So 10 Commandments had a giant curved screen? According to Variety South Pacific had a giant curved Todd AO screen. Any body know if there are any pics of the auditorium with the various screen sizes exposed like there are of the Capitol and the Rivoli?
There is a new coffee table book of the photos of Gottscho called the Mythic City. Times Square at night photos to die for and stunning photos of the Hall auditorium. One before any curtains have been hung, a two pager, is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.
Ken mc
you probably went in ‘71. There was a Christmas Circus stage show with that one. Scrooge was '70.
Robert that’s a great Music Hall Christmas ad. I always liked that illustration of the Leonidoff Nativity used until '69 though its a bit fuzzyy on microfilm.
Yeah I missed it too for some reason and saw it only very recently at the MOMA. Yep it puts all contemporary filmaking in the shade. Astounding that at the time the idiot New York critics totally humiliated Lean personally at a public function which caused him not to make another film for 11 years.
We lost many years of his moviemaking.
And yes the film deserves a major 70mm release. Some of it is stupendous.
Gee how about more shows with the organ and the Rockettes for the summer months with all those tourists. Something that would take into consideration the theater itself, the stage capabilities and keep it open all day every day employing many musicians and performers.
But what am I thinking? Treating the Music Hall like it were an arena for hockey games is Cablevision shomanship at its finest.
Why don’t they just save the lobby and turn the rest of it into a condo.
Remember that way back in the fall of ‘70 when Lean’s first film since his greatest success Zhivago opened he chose not the Rivoli or Criterion two great epic theaters still intact in all their Time Square glory he chose the small screened tackily appointed Ziegfeld. From the very beginning this theater superseded all the others still standing and I will never know why. One of fate’s cruel jokes I suppose.
RobertR,
There is a good Times' article on the death of the roadshow from ‘69. It would be great if you could find it and post it on the Rivoli or Criterion page.
Look at Paul Goldberger’s review of the new monstrosity above the Hearst Building on 8th Av in The New Yorker. It is a rave. This is the Times' toady who called the wholesale destruction of Times Square in the 80’s “exhilarating.” People today who have a say or any power over these things are a disaster destroying city life.
Did he ever write an article about the magnificent Rivoli and Criterion and how they needed to be restored and saved? No. How does a blind, corporate shill become an “architectural critic?”
Seeing the ad for a John Wayne movie got me to thinking of the very few films of his that played at the Hall. Certainly The Quiet Man would have been perfect as has been discussed before. What other Hollywood stars had few films there? Did any Crawford movies get a showing? Seems to me she was more of a Capitol/Strand star.
So with all the corporate sponsorship Cablevision has for their events that they charge $100 a ticket for they can’t get sponsorship for Saturday or Sunday afternoon movies with shorts and the organ.
The New York department of cultural affairs should demand they show King Kong with Denpiano at the organ.
By the way went to the lower arcade of the RCA Building yesterday for the first time since the vandalism. The cheap stucco they used to replace the gleaming black marble Art Deco walls has gotten dirty and it now resembles an underground strip mall in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
BOBill,
Your descriptions of the year ‘57 have been especially wonderful.
St Louis is a terrific film and with some of that amazing photography and the great set pieces it must have been very exciting on the Music Hall screen. I’m just sorry Wilder didn’t get a younger actor for Lindberg. Stewart was far too old to play a young fearless aviator at this point(He would have been perfect in '37.)
That ad really brought me back. Imagine a full page film ad for one theater with a stylized logo the way ads often were in the Times' Arts and Leisure until the 70’s.
According to an above post by Denpiano the wretched excuse for humanity that currently runs the Hall feels the old organ does indeed need some sort of amplification.
To B0B,
I guess that most of the musicals in that golden year of ‘57 that played the Hall failed to make back their investment except maybe Pajama Game?
Considering that the Hall’s interior is one of New York’s great architectural triumphs and Leonidoff and Markert utilized the lighting of the arches to great wondrous effect I find it pretty amazing that I seem to be the only one bothered be the speakers in the auditorium. Nobody seems to realize it but especially for the Christmas show THEY ARE NOT NEEDED.
The Music Hall lasted for 50 years without them. Or are audiences today so disastrous that they need everthing blasted at them to make them notice something is happening on stage?
Why has not one architectural critic not taken note?
Denpiano
Perhaps you can tell us why the wonderful Leonidoff Renaissance Nativity was disposed of and the evangelical crytal palace bogus christian floor show replaced it.
