The David Loth book, “The City Within a City,” also has lots of interesting info about the Music Hall.
One of Loth’s most informative interviewees when he did the research for the book seems to be G.S. Eyssell who ultimately became president of Rockefeller Center, but started out with Rockefeller Center in the Radio City Music Hall organization. So there is lots of info in the book about the business of running the Music Hall (the problem of finding movies for it, etc.), especially during its tumultuous early days.
For example on pg. 85 he says that “The president of RKO … had talked to Eyssell reservedly about the Music Hall’s problems only a few days after the debut. A few days later, he invited Eyssel to work out of his office at RKO as a troubleshooter, and the first trouble to be shot was finding pictures for the Music Hall.”
He also mentions (pg. 78) that after RKO went bankrupt (about a month after the Music Hall and the Center Theater opened), the leases on Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater were “automatically terminated. Claims for damages as a result of this liquidation went in and out of court for the next seven years before a complicated settlement was finally reached in 1939.”
Some interesting tidbits:
Loth claims (pg. 127) that about twenty pounds of chewing gum a day, on average, was removed by hand from underneath the Music Hall’s seats!
The Music Hall was closed for five days early in 1965 for a thorough cleaning (pg. 158). (Maybe this is when that very laudatory article about the Music Hall, that I read in Reader’s Digest, came out?)
Chapter XIII of Carol Krinsky’s book, “Rockefeller Center” has very detailed info and lots of great pictures about the history and development of both Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater.
The portion of the chapter dealing with the Radio City Music Hall, pgs. 164 to 187, has two photos of the early clay models that were used to judge various proposed designs for the interior of the auditorium. It also has a photos of some early theaters, and drawings of proposed theaters, that may have influenced the ultimate design of the theater (five photos). There are (very small) reproductions of a cross section of the theater and the floor plans for the ground floor and first balcony levels. Plus there are photos of Roxy’s studio/reception room, the grand lobby (one photo looking north; one photo looking south), the basement lounge, the side/back of the auditorium, the men’s smoking room, the women’s powder room that has painted murals, and the women’s powder room that is encircled by mirrors.
Some interesting tidbits from the chapter:
Edward Durell Stone (an architect who later became famous and controversial) was in charge of the designs for both Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater (pg. 180).
Donald Desky won a limited competition to decorate the interiors of both theaters (pg. 183). (If I understand her correctly, because he could not do all the work for both theaters, he apparently subcontracted out the work of the Center Theater to Eugene Schoen who shared a similar interest in contemporary design.)
Krinsky challenges the Roxy story that he conceived of the idea of a radiating sunburst design for the auditorium after seeing a glorious sunrise or sunset while at sea. She says that he did not even embark on the trip in question until six days after the model for such a design had been photographed (pg. 180).
Krinsky says (pg. 180) that shortly before the theater opened, Roxy “entered the auditorium to demonstrate its acoustic properties” and discovered that the sound was unsatisfactory. So, according to Krinsky, “several stretches of auditorium wall had to be moved, and their fabric coverings rewoven in time for the opening night.”
Krinksy claims (pg. 180) that certain publicity photos (like the one shown on page 175) that show the auditorium with a stage show in progress are, in reality, composite photos that show the Rockettes and the performers behind them to be bigger on the stage than they really are (so as to make the stage not seem so far away). (I think as a kid I suspected this.)
The main point of posting about the change from incandescent to florescent was really to alert first-time, post-renovation visitors that, despite the vaunted “restoration” of the Music Hall, there are actually a few changes from the original that have diminished the original effect of the theater’s wonderful architecture.
And while none of these may be big things, a lot of little things (e.g., the heaters, the loudspeakers, the pedestrian fences) do add up to give the visitor a different (and, unfortunately, less impressive, in my opinion) experience when waiting outside, or entering into, the Music Hall.
This was also the reason for pointing out in an earlier post that the grand lounge had been radically re-designed. (I must admit that I’m skeptical that the lounge has been restored to its original grandeur, as one poster seems to feel. I’m not sure, but I think I did visit the grand lounge on my last visit in 2001, and I believe the alterations to the grand lounge had been “prettied up” a bit, but not undone.)
While one certainly doesn’t expect the owners of the Music Hall to jeopardize its financial viability by refusing to cut corners here and there, it’s also kind of interesting to look at, and to note, what corners the owners of a building choose to cut and what corners they choose not to cut — as it ultimately shows the values that are placed on various things.
For instance, I doubt the owners of the Music Hall would replace interior incandescents with florescent. So apparently the marquee incandescents were seen as an expendable part of the Radio City Music Hall “experience.”
Chapter XIII of Carol Krinsky’s book, “Rockefeller Center” has very detailed info and lots of great pictures about the history and development of both Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater.
The portion of the chapter dealing with the Center Theater, pg. 187 to 195, has photos of the early clay models that were used to judge various proposed designs of both the interior of the auditorium (two photos) and the Sixth Ave. marquee (three photos). It also has a picture of the grand foyer, the women’s lounge (two photos) and the men’s lounge (two photos).
On page 195 there is a spectacular picture of the Simon and Schuster offices that were built on the roof: “In 1940 the roof of the theater was rented to Simon & Schuster, publishers, for twenty offices and reception rooms. Harrison & Fouilhoux, Reinhard & Hofmeister designed a one-story building there with a flat slab roof cantilevered over thin piers. Much of the building perimeter was made of 250 feet of plate glass, but the roof overhang of about three or four feet was great enough to shield the interior from the unpleasant effects of summer sun and winter wind. The tenants loved their rooftop perch and the charming views, through glass walls, of planting on the pavement around them. They admitred Edward Durrell Stone’s simply-designed furniture which was finished in carefully-oiled natural tones of wood; such fittings were novel in corporate directors' offices at the time.”
On page 109 there is a picture looking west along 49th St. showing the office building and the ground floor showrooms that replaced the Center Theater.
On pgs. 98 and 99 there are terrific before and after photos that show that the Center Theater before and after the neighboring U.S. Rubber Building was built to the south. So in the “before” photo you see a row of brownstones along Sixth Ave. “hemmed in” by the large blank walls of the ticket lobby “pavilion” (to the north) and the large auditorium (to the east). The “after” photo shows how seamlessly the design of the new U.S. Rubber Building worked with the existing Center Theater — the ticket lobby “pavilion” of the Center Theater looks like a northern wing built to match a southern wing on the northeast corner of 48th St.
In the David Loth book, “The City Within a City,” the endpapers have a map of Rockefeller Center that show the outlines of the Center Theater (where it now says “U.S. Rubber Co. Building Addition”).
I believe the garage that was built in Rockefeller Center is NOT part of the building that replaced the Center Theater, the U.S. Rubber Co. Building Addition, but part of the Eastern Airlines Building to the east, instead. Krinsky describes how the garage came to be (pgs. 96-97): “The building [on the site of the Eastern Airlines Building] was to have a garage located between the office space and the Center Theater, an idea put forward as early as November 1936, taking advantage of a Zoning Resolution amendment of the preceding year which permitted certain parking garage construction in the Midtown retail zone. The garage was built for eight hundred cars, housed on three stories underground and three above. It used space that was hard to sell, and it halped to make visiting the Center easier for those who could not use mass transit.”
Loth (pg. 140-141) also describes how the garage came to be: “[zoning] Negotiations finally won a variance in 1938. Six floors of space above and below ground had been left for a garage in the Eastern Air Lines Building, then under construction as next to last of the original structures planned for the Center … . Here room for seven hundred autombiles was provided early in 1939, an innovation for a New York office building.” (He then goes on to describe how the garage had firemen’s poles so the garage attendant’s could get quickly down to the lower level. There’s also a picture!)
There’s also a great picture of the Center Theater in “New York 1960” by Stern, Mellins and Fishman. This photo (page 1102) looks eastward down 49th St. and shows what appear to be the five frosted and etched in relief(?) large glass windows of the foyer that fronted on 49th St. (These windows seem to be the exteriors of the windows shown on page 190 of Krinsky.)
The Center Theater is also mentioned in the WPA Guide to New York (1939) and gets about 17 lines — compared to only 5 lines for the original Roxy!.
I went by the Music Hall a few weeks ago to take a closer look at the underside of the marquee to figure out what it was that bothered me about the changes made to it during the most recent renvation.
Now that I’ve looked at it more closely, I’m wondering if I remembered correctly when I thought it originally had those “silver bowl” lightbulbs that Jim Rankin so kindly looked into in his December 17 posts. There seems to be mixed evidence about what the underside of the marquee was like:
On the one hand almost all of the recesses (coffers?) in the grid currently have plain reflector tiles (which appear to be metal pans coated with enamel) which give no indication that original light sockets had been filled in. Did the renovators actually reproduce all those pans, but this time without light sockets, for the renovation?
On the other hand, there seem to be about three or four very rusty light bulbs sockets scattered amongst the hundreds of plain coffers in the grid, which would seem to indicate that “silver bowl” lamps were indeed part of the original lighting scheme and that the renovators did indeed replace the old reflector pans.
But then again, at least one of these light sockets was plainly off-center — so maybe these three or four light sockets were just ad hoc additions to the original reflector pans?
The interior ticket lobby has a ceiling scheme that is similiar to — but actually different than — that of the “silver bowl” scheme I thought the marquee had. Maybe I confused the ticket lobby’s scheme with that found at the Whitney Museum?
I think either the “Godfather I” or “Godfather II” has a scene with Al Pacino and Diane Keaton that was done on location beneath the unrenovated marquee of the Music Hall. I wondered if one can tell from this scene what the underside of the marquee was like?
Whatever the case, one of the strong negatives about the renovation is that the reflector pans now reflect ugly, cold bluish florescent light — instead of the warm, fire-like incandescent light which I’m pretty sure was there pre-renovation.
Two other changes that lessen the original effect:
1) There are now obtrusive (but, sadly, necessary) security cameras hung from the underside of the marquee.
2) There are also lots of electric heaters hung from the grid. While these are certainly welcome, perhaps they could have been hung slightly differently to work better with the aesthetics of the grid, rather than to damage its original handsome effect.
While I realize all of this is not major, I think the cumulative effect of all these kinds of little changes (like the addition of those ugly pedestrian barriers on Sixth Ave. and the addition of blaring outdoor speakers) really distorts the original beauty and dignity of the theater.
A few weeks ago I went back to the Rockefeller Center concourse to take a closer look at the two stairways opposite the Radio City Music Hall corridor. These two little staircases do seem a little grand for just access to the service area that I thought they led to, as they kind of symmetrically wrap around the box office which is positioned in the center.
But they still seem kind of small — and so very, very much out of the way — for a main entrance to a museum. (I once worked at a similar “underground” location in Grand Central, and people found it very inconvenient and difficult to find — although it was directly adjacent to the Times Sq. shuttle, and directly below a very easily found street address!)
I’m interested in learning more about the museum, and hope that John S. Rogers, or someone else, might be able to elaborate a bit more as to how this entrance was used? Was this concourse entrance a secondary entrance, the same way that the Music Hall entrance was a secondary entrance? It seems strange that the museum wouldn’t have a main entrance on street level, since the museum itself surely extended upwards to street level. (There are pictures, from 1936(?) and 1934, of the very high ceilinged interior of the museum in the book “Rockefeller Center” by Carol Krinksy — pgs. 90 and 142).
I checked the WPA Guide to NYC (1939) and while they have a little over two and a half pages on the Museum and mention all the subways that go to the museum, they don’t give an entrance location other than 30 Rockefeller Plaza (the RCA Building’s address facing the ice skating rink).
Here’s two descriptions of the museum from Krinksy:
“The Museum dispays occupied the hard-to-sell windowless interior ‘Forum’ space on the lowest floors of the RCA Building, extending toward the RCA Building West. The long lease made the Museum a better tenant than the occasional municipal art exhibitors or the restauranteurs originally envisioned for the area.” (page 91)
“Below the [radio] studio area [of the RCA Building] was an area which had the advantage of offering wide spans of clear space — as much as 45 feet high and 117 feet wide — but which had the disadvantage of being entirely in the unlit interior of the building. The managers and architects labored throughout the 1930s to find a suitable use for this potentially profit-making waste space. It took until 1934 for the architects … . to design the area to provide a two-syory exhibition space. It had balconies at the second floor level which led to smaller exhibition rooms. The space became the site of two Municpal Art Exhibits in 1934 and 1935. When the Musuem of Science and Industry took a fifteen-year lease beinning in January 1936, Edward Durell Stone redesigned the space to create a lively display area with stepped ramps around part of a central rotunda, a scheme not entirely remote from that of Frank Lloyd Wright’s later Guggenheim Museum … As at the Guggenheim, the public was led along a preordained path, an arrangement better suited to lively displays of basic scientific principles and technology than to the contemplation of great paintings.” (pg. 143)
Thanks in advance for any additional info that anyone can provide!
Re: The cost of the Roxy and the price of admission
Thanks for the dates Ziggy! It just so happens that I was reading a book by a favorite author of mine, Jane Jacobs, and she mentions that in 1936 she was a stenographer in New York and that her weekly wages were … $12 dollars a week. A few pages later she mentions that in 1941 she got a better secretarial job that paid $15 dollars a week.
Also noticed this in the CD booklet for the “Ziegfeld Follies of 1936” (coincidentally at the Winter Garden, across the street from the Roxy entrance): “By the end of two additional tryout weeks in Philadelphia, word filtered back to New York that the [show] would be worth the unusually high $5.50 top ticket price.” (This amount is almost one-half of Jane Jacobs' weekly wages!)
So by adding all of this info together, a picture begins to emerge as to what prices REALLY meant in the mid- to late-1930s.
I wonder how much it cost to go to the Roxy at this time? My 1939 guidebook to NYC doesn’t give the price of admission to the Roxy, but it does give the price of Radio City Music Hall, and I assume that the Roxy’s prices were similar for competitive reasons
“Single Admissions. Radio City Music Hall: 40 cents to $1.65, performances begin about 11:30 A.M. Observatory (RCA Building, 70th Floor): adults 40 cents, children 20 cents; 10 A.M. to midnight.”
Assuming Jacobs worked a 40 hour week, she was getting paid 30 cents an hour. So she had to work an hour and twenty minutes to pay for her admission to Radio City Music Hall.
It’s interesting that the opening day ad for the Roxy reproduced in the Hall book says the theater cost $10,000,000 (1927) to build, but the 1939 guide book says it cost “fifteen million dollars.” (I was thinking that maybe the $10,000,000 does NOT include the cost of land, which Hall gives as $3,000,000, but that still leaves about $2,000,000 unaccounted for!)
Whichever numbers are correct, it would be interesting to compare the cost of building the Roxy to the prices charged for admission — to get a true indicator of how enormously expensive the theater must have been. Unfortunately, however, 1927 dollars were different from 1936 prices, so to do this right you’d really have to find out the price of admission to the Roxy in 1927 (or pre-1929 crash).
The only ad I could find in the Hall book that states the price of admission to the Roxy was the ad for the closing attraction, “The Wind Cannot Read”: 90 cents, opening to noon; $1.25, noon to 6 P.M.; $1.50, 6 P.M. to closing.
How much is this in today’s dollars?
I haven’t gone to the movies in ages, so I went by the multiplex on Third Ave. and 11th(?) St. in Manhattan. Their prices were $10.50 for adults and $7.00(?) for children and seniors. (I should have written it down the price for a child’s ticket, but I know that it was more than ½ price.) (I’m wondering if these prices are unusually high as you mentioned that the average price of a movie is $7.00. How did you arrive at your figure — for what localities and for what showings?)
