Wow! I hadn’t realilzed that article was done 25 (!) years ago. I do have copies of it, but hadn’t read it or looked at the date for some time. I was a “mere lad” of 43 when I was quoted in the article. I tell people that I’ve been around projection booths from “B.C.” to “A.D” (Before Cinerama till After Digital). That’s true — I started learning how to thread 35mm machines at the Majestic Theatre in Streator, Ill. two years before I entered high school, and a year before Cinerama debuted. Oddly enough, we’re both still in operation, although the Majestic now has 70mm projectors (I’ve grown wider too!) And yet as recently as this morning I was still running 35mm reels with changeovers, in a house with two curtains and three colors of footlights almost exactly as I did at the Ziegfeld (in fact our screening room was patterned after the Ziegfeld in terms of presentation.) I guess (hope?) they’re going to keep me doing this until I get it right! No wonder Vito initiated my first response to this site with the question, “Is Bob Endres still alive?”
I worked at the Ziegfeld when both curtains were in daily use, as well as having a main curtain, and until the “Snow White” stage presentation at Radio City, a title curtain there as well. I also have both a main and a title curtain in the screening room I’m in now. A few years ago the New York Times did an article on projection and interviewed me while I was running the 70mm print of “Pink Floyd: The Wall” at the Ziegfeld, and described the curtian use in some detail.
At the Zieg we would take the house lights and curtain warmers down to a pre-show level and open the main curtain followed by the title curtain as the trailers/shorts hit the screen. At the end of the pre-show material, I’d close the title curtain in and take the lights down to show level, hit the title curtain with the logo of the feature and then open the title curtain. Since the contour curtain at Radio City takes a good 20 sec. to get in and out, after it was going up, we’d start the shorts, etc and the the title curtain (or golds in that case) would open. We would also close it in before starting the feature. The golds control at Radio City gave a choice of four speeds to match the logo length, so the title curtain would be fully open as the company logo ended. I like to see the company logo hit the title curtain and have it opening as the logo fades. Martin Hart has an interesting section on this on the AWSM site. If we were running an overture at Radio City it is absolutely necessary to get the contour out of the way before it starts as the contour effectively muffles the high frequency horns as it comes in. It was interesting to listen to the sound at the end of the credits on a feature as it came in and hear the effect.
By the way, your idea of projecting a slide with a logo was used at the Michael Todd Theatre in Chicago for “Becket” when they projected a sword on the closed curtains before the start of the 70mm roadshow edition. The Chicago Theatre did something similar with their Hall & Connelly FR10 Spot/Effect Projectors. At one point in the late 60’s or early 70’s they had a couple of really interested stagehands who kept adding lights and effects for the intermissions. The FR10’s are pattern projectors (we had two in the booth at Radio City), and for a Frank Sinatra movie they projected a silhouhtte of Sinatra’s profile over the end credit crawl, and then as the curtains closed left it on the curtain. They did the same thing with a Japanese umbrella for a James Bond movie set in Japan. I had a Plitt Theatre pass and would stop by the Chicago every time I was in the Loop just to see what they had added. Now of course, with video projection it would be easier to scan in feature art work as a Powerpoint and project it. That would add a little showmanship even if the house didn’t have a curtain. The problem of course,is that it would conflict with the pre-show ads.
Bob: I’ve known (and admired) Bob Eberenz for years. He would have worked with Warren Jenkins on a number of projects including Cine Mix a film re-recording studio located in one of the Radio City screening rooms which utilized the some of the first 35mm Magna-Tech recorders and dubbers and on the Mercury “Living Presence” recordings. He probably has some stories about working with Warren and Bill Nafash on Otto’s room.
By the way, another Otto story that Warren told was also a gem. Otto had a JAN 16mm projector in his booth that could be rolled into position and which was equipped with special torque motor driven reel arms that could hold an entire 16mm feature on one big reel (he had a 16mm print of “Porgy” stored in the booth). One night Warren got home from a show change at the Hall and was told by his wife that Otto had called and was having problems. Warren hopped in a cab and went uptown. When he walked into the booth, Otto was standing there in his jumpsuit, ankle deep in 16mm film shaking his hand at Warren. Warren walked over and flipped the torque motor switch to “on”, and the take-up reel started turning. Otto had threaded the projector and started it remotely from his coffe table controls without the take-up reel turning, thus dumping a whole feature on the floor. It took the two of them a fair amount of time to get the film off the floor and back onto the reel, at which point Otto invited Warren into the room itself and opened a bottle of Courvosier, which they proceeded to finish off while Otto entertained Warren with stories about his career. Warren said it was a memorable evening, but it took him the rest of the next day to recover.
Bob Furmanek: I’d be interested to know who your person involved in Otto Preminger’s screening room is. When I came to Radio City Music Hall in ‘74 a number of our techs also worked for National Theatre Supply which supplied the projection equipment. Those included Warren Jenkins and Bill Nafash. I had heard a number of stories about the room, and then was called by the union to work there. I called the Preminger home to see if I could get in early before the screening to break in and familarize myself with the booth, and found myself talking to Otto himself. He said to come over anytime and I did. It was quite an evening as at one point while examining the print I heard, “How’s it going?” and turned to find Mr. P. himself standing there. We chatted a moment and then he left. A while later the butler showed up with a tray containing the same meal they were serving for their guests downstars. Just before the screening Hope Preminger came in as asked if I wanted coffee. I had just come to New York from Illinois and had grown up watching Preminger films (including “Porgy & Bess” in Todd-AO during it’s roadshow engagement at the McVickers Theatre in Chicago) so I was very much impressed by the Premingers. In fact, I never cashed the check I received as payment that first night because it was signed by Otto Preminger and was made out to “Robert Endres Projectionist”. I still have it as a bookmark in my edition of Richardson’s Bluebook of Projection.
I worked for them fairly frequently for a couple of years after that and was always blown away by their residence which was almost like an extension of the Museum of Modern Art with their Picasso hanging right outside the booth, Eames chairs (personally modified by the Eames for the den/screening room)and a Dubuffet sculpture just outside the powder room. It was also the only home screening room I’ve worked in which had a “balcony” on top of the projection booth outside the gym one level up where the Preminger twins could watch the movie away from the guests downstairs.
Ask your person who designed the room if he remembers the marble topped coffee table in the room which sat by the sofa in front of the booth ports (which were concealed by another huge painting which slid up the wall to reveal the ports when the booth was in use.) The marble top on the table rolled back to reveal projector and room controls — including a red button marked “Panic!”.
While I was cowed by Otto’s reputation as a rather fierce dictator, the Premingers and their children were always gracious and charming to me, and this whole discussion of “Porgy & Bess” has brought back a lot of fond memories.
Actually, the Rockettes did do a number in “nuns habits”, kinda — The Glory of Easter prologue featured what would appear to be nuns in a great cathedral. I once made the mistake of referring to them as nuns and was corrected: they were “Novices”! Well, maybe, but at least one review referred to them as “nuns in tap shoes”. The “Glory” pagent and the “Christmas” one were both 8 minutes long as conceived by the Rogge sisters. I always preferred the “Glory” since it is deceptively simple — just choreography with bunches of lillies until the final chord when the central “novices” kneel on the steps to the altar and form a giant cross as the contour comes in. The cross was lit by the two Hall & Connelly effects spots we had in the booth, and originally was done by two projectionists one on the vertical and one on the horizontal strip. Later when there was only one projectionist on for the Easter show, I set up so the lamps could be locked off and the operator standing behind them could open both irises at the same time. It was always a kick to slowly fade the “cross” as the contour just ticked the top of the vertical beam. I have a recording of some of the music on the Music Hall organ at home, and still hear the “buzz” cue in my head when that final chord hits. (By the way, people always ask me about mistakes. The effects lamps were used to light a blue strip when the novices were proceeding across the stage. Of course the gels were supposed to be pulled before the cross which was dazzlingly white. On one show the two projectionists forgot to pull the gels before the cross cue and came up with a decidedly non-white image. The stage manager was on the phone as soon as the contour came in, wanting an explanation. To which one of the operators, thinking quickly said, “What? You’ve never heard of Blue Cross?!”)
