Radio City Music Hall

Justin… I don’t think there’s been an Easter show at the Hall in more than two decades! At least not the Glory of Easter shows many of us remember from years gone by.

brenograph: The auditorium was always more or less beige as a base color. The color was designed to reflect the light shone upon it. The original paint job, and the first re-painting speckled the beige undercoat with four colors of paint which reflected the cove lighting. The cove lights are in four colors: amber (gold), red, blue and green. That lighting is also used in the soffits under the mezzanines. Thus the ceiling can look gold or any one of the other colors. I left at the time of the current remodeling, so I’m not sure how well the new system works. The light source may have changed, as well as the basic color of the auditorium, and they may not have speckled it with the colors of paint that were in the original painting, but the concept remains the same.

One of the most impressive displays I remember was during a performance of The Mighty Clouds of Joy, which were an opening act. Our lighting console crew alternated the color of each cove one color at at time in a rippling pattern, which saw red go from “A” cove all the way to the back of the house, followed by each successive color. The effect was to turn the ceiling into a huge jukebox. In my twenty-five years there I never saw the effect repeated, but never forgot it.

Another great effaect was during the Easter Sunday Sunrise service which preceded the first show of the day. At the start the coves faded from gold to black, and as chimes sounded in the organ chamber, they slowly faded up with a low blue, through purple as the reds were added, and then from there to full brightness as the “sun” rose. Since the coves were, in legend, designed to reflect a sunrise Roxy say while cruising on a ship, the effect was very impressive.

I haven’t been to RCMH in many years, but went to the “Splendor” show this February. The auditorium was painted in a pale beigh color which didn’t seem right. Was I hallucinating on it’s original color which was gold, or was pale beigh it’s original color?

Footfall has always been a dubious figure in the industry with theatres keeping it secret so that comps, discounts, unsellable seats and footfall rent triggers did not get exposed.

You can get figures adjusted for inflation from boxofficemojo but for individual films, not theatres. Variety once speculated that BIRTH OF A NATION or DEEP THROAT, not GWTW, would probably hold the true attendance record.

Since Cablevision now controls the building, they don’t want the public to dig deeper into their hidden stuff, much like the company does with Clearview Cinemas and its cable operations, as well as its sports teams and arena.

Actually, the ties between RKO and Radio City continued in a way into the ‘50’s. The building over the Radio City entrance and lobby was RKO’s headquarters. We had two screening rooms in Radio City over the lobby auditorium on the executive level. One was Radio City’s and one was RKO’s. The two rooms had a common lobby with a staircase that extended down and onto the roof between the office building and the back wall of the Hall. There was a crosswalk area that led to a set of doors into the RKO building. Thus executives from RKO could go down to that floor in the office section, cross over outside for 10’ or so, and come up the staircase to their screening room. The first time “Citizen Kane” was screened in New York it was for the press in one of those screening rooms (probably Radio City’s since it was the larger of the two). Robert Wise, who was the “Kane” editor, remembered carrying the print in from California for the screening. I don’t know when RKO stopped using the room and it became Radio City’s, but I inherited a pair of “SuperScope” lenses from the room. SuperScope was RKO’s proprietary process designed to compete with CinemaScope. Their room (which became ours) was also equipped for 3-D presentation using two interlocked projectors with large 3-D film magazines, and an RKO sticker on one of the lamp ballasts. DC power for the arc lamps in the RKO room came from a generator in the Radio City generator room in the basement. I can’t remember whether the projectionists in both screening rooms were on Radio City’s payroll, but I know I had notebooks with the booth payroll hours listed that included the screening room crew.

The ties between RKO and Rockefeller Center were complex. The “R” in RKO was for RCA which was the Center’s leading tenant. There are also accounts of the Rockefellers using their clout to counter Hearst’s drive against “Citizen Kane”. Indeed, “Kane” was originally booked into the Hall before they moved it to the Palace. Had RKO continued in its original form, they would probably have still been using their space in the Hall.

Also remember labor was much cheaper during those days.

To this day, most people prefer to watch movies full-screen, even with the advent of HDTV and digital cinema, at home. Too bad the ratio used by HDTV is not as wide as Cinemascope/Panavision, leaving the user to zoom in on the 2:39 or greater ratio. The only studio that makes filmed stuff in 2:20:1 is Sony, who makes only trailers for the movies in the format, mostly for big movies.

I don’t know if “Little Women” could have pulled the crowds in by itself or not, but in the 1930’s it was still a book extremely beloved by the public, much more so than today. When the stage version came out in 1912 it generated quite a bit of excitement. I can’t help but think that the movie would have done even more so.

WBNA liberty basketball has been on the great stage live – i think boxing also (?) althought that is usually at the wamu. The panasonic screen has not been used for television, though i think every guy who watched the christmas show has thought in the middle of the show what it would be like to watch the super bowl on that screen.

Four or five years ago, The landlord of the Harlem Warehouse did not renew lease – the property was sold to a developer who was going to build a condominium. It was for the best. The property was not cared for by landlord, unheated , many items lost to water damage.

I have a question to ibnybill. You say that the show will be stored upstate this year. Do you know what happened to the wherehouse they had uptown I think in Harlem?

The bus is here to stay. David – good eye on the 36 rox up from 30 used previous years. the show will be stored in upstate NY this year – not sure where