For the moment, I’ll stick with the $10.50 price and round it down to $10.00 — since that is exactly ten times what I think it cost for a regular movie in NYC in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Using this standard, the Roxy’s prices were $9.00, $12.50 and $15.00.
But given today’s tastes, I don’t think there are enough general interest movies (that appeal to a very wide spectrum of the population) and enough general interest live entertainment (that also would appeal to a very wide spectrum of the population) to make something like the Roxy profitable at these prices.
That’s why I compare the Roxy to ocean liners. Even if the price of a transatlantic journey remained, the advent of new, more competitive alternatives made it seem less worthwhile than it once had been. In the case of ocean liners, the competition was jet planes; in the case of the great movie palaces, the competition was changing tastes (free TV and more niche entertainment in the movies?) and the development of suburban America (and theaters showing the niche products closer to home and conveniently accessible by car).
I’ve refined my Gloria Swanson quote:
Reporter: Why, you’re Miss Roxy Music Hall — you used to be a stupendous value!
MADAM Roxy Music Hall: I AM still a stupendous value — it’s the world that’s gone cheap!
While this doesn’t answer the question posed by “mjc,” I thought people might be interested in reading part of what the Hall book does say. The author of the article, Maurice Kahn, that is reprinted in the Hall book and from which the quote is taken, makes some interesting statements.
“The unique location of the projection room — in a cut in the balcony — has a three-fold purpose, the bettering of the theater’s acoustics, the improvement of projection and creation of an atmosphere of intimacy despite the theater’s size. The distance from the booth to the screen — the "throw” of the picture is exactly 100 feet, instead of the customary 250 feet. All distortion is eliminated by this innovation.“ (from a reprint of "Roxy, A History” — the lavish 60-page souvenir book prepared by the editors of “The Film Daily” that is reprinted in Hall, pg. 87 [unnumbered])
The full page picture of the interior of the Roxy on pg. 132 shows only the beginning of where there is a recess in the balcony for the projection booth.
Re: acoustics
If the acoustics for movies were good at the Roxy, it’s interesting to consider that the theater was probably not designed with acoustics in mind since when the Roxy was being designed, actors in movies didn’t “really” talk yet. The Hall book gives the impression that Vitaphone was still being perfected (pg. 240) while the foundations for the Roxy were being laid (pg. 78, unnumbered).
Perhaps part of the Roxy’s good fortune in this regar (as opposed to that of Radio City Music Hall which was built about five years later) can be attributed to the very irregular surfaces created by its more traditional, ornate architectural decoration (which I believe can be helpful to acoutics in certain instances). In contrast, Radio City Music Hall has, of course, a strikingly modern interior with very untraditionally “flat” surfaces for a theater, which would seem to foster an echo. (According to Krinksy [pgs. 180, 182-183] RCMH’s acoustics were never good, apparently, even for its intended use as a music hall.)
From my recollection, the rooftop theater atop the New Amsterdam was indoors — but with big windows. It may — or may not — also have had some kind of sliding roof that allowed you to see the sky in good weather.
I know this sounds modern, and I’m not sure about the New Amsterdam having such a roof, but Christopher Grey in the “Times” — a pretty reliable source — said that the original Lunt-Fontanne Theater had such a “moon roof.” And I believe the Waldorf-Astoria (the current one, from the 1930s) had some kind of retractable roof for it’s “Starlight Roof” nightclub. (I was in this space once for a function — it’s used for events and receptions — but I believe the retractable roof feature was removed long ago.)
The roof garden / restaurant on top of Hammerstein’s Victoria seems (from the one or two photos I’ve seen of it) to be mostly in the open air — but with some sort of covered area along the sides also. (From photos, it seems to be “multi-leveled” also, with the open air section up a few steps.)
Re: ambient noise
While I assume 42nd St. was not really quiet even then, in 1903 or so when some of these theaters were built, the area was built up differently than it is today. It was mostly low, rowhouses (“brownstones”), churches and horse and carriage manufacturing / trading facilities. So I suppose the kind of noises produced were different — for instance, no loud diesel truck and bus v-a-r-o-o-m noises, no garbage truck compactor whines and, obviously, no car alarms! Also maybe the height (six stories or so above the ground) might have helped distance people from some of the noise?
(Also, maybe the whole thing seemed like a better idea than it was, and the noise helped contribute to the demise of such places — along with the growing city around them!)
P.S. — I think the New Amsterdam’s roof “garden” and roof “theater” are the same thing. I believe at the time the New Amsterdam was built, the word “garden” had more connotations than it has today. For example: Madison Sq. Garden (an arena); and the Winter Garden Theater (a name that was given to the theater, which I believe was at one time decorated with trellises, to evoke those places like the lobbies of grand hotels that created a “garden” of potted palms, etc.).
I believe in those pre-air-conditioned times, a number of restaurants and “night clubs” (or their equivalent) were built on roofs (especially the very large roofs of theaters that were otherwise economically useless) and that many of them had a garden-like theme. (Oscar Hammerstein’s “Victoria,” on 42nd and Seventh Ave., had a famous one with cows and milkmaids. There’s a photo of it, empty, in the exhibition catalog.)
Before the skyscraper to the east of the New Amsterdam was built, you could clearly see the very large windows of the rooftop theater. I believe they were “French door” type windows that, when opened wide, gave one the illusion of being outdoors. (Over the years, unfortunately, I think they were painted over in black.)
In the years around the time I took the tour, I think the roof garden/theater space was used as a rehearsal hall for Broadway plays and musicals.
While I don’t believe this is that easily visible these days, I think the jumble of firescapes needed for both the roof theater and the rest of the New Amsterdam are still visible on 41st St.
I found the announcement and the exhibition catalog from the event. So in case people are interested, here is some additional info (and a correction):
The series of programs, the tour and an exhibit was called, “42nd St. — Theatre and the City.” It was indeed sponsored by the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) and took place in the fall of 1977.
The Graduate School was then located on 42nd St., on the north side of 42nd St., between Fifth Ave. and the Ave. of the Americas. The building had an “arcade” almost the width of the building that was used as an exhibition space. It also had a fair-sized basement auditorium where the panel discussions were held. By the way, I believe the building was originally the Aeolian Building, and there was originally a theater/auditorium on the second floor that was used as a concert hall, Aeolian Hall, where Gershwin premiered “Rhapsody in Blue.” If I recall correctly, while the graduate school was there, this space was used as a large, casual auditorium/lecture hall. I think the building is used as a dental school these days.
There were five Tuesday evening panel discussions beginning on October 18th and ending on November 22nd. 1) History; 2) Problems; 3) Human and Economic Solutions; 4) Future Reconstruction; 5) Future Showcase. Participants included “names” from different walks of life: academics (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Mary Henderson); actors (Dorothy Stickney); producers (Herman Schulmin, Alfred de Liagre, Jr.); businessmen (Vincent Sardi); critics (Jack Kroll, Brendan Gill); etc.
There was a two film “film festival” (“Reunion in Vienna” and “Once in a Lifetime”) that showed films “… of the 1930’s, based on a play of the same period that opened in the 42nd St. area …” (Stanley Kauffmann is listed as the discussant [don’t ever recall seeing this word before]).
The exhibit was 85 photographs “… featuring interiors and exteriors of the area’s major theatre structures as they were in 1927 and as they are now …”
The walking tour was on Sunday, October 23rd. Here’s the blurb from the announcement: “Opportunity to view first-hand examples of the old playhouses, including the new Amsterdam (built 1903), a new off-off Broadway theatre center, a performing arts housing complex, among others.”
The announcement itself has some interesting photographs and a particularly interesting juxtaposition of photographs: the original facade of the New Amsterdam (without any advertising whatsoever) and the facade in the 1970s (with advertisements for “The Deep” plastered all over the place).
The facade, sans marquee, etc., is fascinating because it shows the entrance being only four doors wide (stone facing taking up the rest of this very, very narrow facade). Looking at the two photos side by side it’s hard to believe they are the same structure — it’s hard to imagine how the entry of four doors in the photograph on the left could be enlarged to the building wide entryway shown in the modern photo on the right.
(P.S. — I am somewhat new to the internet. If it is technologically possible, and legally permissible, to send in scanned copies of these photos (and others), I’d be delighted to give it a try. I can get access to a scanner and the appropriate software (I think), but I’d have to find out how I could get it to Cinema Treasures.)
The announcement also has great photos of the original facades of the Empire (with glass and iron canopy), the Liberty (with almost no advertising); the Belasco (now the Victory?); etc.
My favorite photo is a “wide-angled” one that shows the Lunt-Fontanne (which was a movie theater at one time, and is listed on this site, I believe) and the Helen Hayes. It gives a really nice feel for how well they worked together to create a nice “feel” to 46th St.
The exhibition catalog (text by Josephine Dakin, Megan Lawrence and Ray Ring) has nice pictures (interior, exterior, historical) and text on all the 42nd St. theaters and a few others off 42nd St.: New Amsterdam; Harris; Liberty; Empire; Anco; American Theatre (demolished in 1932); Times Sq. and Apollo; Lyric; Victoria (replaced by the Ra\ialto); Lunt-Fontanne (with a terrific photo of the way it looked when it opened); the Palace; the Astor; the Hudson (including a contemporary photo showing “For Rent” on the marquee); etc. (I’ve tried to list only those theaters that were also movie theaters. But a few other theaters are also included.)
Correction: The catalog mentions that the New Amsterdam “… is said to have been the first theatre built with a cantilevered balcony.” (Something I had thought I had heard about the Hudson.) So apparently the balcony I saw that was held with rods from the ceiling was in another theatre on the tour, not the New Amsterdam.
Fascinating fact: The Hudson, the New Amsterdam and the Lyceum (a landmarked “legit” theatre that was never, as far as I know, a movie theater) were all opened within weeks of each other — two of them even opened on the same night!: 10/19/03, the Hudson; 11/2/03, the New Amsterdam; 11/2/03, the Lyceum. WOW! New York, in those days, WAS really jumpin!
I also found a terrific Hagstrom “detail” map from the late 1950s that shows the approximate building lot outlines of the various theaters in the theater district, including the bunched up ones on 42nd St. On this map you can clearly see where the actual auditoriums for the various theaters on 42nd were located. Again, if it’s legally OK, and if someone tells me how, I’d love to be able to share this with Cinema Treasures.
During the late 1970s when everyone was trying to figure out how to save 42nd St., a number of civic organizations held symposia, etc. discussing the problem of 42nd St./Times Sq., and some of these events including tours of the theaters on 42nd St. — tours that included the interiors of these theaters.
Looking back, I feel so privileged that I was able to take some of these tours and especially to take the tour of the New Amsterdam and to see it all lit up but empty in its “ghostly” downtrodden state. (I believe the New Amsterdam tour took place not long before, or just after, it closed as a functioning movie theater.) The tour was terrific and included not only the auditorium, but various lobbies, the backstage areas AND the fabled rooftop nightclub.
(I also went on interesting tours of some of the other theaters on the street, but don’t remember offhand, if they were all included on one big tour or if the New Amsterdam tour was separate.)
Although I’ve seen the Mary Henderson book about the restoration of the New Amsterdam, I’d like to share my much fuzzier recollections of the theater as I remembered it from this tour. (Somewhere down the line I’ll have to take a closer look at the Henderson book to see how well my memories correspond to reality.) So here’s a quick run-down of the tour as I remember it now — kind of like a report about the tour 25 years, or so, after the fact!:
We entered through the main entrance and went down the long entrance corridor (which has an office building above it). This corridor lead to the back of the orchestra level of the auditorium proper. Don’t have much recollection of how the theater impressed me from this viewpoint. In the years before it was renovated, I read a newspaper article that said, I believe, that the theater had a beautiful asbestos curtain — don’t remember if we saw it or not on the tour.
Eventually we went up to one of the balconies, and, if I remember correctly, I was surprised to see that they were supported by columns from below or from rods from above.
The three big highlights of the tour for me were as follows (in no special order):
1) A visit to a very handsome lounge. Don’t remember which one it was but, as I remember it, it had an unusual shape with some very thick columns. Could it have been a lounge for one of the balconies — or was it in the basement?
2) A visit to the stage and backstage area. I think we were told that this was the largest stage on Broadway — at least when it was built. To this “civilian” (with no real experience of other stages to compare it with) it didn’t really seem all that big to me. (Years later, the same held true, more or less, with my impression of the stage of Radio City Music Hall. The only stage I’ve ever seen on a tour that really impressed me as huge was that of the Metropolitan Opera House which, along with it’s side stages, seemed to be more like a movie sound stage or an aircraft hanger!)
I think this stage also included a turntable and maybe even stage elevators? But the big thing about the visit to the stage was to think about and reflect that I was standing in the same wings that so many famous entertainers had once stood in. If I remember correctly, I think Fred Astaire stood in those wings before going onstage in one of his last Broadway shows. Also think Bob Hope played in “Roberta” in this theater — so he too would have stood in these wings waiting to go on.
3) A visit to the fabled New Amsterdam roof! We took the elevators which were on the eastern side of the long entrance corridor? Again, if I remember correctly, I was a little “disappointed” in that the roof garden seemed smaller than I thought it would be. I also think, as small as it was, it had some sort of small balcony around it. Still it was just amazing to be in this space that I had heard so much about.
As mentioned earlier, I also got to go on tours of some of the other theaters. While memorable, these tours were not as “eventful” as that of the tour of the New Amsterdam, though.
(Since I hadn’t seen “Follies,” I don’t think the aura of “Follies” entered into my thoughts of the tour at the time. Plus, I don’t think the New Amsterdam was seen as ripe for renovation rather than demolition — maybe this is another reason I don’t really recall thinking of “Follies.” But looking back on the tour now, the theater would probably have been a visually PERFECT setting for a film version — which is not always true of real life places that are, more or less, being depicted in a movie.
Two strong impressions of this “other” tour:
1) In one of the theaters — it was on the north side of 42nd St. — we got to tour what had been a suite of offices upstairs. The suite of offices — which in my recollection was really large and spread out — was absolutely empty and thus gave off a very ghostly aura. One — one could image these offices as a beehive of activity in the heydey of 42nd St. — just like in the movies, with actors and chorus girls camping out to get an audition, and the Broadway bigwigs scooting in and out of the offices to avoid them or the bill collectors or to work on a big deal.
Don’t know when the offices were vacated, but lending credence to the aura that they had been vacated not long after 42nd St.’s heydey (which, in reality, is probably unlikely) was the fact that amongst all the emptiness there was a book left on one of the inbuilt bookcases(?) — a large format pictorial guidebook to New York in 1939!
An acquaintance that I had met on the tour (he was a grad student in theater history at the Grad Center of CUNY, which may have been the sponsor of the tour) said I should take it — but I felt funny about it. Later, after we had already left the building, he pulled it out from beneath his coat and gave it to me! So I took it. (I’ve since given it away in a fit of apartment cleaning.)
2) The other stong recollection from the tour of these theaters was how just how badly they all smelled! Not only did they seem to have a musky smell of unwashed people, I believe they also smelled from the cats that were kept in them (to keep the mouse problem under control).
One of the symposia also published a small book and informative brochure, both of which I’ve kept. When I get the chance, I’ll have to take a look at them to see if they mention these tours and anything interesting about the theaters.
P.S. — Sorry, but I made a significant typo in my previous post. One sentence should have read: “ … but these prices are NOT recorded for cost comparisons.”
(In other words, some people WERE paying similar prices for hot tickets in the old days, we just don’t know about it.)