Yes the projectors are run concurrently. The company supplying the MUTTS called me yesterday to ask about the Scope back up lens focal length and gave me the information about tonight’s screening. I suggested that if they REALLY wanted to get fancy they could run the same print through the two 35/70mm projectors that are interlocked for the 3-D film effect in the Christmas Show, and run the second print on a third projector! (Actually, we went that one better with the “Lion King” premiere where we had a 70mm print on a platter interlocked to a 35mm print on another platter for Dolby Digital sound, and then a second 70mm print run reel-to-reel on the other two 70mm machines. Sometimes people get a little “back-up crazy” to the point where there is so much back-up involved it starts to create its own problems.)
Vito: I’m sure the decision to run 12,000' reels was made by Fox or its representative doing the screening. Since there are so few houses running changeovers tech people don’t trust anyone to make them. While I was still at Radio City the tech supervisor for the Fox in Detroit called to ask about our lamps, and said they were installing a platter just because no one knew how to do changeovers any more. Also the MUTT is the unit Eprad made as an answer to platters. MUTT stands for Make Up Table Transport (or some such thing), and it can be used as a make up table or a show feed if the platter failed or the show feed itself. Its a small table which feeds out on one side and takes up on the other. They can be used in situations where the booth is too small for a platter, or in a temporary set-up, since they are easier to move around than platters. We used one for the “Lion King” press conference at the Hall, again because there was more than 2,000 feet of 35mm film involved along with a 35mm interlocked mag track, so the track was run on a MUTT while the print was on a 6,000' reel.
Tonight’s screening of “Live Free or Die Hard” is being done on 35mm film from the original booth. The prints have been assembled on 12,000' reels and three double mutts are being brought in as well as new sets of Scope lenses. Two projectors will be used for the screening with one serving as a back-up.
Oddly enough, 35mm sync seemed to be pretty good, although when the two frame advance issue came up, someone in the Disney sound department said, “Oh yes, we always used to advance the optical track for features that played there”. By the time I started in ‘74, the 70mm projectors were in and its possible that the spacing between the picture and optical sound head was a little different enabling the delay to be taken care of in threading. I could advance the sound on mag prints by making a bigger loop between the mag penthouse and the picture head, but if I advanced it more than a frame the 70mm film loop became noisy, unstable and really flopped around.
The echo also bothered me. We screened all new prints after the last feature of the current attraction, and I’d be sitting in the middle of the orchestra at the director’s console so I could communicate with the booth. If I turned my head 90 degrees, I could hear two distinct soundtracks, one from the screen and one from the back of the house. We had an acoustician in to measure it, and he came up to the booth saying, “Why haven’t they FIXED that!” He predicted that when we moved his measuring microphone into the shadow of the First Mezzanine the echo would disappear, and it did. It was coming from the curved back wall above the Third Mezz. I remember a Columbia Pictures Post Production supervisor coming up to complain about the echo during a tech screening for a premiere. At the actual screening he sat in the First Mezz with other company executives, and after the screening came up to congratulate me on getting rid of the echo! Since the VIPs always sat in the first rows of the First Mezz, they were never bothered by the echo, thus not a lot was done to fix it, although some attempts had been made. When we installed the new movie sound system for “The Lion King” it was found that most of the acoustic absorbing material behind the art deco wall fabric had decayed and fallen down. The situation was actually exacerbated when the Hall was refurbished in the ‘79 update, since the art deco wall fabric had been like speaker grill cloth, and the new fabric when printed was much denser and even less absorbent. The 1999/2000 remodeling may have eased the problem.
DavidM: While the Music Hall did have special prints made, it wasn’t to eliminate overtures, intermission music, etc. Those cuts could be made to any print (and all too often were outside of the cities in roadshow engagements). The print could just be rolled down to just ahead of the start point of the picture, or the film could be physically cut. One of my most embarassing moments came about because of this, but I think it was a case of “Payback”. When in college in my home town in Illinois I had seen the roadshow presentation of “Ben Hur” at our local Great States theatre, complete with stereophonic sound and all of the music intact. When the film came to our drive-in I was curious to see what they would do, so a friend of mine and I drove out behind the drive-in to watch the start the first night. The overture played to much honking since there was no picture, and then when the picture came up, it was out of frame because someone had spliced the music portion with no picture on incorrectly. I, with all the smugness of a college student, snickered. Years later at the Hall, when we played “Dr. Zhivago” in 70mm as a re-run, I checked the print in, thought the music was spliced on correctly and watched in horror as the MGM lion came up on the Music Hall screen on the first show out of frame. I figured it was a case of delayed justice!
Our prints were special beacause they were frequently printed a couple of points lighter than normal density, since any lamp that could generate the standard footlamberts on a screen our size would also burn a hole in the film. We also had the soundtrack advanced two frames on many of our 70mm prints. At the Hall if the sound is in sync with the picture at the screen, it is four frames out of sync by the time it reaches the back of the Third Mezzanine. A two frame track advance would put the sync at the front of the First Mezzanine, which was both an average middle of the house location, and where the executives sat. We also had the advantage of getting a number of our prints pulled from the camera negative which gave us a better picture in terms of sharpness than prints pulled from later generations. Because of the necessity of striking the number of prints now used in day-and-date releasing on multiple screens, today’s prints are pulled even further down in the printing chain.
Radio City never ran roadshows until 1974 when they played repeat engagements of “2001”, “Gone With The Wind” and “Dr. Zhivago”. The reason was the length — they were considered too long to do with a stage presentation. In 1974 we did the above three and “Singing In The Rain” as a kind of warm-up for another 70mm film “The Wind and the Lion”. All three of the repeats played one week each with the same stage presentation. We later did “The Sound of Music” also in 70mm and with an intermission, and another release of “GWTW” to celebrate its 50th Anniversary, although that was a stand-alone presentation with no stage show. I successfully argued against having a live organ interlude during the intermissions of the roadshow presentations when we were doing the stage shows, explaining that the EntreActe music was to serve as “call-in” music indicating that the second half of the feature was about to start. Recorded Overtures were a bit tricky. We had a short overture that accompanied “The Slipper and the Rose”, and management wanted to play it before the first show when no organist was scheduled. The union projection crew agreed not to charge an hour of overtime for starting early, but the musicians objected, saying we were replacing the organist with recorded music. They said that if we played the recorded overture before every show it would be O.K., but to do it only when no live organist was present was not.
Plitt took over in the mid-60’s. Actually, the theatre was part of the ABC/Paramount chain split off after the consent decrees. Plitt worked as a circuit manager for ABC/Paramount directly under the ABC head Leonard Goldenson. The ABC owned TV station in Chicago was WBKB (Balaban & Katz Broadcasting)and the engineer who put it on the air was I. F. Jacobson, who was the technical head of the Balaban & Katz theatres. When ABC/Paramount got out of the theatre business, Plitt took over the chain. I was working part-time as a projectionist in a downstate Illinois Publix theatre (the chain had theatres under a variety of names including Paramount/Publix) at the time Plitt took over and gave circuit-wide passes to all the employees. My passes were always listed under the Plitt theatres name, and it was about that time that the top of the Chicago vertical sign was changed to Plitt.
Vito, Radio City almost played “The Red Tent” in 70mm with 6 track mag. Paramount made a test reel of Reel 1, which was printed 1.85 in a 70mm frame. When they brought it in to test, they balked at making a print, because the photographs in the news coverage of the ship takeoff looked too “grainy”. Well, they were supposed to be shots taken from news! They left that reel at the theatre, and I used it for years as a test reel when we were going to play a 70mm print. It’s too bad they didn’t pull the whole print, since the six track music played under the titles was awesome. I hadn’t started at the Hall when it played, but the crew remembered the sound quality vividly. The test reel had the gap between the picture and the outer edge of the frame left clear on the outside, and with a black mat on the inside, so I always had a white scren on the right side of the screen when I ran it, but it was still fun to see.
