Radio City Music Hall

Judging from the size and stature of the audience, the screening probably took place in one of the two screening rooms. Preview A was the larger room used by Radio City for screenings for the cast and crew of the stage shows during their dinner breaks. Preview B the smaller of the rooms (used by RKO as their screening room) was the more comfortable of the rooms with comfy Art Deco chair instead of the fixed theatre seating of the big room. The rooms were across the hall from the small rehearsal hall, and Ben Olevsky who was Head Projectionist at the time remembers the Rockefellers hosting parties having catering and bars set up in the rehearsal hall so guests could adjourn for screenings in the Preview rooms.

Years later we screened clips from Ginger Rogers' films for Ginger
Rogers, who was about to star in one of our Summer Spectaculars in
the small room. It felt like a throwback to the ‘30’s to be screening that material for that person in that Art Deco room.

On January 31 Cheech and Chong come to the Hall…
http://tinyurl.com/8xwurn

Roxy….I’d be curious as to the Sneak Preview of the “Laugh Riot of 1956” (in Cinemascope), I’m thinking The Girl Can’t Help It with Mansfield.

Greetings Again:

Time tables of the shows were made up in the projection booth and at the stage managers station, as I and other assistant managers from the front of the house would have to make a quick pick up tour around the theater at the start of the last feature and get them to the senior manager at the front of the house so he could put his end of day report together once he got the box office figures.

Greetings:

Keeping shows on time was very serious as a few minutes over a certain number of hours at the end of the day would cost the Hall a good deal of overtime funds for a large number of staff (Union) still working at that hour. Periodically if necessary, organ intermissions would be shortened during the evening at 6PM 7PM 9PM and going into the last feature to keep the show on time. As one of the former assistant managers at the front of the house we were informed by the senior manager when he planned to do this, so we could give our staffs and patrons proper time information during the evening hours.

Copied from the Embassy 1-2-3 page, with a question for REndres if he’s here:

In the movie clock for Radio City Music Hall on that 11/20 ad, “The Sandpiper” was listed as going on at 3:57 … 9:53 … right to the minute. I wonder if the Music Hall really got their shows off on time like that – they probably took great pride in it. I guess REndres would be able to answer that.

None of the other theaters in the movie clock had such exact time listings.

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Just think a Christmas show that opens on Dec 21st!

That list of his is a shambles and so unfortunately is the rest of that book.
A great opportunity lost.
Considering your vast knowledge of the place Warren didn’t even a cursory look make your jaw drop?
Too bad the Hall doesn’t seem to want it’s history documented.
All that great info rotting away in archives.
What a coffe table book it would make!

ziggy: Thanks for the Christmas wishes.
The newsreel footage that was lost was of the opening of the “RKO Roxy”. The Chief Operating Officer of the Hall had a business relationship with Technicolor, and recommended I take the footage to them. I walked into the head of the lab’s office with the film in a can, and he pulled the blinds on his office window closed, put out his cigar, and opened the can. He took one look and said, “Get it out of here!” I asked if anything could be done, and he repeated, “Get it out of here!” I picked the can up and put it under my arm to leave, and he said, “No. Put it under the other arm. That way if if blows up on the way back, it’ll only take out a lung and not your heart.” Needless to say, I took the can back to the Hall held out at arm’s length!

Ziggy: Since I’ve been out of the Hall for a decade now, the decision is no longer mine. Actually, they had formed an Archive in 1979, prior to which I tried to deal with the film library.

A lot of the film was from travelogues which Leon clipped scenes from and used in the stage shows. We also had a lot of historical footage of the Rockettes and the opening of the Hall from newsreels and the “March of Time”. While, as I mentioned above, I was able to get much of the RKO newsreel footage to the Museum of Modern Art, some of it was nitrate and lost to age (I was particularly upset to find a reel of the opening of the Center Theatre had started to bubble and couldn’t be saved, since there was very little documentation on the Center.)

Another complication was the rights to the footage. The Sherman Grinberg stock footage library bought out the RKO newsreel library, so we couldn’t use the footage we had without an agreement from them. It became easier to just contract them to supply the footage rather than deal with material we had.

I’m not sure what happened to Leon’s footage, since it was just one case of 16mm four minute reels. It did come back from the L.A. transfer, so presumeably it’s still in the Music Hall Archives. They now have a full time archivist to tend the material, and since it still turns up on specials such as the recent Music Hall history on the MSG channel, I presume it’s being cared for.

Oh and ‘62 was Jumbo.

paljoey: The only film we had of the stage shows was taken by Leon Leonidoff with his 16mm camera. He wrote to me after he left asking if I could return it, but I didn’t know what he was asking about. After his death I found a case containing the footage buried in with hundreds of reels of 35mm film I always felt badly about not being able to return it to him.

When we were doing the 50th Anniversary Show, a producer on the West Coast asked for footage to incorporate into intersticial montage sequences than ran on a scrim between numbers. I sent Leon’s footage along with our prints of RKO newsreel footage about the theatre to them with the admonition that they reassemble what they used. Unfortunately, the footage all came back in short sections which we never had a chance to reassemble even if we could figure out what went where.

In reality, Leon’s footage (which did include clips from “Bolero” as well as “Rhapsody”) wasn’t very complete. 16mm rolls for non-professional use only lasted about 4 minutes so only the highlights of a number were seen (some photographed from the electric bridges at the sides of the stage).

We did give the nitrate RKO newsreel footage to the Museum of Modern Art, which is how we got the copies we used in our shows. The rest of the materials went to the Music Hall Archive which is now off-site, so we’re not sure how much is still in existence (there was a plan at one point to send it to Bonded in N.J. for proper storage in a film vault.) And yes — one of the most interesting parts of the job when we were there was working with the production people to edit footage for the stage shows and then integrate the projection into the set pieces. I must confess I’m a little envious about the freedom the producers now have with video projection and wall capability to expand the range of effects. Even the Metropolitan Opera is now using digital video to expand the artistic capability of its producers and scenic designers.

Anybody seen the Pulham movie? Does it ever show up on TCM?
Seems a very bizarre choice for a holiday show even if it’s good. Why is it unheard of?

REndress is any of that film of stage shows from the sixties and before? Or is all of that gone for good? Would love to have movies of the big set pieces available to experience as much as possible the holiday shows and Bolero, Court of Jewels and Serenade to the Stars etc. We don’t even have good color photos!
And wasn’t there a Voyage of the Vikings?
What fun it must have been devising this stuff. And even more fun to see it. And then stay and see it again!