Thank you for the accurate version of that wonderful quote! While that version of the quote could also be used as a launching pad for an analogy, it is also quite unlikely, however, that someone would ever, ever admit to it!: “I AM still a big bargain; it’s that the rest of the rest of the world got less expensive!”
I think the illustrative prices provided by your grandparents and aunt are great (although dates would make it even better) and help illustrate my two points: 1) that you have to compare across the board within an era; 2) that comparisons across eras are nevertheless tricky because of other changes in the way people live (like hats not holding the same place in a well-dressed woman’s wardrobe as it used to have).
By the way, given what people tell me about prices for woman’s clothing — especially hand crafted, high fashion items — $1,500 for a hat (if hats still held the same place in a woman’s life as they did then) would not be all that outrageous. I forget exact prices that woman have told me that they’ve paid for things they’ve purchased, but I do remember being shocked at the price of “simple” things like scarves, tiny bathing suits, handbags, etc.
Vincent:
I think the key thing you mentioned in your last post about the $7.50 for “Follies” was that it was for a Wednesday matinee. I’m not sure about these days, but traditionally that’s the cheapest set of prices for a Broadway show, and in the “old” days such prices were SIGNIFICANTLY lower than those for the top tickets on a Friday or Saturday night. Usually when people talk about prices for Broadway shows they make comparisons between the top prices for a Friday or Saturday night, which is what I thought your $7.50 figure was referring to.
The $250 and $500 tickets you mention are a new phenomenon and using them to compare to past prices is misleading. In the old days “scalpers” would also charge (illegally) such exorbitant sums for “hot” tickets — but these prices are recorded for cost comparisons. The $250 and $500 tickets today are a way of producers seeing to it that such money spent goes into the hands of the producer rather than to a scalper (who hasn’t shouldered any of the risk of putting on the show).
But in addition to prices that are, in fact, genuinely higher than those of the past, another way of charging more for Broadway show is to charge higher for the lower priced seats — 2nd balcony, matinees tickets, etc. — and my guess is that THAT is where you probably are going to see the biggest price difference between prices today and in the “old” days.
Going back to the discussion of the Roxy and movie palaces, in a way the movie palaces provide another example. Although their prices probably remained quite reasonable until the “end,” the demand for their product at that price became less and less (as the public’s taste changed). In other words, given all the other inexpensive entertainment options that existed, and were being developed, fewer people were still interested in seeing that type of combo film and stage show, even if the prices for it were eminently reasonable. People preferred spending their entertainment dollar on something else.
(Another better example, I think, might be transatlantic ocean travel. It’s not that ocean liners became more expensive, but that the development of jets made other options quicker and cheaper.)
Re: great “low” prices of tickets to movie palaces (and musicals) in the “olden” days
While it is indeed probably true that tickets to the movies and the great movie palaces were great bargains (and great entertainment values!) in years gone by, it should also be remembered that people MADE a lot less money in those days too, and that prices for other things — including other forms of entertainment — were also correspondingly lower in those days too.
In other words, it’s important to account for inflation across the board and not just selectively when comparing prices from one era to another. What is “really” more accurate (to the extent that one can be accurate about such things in the first place — it’s stubbornly tricky) is to compare the RATIO of prices within one era to the RATIO of prices within another era. For example, a more accurate way of making such a comparison would be to say that the price of a ticket to a musical was, say, eight and a half times more than that of a movie in 1960, versus, let’s say, eleven times more than that of a movie in 2004. (Don’t know if this is true, just guessing here.)
If I remember correctly, in the early 1960s (too late for the Roxy, but as far back as my memory of these things go) prices were as follows (wasn’t earning money yet, so don’t know about wages):
15 cents for bus or subway fare to go to the movies; 50 cents for a child’s ticket ($1.00 for an adult’s ticket); 15 cents for a slice of pizza, before or after the movie; about $8.60(?) for top price to a big Broadway musical on Friday or Saturday night — both Wednesday and Saturday matinee prices seemed to be about one-half that (even without “twofers”) though. Don’t remember what the cost of a ticket to the Grand Tier of the Metropolitan Opera was, but I think it was “considerably” more (maybe in the $20 range?) than the top price of a Broadway show.
I say all this because although prices for tickets to Broadway musicals, for instance, are indeed higher than what they were in the past (even accounting for inflation), it is not quite as dramatic as it is often made out to be. (Although the cost of tickets for musicals have probably, indeed, outpaced inflation because of higher labor costs and much more technically elaborate scenery, etc.)
To paraphrase the great line said by Gloria Swanson (as Norma Desmond) — (I think it was something like) “It’s not that pictures got bigger, it’s that the people got smaller” — “It’s not that plays and musicals got expensive, it’s that everything else ("records,” home movies, etc.) got so much cheaper."
P.S. — I’m very surprised that a top priced ticket to “Follies” (whose poster design does indeed seem to consciously evoke that great Life Magazine picture of Gloria Swanson in the ruins of the Roxy — the photo is reproduced on the last page of Ben Hall’s “Best Remaining Seats”), would have cost only $7.50 in the early 1970s. I distinctly remember higher prices than that even in the early 1960s, and a collection of reviews of Broadway musicals (“Opening Night on Broadway,”[?] by Suskin[?]) includes posters of Broadway musicals that show higher prices than that, also earlier than the 1970s.
Glad you enjoyed the “tour”! As I revisted and reflected upon the Hudson, I really began to appreciate this theater even more.
Regarding gallery entrances:
From my readings over the years, I got the impression that the separate entrances were almost entirely designed for the purpose of economic/social segregation — keeping the poorer classes away from the more well to do. And in the era in which they wre built (pre WWI), I don’t think people really gave it much thought.
Also, and this is just a guess on my part, I think it was really the rise of the (bascially one price) movie theater and the (bascially one price) movie palace that led the way towards the elimination of this type of design — movie palaces being “palaces” for the people, for the masses.
Although I realize that Radio City Music Hall, and probably a number of the other movie palaces, did have higher priced sections, I don’t think any of them had separate entrances for them. And judging from RCMH, the people going to the more expensive section had to walk through the areas set aside for the less expensive seats in the Orchestra and walk along with those headed for the less expensive seats in the second and third balconies.
By the way the first three levels of the old Metropolitan Opera House — the three levels closest to the stage and to the ground — were accessed through the main lobby. (The main lobby was not, by the way, all that impressive to begin with.) These three levels were called, I believe, the Orchestra level, the Parterre (the boxes) and the Grand Tier. Everything above that (from what I believe was called the Family Circle on up) was accessed through a number of separate entrances (which I believe were on the side streets, rather than Broadway).
The Sam S. Shubert theater on 44th St. had a separate 2nd balcony stairway that was entered, if I remember correctly, from Shubert Alley.
P.S. — One thing I forgot to mention is that when I looked at the back wall of the theater it occurred to me that the theater is only about three — or four, at most — brownstones (rowhouses) wide on 45th St., and only two — or three, at most — brownstones wide on 44th St. So it’s also interesting to me that this handsome and seemingly commodious “regular-sized” theater takes up such a small amount of space. It’s a very modest, handsome and efficient design — a real positive contribution to the cityscape!
Glad you mentioned about how accessible the interior of the Hudson Theater was, as it inspired me to go back and take a look again after 40 years! I’ve passed by the theater many times over the years, and knew the theater was being preserved as part of the hotel, but didn’t think to try and get inside. Even now I’m surprised that it was so easy to walk in — perhaps both of us just happened to visit at the right times?
Actually, when I first tried to visit around Christmastime, the doors were locked — it might have been off hours — and you could see through the glass doors that the theater was being repainted. When I tried successfully a few days ago, there were still painters, etc. working on the theater, and I almost wonder if that made it easier for me to just walk right in. (Although I realize that the hotel LOBBY itself is legally something of a public space — I believe the owners got a zoning bonus from the City for providing it — I don’t think they are legally required to allow public access to the interior of the theater though.)
But in any case, I took a look at the lobby — and, of course, it’s funny how memory plays tricks on you! Actually the ticket lobby entranceway goes directly into the back of the orchestra level of the theater — it’s hard to imagine it being any more straight forward or direct! (It even seems to have been placed symmetrically in the center of the theater.)
So how / why did the Hudson Theater become part of this strange recurring dream of mine?
On the one hand, dreams are “notorious” for being irrational. Thinking of movies, there was a fantastic dream sequence in a Michael Fox movie (forgot the name, based on a book by Jay McErney[?]) where the Fox character plays a young intern at the “New Yorker.” The great thing about the dream sequence was the way the people pictured in it kept on changing (morphing) as the dream progressed — just like in some real dreams! So perhaps, something similar happened to the theater that appeared in this dream — perhaps it started out the Hudson Theater, but then morphed to, say, the Imperial Theater (which, I’m pretty sure, does have such a “funny” entrance).
But on the other hand, I wonder if maybe the source of this dream was that perhaps I was sitting in the second balcony when I went to see “Ross”?; and I wonder if the original ENTRANCE to the second balcony is that “mysterious” stairway to the right, just inside the doors to the street? (I didn’t feel comfortable enough to go up the stairs to see where they led; and now that the theater is connected to the hotel, access to the second balcony might have been changed anyway.)
By the way, in the old days (pre-democratic movie palace days), many legit theaters did indeed have separate entrances for second balconies etc. For instance, the Shubert Theater (on 44th St.) had one (which I used once), as did the Metropolitan Opera (which I also used once).
Now that I think about it, if I remember correctly, I vaguely remember being told we couldn’t enter into the Hudson using the main entrance, but had to use the stairway to the second balcony. What’s “strange” and “funny” about this stairway (at least to me), if this is indeed what happened, was the way the stairway was so unobtrusively and “mysteriously” placed just inside the glass doors leading in from the street. Almost like a secret stairway. (Plus, since we were seeing the show on twofers, there’s a good chance there were very few other people using this “secret” stairway.) Somehow in my mind I would have thought that the stairway to all those seats in the balcony — even if it was a separate stairway — would have been further inside the theater and more prominently placed.
The other “funny” thing about this staircase that might have inspired my dream was that I believe it was a “blind” staircase that seemed to just go on and on forever!
Regarding the theater’s adaptive re-use:
This does seem to be a terrific adaptive re-use of the Hudson Theater. As you are probably aware, there are other theaters that have also been adaptively re-used well. Perhaps the most famous is “Studio 54,” which was originally a legit theater (whose name escapes me … the Gallo Opera House? — it’s profiled in the Mary Henderson book on New York theaters) before it became 1) a TV studio (“What’s My Line”; “To Tell the Truth”, etc.) and a world-famous disco. The Henry Miller Theater (which is now only a preserved facade) was — many years before it was the home to “Cabaret” — the home to “Xenon” (which was a poor man’s “Studio 54”) and, I think, a nightclub by the name of “Shout!” Also the Academy of Music on 14th St. (which was built as a Thomas Lamb[?] designed movie palace) also was a disco, the “Palladium,” before being torn down for an NYU residence hall.
What’s great about all these adaptive re-uses was that the theater’s interiors were pretty much preserved as theaters — the theaters could easily have been reconverted to theaters (and in some cases were).
Having been to some of these theaters, what I find striking is how SMALL the theaters seem to be when the orchestra level no longer has seats. Somehow (at least to me) theaters appear bigger when they have their seats in them.
Also took a look at the rear of the Hudson Theater and noticed that the loading dock to the stage is only a foot or two off the ground. It’s easy to see how Steve Allen could interview passersby from this stage, as he did in the early days of the “Tonight” show.
I hadn’t noticed before, but there appear to be windows (dressing rooms?) and, if I remember correctly, very small firescapes on either side of the stage’s backwall. It’s interesting to see how these windows, firescapes and the stage itself are so close to the street. The whole set-up seems so delightfully small-scaled and so intimate — a really nice addition to a city street!
Thinking about the Beekman, it occurred to me why I think news of its proposed demolition may be so disturbing:
The Beekman is, perhaps, the Radio City Music Hall of the art house era — or, one might say, an art house version of the Roxy.
That is to say, what the art nouveau New Amsterdam Theater was to the sophisticated patrons of the Ziegfeld Follies in the early years of the 20th Century; what the opulently overwhelming Roxy was to the masses of silent movie fans in the roaring jazz age 20s; and what the massive and sleek Radio City Music Hall was to family fare moviegoers of the 30s, 40s and 50s, the Beekman was to intellectually adventurous New Yorkers of the post-WWII era, especially in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Beekman is more than just a movie theater — it is/was a way of going to the movies … oops, going to the “cinema” or a way of experiencing thought provoking / great “film.”
Funny too, how waiting on line at the Beekman (immortalized in “Annie Hall”[?]) might be considered a more sophisticated and grown up version of the New York “tradition” of waiting on line for the Christmas or Easter show at Radio City Music Hall!
And the Beekman’s coffee bar, offering what was then novel and sophisticated Columbian coffee and a window allowing loungers to see the screen through glass from the lounge, might be considered an art house equivalent of the Radio City Music Hall vast underground lounge.
Regarding the reputations and relative popularity of the Roxy vs. Radio City Music Hall:
I was looking through a 1939 guidebook to NYC, the “WPA Guide to NYC,” and noticed that the entry for the Roxy is less than five lines long and comes at the end of a paragraph that includes info about the Casa Manana nightclub (across the street from the Roxy) and the Brass Rail restaurant (just south? of the Roxy). This listing is similar to the listings for the other Times Sq. movie palaces: the Strand (3 ½ lines); the Rivoli (essentially 5 lines); the Capitol (1 ½ lines); the Continental [Warner Hollywood or Mark Hellinger] (2 ½ lines).
However the the entry for Radio City Music hall takes up almost an entire page! (It’s just two lines short.)
Here’s the entry for the Roxy: “The ROXY, Seventh Avenue and Fiftieth Street, is the most elaborate of the first-run motion-picture houses in the Broadway district. The huge oval lobby, highly ornate in its decorations, can accommodate three thousand patrons, about half as many as the auditorium itself. The Roxy opened in 1926, representing an investment of fifteen million dollars.”
So it would seem that in 1939, Radio City Music Hall had a much higher profile, and was considered more of a wonder, than the Roxy.
By the way, another poster mentioned something like the Roxy was of one era and the Radio City Music Hall was of another. While I don’t disagree with this — they do seem to be of two different eras — isn’t it fascinating that these two theaters, representing these two “eras,” were built only five and a half years apart! For instance, imagine comparing something that opened on December 27, 2004 with one that opened on March 11, 1999!!!
This says two things to me:
1) They were very tumultuous times! And they were. Just for some quick for instances, in 1927, the year the Roxy opened, I believe NBC and CBS radio networks were also founded. (NYC got its first radio station, WEAF, only in 1922.) And Vitaphone became the rage later on in 1927. Also I think the Paramount and probably many, many more other movie palaces were also built or under construction in 1927.
2) The “old fashioned” architectural style of the Roxy made it seem prematurely “old.”
Originally I was thinking this about the Roxy’s interiors as being less photogenic, but looking at some of the photos of the Roxy on various websites, I think this is also true of its exterior architectural design.
For one thing it’s design does not appear to have aged well, even in a short period of time — city dirt, grime and soot really “show” on its ornate architecture. But dirt, grime and soot actually form a somewhat attractive “patina” on Radio City Music Hall’s (and Rockefeller Center’s) sleek modern walls — or are at least less unattractive in my opinion. (I remember watching them steam clean the walls of Rockefeller Center and at first thinking how wonderful they would look when they were clean. But I was then surprised when my reaction was that it really didn’t make that much of a positive difference (the way it did with ornate St. Patrick’s), and in a way it seemed to me that something was actually lost. Looking back, I think this is because on the large plain walls of Rockefeller Center, the soot forms kind of a marbelizing pattern on the large plain walls — “decorating” them in a way with sweeping modernistic dark columns!)