There is an ad in today’s Business section of the New York Times that would appear to be for this property. It has a picture of the marquee with an art deco “Retail” sign on top where the word “Metro” is now. It lists the availability of store front properties as well as two levels of space inside.
Jay, The Warren you’re referring to is Warren Jenkins, who is the man who actually arranged for me to come to the Hall as Head Projectionist from Illinois. He, Greg Raffa,the Music Contractor at the Hall, and John Jackson, the Vice-President in charge of Production started Plaza Sound in what was the broadcast studio where Roxy’s broadcasts were to originate. Greg actually owned the business, which made use of the studio space (complete with two manual Wurlitzer) that was being unused much of the time. Warren was also involved as the technical resource for Cine-Mix, a film re-recording studio that took over the two screening rooms. Cine-Mix became so successful that they had moved out to larger quarters just about the time I came to the Hall in ‘74. Plaza continued in existence until the new management took over in '79, and recorded the music used in the Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcasts and the group Blondie among others. I haven’t seen or heard from Warren for several years now. I did a presentation for the Society of Motion-Picture and Television Engineers about the Hall and sent Warren a copy of my remarks to check for accuracy. He then actually showed up for the presentation. He also ran Raven Laboratories which made automation equipment for National Theatre Supply where he also served as a technical advisor.
DavidM, Another instance where we openend the masking to applause was going into the triptych sequence of “Napoleon”. We also did it on another occassion during the Warner series. By that time the traveller had long been removed to make way for a piece of scenery hanging in that space during our live presentation of “Snow White”. It was never put back, and to lower the contour and take it out would take almost 30 seconds in each direction, so it was no longer practical, and as you mentioned, seeing the masking move from 1.37 to Scope or 70mm size is fun. I think it was either “Blade Runner” or “Jaws” which was preceded by a “flat” short with the masking in. At the changeover, the Warner shield was contained in the flat frame, and then the masking opened out to full scope size while the logo was still on. It was actually pretty neat.
EdSolero, I am in a screening room that is owned by a company which makes technical equipment for a wide range of entertainment companies from production to exhibition and digital HD. It shall be nameless here to protect my editorial independence, but it is the only company that I would leave Radio City for. We had a long relationship together starting with my first year at Radio City, and I met the Vice President of the N. Y. office back when he was a projectionist at the Ziegfeld when I started doing relief work there, and convinced him to work with me at Radio City as needed. Similarly, the Director of Engineering Operations here worked at the South Street Seaport and the New York Experience when I was there, and he also joined me at Radio City. He had started as a projectionist in Pennsylvania and had toured internationally as head electrician with the Dance Theatre of Harlem when he was still in his 20’s. This room was built as a technical resource for our engineers and clients with no idea of renting it out, but because of the theatrical backgrounds of the three of us it mirrors what we learned from Radio City and the Ziegfeld in terms of presentation. I came here a couple of years after the room was finished to help out with a couple of things while Radio City was closed for the renovation, and ended up staying. When the head prodcution stage manager at Radio City came over to see me and a demo while the Hall was closed he said, “Wow! You’re your own stage manager.” Because of the nature of our business, we do have 35 and 70mm capability as well as Dolby, DTS and SDDS and now 2k Digital Cinema projection (the projector is an NEC, the same as the Ziegfeld’s with a smaller lamp), and digital tape capability. We do press and industry screenings now, but that’s not the main thrust of the company. And yes — I do think we put on a better show than your average neighborhood multiplex!
I agree, but I can remember when someone wanted to start their premiere at the Hall with the curtain up. Fortunately our public relations person said, “No!” Alas, with everyone running ads before the trailers even start these days no one has a clue about presenting a show. We cued pre-feature material at the Hall, so the operator on the outgoing projector could cue the stage to close in the traveller at the right time. (We also didn’t use the projector changeovers going between short subjects and trailers and the feature. We would fade the outgoing projector out with the lamp douser, and fade in the incoming projector with the start of the feature with the douser also. The changeovers were only used in the body of the feature.) Fortunately the room I’m in now has both a main curtain and a title curtain, along with gold, red and blue foots. I take the room lighting to half and the foots from red and gold to blue and red as I roll the picture, and then when I hit the changeover after the 2 point, start the lights down to show and the title scrim opening on the company logo. I’ve only had a couple of requests to start the curtain opening earlier, and if I do I take the lights to show first so that the screen isn’t visible. I do the reverse at the end of the show during the end logos and legalese. The only serious complaint I had was from an editor on Scorcese’s “Gangs”. It was an interlock screening with no credits, just a freeze of the title. The editor said I closed in too soon, but I kind of figured after watching the whole film, the audience kind of knew the title of what they were watching and it was classier to have the scrim close over it!
Ed, that’s the Empire booth all right. That’s one of the steeper balconies (note the handrails at the end of each aisle). Also notice the light coming through what looks like a hole at the bottom of the booth on the right hand side of the picture. That hole (which I remember as being squared off and neater) is at floor level. You could stand in the rewind “room” at the bench which ran at right angles to the front wall just next to the entrance door at that end of the booth and ran to the back wall, and look through an opening in that “wall” at bench level, across the booth and through the floor level opening to see at least the top of the screen. It may not be the steepest angle booth I’ve ever been in, but it was close. Notice also the conduit run on the outside of the booth. Since it was an asbestos booth, the “walls” were just asbestos panels probably around an inch thick, thus there was no place to bury the conduit in the walls. A lot of the booths built in former legit theatres were of similar construction, just dumped in at the back of balconies, in this case on a platform built up over the seats a few rows out. It hadn’t changed any from 1958 when I was there in the 70’s, but the upper balcony wasn’t open and was kept locked up until the show was over, and the staff unlocked the gates to let me out. Great shot!
I’m a big fan of the El Cap too. I was in it not long after the renovation, and was backstage before the THX wall was removed. At that time the stagehouse was cleaned and painted, but had no grid. Ken Billington, who designed the lighting for a number of shows at Radio City, told me he had been out there to do some lighting design about the time they installed the organ.
When we did “The Lion King” at Radio City, Disney was trying to do the same stage show at the El Cap, and their tech person got a call in our booth telling him that during the “Aladdin” sequence, the computer missed a cue, and the flying carpet took off leaving Aladdin and his girl stranded! We kind of took that as a victory at the Hall where we had real live stagehands doing the cues. (I was also reminded of the tenor in a Wagner opera who was to exit in a swan boat. As he moved toward the boat, it took off across stage without him, and he was heard to ask in a loud aside, “What time does the next swan leave?”)
Vito, I must have used the generator at the St. George to run the FR10, as I don’t think it had a rectifier supply. I could only get one of the two going for the show, but as all FR10’s do, it looked great. And yes, after running down to the auditorium to look at it from the orchestra, I did RUN back up to the booth so I could get there before the end of the number. If I did that now either at the St. George or the Hall I’d probably go into cardiac arrest!