Also do they still have all those big idiot speakers hanging everywhere destroying the grace and beauty of the overlapping arches(and destroying peoples hearing as a residual effect?)
Well 12.50 for an exclusive engagement reserved seat is an absolute bargain. Remember My Fair Lady at the Criterion was $5.50 for the mezz in ‘64. That would without exageration would be close to $50 today(and if I could see that or Lawrence in 70mm today at the Criterion I’d pay it without blinking an eye.)
After all this was close to half the price of a top ticket to Dolly of Fiddler at the time and when you consider that tickets to musicals are $110 today it makes sense.
But then most seats in the orchestra today are premium prices which range from $250 to $500.
So if you wanted to sell a premium seat to a road show film this would cost you over $100. After all premium seating is simply legalized scalping.
$12.50 at the Ziegfeld in today’s loony pricing scheme when you come down to it is dirt cheap.
I remember the renovation done at that time in 79 and it was beautiful as it was totally dedicated to restoring the Hall to its 30’s glory as opposed to the recent updating. They also installed in the lobby the vase that the Rockettes won at the Paris Exposition. This was also a period where the Hall occasionally showed movies to the general public. It’s too bad Jani did not continue and Disney didn’t take over. I might still have a reason for going there.
Now it is simply a shopping mall(Rockefeller Center) adjunct.
By the way it seems the audiences are still going there for the Christmas show. Nobody cares that there’s no orchestra!!
The mayor is getting involved now?!
It hardly seems worth the all the money and preparation neccessary to put the orchestra in at this point.
REndres
Do you know what the issues were concerning the That’s Entertainment film’s and why they didn’t play the theater?
It seems odd that the films would be considered second to the stage show as the Hall always depended on popular films to draw the crowds. I believe in a previous post I mentioned a Variety critic in the early 30’s reviewing a stage show commenting that the size of the Music Hall crowds depended on what film was playing there.
And as far as the stage show being the important thing nobody would cut the theater more slack than I but at that point even I found them pretty embarassing when they weren’t downright tedious.
I remember with The Tamarind Seed(I believe the first without the Ballet.) The Rockettes did a terrific Lullaby of Broadway number but the rest of the stage show was just one singer after another just standing center and singing a song. It was endless. Nobody went to the Music Hall for that.
This was followed by The Girl from Petrovka. Now I like Goldie Hawn as much as anybody but this was beyond the pale. I heard people in the lobby complaining to the ushers about the ghastly stage show. In ‘76 when I worked there the ushers were still singing “Nyet Nyet Nyet.'
There was nothing to do at that point but sit out everything and wait for the organ.
I just saw that Andrews and all the kids were on Good Morning america to celebrate the 40 anniversary of SOM.
Wished I had known.
Too bad they didn’t give it week’s run in Todd AO.
REndres thanks for your response. When I worked there during Robin and Marian and Bluebird(neither of which I was able to sit through)it was clear that everyone saw the Hall as a lost cause(so why were they working there?) One of the staff called it a white elephant. I thought he was out of his mind. How do you call one of New York"s great architectural achievments a white elephant?
When you mentioned to someone that perhaps the films and stage show were not what they should be they would give you a deer in the headlights look and insist they had no idea what you were talking about. I also remember the vice president(Fred something?) at the time being very surprised and dismayed that Robin was not a success.
You had to pick me up off the floor. Had anyone seen this dreary dark revisionist film before it was booked as a holiday show?
And the Easter show was totally designed in black and white!
This is what I mean by incompetence.
Then there was that Christmas show(Sunshine Boys) where the only dance number besides the Rockettes was a Raggedy Ann doll on a small set doing a dopey dance. Pretty pathetic.
By the way I walked out of Caravans when when Michael Sarrazin started pissing against a wall. People were being paid to negotiate Christmas films like this? They could have simply righted a wrong done back in ‘44 and showed a beautiful Technicolor print of Meet Me In Saint Louis. There was no way that there would have been fewer people in the house especially if they had bothered to put a sensational Christmas show on that stage.
REndres I saw Super Dad at the Hall to what I remember was a fairly full house and I remember as well the wedding at the end being very effective. Now I know why.
Being that you were working at the Hall in the mid 70’s and being that the bookings and the stage shows at this time were so inexplicably disastrous do you think this was done on purpose to drive the Hall into the ground and sell it for office space or was the place being run by simply terribly incompetent people put there by nepotism and connections?