I also noticed that the Roxy had an ENORMOUS, exposed, and very prominent, lot line wall facing busy Sixth Ave. that was left “undesigned” — it just had some ugly firescapes on it. In contrast Radio City Music Hall facades incorporated its firescapes behind very handsome grilles.
So it’s easy for me to see how people can see the Roxy as being “old fashioned” and of a different “era” even though it was built only five and a half years before RCMH!
Plus one of the “wonders” of the Roxy was the P.T. Barnum-like Roxy himself and his proto-Disney like obsession with “presentation” — one can imagine him rather than Disney as coming up with the idea that employees such as ushers and ticket takers were “characters” rather than just employees. So it seems likely to me that when Roxy and his Roxy “magic” left the Roxy Theater for RCMH, some of the air inevitably left the Roxy balloon and it became more of just a very big, ornate theater.
More on Roxy and the Roxy Theater from Ben Hall (“Best Remaining Seats,” 1961), David Loth (“The City Within a City,” 1966) and Carol Krinsky (“Rockefeller Center,” 1978). (As you will see, each writer has a different focus and a different “take.” I don’t necessarily agree with all the details of any of the versions — I just thought Cinema Treasure readers would be interested in seeing this info.)
Re: Roxy abandoning the Roxy for the Radio City Theaters (I didn’t find any mention in any of the three books about Roxy being forced out of the management of the original Roxy Theater.)
Hall (pg. 252): “What happened to Roxy? In 1930 he had another vision, one that led him another block eastward … . The Rockefellers were building their Center, and it in the largest theatre in the world, the International Music Hall.”
Loth (pg. 81): “RKO was generally considered to have brought off an admirable coup when they persuaded him to take over the management of the new Music Hall.”
Krinsky (pg. 164): “On hearing that the radio group [RKO] planned to join the Rockefeller development, he proposed that he build a rival for his own namesake. The president of NBC [at the time, both NBC and RKO were subsidiaries of RCA, pg. 48, Loth] spoke to Rockefeller who approved of the idea… . In April 1931 Roxy announced his affiliation with the Center, having severed his ties to the Roxy Theater.”
(pg. 79) (She’s discussing why RCMH’s management wanted Roxy out in 1933) “… perhaps they thought that he was abandoning their sinking ship more quickly than he had abandoned his own Roxy Theater … .”
(Although they all agree with each other in fundamental ways, they also all present slightly different versions of what happened!)
Re: the closing of the Roxy
(I didn’t find any mention in any of the three books of the Taft not being willing to renew a lease for the Roxy’s ticket lobby.)
Hall: As far as I could see, he doesn’t really go into the particulars about the demise of the Roxy — but he does have a full page reproduction of that wonderful Gloria Swanson photo as the last page of the book.
But regarding the Hotel Taft site, Hall does present what appears to be an apocryphal story — or sloppily written one — about how Herbert Lubin (the man who hired Roxy to create the Roxy Theater) originally purchased the land needed to build the Roxy. Hall says that in the spring of 1925 Lubin decided that the Seventh Ave. and 50th St. corner “would be ideal to build his big theater on,” asked the agent how much it would cost, and agreed to pay the $3,000,000 on the spot.
The problem with this story is that the corner of Seventh and 50th is where the Roxy’s ticket lobby occupied the first floor of the adjoining hotel. Now, there are ways for Hall’s version of the story to be true — say, for instance, if the Roxy leased to the hotel the right to build over the ticket lobby — but without any further explanation, this story appears to be sloppily written.
Loth: (pgs. 186-187) He mentions that after Rockefeller Center was “complete,” the management decided to expand to the other side of Sixth Ave. and began purchasing land there — first purchasing the land where the Time-Life Building would eventually be built (in 1953) and then purchasing the Roxy Theater, which was the adjacent property to the west (in early 1956?). Originally when they started buying land on the west side of Sixth Ave., they were considering building a TV City with studios for NBC and a skyscraper for Time-Life. But NBC pulled out of the deal before the Roxy was actually purchased.
(pg. 191) “The purpose for which they had bought it was a thing of the past, but they had acquired air and tower rights for the Time & Life Building … priced at $2 million. So the Center could afford to be relaxed about the Roxy’s fate in the entertainment world.
“Various attempt to revive its old popularity by a couple of lessees, one of whom was Roxy’s nephew were short-lived. They even at temped a combination of stage and screen show, but apparently the Radio City Music Hall has a monopoly on success in this field. [Don’t know what the author means here; maybe he means attempted to revive a combination of stage and screen show?] Shortly before the Time & Life Building opened (late 1959?), Rockefeller Center had to take over the controls; it was already dickering for an entirely different sort of deal. That deal was consummated in February, 1960, when it was announced that the theater had been sold to Webb & Knapp for an office building … .”
Krinsky: (pgs. 111-114) Her version is essentially the same, but again with some differences. “To let the Center build a slab as tall as this one [Time-Life Building] while conforming to the requirements of the Zoning Resolution, Westprop, Inc. a Center subsidiary, had to buy the Roxy Theater immediately to the west, for its air rights. This also guaranteed that no rival tower could abut the new building in the future.”
The Loth and (especially) the Krinksy book also have lots of interesting info (and Krinksy has lots of great photos) about the creation of the Center Theater and Radio City Music Hall. If I get the chance, I will post some of this info on the appropriate site for each of the theaters.
My copy of the Ben Hall book, “Best Remaining Seats,” is a Bramhall House (div. of Clarkson Potter, Inc.) edition from the mid-1970s. Although I was able to find the photos referenced in Jim’s post, I read them very differently and hope that those interested get a chance to look at the Hall book, especially the following pages: pg. 128, for what appears to me to be a modified “plan” of the first floor of the Roxy; pgs.82-83 (unnumbered), for what appears to me to be a loosely done “section” of the theater; and pg. 90, for a loose equivalent of an “elevation” of the proposed theater.
While there are also some good photos, including a photo of the Roxy’s main entrance on opening night (pages 2-3, unnumbered), these suffer (for our purposes) from severe foreshortening (the photographs being taken looking down relatively narrow streets).
But looking at the loose equivalents of a “plan,” “section” and “elevation” of the Roxy, it seems to me that pretty much only the ticket lobby of the Roxy extended into the hotel next door and that the five floors above the ticket lobby were most probably NOT used by the Roxy Theater — especially for things like the Usher’s Locker Room that is shown on the cutaway section.
Looking at an artist’s rendering of the Roxy (pg. 90), which also shows the adjacent hotel structure, and comparing it to the “plan” and “section” one sees that the Roxy facade was divided into three sections:
a very large section on the east (the auditorium itself);
a slightly lower section to the west of that (labeled the “Grande Foyer” on both the plan and the section);
and a yet smaller section, only three windows wide, to the west of that (labeled “Recpt. Hall” on the plan and the “Entrance Hall” on the section).
It is this last section, three windows wide, that appears to me to contain the five floors or so (there is a set back after the “third” story) of ancillary activities that are shown in the cutaway section.
Looking at both the plan and the cutaway section one notices that no ticket lobby whatsoever is being shown on either of them — the ticket lobby is the long, low area of the theatre that extended into the first floor of the adjacent hotel. In other words, neither the plan nor the section actually choose to show the ticket lobby — only the artist’s rendering, which shows the southern facade of the hotel, shows where the long, low ticket lobby was.
To a smaller extent this also seems to be borne out in the photo of the Roxy’s main entrance on opening night. One sees that the floors above the marquee appear to be conventional hotel type rooms — not rooms being used for the facilities being shown on the cutaway drawing.
Also, looking through the Hall book (flipping through the pages and using the index) I found no reference to 1) a story that the adjacent hotel choose not to renew the lease of the Roxy Theater’s ticket lobby; and 2) no reference to Sam Rothafel being forced out by the “new” owners of the Roxy.
The only reference in the Hall book to Sam Rothafel being force out that I could find was the account of his being forced out of the management of Radio City Music Hall (the last section of the book, “The End of the Dream”). And surprisingly for a book with so much info on the Roxy, I was not able to find any sustained account of how it closed or why it was demolished.
Now the book is very loosely organized, with info about the Roxy, included reprints of various magazine articles, etc., spread (non-chronologically) all throughout the book. So it is possible that I might have missed such accounts.
But in any case, none of the accounts were a major part of the Roxy story in the Hall book — plus I’ve discovered accounts elsewhere (more about that latter) that would seem to dispute these versions of Roxy’s and the Roxy’s history.
I have some additional comments on what I found last night in the Hall book about the Roxy Theater — plus some interesting relevant info from the Carol Krinsky book (“Rockefeller Center”) and the David Loth book (“The City within a City”) about Rockefeller Center. But that will have to wait till later.
The Ben Hall book, “The Best Remaining Seats,” is indeed a fantastic source of info about the Roxy. And, it is one example of a discussion about movie palaces where the Roxy is actually “numero uno” (written about more extensively than any other theater) while RCHM hardly even rates a mention! Just the other day I was thinking that one might almost consider this book to be an ode to the Roxy, as the extensive Roxy material appears to be the centerpiece of the book. I don’t have my copy of the book here with me at work, but will, of course, look at it again when I get home.
Although the Roxy may have used the first five floors above the ticket lobby for theatrical purposes, the building above the ticket lobby was still essentially part of the hotel’s structure — at least that’s the impression that I had from general reading of the book, from walks by the hotel post-Roxy demolition and from a general understanding of the way New York City “works.” And it’s not all that uncommon for one use in one structure to “infiltrate” another use in another structure. For instance when Barney’s clothing store was on 17th(?) St., it expanded into (among other structures) a neighboring apartment house — remodeling apartments in the apartment house to be an extension of its sales floor, fitting rooms and administrative offices. Also I think part of Radio City Music Hall may have also extended into the office building above the ticket lobby portion of RCMH.
As to “why” these things are done: I believe in the Carol Krinsky book on Rockefeller Center she too mentions “effect” as a partial reason for a low ticket lobby — but in this case the reference is to the “low” ceilinged lobby of RCMH. But practically speaking, I think it’s very rare — perhaps even unheard of — for any auditorium in Manhattan to NOT have any office space (or something similiar) above the ticket lobby. So to some degree it also seems to be a question of how much office space, administrative space or hotel rooms the theater’s builders are going to allow to be “displaced” by a “uselessly” high ticket lobby.
I think my comments about the clean lines of RCMH may have been misunderstood. Actually I was talking mostly about the clean lines of the interiors (especially the sunburst auditorium) that make the theater very unusual for a “movie” palace — and thus rather distinctive. I think these interiors probably make RCMH more “photogenic” — especially to the modern day tastes of the general public at large.
Regarding the exteriors — it seems to me from photographs that the Hotel Taft’s exteriors somewhat MATCH those of the Roxy. This is one of the reasons I think that the same corporate builder may have been involved in both. (The exteriors of the Hotel Manhattan, the Majestic, the Golden and the Royale — which indeed had the same corporate parent — also, similarly, “match.”) While at the time of the Roxy’s demolition, the ticket lobby area (as well as, of course, the Roxy facilities in the hotel structure above the ticket lobby) were apparently owned by someone else, I wonder if this was true when they were constructed?
While, I will have to keep an eye out for info on the construction of the hotel, it seems to me that the that kind of hotel structure is of the same era as that of the Roxy — another reason that it appears to me that there may have been some sort of corporate connection between the Roxy and the hotel.
With regard to the aesthetics of the interior of the Roxy: “… perhaps not the most artistic and memorable at all levels, but certainly overwhelming if for no other reason that vastness.” If I understand this comment correctly, this is close to my point: that the effect of the Roxy largely depended upon being overwhelmed by its size when you were inside it.
While technically speaking, Roxy may not have “abandoned” the Roxy but been forced out, if the Roxy theater were a “first” wife she would have had good grounds for divorce because of Roxy’s “unfaithfulness” with the two much younger and more stylish young beauties he was having “an affair” with. I think this is closer to how the general public may have seen Roxy’s relationship with the original Roxy.
I hope I didn’t come across as being “anti” Roxy. I was just trying to add some more reasons to those already given as to why RCMH may have had (if it indeed did have) a higher profile than the Roxy.
Actually, in spite of the differences in architectural styles, I think the lobby area of RCMH and the Roxy are actually quite similar.
Both of them sit beneath a skyscraper that is separate and apart from the theater itself. In the case of the Roxy, the building was a hotel; in the case of RCMH it is an office building with an entrance on, I believe, Sixth Ave. (just to the north of the entrance to RCMH itself).
In both cases the theater patron goes from a long, relatively low, lobby/ticket area into a vast and grand theater lobby. In the case of RCMH the lobby space is rectangular and goes across the block. In the case of the Roxy, I believe it was oval – which was a clever way for the architect to mask the fact that the auditorium itself was not parallel to the street it fronted on, but was at a angle (to make the most of a relatively small plot of land).
In both cases, having a skyscraper over the ticket lobby area is a way of optimizing the value of the land. The lobby/ticket area of a theater is pretty much the only part of a theater overwhich one can economically build another structure. (Interestingly, it appears that the builders of that grand movie place in Atlanta, for example, had no need to maximize the value of their land in this way. From the illustrations I’ve seen they only have stores to the left and right of the lobby/ticket area — but no office building above.
Don’t know what the arrangement was between the Roxy and the Taft, but both of them seem to have exteriors built in the same style. So my guess is that they were built together — pehaps by the same owner who then leased or sold off the parts? For a similar arrangement look at what was once the Hotel Manhattan (don’t remember if that’s its current name) on Eighth Ave. It was built by the same builder and in the same architectural style as the Majestic Theater (44th St.), the Golden and Royale Theaters (45th Sts.). The theaters all share a common service alley way on 45th St. that used to be open but is not gated off.
By the way, I think the Michealangelo is some sort of condo/corporate hotel. I think big corporations own apartments there where they put up workers visiting from other places. For instance, I once temped at a fabric company (in the building just across the street to the north) that housed an employee from North Carolina who was temporarily assigned to a project at the New York office.
Re: Popularity / fame of Roxy vs. RCMH — some additional thoughts
Interesing question. I agree that the fact that one was demolished “ages” ago is part of the reason. Also think that the clean lines of RCMH makes it more distinctive — especially among movie palaces! — and also more “photogenic” (i.e., a beauty that easily comes across in photos).
Also think that the Roxy interior was maybe more overwhelming for being “gargantuan” than for being visually engaging. (Personally, I think as a kid I was my fascinated by spectacular “themed” theaters, like the Loew’s atmospherics, than by the Roxy.
Also, RCMH was the newer and “better” theater — after all didn’t Roxy himself(!) forsake the Roxy for the Roxy Center and Radio City Music Hall. So, I guess, people may have just seen the Roxy as being a bit old hat.
(Interestingly, I think it was generally believed that RCMH was the largest theater in the world (which would certainly have added luster to its image) although maybe the Roxy was the larger of the two? — not to mention other theaters that also might have been larger than either of them. So maybe RCMH also had a better press department?
Plus RCMH is part of a large and famous group of buildings — and that probably also helped.
P.S. — I started writing my previous post before the two very pertinent posts that come before it were posted. So my post wasn’t meant to be a commentary on them.
The David Loth book, “The City Within a City,” also has lots of interesting info about the Music Hall.