Vito, the RCMH shows were a blast, particularly since we used a lot of film effects in the shows. Theatres like the Chicago did “star turns” with featured bands and performers, while Radio City did a more spectacular (hopefully) show which had more variety. I may be one of the last projectionists around who ran film and spot for two film/live show presentations in two different theatres on the same day. I had gotten involved trying to help out at the St. George on Staten Island when the people operating it were trying to do live shows as well as movies. Thus they booked “Lady Sings the Blues” and “Mahogany” on screen, and the groups Brooklyn Bridge and Corporation LTD on stage. I got one of the H & C spots to work, and brought some parts and gels over from Radio City. I started the day at Radio City doing our film and stage show, then after my shift hopped the Staten Island ferry and ran one of the two films at the St. George, and operated the spot for the stage presentation. At one point I flooded the whole stage, locked the spot off, and ran all the way down to the orchestra from the booth so I could look back up and see the spot beam coming down just as it did when the St. George ran stage shows with every movie. We have an image of the stage shows in those days being like Busby Berkley movies, but in reality, Radio City was one of the very few places that could actually do that sort of thing. I remember being in the Jefferson on 14th St. after it had closed. They had run Spanish stage shows with movies, and when I stood on stage I realized how small those stages (and shows) must have been. Even the stage at the Chicago was relatively shallow as I remember — deep enough to hold a band car and a star performer, but not a lot deeper. I was also in the El Capitan after Disney refurbished it, and the stage house there was also relatively shallow, but since then they have demolished it and built a larger stage house for the shows they’re doing now. Of course all of those perceptions are based on my familiarity with the Radio City stage, which after a few years just became the “norm” for size in my mind. Looking back, I consider myself really lucky to have been around for at least a bit of the end of an era.
I grew up in Illinois, and my parents would take me into Chicago with them a couple of times a year. We would frequently go to the Chicago Theatre because of the movie stageshow policy. The last two films I rememer seeing there with a stageshow were “Living It Up” with Martin & Lewis, and “Dragnet” with Jack Webb, who appeared on stage after the first show on opening day. Both were in 1954. They probably continued them for a while after that, but I know they were gone after I graduated from high school in 1957. At one point in the ‘70’s before I came to New York, the Chicago had a couple of ambitious stage hands who kept adding stage lighting in the intermissions. They used the same Hall & Connelly spot/effect lamps we used at Radio City to project patterns fromt the booth that tied in with the film being presented. I was working part time in Plitt Theatres and would use my pass when in Chicago to go to the theatre just to see the intermissions. One of the last Christmases I was out there they flew out the screen at intermission to reveal a Christmas tree with packages under it on stage, while an announcement wished everyone a “Happy Holiday Season”. It was the last time I remember seeing the stage before the theatre was renovated to its current use.
Bill, I worked every performance of “Napoleon” as Head Projectionist. I had worked with Boston Light & Sound doing dailies at Astoria, and recommended them to do the three projector interlocking. It was run from the third of the five projectors in the booth, with the other two panels on Machines #1 and #5. I had two other operators on #1 and #5 to open the lamp dousers and make sure the projectors were running properly. After they were threaded and locked, I was able to start all three from the center machine, and when I hit that changeover pedal all of the changeovers opened at the same time. The first run of the show, #1 and #5 operators had spotlight gel holders with blue and red gels, and on my cue would drop them in front of the lenses to create the French Tricolor effect. Later runs used tinted film on those machines. Vito, if you think a normal changeover at the Hall was thrilling, you ought to do one to 3 projectors at once! I always thought that after sitting for four hours watching the film, if we blew that finale the audience would lynch us!
A couple of summers later one of our producers wanted to do three screen effects in our stage show, but didn’t want to rent the selsyns and hire operators to do it. We snuck selsyn rentals (which we HAD to have to keep the machines in step) into the toilet paper account for the show, and I rewired the lamps for auto strike, so that when I started the machines the lamps would light on all three machines. That way I could leave the lamp dousers open. Since I couldn’t close them remotely the lamps extinguished when I stopped the machines in black film a the end of the cue and I would go over an manually close the changeovers for the next cue. I did every performance of that show by myself over the space of a couple of months with only l misframe on one machine during the run, and with three of those multiscreen effects in the show. THAT was really thrilling!
Bill, Amen! Cinerama and Imax are both “World Series” projection systems, although I first saw 3 strip Cinerama when I was 13 or 14 years old and it blew me away sitting in the 3rd or 4th row center of Eitel’s Palace in Chicago where the screen actually came out to the ends of that row. At that time no one had see a “widescreen” picture since “Napoleon”, and no one had heard stereophonic sound since “Fantasia”, thus the impact on me was even greater than Imax two or three decades or so later. I have been lucky enough to see 3 strip in three theatres, including the Cooper Cinerama in Minneapolis, and while I’ve never run it, I have been lucky enough to run the “Napoleon” triptych at Radio City numerous times and run 3 interlocked 16mm projectors on a curved screen at the New York Experience. I also worked a 3 strip array than ran on the front of the Metropolitan Opera for the 15th (?) anniversary of Lincoln Center. It’s always exciting to do one of those gigs, and the prospect of doing a “How The West Was Won” digitally would really be fun!
CinemaSightlines, guilty as charged. It’s “Robert”, and I did make the very last edition of the Radio City souvenier book as Head Projectionist 32 years ago (where does time go?!) I was also mentioned a couple of times in the Boxoffice Showmanship section (and I miss it too.)
Vito and Ed, One of my fantasies is to have Paul Allen put digital projectors in his Cinerama booths in Seattle along with the Cinerama projectors and try projecting a Cinerama project digitally. Think of the probelms that could be solved that way: no carbon arc color shift between panels (although I know they’re already using xenon), no lab problems matching the color timing of the prints, and no sync problems.
That does raise the question: do we also love the defects of a process? Like tube hiss, vinyl hiss and occasional pop, the matching lines of the Cinerama panels have a certain charm about them. Every time we ran “Napoleon” at Radio City in a scene where a horse runs across the three panels of the triptych the audience applauded even though the matching was far from perfect. Perhaps it was because it was something daring that had never been done before, even though done crudely, that drew the applause. A digital Cinerama could pretty much eliminate even the matching seams even though probably not some of the distortion of the horizon line caused by the angling of the three cameras. Wouldn’t it be interesting to try?
Vito, Thanks for the kind comments. I’m afraid if I went back to the Hall now I would be pushing for (heresy!) digital cinema projectors. The facility I’m at now has both 35/70mm film projectors and 2K digital cinema projectors with both D-5 and HDCam feeds. I see a lot of first generation digital material (including digital dailies), and its getting very good indeed. Especially compared to the quality of film prints pulled in a hurry to fill a 4,000 theatre opening schedule. When I think of all the apertures I cut to fit film effects into the scenery at the Hall, and how much more easily (and probably effectively) it can now be done digitally, I’m afraid I’m going over to the “dark side”! Music Hall management is very aware of the latest in staging effects, especially in performing venues such as the Las Vegas casinos, and want to be state of the art at the Hall. Times do change. I can remember seeing one of the last of the original “Undersea Ballet” performances when I was in high school and being blown away by the film and slide effects in the show. I was also blown away by the huge number of carbon arc follow spots employed both from Front Lights and D-Cove and from towers backstages in the entrances. By the time I started there, they were no longer viable. The arc spots were used because there were no lamps bright enough to work in spaces that large, but by the 60’s there were, and their brightness in turn wiped out the Brenograph slide and motorized water effects. Now those effects can be duplicated with VariLights which are capable of doing so much more. So its going with film projection. There will be some losses as there were in the transition from tubes to transistors and vinyl to digital recordings, but in time the newer media will gain in quality, and when creative people such as Fred Waller who invented Cinerama discover how to use the new technology artistically, we may find that we have gained something exciting in the process.
Vito, it was good to see the Hall again, although I was with another member of my current firm who was there to discuss surround capabilities of movie system for use in the stage presentations. (We did have a surround sound mix for “Riverdance” and it was very effective, particularly for thunder in one of the dance routines.) I really hadn’t been in the booth since I worked on film effects for the first Christmas Show after I left. At that time construction was underway,and it was rather depressing. Yesterday everything was cleaned up and rather impressive. While I’m not going to work the Christmas Show, their head of production was kind enough to ask twice what it would take to get me to come back. The Music Hall crew really is a family — even after I’ve been away for almost eight years now.