During the Glory of Easter pageant the two organs would be played though during the 70’s the organ on the right side would have a dummy. In fact I have no idea when it happed but many of the figures in this Easter pageant were replaced by dummies. I never had any idea of this until the review of I believe the ‘74 Easter show by Variety which lamented that the pageant had become a shadow of itself.
The two organs were used for the only time I can remember in the '70 one time. The orchestra was on stage with the two organs playing the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor. You all know this from Fantasia.
The stage show was From Bach to Bacharach for The Bluebird.
From the audience I saw I can’t imagine Thieves did any better than Mr.Billions(or is it Millions?) Who in the world was booking movies at this time? Movies that you wouldn’t go to see on the bottom of a double bill on 42nd street for $1.50. Even another revival of Singing in the Rain would have been better and probably a lot cheaper.
BOB what an excellent description of the stage show. So much more informative than the reviews one reads in the old Varietys.
The Balanchine connection to the Hall seems to have been explicit at this time. Was he a friend of Leonidoff’s?
His extraganzas of the 70’s like Union Jack and Vienna Waltzes(maybe one can go back to Figure in the Carpet?)seemed to owe a lot to Music Hall style presentation, at least as I imagine them being during the golden years.
Suzanne Farrell arguably the greatest dancer of the 20th Century once said that she would have danced anywhere if she had to even Radio City(ouch!) But she didn’t have to.
How great is that marquee in ‘53? I also found the modernized streamlined version pretty wonderful as well and couldn’t believe when they destroyed it when it became a United Artists multiplex. Just look at the Funny Girl premiere photo. Also on the marquee for that film were two revolving logos only one of which you can make out in the picture. I remember seeing that marquee a couple of times as a boy walking through Times Square and it seemed to me the epitomy of show biz excitement and color(that whole block along with the Bond neon and the Gordon’s Gin display was at night the most beautiful thing you’d ever want to see.)
Too bad I couldn’t walk into the outside lobby and go to the reserved seat boxoffice with the grill which was situated on the inside to the left and buy a ticket. Still remember the old man(well to a young teenager) in that box office who sold me my advance ticket to Nick and Alex. He might very well have worked there since 10 Commandments.
So 10 Commandments had a giant curved screen? According to Variety South Pacific had a giant curved Todd AO screen. Any body know if there are any pics of the auditorium with the various screen sizes exposed like there are of the Capitol and the Rivoli?
There is a new coffee table book of the photos of Gottscho called the Mythic City. Times Square at night photos to die for and stunning photos of the Hall auditorium. One before any curtains have been hung, a two pager, is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.
Ken mc
you probably went in ‘71. There was a Christmas Circus stage show with that one. Scrooge was '70.
Robert that’s a great Music Hall Christmas ad. I always liked that illustration of the Leonidoff Nativity used until '69 though its a bit fuzzyy on microfilm.
Yeah I missed it too for some reason and saw it only very recently at the MOMA. Yep it puts all contemporary filmaking in the shade. Astounding that at the time the idiot New York critics totally humiliated Lean personally at a public function which caused him not to make another film for 11 years.
We lost many years of his moviemaking.
And yes the film deserves a major 70mm release. Some of it is stupendous.
Gee how about more shows with the organ and the Rockettes for the summer months with all those tourists. Something that would take into consideration the theater itself, the stage capabilities and keep it open all day every day employing many musicians and performers.
But what am I thinking? Treating the Music Hall like it were an arena for hockey games is Cablevision shomanship at its finest.
Why don’t they just save the lobby and turn the rest of it into a condo.
Remember that way back in the fall of ‘70 when Lean’s first film since his greatest success Zhivago opened he chose not the Rivoli or Criterion two great epic theaters still intact in all their Time Square glory he chose the small screened tackily appointed Ziegfeld. From the very beginning this theater superseded all the others still standing and I will never know why. One of fate’s cruel jokes I suppose.
RobertR,
There is a good Times' article on the death of the roadshow from ‘69. It would be great if you could find it and post it on the Rivoli or Criterion page.
Look at Paul Goldberger’s review of the new monstrosity above the Hearst Building on 8th Av in The New Yorker. It is a rave. This is the Times' toady who called the wholesale destruction of Times Square in the 80’s “exhilarating.” People today who have a say or any power over these things are a disaster destroying city life.