One of Loth’s most informative interviewees when he did the research for the book seems to be G.S. Eyssell who ultimately became president of Rockefeller Center, but started out with Rockefeller Center in the Radio City Music Hall organization. So there is lots of info in the book about the business of running the Music Hall (the problem of finding movies for it, etc.), especially during its tumultuous early days.
For example on pg. 85 he says that “The president of RKO … had talked to Eyssell reservedly about the Music Hall’s problems only a few days after the debut. A few days later, he invited Eyssel to work out of his office at RKO as a troubleshooter, and the first trouble to be shot was finding pictures for the Music Hall.”
He also mentions (pg. 78) that after RKO went bankrupt (about a month after the Music Hall and the Center Theater opened), the leases on Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater were “automatically terminated. Claims for damages as a result of this liquidation went in and out of court for the next seven years before a complicated settlement was finally reached in 1939.”
Some interesting tidbits:
Loth claims (pg. 127) that about twenty pounds of chewing gum a day, on average, was removed by hand from underneath the Music Hall’s seats!
The Music Hall was closed for five days early in 1965 for a thorough cleaning (pg. 158). (Maybe this is when that very laudatory article about the Music Hall, that I read in Reader’s Digest, came out?)
Chapter XIII of Carol Krinsky’s book, “Rockefeller Center” has very detailed info and lots of great pictures about the history and development of both Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater.
The portion of the chapter dealing with the Radio City Music Hall, pgs. 164 to 187, has two photos of the early clay models that were used to judge various proposed designs for the interior of the auditorium. It also has a photos of some early theaters, and drawings of proposed theaters, that may have influenced the ultimate design of the theater (five photos). There are (very small) reproductions of a cross section of the theater and the floor plans for the ground floor and first balcony levels. Plus there are photos of Roxy’s studio/reception room, the grand lobby (one photo looking north; one photo looking south), the basement lounge, the side/back of the auditorium, the men’s smoking room, the women’s powder room that has painted murals, and the women’s powder room that is encircled by mirrors.
Some interesting tidbits from the chapter:
Edward Durell Stone (an architect who later became famous and controversial) was in charge of the designs for both Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater (pg. 180).
Donald Desky won a limited competition to decorate the interiors of both theaters (pg. 183). (If I understand her correctly, because he could not do all the work for both theaters, he apparently subcontracted out the work of the Center Theater to Eugene Schoen who shared a similar interest in contemporary design.)
Krinsky challenges the Roxy story that he conceived of the idea of a radiating sunburst design for the auditorium after seeing a glorious sunrise or sunset while at sea. She says that he did not even embark on the trip in question until six days after the model for such a design had been photographed (pg. 180).
Krinsky says (pg. 180) that shortly before the theater opened, Roxy “entered the auditorium to demonstrate its acoustic properties” and discovered that the sound was unsatisfactory. So, according to Krinsky, “several stretches of auditorium wall had to be moved, and their fabric coverings rewoven in time for the opening night.”
Krinksy claims (pg. 180) that certain publicity photos (like the one shown on page 175) that show the auditorium with a stage show in progress are, in reality, composite photos that show the Rockettes and the performers behind them to be bigger on the stage than they really are (so as to make the stage not seem so far away). (I think as a kid I suspected this.)
Re: the underside of the marquee
The main point of posting about the change from incandescent to florescent was really to alert first-time, post-renovation visitors that, despite the vaunted “restoration” of the Music Hall, there are actually a few changes from the original that have diminished the original effect of the theater’s wonderful architecture.
And while none of these may be big things, a lot of little things (e.g., the heaters, the loudspeakers, the pedestrian fences) do add up to give the visitor a different (and, unfortunately, less impressive, in my opinion) experience when waiting outside, or entering into, the Music Hall.
This was also the reason for pointing out in an earlier post that the grand lounge had been radically re-designed. (I must admit that I’m skeptical that the lounge has been restored to its original grandeur, as one poster seems to feel. I’m not sure, but I think I did visit the grand lounge on my last visit in 2001, and I believe the alterations to the grand lounge had been “prettied up” a bit, but not undone.)
While one certainly doesn’t expect the owners of the Music Hall to jeopardize its financial viability by refusing to cut corners here and there, it’s also kind of interesting to look at, and to note, what corners the owners of a building choose to cut and what corners they choose not to cut — as it ultimately shows the values that are placed on various things.
For instance, I doubt the owners of the Music Hall would replace interior incandescents with florescent. So apparently the marquee incandescents were seen as an expendable part of the Radio City Music Hall “experience.”
Chapter XIII of Carol Krinsky’s book, “Rockefeller Center” has very detailed info and lots of great pictures about the history and development of both Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater.
The portion of the chapter dealing with the Center Theater, pg. 187 to 195, has photos of the early clay models that were used to judge various proposed designs of both the interior of the auditorium (two photos) and the Sixth Ave. marquee (three photos). It also has a picture of the grand foyer, the women’s lounge (two photos) and the men’s lounge (two photos).
On page 195 there is a spectacular picture of the Simon and Schuster offices that were built on the roof: “In 1940 the roof of the theater was rented to Simon & Schuster, publishers, for twenty offices and reception rooms. Harrison & Fouilhoux, Reinhard & Hofmeister designed a one-story building there with a flat slab roof cantilevered over thin piers. Much of the building perimeter was made of 250 feet of plate glass, but the roof overhang of about three or four feet was great enough to shield the interior from the unpleasant effects of summer sun and winter wind. The tenants loved their rooftop perch and the charming views, through glass walls, of planting on the pavement around them. They admitred Edward Durrell Stone’s simply-designed furniture which was finished in carefully-oiled natural tones of wood; such fittings were novel in corporate directors' offices at the time.”
On page 109 there is a picture looking west along 49th St. showing the office building and the ground floor showrooms that replaced the Center Theater.
On pgs. 98 and 99 there are terrific before and after photos that show that the Center Theater before and after the neighboring U.S. Rubber Building was built to the south. So in the “before” photo you see a row of brownstones along Sixth Ave. “hemmed in” by the large blank walls of the ticket lobby “pavilion” (to the north) and the large auditorium (to the east). The “after” photo shows how seamlessly the design of the new U.S. Rubber Building worked with the existing Center Theater — the ticket lobby “pavilion” of the Center Theater looks like a northern wing built to match a southern wing on the northeast corner of 48th St.
In the David Loth book, “The City Within a City,” the endpapers have a map of Rockefeller Center that show the outlines of the Center Theater (where it now says “U.S. Rubber Co. Building Addition”).
I believe the garage that was built in Rockefeller Center is NOT part of the building that replaced the Center Theater, the U.S. Rubber Co. Building Addition, but part of the Eastern Airlines Building to the east, instead. Krinsky describes how the garage came to be (pgs. 96-97): “The building [on the site of the Eastern Airlines Building] was to have a garage located between the office space and the Center Theater, an idea put forward as early as November 1936, taking advantage of a Zoning Resolution amendment of the preceding year which permitted certain parking garage construction in the Midtown retail zone. The garage was built for eight hundred cars, housed on three stories underground and three above. It used space that was hard to sell, and it halped to make visiting the Center easier for those who could not use mass transit.”
Loth (pg. 140-141) also describes how the garage came to be: “[zoning] Negotiations finally won a variance in 1938. Six floors of space above and below ground had been left for a garage in the Eastern Air Lines Building, then under construction as next to last of the original structures planned for the Center … . Here room for seven hundred autombiles was provided early in 1939, an innovation for a New York office building.” (He then goes on to describe how the garage had firemen’s poles so the garage attendant’s could get quickly down to the lower level. There’s also a picture!)
There’s also a great picture of the Center Theater in “New York 1960” by Stern, Mellins and Fishman. This photo (page 1102) looks eastward down 49th St. and shows what appear to be the five frosted and etched in relief(?) large glass windows of the foyer that fronted on 49th St. (These windows seem to be the exteriors of the windows shown on page 190 of Krinsky.)
The Center Theater is also mentioned in the WPA Guide to New York (1939) and gets about 17 lines — compared to only 5 lines for the original Roxy!.
I went by the Music Hall a few weeks ago to take a closer look at the underside of the marquee to figure out what it was that bothered me about the changes made to it during the most recent renvation.
Now that I’ve looked at it more closely, I’m wondering if I remembered correctly when I thought it originally had those “silver bowl” lightbulbs that Jim Rankin so kindly looked into in his December 17 posts. There seems to be mixed evidence about what the underside of the marquee was like:
On the one hand almost all of the recesses (coffers?) in the grid currently have plain reflector tiles (which appear to be metal pans coated with enamel) which give no indication that original light sockets had been filled in. Did the renovators actually reproduce all those pans, but this time without light sockets, for the renovation?
On the other hand, there seem to be about three or four very rusty light bulbs sockets scattered amongst the hundreds of plain coffers in the grid, which would seem to indicate that “silver bowl” lamps were indeed part of the original lighting scheme and that the renovators did indeed replace the old reflector pans.
But then again, at least one of these light sockets was plainly off-center — so maybe these three or four light sockets were just ad hoc additions to the original reflector pans?
The interior ticket lobby has a ceiling scheme that is similiar to — but actually different than — that of the “silver bowl” scheme I thought the marquee had. Maybe I confused the ticket lobby’s scheme with that found at the Whitney Museum?
I think either the “Godfather I” or “Godfather II” has a scene with Al Pacino and Diane Keaton that was done on location beneath the unrenovated marquee of the Music Hall. I wondered if one can tell from this scene what the underside of the marquee was like?
Whatever the case, one of the strong negatives about the renovation is that the reflector pans now reflect ugly, cold bluish florescent light — instead of the warm, fire-like incandescent light which I’m pretty sure was there pre-renovation.
Two other changes that lessen the original effect:
1) There are now obtrusive (but, sadly, necessary) security cameras hung from the underside of the marquee.
2) There are also lots of electric heaters hung from the grid. While these are certainly welcome, perhaps they could have been hung slightly differently to work better with the aesthetics of the grid, rather than to damage its original handsome effect.
While I realize all of this is not major, I think the cumulative effect of all these kinds of little changes (like the addition of those ugly pedestrian barriers on Sixth Ave. and the addition of blaring outdoor speakers) really distorts the original beauty and dignity of the theater.
A few weeks ago I went back to the Rockefeller Center concourse to take a closer look at the two stairways opposite the Radio City Music Hall corridor. These two little staircases do seem a little grand for just access to the service area that I thought they led to, as they kind of symmetrically wrap around the box office which is positioned in the center.
But they still seem kind of small — and so very, very much out of the way — for a main entrance to a museum. (I once worked at a similar “underground” location in Grand Central, and people found it very inconvenient and difficult to find — although it was directly adjacent to the Times Sq. shuttle, and directly below a very easily found street address!)
I’m interested in learning more about the museum, and hope that John S. Rogers, or someone else, might be able to elaborate a bit more as to how this entrance was used? Was this concourse entrance a secondary entrance, the same way that the Music Hall entrance was a secondary entrance? It seems strange that the museum wouldn’t have a main entrance on street level, since the museum itself surely extended upwards to street level. (There are pictures, from 1936(?) and 1934, of the very high ceilinged interior of the museum in the book “Rockefeller Center” by Carol Krinksy — pgs. 90 and 142).
I checked the WPA Guide to NYC (1939) and while they have a little over two and a half pages on the Museum and mention all the subways that go to the museum, they don’t give an entrance location other than 30 Rockefeller Plaza (the RCA Building’s address facing the ice skating rink).
Here’s two descriptions of the museum from Krinksy:
“The Museum dispays occupied the hard-to-sell windowless interior ‘Forum’ space on the lowest floors of the RCA Building, extending toward the RCA Building West. The long lease made the Museum a better tenant than the occasional municipal art exhibitors or the restauranteurs originally envisioned for the area.” (page 91)
“Below the [radio] studio area [of the RCA Building] was an area which had the advantage of offering wide spans of clear space — as much as 45 feet high and 117 feet wide — but which had the disadvantage of being entirely in the unlit interior of the building. The managers and architects labored throughout the 1930s to find a suitable use for this potentially profit-making waste space. It took until 1934 for the architects … . to design the area to provide a two-syory exhibition space. It had balconies at the second floor level which led to smaller exhibition rooms. The space became the site of two Municpal Art Exhibits in 1934 and 1935. When the Musuem of Science and Industry took a fifteen-year lease beinning in January 1936, Edward Durell Stone redesigned the space to create a lively display area with stepped ramps around part of a central rotunda, a scheme not entirely remote from that of Frank Lloyd Wright’s later Guggenheim Museum … As at the Guggenheim, the public was led along a preordained path, an arrangement better suited to lively displays of basic scientific principles and technology than to the contemplation of great paintings.” (pg. 143)
Thanks in advance for any additional info that anyone can provide!
Re: The cost of the Roxy and the price of admission
Thanks for the dates Ziggy! It just so happens that I was reading a book by a favorite author of mine, Jane Jacobs, and she mentions that in 1936 she was a stenographer in New York and that her weekly wages were … $12 dollars a week. A few pages later she mentions that in 1941 she got a better secretarial job that paid $15 dollars a week.
Also noticed this in the CD booklet for the “Ziegfeld Follies of 1936” (coincidentally at the Winter Garden, across the street from the Roxy entrance): “By the end of two additional tryout weeks in Philadelphia, word filtered back to New York that the [show] would be worth the unusually high $5.50 top ticket price.” (This amount is almost one-half of Jane Jacobs' weekly wages!)
So by adding all of this info together, a picture begins to emerge as to what prices REALLY meant in the mid- to late-1930s.
I wonder how much it cost to go to the Roxy at this time? My 1939 guidebook to NYC doesn’t give the price of admission to the Roxy, but it does give the price of Radio City Music Hall, and I assume that the Roxy’s prices were similar for competitive reasons
“Single Admissions. Radio City Music Hall: 40 cents to $1.65, performances begin about 11:30 A.M. Observatory (RCA Building, 70th Floor): adults 40 cents, children 20 cents; 10 A.M. to midnight.”
Assuming Jacobs worked a 40 hour week, she was getting paid 30 cents an hour. So she had to work an hour and twenty minutes to pay for her admission to Radio City Music Hall.
It’s interesting that the opening day ad for the Roxy reproduced in the Hall book says the theater cost $10,000,000 (1927) to build, but the 1939 guide book says it cost “fifteen million dollars.” (I was thinking that maybe the $10,000,000 does NOT include the cost of land, which Hall gives as $3,000,000, but that still leaves about $2,000,000 unaccounted for!)
Whichever numbers are correct, it would be interesting to compare the cost of building the Roxy to the prices charged for admission — to get a true indicator of how enormously expensive the theater must have been. Unfortunately, however, 1927 dollars were different from 1936 prices, so to do this right you’d really have to find out the price of admission to the Roxy in 1927 (or pre-1929 crash).
The only ad I could find in the Hall book that states the price of admission to the Roxy was the ad for the closing attraction, “The Wind Cannot Read”: 90 cents, opening to noon; $1.25, noon to 6 P.M.; $1.50, 6 P.M. to closing.
How much is this in today’s dollars?
I haven’t gone to the movies in ages, so I went by the multiplex on Third Ave. and 11th(?) St. in Manhattan. Their prices were $10.50 for adults and $7.00(?) for children and seniors. (I should have written it down the price for a child’s ticket, but I know that it was more than ½ price.) (I’m wondering if these prices are unusually high as you mentioned that the average price of a movie is $7.00. How did you arrive at your figure — for what localities and for what showings?)