Wow! I hadn’t realilzed that article was done 25 (!) years ago. I do have copies of it, but hadn’t read it or looked at the date for some time. I was a “mere lad” of 43 when I was quoted in the article. I tell people that I’ve been around projection booths from “B.C.” to “A.D” (Before Cinerama till After Digital). That’s true — I started learning how to thread 35mm machines at the Majestic Theatre in Streator, Ill. two years before I entered high school, and a year before Cinerama debuted. Oddly enough, we’re both still in operation, although the Majestic now has 70mm projectors (I’ve grown wider too!) And yet as recently as this morning I was still running 35mm reels with changeovers, in a house with two curtains and three colors of footlights almost exactly as I did at the Ziegfeld (in fact our screening room was patterned after the Ziegfeld in terms of presentation.) I guess (hope?) they’re going to keep me doing this until I get it right! No wonder Vito initiated my first response to this site with the question, “Is Bob Endres still alive?”
I worked at the Ziegfeld when both curtains were in daily use, as well as having a main curtain, and until the “Snow White” stage presentation at Radio City, a title curtain there as well. I also have both a main and a title curtain in the screening room I’m in now. A few years ago the New York Times did an article on projection and interviewed me while I was running the 70mm print of “Pink Floyd: The Wall” at the Ziegfeld, and described the curtian use in some detail.
At the Zieg we would take the house lights and curtain warmers down to a pre-show level and open the main curtain followed by the title curtain as the trailers/shorts hit the screen. At the end of the pre-show material, I’d close the title curtain in and take the lights down to show level, hit the title curtain with the logo of the feature and then open the title curtain. Since the contour curtain at Radio City takes a good 20 sec. to get in and out, after it was going up, we’d start the shorts, etc and the the title curtain (or golds in that case) would open. We would also close it in before starting the feature. The golds control at Radio City gave a choice of four speeds to match the logo length, so the title curtain would be fully open as the company logo ended. I like to see the company logo hit the title curtain and have it opening as the logo fades. Martin Hart has an interesting section on this on the AWSM site. If we were running an overture at Radio City it is absolutely necessary to get the contour out of the way before it starts as the contour effectively muffles the high frequency horns as it comes in. It was interesting to listen to the sound at the end of the credits on a feature as it came in and hear the effect.
By the way, your idea of projecting a slide with a logo was used at the Michael Todd Theatre in Chicago for “Becket” when they projected a sword on the closed curtains before the start of the 70mm roadshow edition. The Chicago Theatre did something similar with their Hall & Connelly FR10 Spot/Effect Projectors. At one point in the late 60’s or early 70’s they had a couple of really interested stagehands who kept adding lights and effects for the intermissions. The FR10’s are pattern projectors (we had two in the booth at Radio City), and for a Frank Sinatra movie they projected a silhouhtte of Sinatra’s profile over the end credit crawl, and then as the curtains closed left it on the curtain. They did the same thing with a Japanese umbrella for a James Bond movie set in Japan. I had a Plitt Theatre pass and would stop by the Chicago every time I was in the Loop just to see what they had added. Now of course, with video projection it would be easier to scan in feature art work as a Powerpoint and project it. That would add a little showmanship even if the house didn’t have a curtain. The problem of course,is that it would conflict with the pre-show ads.
Bob: I’ve known (and admired) Bob Eberenz for years. He would have worked with Warren Jenkins on a number of projects including Cine Mix a film re-recording studio located in one of the Radio City screening rooms which utilized the some of the first 35mm Magna-Tech recorders and dubbers and on the Mercury “Living Presence” recordings. He probably has some stories about working with Warren and Bill Nafash on Otto’s room.
By the way, another Otto story that Warren told was also a gem. Otto had a JAN 16mm projector in his booth that could be rolled into position and which was equipped with special torque motor driven reel arms that could hold an entire 16mm feature on one big reel (he had a 16mm print of “Porgy” stored in the booth). One night Warren got home from a show change at the Hall and was told by his wife that Otto had called and was having problems. Warren hopped in a cab and went uptown. When he walked into the booth, Otto was standing there in his jumpsuit, ankle deep in 16mm film shaking his hand at Warren. Warren walked over and flipped the torque motor switch to “on”, and the take-up reel started turning. Otto had threaded the projector and started it remotely from his coffe table controls without the take-up reel turning, thus dumping a whole feature on the floor. It took the two of them a fair amount of time to get the film off the floor and back onto the reel, at which point Otto invited Warren into the room itself and opened a bottle of Courvosier, which they proceeded to finish off while Otto entertained Warren with stories about his career. Warren said it was a memorable evening, but it took him the rest of the next day to recover.
Please say, “Hi!” to Bob Eberenz for me tonight.
Bob Furmanek: I’d be interested to know who your person involved in Otto Preminger’s screening room is. When I came to Radio City Music Hall in ‘74 a number of our techs also worked for National Theatre Supply which supplied the projection equipment. Those included Warren Jenkins and Bill Nafash. I had heard a number of stories about the room, and then was called by the union to work there. I called the Preminger home to see if I could get in early before the screening to break in and familarize myself with the booth, and found myself talking to Otto himself. He said to come over anytime and I did. It was quite an evening as at one point while examining the print I heard, “How’s it going?” and turned to find Mr. P. himself standing there. We chatted a moment and then he left. A while later the butler showed up with a tray containing the same meal they were serving for their guests downstars. Just before the screening Hope Preminger came in as asked if I wanted coffee. I had just come to New York from Illinois and had grown up watching Preminger films (including “Porgy & Bess” in Todd-AO during it’s roadshow engagement at the McVickers Theatre in Chicago) so I was very much impressed by the Premingers. In fact, I never cashed the check I received as payment that first night because it was signed by Otto Preminger and was made out to “Robert Endres Projectionist”. I still have it as a bookmark in my edition of Richardson’s Bluebook of Projection.
I worked for them fairly frequently for a couple of years after that and was always blown away by their residence which was almost like an extension of the Museum of Modern Art with their Picasso hanging right outside the booth, Eames chairs (personally modified by the Eames for the den/screening room)and a Dubuffet sculpture just outside the powder room. It was also the only home screening room I’ve worked in which had a “balcony” on top of the projection booth outside the gym one level up where the Preminger twins could watch the movie away from the guests downstairs.
Ask your person who designed the room if he remembers the marble topped coffee table in the room which sat by the sofa in front of the booth ports (which were concealed by another huge painting which slid up the wall to reveal the ports when the booth was in use.) The marble top on the table rolled back to reveal projector and room controls — including a red button marked “Panic!”.
While I was cowed by Otto’s reputation as a rather fierce dictator, the Premingers and their children were always gracious and charming to me, and this whole discussion of “Porgy & Bess” has brought back a lot of fond memories.
Actually, the Rockettes did do a number in “nuns habits”, kinda — The Glory of Easter prologue featured what would appear to be nuns in a great cathedral. I once made the mistake of referring to them as nuns and was corrected: they were “Novices”! Well, maybe, but at least one review referred to them as “nuns in tap shoes”. The “Glory” pagent and the “Christmas” one were both 8 minutes long as conceived by the Rogge sisters. I always preferred the “Glory” since it is deceptively simple — just choreography with bunches of lillies until the final chord when the central “novices” kneel on the steps to the altar and form a giant cross as the contour comes in. The cross was lit by the two Hall & Connelly effects spots we had in the booth, and originally was done by two projectionists one on the vertical and one on the horizontal strip. Later when there was only one projectionist on for the Easter show, I set up so the lamps could be locked off and the operator standing behind them could open both irises at the same time. It was always a kick to slowly fade the “cross” as the contour just ticked the top of the vertical beam. I have a recording of some of the music on the Music Hall organ at home, and still hear the “buzz” cue in my head when that final chord hits. (By the way, people always ask me about mistakes. The effects lamps were used to light a blue strip when the novices were proceeding across the stage. Of course the gels were supposed to be pulled before the cross which was dazzlingly white. On one show the two projectionists forgot to pull the gels before the cross cue and came up with a decidedly non-white image. The stage manager was on the phone as soon as the contour came in, wanting an explanation. To which one of the operators, thinking quickly said, “What? You’ve never heard of Blue Cross?!”)