Did he ever write an article about the magnificent Rivoli and Criterion and how they needed to be restored and saved? No. How does a blind, corporate shill become an “architectural critic?”
Seeing the ad for a John Wayne movie got me to thinking of the very few films of his that played at the Hall. Certainly The Quiet Man would have been perfect as has been discussed before. What other Hollywood stars had few films there? Did any Crawford movies get a showing? Seems to me she was more of a Capitol/Strand star.
So with all the corporate sponsorship Cablevision has for their events that they charge $100 a ticket for they can’t get sponsorship for Saturday or Sunday afternoon movies with shorts and the organ.
The New York department of cultural affairs should demand they show King Kong with Denpiano at the organ.
By the way went to the lower arcade of the RCA Building yesterday for the first time since the vandalism. The cheap stucco they used to replace the gleaming black marble Art Deco walls has gotten dirty and it now resembles an underground strip mall in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
BOBill,
Your descriptions of the year ‘57 have been especially wonderful.
St Louis is a terrific film and with some of that amazing photography and the great set pieces it must have been very exciting on the Music Hall screen. I’m just sorry Wilder didn’t get a younger actor for Lindberg. Stewart was far too old to play a young fearless aviator at this point(He would have been perfect in '37.)
That ad really brought me back. Imagine a full page film ad for one theater with a stylized logo the way ads often were in the Times' Arts and Leisure until the 70’s.
According to an above post by Denpiano the wretched excuse for humanity that currently runs the Hall feels the old organ does indeed need some sort of amplification.
To B0B,
I guess that most of the musicals in that golden year of ‘57 that played the Hall failed to make back their investment except maybe Pajama Game?
Considering that the Hall’s interior is one of New York’s great architectural triumphs and Leonidoff and Markert utilized the lighting of the arches to great wondrous effect I find it pretty amazing that I seem to be the only one bothered be the speakers in the auditorium. Nobody seems to realize it but especially for the Christmas show THEY ARE NOT NEEDED.
The Music Hall lasted for 50 years without them. Or are audiences today so disastrous that they need everthing blasted at them to make them notice something is happening on stage?
Why has not one architectural critic not taken note?
Denpiano
Perhaps you can tell us why the wonderful Leonidoff Renaissance Nativity was disposed of and the evangelical crytal palace bogus christian floor show replaced it.
Also do they still have all those big idiot speakers hanging everywhere destroying the grace and beauty of the overlapping arches(and destroying peoples hearing as a residual effect?)
Well 12.50 for an exclusive engagement reserved seat is an absolute bargain. Remember My Fair Lady at the Criterion was $5.50 for the mezz in ‘64. That would without exageration would be close to $50 today(and if I could see that or Lawrence in 70mm today at the Criterion I’d pay it without blinking an eye.)
After all this was close to half the price of a top ticket to Dolly of Fiddler at the time and when you consider that tickets to musicals are $110 today it makes sense.
But then most seats in the orchestra today are premium prices which range from $250 to $500.
So if you wanted to sell a premium seat to a road show film this would cost you over $100. After all premium seating is simply legalized scalping.
$12.50 at the Ziegfeld in today’s loony pricing scheme when you come down to it is dirt cheap.
I remember the renovation done at that time in 79 and it was beautiful as it was totally dedicated to restoring the Hall to its 30’s glory as opposed to the recent updating. They also installed in the lobby the vase that the Rockettes won at the Paris Exposition. This was also a period where the Hall occasionally showed movies to the general public. It’s too bad Jani did not continue and Disney didn’t take over. I might still have a reason for going there.
Now it is simply a shopping mall(Rockefeller Center) adjunct.
By the way it seems the audiences are still going there for the Christmas show. Nobody cares that there’s no orchestra!!
The mayor is getting involved now?!
It hardly seems worth the all the money and preparation neccessary to put the orchestra in at this point.
REndres
Do you know what the issues were concerning the That’s Entertainment film’s and why they didn’t play the theater?
It seems odd that the films would be considered second to the stage show as the Hall always depended on popular films to draw the crowds. I believe in a previous post I mentioned a Variety critic in the early 30’s reviewing a stage show commenting that the size of the Music Hall crowds depended on what film was playing there.
And as far as the stage show being the important thing nobody would cut the theater more slack than I but at that point even I found them pretty embarassing when they weren’t downright tedious.
I remember with The Tamarind Seed(I believe the first without the Ballet.) The Rockettes did a terrific Lullaby of Broadway number but the rest of the stage show was just one singer after another just standing center and singing a song. It was endless. Nobody went to the Music Hall for that.