For the moment, I’ll stick with the $10.50 price and round it down to $10.00 — since that is exactly ten times what I think it cost for a regular movie in NYC in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Using this standard, the Roxy’s prices were $9.00, $12.50 and $15.00.
But given today’s tastes, I don’t think there are enough general interest movies (that appeal to a very wide spectrum of the population) and enough general interest live entertainment (that also would appeal to a very wide spectrum of the population) to make something like the Roxy profitable at these prices.
That’s why I compare the Roxy to ocean liners. Even if the price of a transatlantic journey remained, the advent of new, more competitive alternatives made it seem less worthwhile than it once had been. In the case of ocean liners, the competition was jet planes; in the case of the great movie palaces, the competition was changing tastes (free TV and more niche entertainment in the movies?) and the development of suburban America (and theaters showing the niche products closer to home and conveniently accessible by car).
I’ve refined my Gloria Swanson quote:
Reporter: Why, you’re Miss Roxy Music Hall — you used to be a stupendous value!
MADAM Roxy Music Hall: I AM still a stupendous value — it’s the world that’s gone cheap!
Re: Projection and acoustics
While this doesn’t answer the question posed by “mjc,” I thought people might be interested in reading part of what the Hall book does say. The author of the article, Maurice Kahn, that is reprinted in the Hall book and from which the quote is taken, makes some interesting statements.
“The unique location of the projection room — in a cut in the balcony — has a three-fold purpose, the bettering of the theater’s acoustics, the improvement of projection and creation of an atmosphere of intimacy despite the theater’s size. The distance from the booth to the screen — the "throw” of the picture is exactly 100 feet, instead of the customary 250 feet. All distortion is eliminated by this innovation.“ (from a reprint of "Roxy, A History” — the lavish 60-page souvenir book prepared by the editors of “The Film Daily” that is reprinted in Hall, pg. 87 [unnumbered])
The full page picture of the interior of the Roxy on pg. 132 shows only the beginning of where there is a recess in the balcony for the projection booth.
Re: acoustics
If the acoustics for movies were good at the Roxy, it’s interesting to consider that the theater was probably not designed with acoustics in mind since when the Roxy was being designed, actors in movies didn’t “really” talk yet. The Hall book gives the impression that Vitaphone was still being perfected (pg. 240) while the foundations for the Roxy were being laid (pg. 78, unnumbered).
Perhaps part of the Roxy’s good fortune in this regar (as opposed to that of Radio City Music Hall which was built about five years later) can be attributed to the very irregular surfaces created by its more traditional, ornate architectural decoration (which I believe can be helpful to acoutics in certain instances). In contrast, Radio City Music Hall has, of course, a strikingly modern interior with very untraditionally “flat” surfaces for a theater, which would seem to foster an echo. (According to Krinksy [pgs. 180, 182-183] RCMH’s acoustics were never good, apparently, even for its intended use as a music hall.)
From my recollection, the rooftop theater atop the New Amsterdam was indoors — but with big windows. It may — or may not — also have had some kind of sliding roof that allowed you to see the sky in good weather.
I know this sounds modern, and I’m not sure about the New Amsterdam having such a roof, but Christopher Grey in the “Times” — a pretty reliable source — said that the original Lunt-Fontanne Theater had such a “moon roof.” And I believe the Waldorf-Astoria (the current one, from the 1930s) had some kind of retractable roof for it’s “Starlight Roof” nightclub. (I was in this space once for a function — it’s used for events and receptions — but I believe the retractable roof feature was removed long ago.)
The roof garden / restaurant on top of Hammerstein’s Victoria seems (from the one or two photos I’ve seen of it) to be mostly in the open air — but with some sort of covered area along the sides also. (From photos, it seems to be “multi-leveled” also, with the open air section up a few steps.)
Re: ambient noise
While I assume 42nd St. was not really quiet even then, in 1903 or so when some of these theaters were built, the area was built up differently than it is today. It was mostly low, rowhouses (“brownstones”), churches and horse and carriage manufacturing / trading facilities. So I suppose the kind of noises produced were different — for instance, no loud diesel truck and bus v-a-r-o-o-m noises, no garbage truck compactor whines and, obviously, no car alarms! Also maybe the height (six stories or so above the ground) might have helped distance people from some of the noise?
(Also, maybe the whole thing seemed like a better idea than it was, and the noise helped contribute to the demise of such places — along with the growing city around them!)
P.S. — I think the New Amsterdam’s roof “garden” and roof “theater” are the same thing. I believe at the time the New Amsterdam was built, the word “garden” had more connotations than it has today. For example: Madison Sq. Garden (an arena); and the Winter Garden Theater (a name that was given to the theater, which I believe was at one time decorated with trellises, to evoke those places like the lobbies of grand hotels that created a “garden” of potted palms, etc.).
I believe in those pre-air-conditioned times, a number of restaurants and “night clubs” (or their equivalent) were built on roofs (especially the very large roofs of theaters that were otherwise economically useless) and that many of them had a garden-like theme. (Oscar Hammerstein’s “Victoria,” on 42nd and Seventh Ave., had a famous one with cows and milkmaids. There’s a photo of it, empty, in the exhibition catalog.)
Before the skyscraper to the east of the New Amsterdam was built, you could clearly see the very large windows of the rooftop theater. I believe they were “French door” type windows that, when opened wide, gave one the illusion of being outdoors. (Over the years, unfortunately, I think they were painted over in black.)
In the years around the time I took the tour, I think the roof garden/theater space was used as a rehearsal hall for Broadway plays and musicals.
While I don’t believe this is that easily visible these days, I think the jumble of firescapes needed for both the roof theater and the rest of the New Amsterdam are still visible on 41st St.
I found the announcement and the exhibition catalog from the event. So in case people are interested, here is some additional info (and a correction):
The series of programs, the tour and an exhibit was called, “42nd St. — Theatre and the City.” It was indeed sponsored by the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) and took place in the fall of 1977.
The Graduate School was then located on 42nd St., on the north side of 42nd St., between Fifth Ave. and the Ave. of the Americas. The building had an “arcade” almost the width of the building that was used as an exhibition space. It also had a fair-sized basement auditorium where the panel discussions were held. By the way, I believe the building was originally the Aeolian Building, and there was originally a theater/auditorium on the second floor that was used as a concert hall, Aeolian Hall, where Gershwin premiered “Rhapsody in Blue.” If I recall correctly, while the graduate school was there, this space was used as a large, casual auditorium/lecture hall. I think the building is used as a dental school these days.
There were five Tuesday evening panel discussions beginning on October 18th and ending on November 22nd. 1) History; 2) Problems; 3) Human and Economic Solutions; 4) Future Reconstruction; 5) Future Showcase. Participants included “names” from different walks of life: academics (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Mary Henderson); actors (Dorothy Stickney); producers (Herman Schulmin, Alfred de Liagre, Jr.); businessmen (Vincent Sardi); critics (Jack Kroll, Brendan Gill); etc.
There was a two film “film festival” (“Reunion in Vienna” and “Once in a Lifetime”) that showed films “… of the 1930’s, based on a play of the same period that opened in the 42nd St. area …” (Stanley Kauffmann is listed as the discussant [don’t ever recall seeing this word before]).
The exhibit was 85 photographs “… featuring interiors and exteriors of the area’s major theatre structures as they were in 1927 and as they are now …”
The walking tour was on Sunday, October 23rd. Here’s the blurb from the announcement: “Opportunity to view first-hand examples of the old playhouses, including the new Amsterdam (built 1903), a new off-off Broadway theatre center, a performing arts housing complex, among others.”
The announcement itself has some interesting photographs and a particularly interesting juxtaposition of photographs: the original facade of the New Amsterdam (without any advertising whatsoever) and the facade in the 1970s (with advertisements for “The Deep” plastered all over the place).
The facade, sans marquee, etc., is fascinating because it shows the entrance being only four doors wide (stone facing taking up the rest of this very, very narrow facade). Looking at the two photos side by side it’s hard to believe they are the same structure — it’s hard to imagine how the entry of four doors in the photograph on the left could be enlarged to the building wide entryway shown in the modern photo on the right.
(P.S. — I am somewhat new to the internet. If it is technologically possible, and legally permissible, to send in scanned copies of these photos (and others), I’d be delighted to give it a try. I can get access to a scanner and the appropriate software (I think), but I’d have to find out how I could get it to Cinema Treasures.)
The announcement also has great photos of the original facades of the Empire (with glass and iron canopy), the Liberty (with almost no advertising); the Belasco (now the Victory?); etc.
My favorite photo is a “wide-angled” one that shows the Lunt-Fontanne (which was a movie theater at one time, and is listed on this site, I believe) and the Helen Hayes. It gives a really nice feel for how well they worked together to create a nice “feel” to 46th St.
The exhibition catalog (text by Josephine Dakin, Megan Lawrence and Ray Ring) has nice pictures (interior, exterior, historical) and text on all the 42nd St. theaters and a few others off 42nd St.: New Amsterdam; Harris; Liberty; Empire; Anco; American Theatre (demolished in 1932); Times Sq. and Apollo; Lyric; Victoria (replaced by the Ra\ialto); Lunt-Fontanne (with a terrific photo of the way it looked when it opened); the Palace; the Astor; the Hudson (including a contemporary photo showing “For Rent” on the marquee); etc. (I’ve tried to list only those theaters that were also movie theaters. But a few other theaters are also included.)
Correction: The catalog mentions that the New Amsterdam “… is said to have been the first theatre built with a cantilevered balcony.” (Something I had thought I had heard about the Hudson.) So apparently the balcony I saw that was held with rods from the ceiling was in another theatre on the tour, not the New Amsterdam.
Fascinating fact: The Hudson, the New Amsterdam and the Lyceum (a landmarked “legit” theatre that was never, as far as I know, a movie theater) were all opened within weeks of each other — two of them even opened on the same night!: 10/19/03, the Hudson; 11/2/03, the New Amsterdam; 11/2/03, the Lyceum. WOW! New York, in those days, WAS really jumpin!
I also found a terrific Hagstrom “detail” map from the late 1950s that shows the approximate building lot outlines of the various theaters in the theater district, including the bunched up ones on 42nd St. On this map you can clearly see where the actual auditoriums for the various theaters on 42nd were located. Again, if it’s legally OK, and if someone tells me how, I’d love to be able to share this with Cinema Treasures.
During the late 1970s when everyone was trying to figure out how to save 42nd St., a number of civic organizations held symposia, etc. discussing the problem of 42nd St./Times Sq., and some of these events including tours of the theaters on 42nd St. — tours that included the interiors of these theaters.
Looking back, I feel so privileged that I was able to take some of these tours and especially to take the tour of the New Amsterdam and to see it all lit up but empty in its “ghostly” downtrodden state. (I believe the New Amsterdam tour took place not long before, or just after, it closed as a functioning movie theater.) The tour was terrific and included not only the auditorium, but various lobbies, the backstage areas AND the fabled rooftop nightclub.
(I also went on interesting tours of some of the other theaters on the street, but don’t remember offhand, if they were all included on one big tour or if the New Amsterdam tour was separate.)
Although I’ve seen the Mary Henderson book about the restoration of the New Amsterdam, I’d like to share my much fuzzier recollections of the theater as I remembered it from this tour. (Somewhere down the line I’ll have to take a closer look at the Henderson book to see how well my memories correspond to reality.) So here’s a quick run-down of the tour as I remember it now — kind of like a report about the tour 25 years, or so, after the fact!:
We entered through the main entrance and went down the long entrance corridor (which has an office building above it). This corridor lead to the back of the orchestra level of the auditorium proper. Don’t have much recollection of how the theater impressed me from this viewpoint. In the years before it was renovated, I read a newspaper article that said, I believe, that the theater had a beautiful asbestos curtain — don’t remember if we saw it or not on the tour.
Eventually we went up to one of the balconies, and, if I remember correctly, I was surprised to see that they were supported by columns from below or from rods from above.
The three big highlights of the tour for me were as follows (in no special order):
1) A visit to a very handsome lounge. Don’t remember which one it was but, as I remember it, it had an unusual shape with some very thick columns. Could it have been a lounge for one of the balconies — or was it in the basement?
2) A visit to the stage and backstage area. I think we were told that this was the largest stage on Broadway — at least when it was built. To this “civilian” (with no real experience of other stages to compare it with) it didn’t really seem all that big to me. (Years later, the same held true, more or less, with my impression of the stage of Radio City Music Hall. The only stage I’ve ever seen on a tour that really impressed me as huge was that of the Metropolitan Opera House which, along with it’s side stages, seemed to be more like a movie sound stage or an aircraft hanger!)
I think this stage also included a turntable and maybe even stage elevators? But the big thing about the visit to the stage was to think about and reflect that I was standing in the same wings that so many famous entertainers had once stood in. If I remember correctly, I think Fred Astaire stood in those wings before going onstage in one of his last Broadway shows. Also think Bob Hope played in “Roberta” in this theater — so he too would have stood in these wings waiting to go on.
3) A visit to the fabled New Amsterdam roof! We took the elevators which were on the eastern side of the long entrance corridor? Again, if I remember correctly, I was a little “disappointed” in that the roof garden seemed smaller than I thought it would be. I also think, as small as it was, it had some sort of small balcony around it. Still it was just amazing to be in this space that I had heard so much about.
As mentioned earlier, I also got to go on tours of some of the other theaters. While memorable, these tours were not as “eventful” as that of the tour of the New Amsterdam, though.
(Since I hadn’t seen “Follies,” I don’t think the aura of “Follies” entered into my thoughts of the tour at the time. Plus, I don’t think the New Amsterdam was seen as ripe for renovation rather than demolition — maybe this is another reason I don’t really recall thinking of “Follies.” But looking back on the tour now, the theater would probably have been a visually PERFECT setting for a film version — which is not always true of real life places that are, more or less, being depicted in a movie.
Two strong impressions of this “other” tour:
1) In one of the theaters — it was on the north side of 42nd St. — we got to tour what had been a suite of offices upstairs. The suite of offices — which in my recollection was really large and spread out — was absolutely empty and thus gave off a very ghostly aura. One — one could image these offices as a beehive of activity in the heydey of 42nd St. — just like in the movies, with actors and chorus girls camping out to get an audition, and the Broadway bigwigs scooting in and out of the offices to avoid them or the bill collectors or to work on a big deal.
Don’t know when the offices were vacated, but lending credence to the aura that they had been vacated not long after 42nd St.’s heydey (which, in reality, is probably unlikely) was the fact that amongst all the emptiness there was a book left on one of the inbuilt bookcases(?) — a large format pictorial guidebook to New York in 1939!
An acquaintance that I had met on the tour (he was a grad student in theater history at the Grad Center of CUNY, which may have been the sponsor of the tour) said I should take it — but I felt funny about it. Later, after we had already left the building, he pulled it out from beneath his coat and gave it to me! So I took it. (I’ve since given it away in a fit of apartment cleaning.)
2) The other stong recollection from the tour of these theaters was how just how badly they all smelled! Not only did they seem to have a musky smell of unwashed people, I believe they also smelled from the cats that were kept in them (to keep the mouse problem under control).
One of the symposia also published a small book and informative brochure, both of which I’ve kept. When I get the chance, I’ll have to take a look at them to see if they mention these tours and anything interesting about the theaters.
P.S. — Sorry, but I made a significant typo in my previous post. One sentence should have read: “ … but these prices are NOT recorded for cost comparisons.”
(In other words, some people WERE paying similar prices for hot tickets in the old days, we just don’t know about it.)