Yes the projectors are run concurrently. The company supplying the MUTTS called me yesterday to ask about the Scope back up lens focal length and gave me the information about tonight’s screening. I suggested that if they REALLY wanted to get fancy they could run the same print through the two 35/70mm projectors that are interlocked for the 3-D film effect in the Christmas Show, and run the second print on a third projector! (Actually, we went that one better with the “Lion King” premiere where we had a 70mm print on a platter interlocked to a 35mm print on another platter for Dolby Digital sound, and then a second 70mm print run reel-to-reel on the other two 70mm machines. Sometimes people get a little “back-up crazy” to the point where there is so much back-up involved it starts to create its own problems.)
Vito: I’m sure the decision to run 12,000' reels was made by Fox or its representative doing the screening. Since there are so few houses running changeovers tech people don’t trust anyone to make them. While I was still at Radio City the tech supervisor for the Fox in Detroit called to ask about our lamps, and said they were installing a platter just because no one knew how to do changeovers any more. Also the MUTT is the unit Eprad made as an answer to platters. MUTT stands for Make Up Table Transport (or some such thing), and it can be used as a make up table or a show feed if the platter failed or the show feed itself. Its a small table which feeds out on one side and takes up on the other. They can be used in situations where the booth is too small for a platter, or in a temporary set-up, since they are easier to move around than platters. We used one for the “Lion King” press conference at the Hall, again because there was more than 2,000 feet of 35mm film involved along with a 35mm interlocked mag track, so the track was run on a MUTT while the print was on a 6,000' reel.
Tonight’s screening of “Live Free or Die Hard” is being done on 35mm film from the original booth. The prints have been assembled on 12,000' reels and three double mutts are being brought in as well as new sets of Scope lenses. Two projectors will be used for the screening with one serving as a back-up.
Oddly enough, 35mm sync seemed to be pretty good, although when the two frame advance issue came up, someone in the Disney sound department said, “Oh yes, we always used to advance the optical track for features that played there”. By the time I started in ‘74, the 70mm projectors were in and its possible that the spacing between the picture and optical sound head was a little different enabling the delay to be taken care of in threading. I could advance the sound on mag prints by making a bigger loop between the mag penthouse and the picture head, but if I advanced it more than a frame the 70mm film loop became noisy, unstable and really flopped around.
The echo also bothered me. We screened all new prints after the last feature of the current attraction, and I’d be sitting in the middle of the orchestra at the director’s console so I could communicate with the booth. If I turned my head 90 degrees, I could hear two distinct soundtracks, one from the screen and one from the back of the house. We had an acoustician in to measure it, and he came up to the booth saying, “Why haven’t they FIXED that!” He predicted that when we moved his measuring microphone into the shadow of the First Mezzanine the echo would disappear, and it did. It was coming from the curved back wall above the Third Mezz. I remember a Columbia Pictures Post Production supervisor coming up to complain about the echo during a tech screening for a premiere. At the actual screening he sat in the First Mezz with other company executives, and after the screening came up to congratulate me on getting rid of the echo! Since the VIPs always sat in the first rows of the First Mezz, they were never bothered by the echo, thus not a lot was done to fix it, although some attempts had been made. When we installed the new movie sound system for “The Lion King” it was found that most of the acoustic absorbing material behind the art deco wall fabric had decayed and fallen down. The situation was actually exacerbated when the Hall was refurbished in the ‘79 update, since the art deco wall fabric had been like speaker grill cloth, and the new fabric when printed was much denser and even less absorbent. The 1999/2000 remodeling may have eased the problem.
DavidM: While the Music Hall did have special prints made, it wasn’t to eliminate overtures, intermission music, etc. Those cuts could be made to any print (and all too often were outside of the cities in roadshow engagements). The print could just be rolled down to just ahead of the start point of the picture, or the film could be physically cut. One of my most embarassing moments came about because of this, but I think it was a case of “Payback”. When in college in my home town in Illinois I had seen the roadshow presentation of “Ben Hur” at our local Great States theatre, complete with stereophonic sound and all of the music intact. When the film came to our drive-in I was curious to see what they would do, so a friend of mine and I drove out behind the drive-in to watch the start the first night. The overture played to much honking since there was no picture, and then when the picture came up, it was out of frame because someone had spliced the music portion with no picture on incorrectly. I, with all the smugness of a college student, snickered. Years later at the Hall, when we played “Dr. Zhivago” in 70mm as a re-run, I checked the print in, thought the music was spliced on correctly and watched in horror as the MGM lion came up on the Music Hall screen on the first show out of frame. I figured it was a case of delayed justice!
Our prints were special beacause they were frequently printed a couple of points lighter than normal density, since any lamp that could generate the standard footlamberts on a screen our size would also burn a hole in the film. We also had the soundtrack advanced two frames on many of our 70mm prints. At the Hall if the sound is in sync with the picture at the screen, it is four frames out of sync by the time it reaches the back of the Third Mezzanine. A two frame track advance would put the sync at the front of the First Mezzanine, which was both an average middle of the house location, and where the executives sat. We also had the advantage of getting a number of our prints pulled from the camera negative which gave us a better picture in terms of sharpness than prints pulled from later generations. Because of the necessity of striking the number of prints now used in day-and-date releasing on multiple screens, today’s prints are pulled even further down in the printing chain.
Radio City never ran roadshows until 1974 when they played repeat engagements of “2001”, “Gone With The Wind” and “Dr. Zhivago”. The reason was the length — they were considered too long to do with a stage presentation. In 1974 we did the above three and “Singing In The Rain” as a kind of warm-up for another 70mm film “The Wind and the Lion”. All three of the repeats played one week each with the same stage presentation. We later did “The Sound of Music” also in 70mm and with an intermission, and another release of “GWTW” to celebrate its 50th Anniversary, although that was a stand-alone presentation with no stage show. I successfully argued against having a live organ interlude during the intermissions of the roadshow presentations when we were doing the stage shows, explaining that the EntreActe music was to serve as “call-in” music indicating that the second half of the feature was about to start. Recorded Overtures were a bit tricky. We had a short overture that accompanied “The Slipper and the Rose”, and management wanted to play it before the first show when no organist was scheduled. The union projection crew agreed not to charge an hour of overtime for starting early, but the musicians objected, saying we were replacing the organist with recorded music. They said that if we played the recorded overture before every show it would be O.K., but to do it only when no live organist was present was not.
Plitt took over in the mid-60’s. Actually, the theatre was part of the ABC/Paramount chain split off after the consent decrees. Plitt worked as a circuit manager for ABC/Paramount directly under the ABC head Leonard Goldenson. The ABC owned TV station in Chicago was WBKB (Balaban & Katz Broadcasting)and the engineer who put it on the air was I. F. Jacobson, who was the technical head of the Balaban & Katz theatres. When ABC/Paramount got out of the theatre business, Plitt took over the chain. I was working part-time as a projectionist in a downstate Illinois Publix theatre (the chain had theatres under a variety of names including Paramount/Publix) at the time Plitt took over and gave circuit-wide passes to all the employees. My passes were always listed under the Plitt theatres name, and it was about that time that the top of the Chicago vertical sign was changed to Plitt.
