so much as it wasn’t true Cinerama and the print was poor.
It was hardly wall to wall. 50ft was small for a theater that size. I always found it a disappointment. I was used to the Rivoli(when they used the D150 screen) and Warner Cinerama which had truly large immersive screens. But the screen installed for the Cinerama presentation was spectacular. Though no curtain. I guess size is subjective.
As per CC’s recently posted ad it was just a 70 MM film. Not Cinerama. But the Ziegfeld finally got a screen that fit the theater rather than their usual shoebox sized screen for such a large place. Unfortunately they got rid of it. But to see their other 70 MM films presented on it would have been amazing. Like the Times Square road show houses of old.
The US release is better. The Italian release is much too long and the US release ends with the stunning segment with Silvana Mangano. The Italian ends with a painfully unfunny segment about the Bronx cheer totally killing the great final image of the US version.
Sadly the original negative was destroyed in a fire in the late 70s. If you were lucky enough to see the film at the Music Hall in ‘75 it looked so dazzling like it was printed from that negative.
The recently released 4k is worth having if you’re a big fan of the film. It’s very good.
It’s strange that in Montclair which was the roadshow center of North Jersey neither the Bellevue nor the Clairidge which had played the big roadshow hits up until that point neither played Oliver or Funny Girl two of the last big roadshow hits. Maybe not even Zhivago.
Maybe not a cinema treasure? It most definitely was during its brief period as a single screen theater. Very elegant with a large screen and spacious auditorium nicely designed. As soon as it was spit in half it felt like a dump. Small screens that you had to look at at an angle. Too sad. 70MM here would have been a joke. Totally pointless. Even as a single screen it never showed a genuine 70mm film at all as far as I know. Had it been built sooner it would have been a great hard ticket house. Even in the second half of the 60s it could have shown reserved seat films. NJ suburbanites wouldn’t have had to drive up to NY State to see films like Zhivago, Lion in Winter, Oliver and Funny Girl. Strangely they didn’t play in Bellevue, North Jersey’s big reserved seat center.
Yes 100k in ‘70 was pretty disastrous for such a large operation as the Hall’s. 145k was a very poor opening week. And as the Christmas show was already in rehearsal at the end of Oct and it used sets from previous shows especially The Nativity(what a loss that is! The Leonidoff pageant was a beauty) it would not have been difficult to get it in place in three weeks of rehearsal. Just from the first week’s poor showing the Music Hall audience had no interest in the film. If only the Music Hall had chosen one of Mel Brooks’ very best films The Twelve Chairs. A family friendly film perfect for the Music Hall audiences. Scrooge was a big success opening week and as previously the Christmas season didn’t start until early December it was shortly after
that I noticed the season started earlier and earlier. Now it was acceptable to start making money off of Christmas mid Nov when before it would have been considered absurdly early. Manhattan merchants would have noticed this. And from there…
TNYT OCT 30 ‘70 Vincent Canby The real subject of the film, however, is one much closer to Mr. Wilder’s other movie fantasies (“Some Like It Hot,” “Kiss Me Stupid”). That is, sex. To put it bluntly, and profanely, were Holmes and Dr. Watson—Holmes’s biographer, his most earnest admirer and the sharer of his secrets and of his flat— lovers? I suspect that only Billy Wilder would have the nerve to raise such a question, and then to dispatch it in a movie that is gentle enough to become the Thanksgiving holiday attraction at the Music Hall.
TNYT NOV 20 ‘70 Vincent Canby “Scrooge” opened yesterday at the Radio City Music Hall as the Christmas attraction, approximately five weeks early. The last “A Christmas Carol” to play the Hall, a version produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1938, was unveiled three days before Christmas. When the next version opens—I estimate in 2001—it may be on the Fourth of July.
One of the Music Hall’s stranger choices for a Christmas film. Up there with Sayonara. I guess the star power of the leads made them major film events worthy of a holiday booking.
bigjoe as I have no interest in most of the box I bought the Oliver 4k on ebay. I’ve read no complaints from others about the tuba sound(I’ll have to watch it. Was saving it for Christmas. It opened at Christmas in ‘68 and I saw it a year later at Christmas when it came to the suburbs. So it’s a Christmas movie to me.) and I wonder why they couldn’t have used music from the overture or entr'acte as all films do for their menu.
I haven’t seen the movie since I saw it on the dimension 150 screen at the Rivoli. It seems pointless. However for some reason I have the 4K. it was one of my great Cinema experiences. Unhappily the Capital was torn down before I even knew it existed. Maybe it was just as well. I bet that in back of all the walling for the smaller Cinerama auditorium there was still all the original decoration of the auditorium and the stage and all the stage rigging and equipment and dressing rooms. A time capsule of when the theater was built in the teens. This is when all the great buildings were being torn down in midtown leading to its miserable days in the 70s and 80s and even worse days today.
The actual Easter film was Mr. Billion(I think that was the name.) It’s receipts were so abysmal the Hall quickly replaced it with this. I saw this and I don’t remember a thing about it.
Just watched this on you tube. As good a movie as I remember it being when I saw it as a boy.
From the timings it looks like it’s fairly cut. I’ve got to check my recordings.
A very very different NY.
I believe FF still shows film classics however the once ubiquitous double features are a thing of the long ago past. Between the cost of traveling there and the cost of a ticket for one movie I gave up when I was once an avid member.