Ziggy:
Thank you for the accurate version of that wonderful quote! While that version of the quote could also be used as a launching pad for an analogy, it is also quite unlikely, however, that someone would ever, ever admit to it!: “I AM still a big bargain; it’s that the rest of the rest of the world got less expensive!”
I think the illustrative prices provided by your grandparents and aunt are great (although dates would make it even better) and help illustrate my two points: 1) that you have to compare across the board within an era; 2) that comparisons across eras are nevertheless tricky because of other changes in the way people live (like hats not holding the same place in a well-dressed woman’s wardrobe as it used to have).
By the way, given what people tell me about prices for woman’s clothing — especially hand crafted, high fashion items — $1,500 for a hat (if hats still held the same place in a woman’s life as they did then) would not be all that outrageous. I forget exact prices that woman have told me that they’ve paid for things they’ve purchased, but I do remember being shocked at the price of “simple” things like scarves, tiny bathing suits, handbags, etc.
Vincent:
I think the key thing you mentioned in your last post about the $7.50 for “Follies” was that it was for a Wednesday matinee. I’m not sure about these days, but traditionally that’s the cheapest set of prices for a Broadway show, and in the “old” days such prices were SIGNIFICANTLY lower than those for the top tickets on a Friday or Saturday night. Usually when people talk about prices for Broadway shows they make comparisons between the top prices for a Friday or Saturday night, which is what I thought your $7.50 figure was referring to.
The $250 and $500 tickets you mention are a new phenomenon and using them to compare to past prices is misleading. In the old days “scalpers” would also charge (illegally) such exorbitant sums for “hot” tickets — but these prices are recorded for cost comparisons. The $250 and $500 tickets today are a way of producers seeing to it that such money spent goes into the hands of the producer rather than to a scalper (who hasn’t shouldered any of the risk of putting on the show).
But in addition to prices that are, in fact, genuinely higher than those of the past, another way of charging more for Broadway show is to charge higher for the lower priced seats — 2nd balcony, matinees tickets, etc. — and my guess is that THAT is where you probably are going to see the biggest price difference between prices today and in the “old” days.
Going back to the discussion of the Roxy and movie palaces, in a way the movie palaces provide another example. Although their prices probably remained quite reasonable until the “end,” the demand for their product at that price became less and less (as the public’s taste changed). In other words, given all the other inexpensive entertainment options that existed, and were being developed, fewer people were still interested in seeing that type of combo film and stage show, even if the prices for it were eminently reasonable. People preferred spending their entertainment dollar on something else.
(Another better example, I think, might be transatlantic ocean travel. It’s not that ocean liners became more expensive, but that the development of jets made other options quicker and cheaper.)
Re: great “low” prices of tickets to movie palaces (and musicals) in the “olden” days
While it is indeed probably true that tickets to the movies and the great movie palaces were great bargains (and great entertainment values!) in years gone by, it should also be remembered that people MADE a lot less money in those days too, and that prices for other things — including other forms of entertainment — were also correspondingly lower in those days too.
In other words, it’s important to account for inflation across the board and not just selectively when comparing prices from one era to another. What is “really” more accurate (to the extent that one can be accurate about such things in the first place — it’s stubbornly tricky) is to compare the RATIO of prices within one era to the RATIO of prices within another era. For example, a more accurate way of making such a comparison would be to say that the price of a ticket to a musical was, say, eight and a half times more than that of a movie in 1960, versus, let’s say, eleven times more than that of a movie in 2004. (Don’t know if this is true, just guessing here.)
If I remember correctly, in the early 1960s (too late for the Roxy, but as far back as my memory of these things go) prices were as follows (wasn’t earning money yet, so don’t know about wages):
15 cents for bus or subway fare to go to the movies; 50 cents for a child’s ticket ($1.00 for an adult’s ticket); 15 cents for a slice of pizza, before or after the movie; about $8.60(?) for top price to a big Broadway musical on Friday or Saturday night — both Wednesday and Saturday matinee prices seemed to be about one-half that (even without “twofers”) though. Don’t remember what the cost of a ticket to the Grand Tier of the Metropolitan Opera was, but I think it was “considerably” more (maybe in the $20 range?) than the top price of a Broadway show.
I say all this because although prices for tickets to Broadway musicals, for instance, are indeed higher than what they were in the past (even accounting for inflation), it is not quite as dramatic as it is often made out to be. (Although the cost of tickets for musicals have probably, indeed, outpaced inflation because of higher labor costs and much more technically elaborate scenery, etc.)
To paraphrase the great line said by Gloria Swanson (as Norma Desmond) — (I think it was something like) “It’s not that pictures got bigger, it’s that the people got smaller” — “It’s not that plays and musicals got expensive, it’s that everything else ("records,” home movies, etc.) got so much cheaper."
P.S. — I’m very surprised that a top priced ticket to “Follies” (whose poster design does indeed seem to consciously evoke that great Life Magazine picture of Gloria Swanson in the ruins of the Roxy — the photo is reproduced on the last page of Ben Hall’s “Best Remaining Seats”), would have cost only $7.50 in the early 1970s. I distinctly remember higher prices than that even in the early 1960s, and a collection of reviews of Broadway musicals (“Opening Night on Broadway,”[?] by Suskin[?]) includes posters of Broadway musicals that show higher prices than that, also earlier than the 1970s.
DavidH:
Glad you enjoyed the “tour”! As I revisted and reflected upon the Hudson, I really began to appreciate this theater even more.
Regarding gallery entrances:
From my readings over the years, I got the impression that the separate entrances were almost entirely designed for the purpose of economic/social segregation — keeping the poorer classes away from the more well to do. And in the era in which they wre built (pre WWI), I don’t think people really gave it much thought.
Also, and this is just a guess on my part, I think it was really the rise of the (bascially one price) movie theater and the (bascially one price) movie palace that led the way towards the elimination of this type of design — movie palaces being “palaces” for the people, for the masses.
Although I realize that Radio City Music Hall, and probably a number of the other movie palaces, did have higher priced sections, I don’t think any of them had separate entrances for them. And judging from RCMH, the people going to the more expensive section had to walk through the areas set aside for the less expensive seats in the Orchestra and walk along with those headed for the less expensive seats in the second and third balconies.
By the way the first three levels of the old Metropolitan Opera House — the three levels closest to the stage and to the ground — were accessed through the main lobby. (The main lobby was not, by the way, all that impressive to begin with.) These three levels were called, I believe, the Orchestra level, the Parterre (the boxes) and the Grand Tier. Everything above that (from what I believe was called the Family Circle on up) was accessed through a number of separate entrances (which I believe were on the side streets, rather than Broadway).
The Sam S. Shubert theater on 44th St. had a separate 2nd balcony stairway that was entered, if I remember correctly, from Shubert Alley.
P.S. — One thing I forgot to mention is that when I looked at the back wall of the theater it occurred to me that the theater is only about three — or four, at most — brownstones (rowhouses) wide on 45th St., and only two — or three, at most — brownstones wide on 44th St. So it’s also interesting to me that this handsome and seemingly commodious “regular-sized” theater takes up such a small amount of space. It’s a very modest, handsome and efficient design — a real positive contribution to the cityscape!
CConnolly:
Glad you mentioned about how accessible the interior of the Hudson Theater was, as it inspired me to go back and take a look again after 40 years! I’ve passed by the theater many times over the years, and knew the theater was being preserved as part of the hotel, but didn’t think to try and get inside. Even now I’m surprised that it was so easy to walk in — perhaps both of us just happened to visit at the right times?
Actually, when I first tried to visit around Christmastime, the doors were locked — it might have been off hours — and you could see through the glass doors that the theater was being repainted. When I tried successfully a few days ago, there were still painters, etc. working on the theater, and I almost wonder if that made it easier for me to just walk right in. (Although I realize that the hotel LOBBY itself is legally something of a public space — I believe the owners got a zoning bonus from the City for providing it — I don’t think they are legally required to allow public access to the interior of the theater though.)
But in any case, I took a look at the lobby — and, of course, it’s funny how memory plays tricks on you! Actually the ticket lobby entranceway goes directly into the back of the orchestra level of the theater — it’s hard to imagine it being any more straight forward or direct! (It even seems to have been placed symmetrically in the center of the theater.)
So how / why did the Hudson Theater become part of this strange recurring dream of mine?
On the one hand, dreams are “notorious” for being irrational. Thinking of movies, there was a fantastic dream sequence in a Michael Fox movie (forgot the name, based on a book by Jay McErney[?]) where the Fox character plays a young intern at the “New Yorker.” The great thing about the dream sequence was the way the people pictured in it kept on changing (morphing) as the dream progressed — just like in some real dreams! So perhaps, something similar happened to the theater that appeared in this dream — perhaps it started out the Hudson Theater, but then morphed to, say, the Imperial Theater (which, I’m pretty sure, does have such a “funny” entrance).
But on the other hand, I wonder if maybe the source of this dream was that perhaps I was sitting in the second balcony when I went to see “Ross”?; and I wonder if the original ENTRANCE to the second balcony is that “mysterious” stairway to the right, just inside the doors to the street? (I didn’t feel comfortable enough to go up the stairs to see where they led; and now that the theater is connected to the hotel, access to the second balcony might have been changed anyway.)
By the way, in the old days (pre-democratic movie palace days), many legit theaters did indeed have separate entrances for second balconies etc. For instance, the Shubert Theater (on 44th St.) had one (which I used once), as did the Metropolitan Opera (which I also used once).
Now that I think about it, if I remember correctly, I vaguely remember being told we couldn’t enter into the Hudson using the main entrance, but had to use the stairway to the second balcony. What’s “strange” and “funny” about this stairway (at least to me), if this is indeed what happened, was the way the stairway was so unobtrusively and “mysteriously” placed just inside the glass doors leading in from the street. Almost like a secret stairway. (Plus, since we were seeing the show on twofers, there’s a good chance there were very few other people using this “secret” stairway.) Somehow in my mind I would have thought that the stairway to all those seats in the balcony — even if it was a separate stairway — would have been further inside the theater and more prominently placed.
The other “funny” thing about this staircase that might have inspired my dream was that I believe it was a “blind” staircase that seemed to just go on and on forever!
Regarding the theater’s adaptive re-use:
This does seem to be a terrific adaptive re-use of the Hudson Theater. As you are probably aware, there are other theaters that have also been adaptively re-used well. Perhaps the most famous is “Studio 54,” which was originally a legit theater (whose name escapes me … the Gallo Opera House? — it’s profiled in the Mary Henderson book on New York theaters) before it became 1) a TV studio (“What’s My Line”; “To Tell the Truth”, etc.) and a world-famous disco. The Henry Miller Theater (which is now only a preserved facade) was — many years before it was the home to “Cabaret” — the home to “Xenon” (which was a poor man’s “Studio 54”) and, I think, a nightclub by the name of “Shout!” Also the Academy of Music on 14th St. (which was built as a Thomas Lamb[?] designed movie palace) also was a disco, the “Palladium,” before being torn down for an NYU residence hall.
What’s great about all these adaptive re-uses was that the theater’s interiors were pretty much preserved as theaters — the theaters could easily have been reconverted to theaters (and in some cases were).
Having been to some of these theaters, what I find striking is how SMALL the theaters seem to be when the orchestra level no longer has seats. Somehow (at least to me) theaters appear bigger when they have their seats in them.
Also took a look at the rear of the Hudson Theater and noticed that the loading dock to the stage is only a foot or two off the ground. It’s easy to see how Steve Allen could interview passersby from this stage, as he did in the early days of the “Tonight” show.
I hadn’t noticed before, but there appear to be windows (dressing rooms?) and, if I remember correctly, very small firescapes on either side of the stage’s backwall. It’s interesting to see how these windows, firescapes and the stage itself are so close to the street. The whole set-up seems so delightfully small-scaled and so intimate — a really nice addition to a city street!
Thinking about the Beekman, it occurred to me why I think news of its proposed demolition may be so disturbing:
The Beekman is, perhaps, the Radio City Music Hall of the art house era — or, one might say, an art house version of the Roxy.
That is to say, what the art nouveau New Amsterdam Theater was to the sophisticated patrons of the Ziegfeld Follies in the early years of the 20th Century; what the opulently overwhelming Roxy was to the masses of silent movie fans in the roaring jazz age 20s; and what the massive and sleek Radio City Music Hall was to family fare moviegoers of the 30s, 40s and 50s, the Beekman was to intellectually adventurous New Yorkers of the post-WWII era, especially in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Beekman is more than just a movie theater — it is/was a way of going to the movies … oops, going to the “cinema” or a way of experiencing thought provoking / great “film.”
Funny too, how waiting on line at the Beekman (immortalized in “Annie Hall”[?]) might be considered a more sophisticated and grown up version of the New York “tradition” of waiting on line for the Christmas or Easter show at Radio City Music Hall!
And the Beekman’s coffee bar, offering what was then novel and sophisticated Columbian coffee and a window allowing loungers to see the screen through glass from the lounge, might be considered an art house equivalent of the Radio City Music Hall vast underground lounge.
Regarding the reputations and relative popularity of the Roxy vs. Radio City Music Hall:
I was looking through a 1939 guidebook to NYC, the “WPA Guide to NYC,” and noticed that the entry for the Roxy is less than five lines long and comes at the end of a paragraph that includes info about the Casa Manana nightclub (across the street from the Roxy) and the Brass Rail restaurant (just south? of the Roxy). This listing is similar to the listings for the other Times Sq. movie palaces: the Strand (3 ½ lines); the Rivoli (essentially 5 lines); the Capitol (1 ½ lines); the Continental [Warner Hollywood or Mark Hellinger] (2 ½ lines).
However the the entry for Radio City Music hall takes up almost an entire page! (It’s just two lines short.)
Here’s the entry for the Roxy: “The ROXY, Seventh Avenue and Fiftieth Street, is the most elaborate of the first-run motion-picture houses in the Broadway district. The huge oval lobby, highly ornate in its decorations, can accommodate three thousand patrons, about half as many as the auditorium itself. The Roxy opened in 1926, representing an investment of fifteen million dollars.”
So it would seem that in 1939, Radio City Music Hall had a much higher profile, and was considered more of a wonder, than the Roxy.
By the way, another poster mentioned something like the Roxy was of one era and the Radio City Music Hall was of another. While I don’t disagree with this — they do seem to be of two different eras — isn’t it fascinating that these two theaters, representing these two “eras,” were built only five and a half years apart! For instance, imagine comparing something that opened on December 27, 2004 with one that opened on March 11, 1999!!!
This says two things to me:
1) They were very tumultuous times! And they were. Just for some quick for instances, in 1927, the year the Roxy opened, I believe NBC and CBS radio networks were also founded. (NYC got its first radio station, WEAF, only in 1922.) And Vitaphone became the rage later on in 1927. Also I think the Paramount and probably many, many more other movie palaces were also built or under construction in 1927.
2) The “old fashioned” architectural style of the Roxy made it seem prematurely “old.”
Originally I was thinking this about the Roxy’s interiors as being less photogenic, but looking at some of the photos of the Roxy on various websites, I think this is also true of its exterior architectural design.
For one thing it’s design does not appear to have aged well, even in a short period of time — city dirt, grime and soot really “show” on its ornate architecture. But dirt, grime and soot actually form a somewhat attractive “patina” on Radio City Music Hall’s (and Rockefeller Center’s) sleek modern walls — or are at least less unattractive in my opinion. (I remember watching them steam clean the walls of Rockefeller Center and at first thinking how wonderful they would look when they were clean. But I was then surprised when my reaction was that it really didn’t make that much of a positive difference (the way it did with ornate St. Patrick’s), and in a way it seemed to me that something was actually lost. Looking back, I think this is because on the large plain walls of Rockefeller Center, the soot forms kind of a marbelizing pattern on the large plain walls — “decorating” them in a way with sweeping modernistic dark columns!)