This was followed by The Girl from Petrovka. Now I like Goldie Hawn as much as anybody but this was beyond the pale. I heard people in the lobby complaining to the ushers about the ghastly stage show. In ‘76 when I worked there the ushers were still singing “Nyet Nyet Nyet.'
There was nothing to do at that point but sit out everything and wait for the organ.
I just saw that Andrews and all the kids were on Good Morning america to celebrate the 40 anniversary of SOM.
Wished I had known.
Too bad they didn’t give it week’s run in Todd AO.
REndres thanks for your response. When I worked there during Robin and Marian and Bluebird(neither of which I was able to sit through)it was clear that everyone saw the Hall as a lost cause(so why were they working there?) One of the staff called it a white elephant. I thought he was out of his mind. How do you call one of New York"s great architectural achievments a white elephant?
When you mentioned to someone that perhaps the films and stage show were not what they should be they would give you a deer in the headlights look and insist they had no idea what you were talking about. I also remember the vice president(Fred something?) at the time being very surprised and dismayed that Robin was not a success.
You had to pick me up off the floor. Had anyone seen this dreary dark revisionist film before it was booked as a holiday show?
And the Easter show was totally designed in black and white!
This is what I mean by incompetence.
Then there was that Christmas show(Sunshine Boys) where the only dance number besides the Rockettes was a Raggedy Ann doll on a small set doing a dopey dance. Pretty pathetic.
By the way I walked out of Caravans when when Michael Sarrazin started pissing against a wall. People were being paid to negotiate Christmas films like this? They could have simply righted a wrong done back in ‘44 and showed a beautiful Technicolor print of Meet Me In Saint Louis. There was no way that there would have been fewer people in the house especially if they had bothered to put a sensational Christmas show on that stage.
REndres I saw Super Dad at the Hall to what I remember was a fairly full house and I remember as well the wedding at the end being very effective. Now I know why.
Being that you were working at the Hall in the mid 70’s and being that the bookings and the stage shows at this time were so inexplicably disastrous do you think this was done on purpose to drive the Hall into the ground and sell it for office space or was the place being run by simply terribly incompetent people put there by nepotism and connections?
During the Glory of Easter pageant the two organs would be played though during the 70’s the organ on the right side would have a dummy. In fact I have no idea when it happed but many of the figures in this Easter pageant were replaced by dummies. I never had any idea of this until the review of I believe the ‘74 Easter show by Variety which lamented that the pageant had become a shadow of itself.
The two organs were used for the only time I can remember in the '70 one time. The orchestra was on stage with the two organs playing the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor. You all know this from Fantasia.
The stage show was From Bach to Bacharach for The Bluebird.
From the audience I saw I can’t imagine Thieves did any better than Mr.Billions(or is it Millions?) Who in the world was booking movies at this time? Movies that you wouldn’t go to see on the bottom of a double bill on 42nd street for $1.50. Even another revival of Singing in the Rain would have been better and probably a lot cheaper.
BOB what an excellent description of the stage show. So much more informative than the reviews one reads in the old Varietys.
The Balanchine connection to the Hall seems to have been explicit at this time. Was he a friend of Leonidoff’s?
His extraganzas of the 70’s like Union Jack and Vienna Waltzes(maybe one can go back to Figure in the Carpet?)seemed to owe a lot to Music Hall style presentation, at least as I imagine them being during the golden years.
Suzanne Farrell arguably the greatest dancer of the 20th Century once said that she would have danced anywhere if she had to even Radio City(ouch!) But she didn’t have to.
How great is that marquee in ‘53? I also found the modernized streamlined version pretty wonderful as well and couldn’t believe when they destroyed it when it became a United Artists multiplex. Just look at the Funny Girl premiere photo. Also on the marquee for that film were two revolving logos only one of which you can make out in the picture. I remember seeing that marquee a couple of times as a boy walking through Times Square and it seemed to me the epitomy of show biz excitement and color(that whole block along with the Bond neon and the Gordon’s Gin display was at night the most beautiful thing you’d ever want to see.)
Too bad I couldn’t walk into the outside lobby and go to the reserved seat boxoffice with the grill which was situated on the inside to the left and buy a ticket. Still remember the old man(well to a young teenager) in that box office who sold me my advance ticket to Nick and Alex. He might very well have worked there since 10 Commandments.