Vito, Radio City almost played “The Red Tent” in 70mm with 6 track mag. Paramount made a test reel of Reel 1, which was printed 1.85 in a 70mm frame. When they brought it in to test, they balked at making a print, because the photographs in the news coverage of the ship takeoff looked too “grainy”. Well, they were supposed to be shots taken from news! They left that reel at the theatre, and I used it for years as a test reel when we were going to play a 70mm print. It’s too bad they didn’t pull the whole print, since the six track music played under the titles was awesome. I hadn’t started at the Hall when it played, but the crew remembered the sound quality vividly. The test reel had the gap between the picture and the outer edge of the frame left clear on the outside, and with a black mat on the inside, so I always had a white scren on the right side of the screen when I ran it, but it was still fun to see.
There is an ad in today’s Business section of the New York Times that would appear to be for this property. It has a picture of the marquee with an art deco “Retail” sign on top where the word “Metro” is now. It lists the availability of store front properties as well as two levels of space inside.
Jay, The Warren you’re referring to is Warren Jenkins, who is the man who actually arranged for me to come to the Hall as Head Projectionist from Illinois. He, Greg Raffa,the Music Contractor at the Hall, and John Jackson, the Vice-President in charge of Production started Plaza Sound in what was the broadcast studio where Roxy’s broadcasts were to originate. Greg actually owned the business, which made use of the studio space (complete with two manual Wurlitzer) that was being unused much of the time. Warren was also involved as the technical resource for Cine-Mix, a film re-recording studio that took over the two screening rooms. Cine-Mix became so successful that they had moved out to larger quarters just about the time I came to the Hall in ‘74. Plaza continued in existence until the new management took over in '79, and recorded the music used in the Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcasts and the group Blondie among others. I haven’t seen or heard from Warren for several years now. I did a presentation for the Society of Motion-Picture and Television Engineers about the Hall and sent Warren a copy of my remarks to check for accuracy. He then actually showed up for the presentation. He also ran Raven Laboratories which made automation equipment for National Theatre Supply where he also served as a technical advisor.
DavidM, Another instance where we openend the masking to applause was going into the triptych sequence of “Napoleon”. We also did it on another occassion during the Warner series. By that time the traveller had long been removed to make way for a piece of scenery hanging in that space during our live presentation of “Snow White”. It was never put back, and to lower the contour and take it out would take almost 30 seconds in each direction, so it was no longer practical, and as you mentioned, seeing the masking move from 1.37 to Scope or 70mm size is fun. I think it was either “Blade Runner” or “Jaws” which was preceded by a “flat” short with the masking in. At the changeover, the Warner shield was contained in the flat frame, and then the masking opened out to full scope size while the logo was still on. It was actually pretty neat.
EdSolero, I am in a screening room that is owned by a company which makes technical equipment for a wide range of entertainment companies from production to exhibition and digital HD. It shall be nameless here to protect my editorial independence, but it is the only company that I would leave Radio City for. We had a long relationship together starting with my first year at Radio City, and I met the Vice President of the N. Y. office back when he was a projectionist at the Ziegfeld when I started doing relief work there, and convinced him to work with me at Radio City as needed. Similarly, the Director of Engineering Operations here worked at the South Street Seaport and the New York Experience when I was there, and he also joined me at Radio City. He had started as a projectionist in Pennsylvania and had toured internationally as head electrician with the Dance Theatre of Harlem when he was still in his 20’s. This room was built as a technical resource for our engineers and clients with no idea of renting it out, but because of the theatrical backgrounds of the three of us it mirrors what we learned from Radio City and the Ziegfeld in terms of presentation. I came here a couple of years after the room was finished to help out with a couple of things while Radio City was closed for the renovation, and ended up staying. When the head prodcution stage manager at Radio City came over to see me and a demo while the Hall was closed he said, “Wow! You’re your own stage manager.” Because of the nature of our business, we do have 35 and 70mm capability as well as Dolby, DTS and SDDS and now 2k Digital Cinema projection (the projector is an NEC, the same as the Ziegfeld’s with a smaller lamp), and digital tape capability. We do press and industry screenings now, but that’s not the main thrust of the company. And yes — I do think we put on a better show than your average neighborhood multiplex!
I agree, but I can remember when someone wanted to start their premiere at the Hall with the curtain up. Fortunately our public relations person said, “No!” Alas, with everyone running ads before the trailers even start these days no one has a clue about presenting a show. We cued pre-feature material at the Hall, so the operator on the outgoing projector could cue the stage to close in the traveller at the right time. (We also didn’t use the projector changeovers going between short subjects and trailers and the feature. We would fade the outgoing projector out with the lamp douser, and fade in the incoming projector with the start of the feature with the douser also. The changeovers were only used in the body of the feature.) Fortunately the room I’m in now has both a main curtain and a title curtain, along with gold, red and blue foots. I take the room lighting to half and the foots from red and gold to blue and red as I roll the picture, and then when I hit the changeover after the 2 point, start the lights down to show and the title scrim opening on the company logo. I’ve only had a couple of requests to start the curtain opening earlier, and if I do I take the lights to show first so that the screen isn’t visible. I do the reverse at the end of the show during the end logos and legalese. The only serious complaint I had was from an editor on Scorcese’s “Gangs”. It was an interlock screening with no credits, just a freeze of the title. The editor said I closed in too soon, but I kind of figured after watching the whole film, the audience kind of knew the title of what they were watching and it was classier to have the scrim close over it!
Ed, that’s the Empire booth all right. That’s one of the steeper balconies (note the handrails at the end of each aisle). Also notice the light coming through what looks like a hole at the bottom of the booth on the right hand side of the picture. That hole (which I remember as being squared off and neater) is at floor level. You could stand in the rewind “room” at the bench which ran at right angles to the front wall just next to the entrance door at that end of the booth and ran to the back wall, and look through an opening in that “wall” at bench level, across the booth and through the floor level opening to see at least the top of the screen. It may not be the steepest angle booth I’ve ever been in, but it was close. Notice also the conduit run on the outside of the booth. Since it was an asbestos booth, the “walls” were just asbestos panels probably around an inch thick, thus there was no place to bury the conduit in the walls. A lot of the booths built in former legit theatres were of similar construction, just dumped in at the back of balconies, in this case on a platform built up over the seats a few rows out. It hadn’t changed any from 1958 when I was there in the 70’s, but the upper balcony wasn’t open and was kept locked up until the show was over, and the staff unlocked the gates to let me out. Great shot!
I’m a big fan of the El Cap too. I was in it not long after the renovation, and was backstage before the THX wall was removed. At that time the stagehouse was cleaned and painted, but had no grid. Ken Billington, who designed the lighting for a number of shows at Radio City, told me he had been out there to do some lighting design about the time they installed the organ.
When we did “The Lion King” at Radio City, Disney was trying to do the same stage show at the El Cap, and their tech person got a call in our booth telling him that during the “Aladdin” sequence, the computer missed a cue, and the flying carpet took off leaving Aladdin and his girl stranded! We kind of took that as a victory at the Hall where we had real live stagehands doing the cues. (I was also reminded of the tenor in a Wagner opera who was to exit in a swan boat. As he moved toward the boat, it took off across stage without him, and he was heard to ask in a loud aside, “What time does the next swan leave?”)
Vito, I must have used the generator at the St. George to run the FR10, as I don’t think it had a rectifier supply. I could only get one of the two going for the show, but as all FR10’s do, it looked great. And yes, after running down to the auditorium to look at it from the orchestra, I did RUN back up to the booth so I could get there before the end of the number. If I did that now either at the St. George or the Hall I’d probably go into cardiac arrest!