That Cinerama(though as I said actually 70MM) screen would have been so great for their presentations of films like Spartacus, My Fair Lady, Lawrence and other 70MM films. I guess I’m the last person alive who saw This is Cinerama there. Nobody else has remarked on it for quite a while. It is exactly 50 years ago and I was pretty young but old enough to have been knocked out by it. The film itself not so much as it wasn’t true Cinerama and the print was poor.
It was hardly wall to wall. 50ft was small for a theater that size. I always found it a disappointment. I was used to the Rivoli(when they used the D150 screen) and Warner Cinerama which had truly large immersive screens. But the screen installed for the Cinerama presentation was spectacular. Though no curtain. I guess size is subjective.
As per CC’s recently posted ad it was just a 70 MM film. Not Cinerama. But the Ziegfeld finally got a screen that fit the theater rather than their usual shoebox sized screen for such a large place. Unfortunately they got rid of it. But to see their other 70 MM films presented on it would have been amazing. Like the Times Square road show houses of old.
The US release is better. The Italian release is much too long and the US release ends with the stunning segment with Silvana Mangano. The Italian ends with a painfully unfunny segment about the Bronx cheer totally killing the great final image of the US version.
Ryan’s Daughter should have gotten a Rivoli or Criterion opening. It deserved roadshow grandeur. Not east side kitsch.
Sadly the original negative was destroyed in a fire in the late 70s. If you were lucky enough to see the film at the Music Hall in ‘75 it looked so dazzling like it was printed from that negative. The recently released 4k is worth having if you’re a big fan of the film. It’s very good.
Since when is a multi-plex a treasure? As once was famously said in another context it should be a buried treasure.
Didn’t know this opened at Loew’s State. Thought it was probably the Criterion.
It’s strange that in Montclair which was the roadshow center of North Jersey neither the Bellevue nor the Clairidge which had played the big roadshow hits up until that point neither played Oliver or Funny Girl two of the last big roadshow hits. Maybe not even Zhivago.
It’s not Loew’s State or the Palace.
Interesting considering The Blue Max wasn’t even roadshowed in New York.
Maybe not a cinema treasure? It most definitely was during its brief period as a single screen theater. Very elegant with a large screen and spacious auditorium nicely designed. As soon as it was spit in half it felt like a dump. Small screens that you had to look at at an angle. Too sad. 70MM here would have been a joke. Totally pointless. Even as a single screen it never showed a genuine 70mm film at all as far as I know. Had it been built sooner it would have been a great hard ticket house. Even in the second half of the 60s it could have shown reserved seat films. NJ suburbanites wouldn’t have had to drive up to NY State to see films like Zhivago, Lion in Winter, Oliver and Funny Girl. Strangely they didn’t play in Bellevue, North Jersey’s big reserved seat center.
Yes 100k in ‘70 was pretty disastrous for such a large operation as the Hall’s. 145k was a very poor opening week. And as the Christmas show was already in rehearsal at the end of Oct and it used sets from previous shows especially The Nativity(what a loss that is! The Leonidoff pageant was a beauty) it would not have been difficult to get it in place in three weeks of rehearsal. Just from the first week’s poor showing the Music Hall audience had no interest in the film. If only the Music Hall had chosen one of Mel Brooks’ very best films The Twelve Chairs. A family friendly film perfect for the Music Hall audiences. Scrooge was a big success opening week and as previously the Christmas season didn’t start until early December it was shortly after that I noticed the season started earlier and earlier. Now it was acceptable to start making money off of Christmas mid Nov when before it would have been considered absurdly early. Manhattan merchants would have noticed this. And from there…
TNYT OCT 30 ‘70 Vincent Canby The real subject of the film, however, is one much closer to Mr. Wilder’s other movie fantasies (“Some Like It Hot,” “Kiss Me Stupid”). That is, sex. To put it bluntly, and profanely, were Holmes and Dr. Watson—Holmes’s biographer, his most earnest admirer and the sharer of his secrets and of his flat— lovers? I suspect that only Billy Wilder would have the nerve to raise such a question, and then to dispatch it in a movie that is gentle enough to become the Thanksgiving holiday attraction at the Music Hall.
TNYT NOV 20 ‘70 Vincent Canby “Scrooge” opened yesterday at the Radio City Music Hall as the Christmas attraction, approximately five weeks early. The last “A Christmas Carol” to play the Hall, a version produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1938, was unveiled three days before Christmas. When the next version opens—I estimate in 2001—it may be on the Fourth of July.
Two very popular Music Hall stars in one movie.
OK here’s the question. What did they cut in The Owl to make it PG?
What happened to Radio City?
Boy look at all that junk.
One of the Music Hall’s stranger choices for a Christmas film. Up there with Sayonara. I guess the star power of the leads made them major film events worthy of a holiday booking.
bigjoe as I have no interest in most of the box I bought the Oliver 4k on ebay. I’ve read no complaints from others about the tuba sound(I’ll have to watch it. Was saving it for Christmas. It opened at Christmas in ‘68 and I saw it a year later at Christmas when it came to the suburbs. So it’s a Christmas movie to me.) and I wonder why they couldn’t have used music from the overture or entr'acte as all films do for their menu.