Ziegfeld Theatre
141 W. 54th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
141 W. 54th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
131 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1,126 - 1,150 of 4,511 comments
I love this theatre. HOWEVER, I saw Sound of Music there last night. They advertised a new print. Not so. The sound was great, but the print was scratched and faded. Not terrible, but kind of disappointing. And no curtain, alas.
Simon,the nitrate era Jeff and wrote about used silver screens
now-a-days they are necessary today with the 3-D craze
A “silver screen” is brighter than a matte screen, as long as you’re sitting in the reflection cone. If you’re out side the cone (side seats for instance) your image may look dimer. A silver screen is a reflective screen with a positive gain (a matte screen is 1.0, or 1.1 at best) so the image is brighter.
Vito… The screen for normal pictures is white, NOT silver, as millions of us keep on saying in a dreamy way.
Silver is for the 3D process and not as bright as the white screen reflection.
The Sound of Music is coming to the Ziegfeld in time for Christmas. Are there any more classics on the horizon?
Jeff,What you wrote about the quality of the nitrate image is so true; nothing we have today compares to that B&W image projected on a silver screen with a carbon arc light source. Of course we also had brilliant three strip Technicolor which has also never been duplicated.
Vito:
Correct, “taken seriously”. Precautions. Proper handling.
Whenever you read an article today about nitrate, it’s given the impression it’s like nitro-glycerin and will explode if you look at it wrong.
I have some nitrate in my collection, and my Simplex projector was designed to run nitrate and has all the safety devices: magazines, fire rollers, fire shutter. Plus some extra measures I added, such as electronic sensors to detect breakage and electrically operated lamp house douser to cut the light off immediately. I’ve also tested my machine to see how long it takes to ignite film in the gate “just in case” it every happened (about 8-10 seconds). On the occasions I run nitrate, I treat it with kit gloves and work slowly.
I check the film on regular intervals to make sure it’s still in viable condition. I typically do a “dark” run of the film ahead of time to make sure it’s running properly. Splices have been checked and mended/taped if necessary.
There is one last thing, the stuff looks wonderful on the screen! The image quality is outstanding.
I wanted to add a comment on what Jeff wrote regarding Nitrate stock. It was dangerous stuff but as he wrote controllable. Projectionists attended safety classes which included fire training. The booth was unlike today’s we had metal film containers called magazines at top and bottom of the projector to hold the film, there were also safety rollers at the bottom (feed) of the upper magazine and top of the bottom (take up) which the film had to pas thru before entering the projector. In early years the projector was modified to accommodate several fire extinguishers with nozzles aimed at the film gate. The extinguishers automatically trigger if a piece of flammable fabric placed near the gate starts to burn. In the event of a fire the fire rollers and metal magazines would prevent a fire from spreading to the spools of film and igniting them. In addition there were fire shutters attached by a chain to the porthole windows, in the event of a fire the projectionist would pull a cord located at the exit which would release the shutters closing the ports and prevent the fire from spreading into the theatre. There was also a safety link attached between the chain and the shutter which when hot would melt and cause the shutter to fall. The feature was stored in a heavy metal vault which looked like a huge safe (some of those still exist today) when the reels were not in the projector magazine they had to be stored in those vaults. Fire marshals visited the booth often and any projectionist or theatre owner not following fire safety to the letter were fined.
Yes my friends the dangers of nitrate were taken very seriously.
I know this might not be the right thread…but since many here are interested in West Side Story, here is the link to the restoration at The Egyptian in Hollywood last month.
http://cinematreasures.org/news/25119_0_1_0_C/
It was a blast…my review of the evening is in the comments.
Thanks for posting the article, Vito. A sad one, to be sure.
A little off-topic, but I hope everyone is watching “Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood” on TCM. Tonight at 10 PM: the 1950’s, when the moguls who created Hollywood start dying off one by one. Another sad story. The final episode airs next week.
The only part of that story that is a little over exaggerated is the part about the nitrate. It seems that whenever the press writes something about nitrate film, they act as if it’s as dangerous as exposed plutonium and the world would have ended had we not stopped using it! Sure it’s dangerous, but not like they write. It’s like handling gasoline. Flammable yes, but safe when properly handled.
I wanted to share this article on projectionists. I found the part about working the porno house rather amusing.
The occupation is disapearing fast which is rather sad.
http://www.slate.com/id/2266654
The A7 speaker was a workhorse during that era, but it is a bad speaker to todays film standards.
RobertR posted the same ad here in August 2005:
View link
All right, Vito! Between the two of us, we’ll get West Side Story in 70mm up there on the Ziegfeld screen, even if it’s just an imaginary show. Better than nothing …
I have an old newspaper ad for a revival of “2001” at the Ziegfeld that actually describes the speakers they were using back in 1970. I’ll have to track that down and post it. Maybe I already did? I will look.
OK Bill, call me I’ll bring my tools.
I hope the speakers are on wheels
Thanks Vito. Maybe it wouldn’t be practical for the original speakers to be used for a 70mm showing of West Side Story but, like you said, anything is possible. I’d even help them hook up the speakers if they’d let me!
Hopefully the Ziegfeld will have 4k projectors by then as many Clearviews will get 4k to replace 2k projection. Most of them are Barcos using DLP technology.
I missed there in Ashville. It was being shown in digital projection(35mm) at all three theaters that had it. I was in Europe and missed it to my disappoitment.
I missed there in Ashville. It was being shown in digital projection(35mm) at all three theaters that had it. I was in Europe and missed it to my disappoitment.
I missed there in Ashville. It was being shown in digital projection(35mm) at all three theaters that had it. I was in Europe and missed it to my disappoitment.
I misse di there in Ashville. It was being shown in digital projection at all three theaters that had it. I was in Euope and missed it to my disappoitment.
I have seen the Sound of Music more times then I can remember, in both 70mm and 35mm. The Fathom Events showing, as much as I hate to admit it, was brilliant. I was told during intermission it was an actual drive of the movie, not a satellite feed as Fathom normally does. They ran the movie from their Sony 4k’s and it was great. One of the best showings I have ever seen of it. Once they adjusted the volume, it was too low, it was great. The resolution was wonderful, I saw things I never noticed before. Whoever did the restoration really did a great job.
American Cinematheque is showing it in 35mm here next weekend…might catch it again.
Would give just about anything to see Sound of Music at the Zigfeld!
Bill I know WSS is one of your all time favorites and I am sure you are salivating over the thought of a 50th anniversary showing to come. As to the original 6 tracks I believe, as someone already mentioned here, he picture is unlikely to be shown that way at the Ziegfeld. I am thinking they removed the regular stage speakers for left/right center and replaced them with sub woofers. If they were to acquire a 6 track print with the original recording they would have to replace the subwoofers. As I recall, and someone please correct me if I am mistaken, Back when 70mm first arrived Mike Todd felt that the huge (in those days ) screen would have a dead spot between the left/right and center speakers so the six tracks were born to correct that problem. Of course, today’s image sizes do not compare with what we had with Oklahoma, for example, so the need for left/right center speakers is no longer an issue, plus the addition of the fifth track used for mono boom sub woofer, and the sixth track used for stereo surrounds added a nice touch. What a magnificent idea for the Ziegfeld to put the original speakers back for a proper 70mm WSS showing, perhaps they are still back there somewhere collecting dust. I wish that for you my friend
Their presentation is shoddy since they use 2k projectors much like what Rockaway does since they got 4k projectors. It’s less HD and more like DVD quality presentation. Fathom is best known for bringing the Met to movie theatres and reinvigorating worldwide popularity of opera.