Vito, the RCMH shows were a blast, particularly since we used a lot of film effects in the shows. Theatres like the Chicago did “star turns” with featured bands and performers, while Radio City did a more spectacular (hopefully) show which had more variety. I may be one of the last projectionists around who ran film and spot for two film/live show presentations in two different theatres on the same day. I had gotten involved trying to help out at the St. George on Staten Island when the people operating it were trying to do live shows as well as movies. Thus they booked “Lady Sings the Blues” and “Mahogany” on screen, and the groups Brooklyn Bridge and Corporation LTD on stage. I got one of the H & C spots to work, and brought some parts and gels over from Radio City. I started the day at Radio City doing our film and stage show, then after my shift hopped the Staten Island ferry and ran one of the two films at the St. George, and operated the spot for the stage presentation. At one point I flooded the whole stage, locked the spot off, and ran all the way down to the orchestra from the booth so I could look back up and see the spot beam coming down just as it did when the St. George ran stage shows with every movie. We have an image of the stage shows in those days being like Busby Berkley movies, but in reality, Radio City was one of the very few places that could actually do that sort of thing. I remember being in the Jefferson on 14th St. after it had closed. They had run Spanish stage shows with movies, and when I stood on stage I realized how small those stages (and shows) must have been. Even the stage at the Chicago was relatively shallow as I remember — deep enough to hold a band car and a star performer, but not a lot deeper. I was also in the El Capitan after Disney refurbished it, and the stage house there was also relatively shallow, but since then they have demolished it and built a larger stage house for the shows they’re doing now. Of course all of those perceptions are based on my familiarity with the Radio City stage, which after a few years just became the “norm” for size in my mind. Looking back, I consider myself really lucky to have been around for at least a bit of the end of an era.
I grew up in Illinois, and my parents would take me into Chicago with them a couple of times a year. We would frequently go to the Chicago Theatre because of the movie stageshow policy. The last two films I rememer seeing there with a stageshow were “Living It Up” with Martin & Lewis, and “Dragnet” with Jack Webb, who appeared on stage after the first show on opening day. Both were in 1954. They probably continued them for a while after that, but I know they were gone after I graduated from high school in 1957. At one point in the ‘70’s before I came to New York, the Chicago had a couple of ambitious stage hands who kept adding stage lighting in the intermissions. They used the same Hall & Connelly spot/effect lamps we used at Radio City to project patterns fromt the booth that tied in with the film being presented. I was working part time in Plitt Theatres and would use my pass when in Chicago to go to the theatre just to see the intermissions. One of the last Christmases I was out there they flew out the screen at intermission to reveal a Christmas tree with packages under it on stage, while an announcement wished everyone a “Happy Holiday Season”. It was the last time I remember seeing the stage before the theatre was renovated to its current use.
Bill, I worked every performance of “Napoleon” as Head Projectionist. I had worked with Boston Light & Sound doing dailies at Astoria, and recommended them to do the three projector interlocking. It was run from the third of the five projectors in the booth, with the other two panels on Machines #1 and #5. I had two other operators on #1 and #5 to open the lamp dousers and make sure the projectors were running properly. After they were threaded and locked, I was able to start all three from the center machine, and when I hit that changeover pedal all of the changeovers opened at the same time. The first run of the show, #1 and #5 operators had spotlight gel holders with blue and red gels, and on my cue would drop them in front of the lenses to create the French Tricolor effect. Later runs used tinted film on those machines. Vito, if you think a normal changeover at the Hall was thrilling, you ought to do one to 3 projectors at once! I always thought that after sitting for four hours watching the film, if we blew that finale the audience would lynch us!
A couple of summers later one of our producers wanted to do three screen effects in our stage show, but didn’t want to rent the selsyns and hire operators to do it. We snuck selsyn rentals (which we HAD to have to keep the machines in step) into the toilet paper account for the show, and I rewired the lamps for auto strike, so that when I started the machines the lamps would light on all three machines. That way I could leave the lamp dousers open. Since I couldn’t close them remotely the lamps extinguished when I stopped the machines in black film a the end of the cue and I would go over an manually close the changeovers for the next cue. I did every performance of that show by myself over the space of a couple of months with only l misframe on one machine during the run, and with three of those multiscreen effects in the show. THAT was really thrilling!
Bill, Amen! Cinerama and Imax are both “World Series” projection systems, although I first saw 3 strip Cinerama when I was 13 or 14 years old and it blew me away sitting in the 3rd or 4th row center of Eitel’s Palace in Chicago where the screen actually came out to the ends of that row. At that time no one had see a “widescreen” picture since “Napoleon”, and no one had heard stereophonic sound since “Fantasia”, thus the impact on me was even greater than Imax two or three decades or so later. I have been lucky enough to see 3 strip in three theatres, including the Cooper Cinerama in Minneapolis, and while I’ve never run it, I have been lucky enough to run the “Napoleon” triptych at Radio City numerous times and run 3 interlocked 16mm projectors on a curved screen at the New York Experience. I also worked a 3 strip array than ran on the front of the Metropolitan Opera for the 15th (?) anniversary of Lincoln Center. It’s always exciting to do one of those gigs, and the prospect of doing a “How The West Was Won” digitally would really be fun!
CinemaSightlines, guilty as charged. It’s “Robert”, and I did make the very last edition of the Radio City souvenier book as Head Projectionist 32 years ago (where does time go?!) I was also mentioned a couple of times in the Boxoffice Showmanship section (and I miss it too.)
Vito and Ed, One of my fantasies is to have Paul Allen put digital projectors in his Cinerama booths in Seattle along with the Cinerama projectors and try projecting a Cinerama project digitally. Think of the probelms that could be solved that way: no carbon arc color shift between panels (although I know they’re already using xenon), no lab problems matching the color timing of the prints, and no sync problems.
That does raise the question: do we also love the defects of a process? Like tube hiss, vinyl hiss and occasional pop, the matching lines of the Cinerama panels have a certain charm about them. Every time we ran “Napoleon” at Radio City in a scene where a horse runs across the three panels of the triptych the audience applauded even though the matching was far from perfect. Perhaps it was because it was something daring that had never been done before, even though done crudely, that drew the applause. A digital Cinerama could pretty much eliminate even the matching seams even though probably not some of the distortion of the horizon line caused by the angling of the three cameras. Wouldn’t it be interesting to try?
Vito, Thanks for the kind comments. I’m afraid if I went back to the Hall now I would be pushing for (heresy!) digital cinema projectors. The facility I’m at now has both 35/70mm film projectors and 2K digital cinema projectors with both D-5 and HDCam feeds. I see a lot of first generation digital material (including digital dailies), and its getting very good indeed. Especially compared to the quality of film prints pulled in a hurry to fill a 4,000 theatre opening schedule. When I think of all the apertures I cut to fit film effects into the scenery at the Hall, and how much more easily (and probably effectively) it can now be done digitally, I’m afraid I’m going over to the “dark side”! Music Hall management is very aware of the latest in staging effects, especially in performing venues such as the Las Vegas casinos, and want to be state of the art at the Hall. Times do change. I can remember seeing one of the last of the original “Undersea Ballet” performances when I was in high school and being blown away by the film and slide effects in the show. I was also blown away by the huge number of carbon arc follow spots employed both from Front Lights and D-Cove and from towers backstages in the entrances. By the time I started there, they were no longer viable. The arc spots were used because there were no lamps bright enough to work in spaces that large, but by the 60’s there were, and their brightness in turn wiped out the Brenograph slide and motorized water effects. Now those effects can be duplicated with VariLights which are capable of doing so much more. So its going with film projection. There will be some losses as there were in the transition from tubes to transistors and vinyl to digital recordings, but in time the newer media will gain in quality, and when creative people such as Fred Waller who invented Cinerama discover how to use the new technology artistically, we may find that we have gained something exciting in the process.
Vito, it was good to see the Hall again, although I was with another member of my current firm who was there to discuss surround capabilities of movie system for use in the stage presentations. (We did have a surround sound mix for “Riverdance” and it was very effective, particularly for thunder in one of the dance routines.) I really hadn’t been in the booth since I worked on film effects for the first Christmas Show after I left. At that time construction was underway,and it was rather depressing. Yesterday everything was cleaned up and rather impressive. While I’m not going to work the Christmas Show, their head of production was kind enough to ask twice what it would take to get me to come back. The Music Hall crew really is a family — even after I’ve been away for almost eight years now.