I also noticed that the Roxy had an ENORMOUS, exposed, and very prominent, lot line wall facing busy Sixth Ave. that was left “undesigned” — it just had some ugly firescapes on it. In contrast Radio City Music Hall facades incorporated its firescapes behind very handsome grilles.
So it’s easy for me to see how people can see the Roxy as being “old fashioned” and of a different “era” even though it was built only five and a half years before RCMH!
Plus one of the “wonders” of the Roxy was the P.T. Barnum-like Roxy himself and his proto-Disney like obsession with “presentation” — one can imagine him rather than Disney as coming up with the idea that employees such as ushers and ticket takers were “characters” rather than just employees. So it seems likely to me that when Roxy and his Roxy “magic” left the Roxy Theater for RCMH, some of the air inevitably left the Roxy balloon and it became more of just a very big, ornate theater.
More on Roxy and the Roxy Theater from Ben Hall (“Best Remaining Seats,” 1961), David Loth (“The City Within a City,” 1966) and Carol Krinsky (“Rockefeller Center,” 1978). (As you will see, each writer has a different focus and a different “take.” I don’t necessarily agree with all the details of any of the versions — I just thought Cinema Treasure readers would be interested in seeing this info.)
Re: Roxy abandoning the Roxy for the Radio City Theaters (I didn’t find any mention in any of the three books about Roxy being forced out of the management of the original Roxy Theater.)
Hall (pg. 252): “What happened to Roxy? In 1930 he had another vision, one that led him another block eastward … . The Rockefellers were building their Center, and it in the largest theatre in the world, the International Music Hall.”
Loth (pg. 81): “RKO was generally considered to have brought off an admirable coup when they persuaded him to take over the management of the new Music Hall.”
Krinsky (pg. 164): “On hearing that the radio group [RKO] planned to join the Rockefeller development, he proposed that he build a rival for his own namesake. The president of NBC [at the time, both NBC and RKO were subsidiaries of RCA, pg. 48, Loth] spoke to Rockefeller who approved of the idea… . In April 1931 Roxy announced his affiliation with the Center, having severed his ties to the Roxy Theater.”
(pg. 79) (She’s discussing why RCMH’s management wanted Roxy out in 1933) “… perhaps they thought that he was abandoning their sinking ship more quickly than he had abandoned his own Roxy Theater … .”
(Although they all agree with each other in fundamental ways, they also all present slightly different versions of what happened!)
Re: the closing of the Roxy
(I didn’t find any mention in any of the three books of the Taft not being willing to renew a lease for the Roxy’s ticket lobby.)
Hall: As far as I could see, he doesn’t really go into the particulars about the demise of the Roxy — but he does have a full page reproduction of that wonderful Gloria Swanson photo as the last page of the book.
But regarding the Hotel Taft site, Hall does present what appears to be an apocryphal story — or sloppily written one — about how Herbert Lubin (the man who hired Roxy to create the Roxy Theater) originally purchased the land needed to build the Roxy. Hall says that in the spring of 1925 Lubin decided that the Seventh Ave. and 50th St. corner “would be ideal to build his big theater on,” asked the agent how much it would cost, and agreed to pay the $3,000,000 on the spot.
The problem with this story is that the corner of Seventh and 50th is where the Roxy’s ticket lobby occupied the first floor of the adjoining hotel. Now, there are ways for Hall’s version of the story to be true — say, for instance, if the Roxy leased to the hotel the right to build over the ticket lobby — but without any further explanation, this story appears to be sloppily written.
Loth: (pgs. 186-187) He mentions that after Rockefeller Center was “complete,” the management decided to expand to the other side of Sixth Ave. and began purchasing land there — first purchasing the land where the Time-Life Building would eventually be built (in 1953) and then purchasing the Roxy Theater, which was the adjacent property to the west (in early 1956?). Originally when they started buying land on the west side of Sixth Ave., they were considering building a TV City with studios for NBC and a skyscraper for Time-Life. But NBC pulled out of the deal before the Roxy was actually purchased.
(pg. 191) “The purpose for which they had bought it was a thing of the past, but they had acquired air and tower rights for the Time & Life Building … priced at $2 million. So the Center could afford to be relaxed about the Roxy’s fate in the entertainment world.
“Various attempt to revive its old popularity by a couple of lessees, one of whom was Roxy’s nephew were short-lived. They even at temped a combination of stage and screen show, but apparently the Radio City Music Hall has a monopoly on success in this field. [Don’t know what the author means here; maybe he means attempted to revive a combination of stage and screen show?] Shortly before the Time & Life Building opened (late 1959?), Rockefeller Center had to take over the controls; it was already dickering for an entirely different sort of deal. That deal was consummated in February, 1960, when it was announced that the theater had been sold to Webb & Knapp for an office building … .”
Krinsky: (pgs. 111-114) Her version is essentially the same, but again with some differences. “To let the Center build a slab as tall as this one [Time-Life Building] while conforming to the requirements of the Zoning Resolution, Westprop, Inc. a Center subsidiary, had to buy the Roxy Theater immediately to the west, for its air rights. This also guaranteed that no rival tower could abut the new building in the future.”
The Loth and (especially) the Krinksy book also have lots of interesting info (and Krinksy has lots of great photos) about the creation of the Center Theater and Radio City Music Hall. If I get the chance, I will post some of this info on the appropriate site for each of the theaters.
My copy of the Ben Hall book, “Best Remaining Seats,” is a Bramhall House (div. of Clarkson Potter, Inc.) edition from the mid-1970s. Although I was able to find the photos referenced in Jim’s post, I read them very differently and hope that those interested get a chance to look at the Hall book, especially the following pages: pg. 128, for what appears to me to be a modified “plan” of the first floor of the Roxy; pgs.82-83 (unnumbered), for what appears to me to be a loosely done “section” of the theater; and pg. 90, for a loose equivalent of an “elevation” of the proposed theater.
While there are also some good photos, including a photo of the Roxy’s main entrance on opening night (pages 2-3, unnumbered), these suffer (for our purposes) from severe foreshortening (the photographs being taken looking down relatively narrow streets).
But looking at the loose equivalents of a “plan,” “section” and “elevation” of the Roxy, it seems to me that pretty much only the ticket lobby of the Roxy extended into the hotel next door and that the five floors above the ticket lobby were most probably NOT used by the Roxy Theater — especially for things like the Usher’s Locker Room that is shown on the cutaway section.
Looking at an artist’s rendering of the Roxy (pg. 90), which also shows the adjacent hotel structure, and comparing it to the “plan” and “section” one sees that the Roxy facade was divided into three sections:
a very large section on the east (the auditorium itself);
a slightly lower section to the west of that (labeled the “Grande Foyer” on both the plan and the section);
and a yet smaller section, only three windows wide, to the west of that (labeled “Recpt. Hall” on the plan and the “Entrance Hall” on the section).
It is this last section, three windows wide, that appears to me to contain the five floors or so (there is a set back after the “third” story) of ancillary activities that are shown in the cutaway section.
Looking at both the plan and the cutaway section one notices that no ticket lobby whatsoever is being shown on either of them — the ticket lobby is the long, low area of the theatre that extended into the first floor of the adjacent hotel. In other words, neither the plan nor the section actually choose to show the ticket lobby — only the artist’s rendering, which shows the southern facade of the hotel, shows where the long, low ticket lobby was.
To a smaller extent this also seems to be borne out in the photo of the Roxy’s main entrance on opening night. One sees that the floors above the marquee appear to be conventional hotel type rooms — not rooms being used for the facilities being shown on the cutaway drawing.
Also, looking through the Hall book (flipping through the pages and using the index) I found no reference to 1) a story that the adjacent hotel choose not to renew the lease of the Roxy Theater’s ticket lobby; and 2) no reference to Sam Rothafel being forced out by the “new” owners of the Roxy.
The only reference in the Hall book to Sam Rothafel being force out that I could find was the account of his being forced out of the management of Radio City Music Hall (the last section of the book, “The End of the Dream”). And surprisingly for a book with so much info on the Roxy, I was not able to find any sustained account of how it closed or why it was demolished.
Now the book is very loosely organized, with info about the Roxy, included reprints of various magazine articles, etc., spread (non-chronologically) all throughout the book. So it is possible that I might have missed such accounts.
But in any case, none of the accounts were a major part of the Roxy story in the Hall book — plus I’ve discovered accounts elsewhere (more about that latter) that would seem to dispute these versions of Roxy’s and the Roxy’s history.
I have some additional comments on what I found last night in the Hall book about the Roxy Theater — plus some interesting relevant info from the Carol Krinsky book (“Rockefeller Center”) and the David Loth book (“The City within a City”) about Rockefeller Center. But that will have to wait till later.
The Ben Hall book, “The Best Remaining Seats,” is indeed a fantastic source of info about the Roxy. And, it is one example of a discussion about movie palaces where the Roxy is actually “numero uno” (written about more extensively than any other theater) while RCHM hardly even rates a mention! Just the other day I was thinking that one might almost consider this book to be an ode to the Roxy, as the extensive Roxy material appears to be the centerpiece of the book. I don’t have my copy of the book here with me at work, but will, of course, look at it again when I get home.
Although the Roxy may have used the first five floors above the ticket lobby for theatrical purposes, the building above the ticket lobby was still essentially part of the hotel’s structure — at least that’s the impression that I had from general reading of the book, from walks by the hotel post-Roxy demolition and from a general understanding of the way New York City “works.” And it’s not all that uncommon for one use in one structure to “infiltrate” another use in another structure. For instance when Barney’s clothing store was on 17th(?) St., it expanded into (among other structures) a neighboring apartment house — remodeling apartments in the apartment house to be an extension of its sales floor, fitting rooms and administrative offices. Also I think part of Radio City Music Hall may have also extended into the office building above the ticket lobby portion of RCMH.
As to “why” these things are done: I believe in the Carol Krinsky book on Rockefeller Center she too mentions “effect” as a partial reason for a low ticket lobby — but in this case the reference is to the “low” ceilinged lobby of RCMH. But practically speaking, I think it’s very rare — perhaps even unheard of — for any auditorium in Manhattan to NOT have any office space (or something similiar) above the ticket lobby. So to some degree it also seems to be a question of how much office space, administrative space or hotel rooms the theater’s builders are going to allow to be “displaced” by a “uselessly” high ticket lobby.
I think my comments about the clean lines of RCMH may have been misunderstood. Actually I was talking mostly about the clean lines of the interiors (especially the sunburst auditorium) that make the theater very unusual for a “movie” palace — and thus rather distinctive. I think these interiors probably make RCMH more “photogenic” — especially to the modern day tastes of the general public at large.
Regarding the exteriors — it seems to me from photographs that the Hotel Taft’s exteriors somewhat MATCH those of the Roxy. This is one of the reasons I think that the same corporate builder may have been involved in both. (The exteriors of the Hotel Manhattan, the Majestic, the Golden and the Royale — which indeed had the same corporate parent — also, similarly, “match.”) While at the time of the Roxy’s demolition, the ticket lobby area (as well as, of course, the Roxy facilities in the hotel structure above the ticket lobby) were apparently owned by someone else, I wonder if this was true when they were constructed?
While, I will have to keep an eye out for info on the construction of the hotel, it seems to me that the that kind of hotel structure is of the same era as that of the Roxy — another reason that it appears to me that there may have been some sort of corporate connection between the Roxy and the hotel.
With regard to the aesthetics of the interior of the Roxy: “… perhaps not the most artistic and memorable at all levels, but certainly overwhelming if for no other reason that vastness.” If I understand this comment correctly, this is close to my point: that the effect of the Roxy largely depended upon being overwhelmed by its size when you were inside it.
While technically speaking, Roxy may not have “abandoned” the Roxy but been forced out, if the Roxy theater were a “first” wife she would have had good grounds for divorce because of Roxy’s “unfaithfulness” with the two much younger and more stylish young beauties he was having “an affair” with. I think this is closer to how the general public may have seen Roxy’s relationship with the original Roxy.
I hope I didn’t come across as being “anti” Roxy. I was just trying to add some more reasons to those already given as to why RCMH may have had (if it indeed did have) a higher profile than the Roxy.
Re: the lobby area of Roxy
Actually, in spite of the differences in architectural styles, I think the lobby area of RCMH and the Roxy are actually quite similar.
Both of them sit beneath a skyscraper that is separate and apart from the theater itself. In the case of the Roxy, the building was a hotel; in the case of RCMH it is an office building with an entrance on, I believe, Sixth Ave. (just to the north of the entrance to RCMH itself).
In both cases the theater patron goes from a long, relatively low, lobby/ticket area into a vast and grand theater lobby. In the case of RCMH the lobby space is rectangular and goes across the block. In the case of the Roxy, I believe it was oval – which was a clever way for the architect to mask the fact that the auditorium itself was not parallel to the street it fronted on, but was at a angle (to make the most of a relatively small plot of land).
In both cases, having a skyscraper over the ticket lobby area is a way of optimizing the value of the land. The lobby/ticket area of a theater is pretty much the only part of a theater overwhich one can economically build another structure. (Interestingly, it appears that the builders of that grand movie place in Atlanta, for example, had no need to maximize the value of their land in this way. From the illustrations I’ve seen they only have stores to the left and right of the lobby/ticket area — but no office building above.
Don’t know what the arrangement was between the Roxy and the Taft, but both of them seem to have exteriors built in the same style. So my guess is that they were built together — pehaps by the same owner who then leased or sold off the parts? For a similar arrangement look at what was once the Hotel Manhattan (don’t remember if that’s its current name) on Eighth Ave. It was built by the same builder and in the same architectural style as the Majestic Theater (44th St.), the Golden and Royale Theaters (45th Sts.). The theaters all share a common service alley way on 45th St. that used to be open but is not gated off.
By the way, I think the Michealangelo is some sort of condo/corporate hotel. I think big corporations own apartments there where they put up workers visiting from other places. For instance, I once temped at a fabric company (in the building just across the street to the north) that housed an employee from North Carolina who was temporarily assigned to a project at the New York office.
Re: Popularity / fame of Roxy vs. RCMH — some additional thoughts
Interesing question. I agree that the fact that one was demolished “ages” ago is part of the reason. Also think that the clean lines of RCMH makes it more distinctive — especially among movie palaces! — and also more “photogenic” (i.e., a beauty that easily comes across in photos).
Also think that the Roxy interior was maybe more overwhelming for being “gargantuan” than for being visually engaging. (Personally, I think as a kid I was my fascinated by spectacular “themed” theaters, like the Loew’s atmospherics, than by the Roxy.
Also, RCMH was the newer and “better” theater — after all didn’t Roxy himself(!) forsake the Roxy for the Roxy Center and Radio City Music Hall. So, I guess, people may have just seen the Roxy as being a bit old hat.
(Interestingly, I think it was generally believed that RCMH was the largest theater in the world (which would certainly have added luster to its image) although maybe the Roxy was the larger of the two? — not to mention other theaters that also might have been larger than either of them. So maybe RCMH also had a better press department?
Plus RCMH is part of a large and famous group of buildings — and that probably also helped.
P.S. — I started writing my previous post before the two very pertinent posts that come before it were posted. So my post wasn’t meant to be a commentary on them.