Radio City Music Hall
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
116 people
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Vito, the HyCans were getting so dull, you might have seen one of them and thought it was xenon. I doubt that they would have experimented during Ben’s regime as he didn’t like anything that could disturb the booth operation (although they did try Universal’s half frame projection in which the reel was run from head to tail, and then taken out of the lower magazine and threaded back in the upper magazine with the other picture so there was no rewinding).
Inerestingly enough, when we started looking at xenon none of the major manufacturers wanted to give us a lamp to because of the angle and screen size. Finally, Al Bodouris of Eprad gave us a lamp to try. Once he broke the ice, Christie and ORC also installed lamps (in the case of ORC both their prototype console with vertical bulbs pointing into a 45 degree mirror, which we picked to counteract the angle), and horizontal lamps. Strong never did get involved. The light output with new collector mirrors and dichroic mirrors and new bulbs did equal the HyCans which did give a pure light, but were inefficient compared even to reflector carbon arc lamps. At 4500 watts for xenon we equalled or bettered the HyCans which ran at 100 volts at the generator and 180 amps or 18,000 watts. We didn’t change to save electricity but rather because we just couldn’t get parts for the arc lamps. We still needed to get lighter prints for premieres as we had with the carbon lamps, and we still got prints made with the soundtrack advanced two frames to count for the delay from the booth to the back row of the third mezzanine which is four frames. Now with 7,000 watt xenons in use in the 70mm projection in the Christmas Show they should really have a nice looking picture.
Ok Rob, I am sure you are right, however I left for Hawaii in 1972 and did not return to NY until 1982. I could have sworn I saw xenon projection at RCMH prior to 1972, I remember thinking the light was dull by comparison to the carbon arc, although the focus had improved. This is an eye opener for me and it has left me a bit confused. Oh, and thanks Vincent for bringing this whole thing up, just another reminder of my old mind turning to mush, lol.
“Airport” was the first film shown in 70mm at Radio City. My predecessor, Ben Olevsky, was against installing 70mm (perhaps because he knew it would disrupt a smooth running booth). MGM had wanted to do “Unsinkable Molly Brown” there in 70, but Ben was able to veto the idea. (A shame, since I saw it in Chicago in 70mm and it was a good transfer with a great sound mix.) Ross Hunter insisted that “Airport” be shown in 70, and since Universal was four-walling the Hall, Ben had no choice. The three projectors were commandered from the Paramount complex in the Gulf and Western Building at Columbus Circle, since there were three going into the theatre and four more into the two screening rooms upstairs, which weren’t ready to open. There are many stories to be told about that installation. The machines for a variety of reasons didn’t work well, and when I started there, we took them out to National Theatre Supply (Simplex) in Paramus and had them rebuilt.
I might quibble with Vito about the xenon installation. We couldn’t get condensers for the Hall & Connely carbon arc lamps. We even tried to get the used Ashcrafts from the Astor Theatre, and couldn’t do that. In 1974 we started experimenting with xenon, and at one point had a different lamp on each projector. We finally settled on ORC lamps, with vertical lamps for the 35/70 machines and horizontal lamps for the 1 and 5 machine, which had to remain on Simplex bases so they could be readily moved for use in film effect projection in the stage shows. We did get more light out of the xenons than we were getting out of the HyCans (in all fairness, that was in part due to the burned lenses in the lamps.) Focus did improve with the xenons although we had to change to slower Scope back-up lenses to compensate for the higher lamp speed. Scope focus was dramatically improved over the HyCans with the 4" Bausch and Lomb lenses that were being used.
By the way, we did run “Becky Sharp” in the first Art Deco Film Festival in 1974 and it was indeed beautiful.
Vincent I will ask my friend Rob Endres to verify this, but I believe it was with the Easter 1970 showing of “Airport”, when RCMH installed the three 35/70 projectors. That would have been projectors #2-#3-#4. Perhaps Rob can tell us if the other two straight 35mm projectors, #1 and #5 get converted to xenon at the same time.
As for your comment about Becky, “you got that right”
Vito when was the switch. For what film?
By the way Becky Sharp was restored a number of years ago except for the finale scene of which the elements no longer existed. It must be seen on a screen. Not TV!
Yes warren, it was in fact the first film to be shot in the three strip Techniclor process. Audiences, having only experienced two strip color,were blown away by the spectacular life like images.
In my humble opinion, with all of the advancements in color photography we have today, nothing compares to the splender of
three strip Techniclor print projected with a carbon arc lamp.
I remember when RCMH converted to Xenon lamps, the result in my opinion was dramatic, and not in a good way. Carbon arc is gone as is three strip, Progress? I say Humbug!
So if you didn’t have a reverent bone in your body what did you think of Leonidoff’s Glory of Easter?
I don’t have one either but I loved it(like his Nativity.)
By the way Saul Chaplin said that the film studio pulled the budget at a crucial moment in the Merry Andrew’s production leaving Kidd forced to wrap up the film with still so much to be done compromising what might have been a terrific movie.
True, “Indiscreet” is exactly the sort of film that TCM lionizes. Life is short and art is long and there’s so much to see, but if the chance comes along, I might peek at it again. Both Grant and Bergman were then a lot younger than I am now, so maybe their ages won’t seem so distracting this time.
Here’s a Program from April, 1959:
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“Merry Andrew†also seemed a minor effort, despite the talent of Michael Kidd, Johnny Mercer, IAL Diamond, Baccaloni, and others associated with it. But it was a RCMH Easter show, and Danny Kaye seemed practically a member of the family (though I never met him), and my high school friends were ready for a good laugh (which hardly came with this picture), so we went to it on Good Friday afternoon while the rest of NYC bowed hushed in prayer. That was a good thing about the Easter show at RCMH: if you didn’t have a reverent bone in your body, you could always walk in on that day without encountering a line. On the other hand, look at what happened to President Lincoln when he went to Ford’s Theater on Good Friday nearly a century earlier.
I’m surprised that Indiscreet isn’t one of those films that’s shown to death on TCM.
Maybe BOB you might want to give it another chance. It is very slight but it’s a very charming classy Donen film with a lot of style.
We’ve got older stars today doing comedy and with nowhere near the class and comic timing of Bergman and Grant.
Here’s a Program from July 1958:
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“Indiscreet†struck me as a dud projecting the exhaustion of a H’wood studio system intent on making its stars of a decade or two earlier perform as though they were younger again. I stand second to none in my admiration for Bergman, ever since at the age of three I saw her twice in “Bells of St. Mary’s,†first at RCMH and then at the RKO Dyker. And if I could only come across like Cary Grant (I try, believe me, I still try). But I remember when seeing the film at that time I thought, “This is what it must have been like at RCMH ten or fifteen years ago.†Only it wasn’t, of course.
One Showplace Program I regret having lost or misplaced around that time was for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof†the following September. Last 22 August, Myrtleave posted a newspaper ad for that film and stage show, and I’m grateful for it. My senior year in high school had just begun, and to celebrate it, a bunch of us piled onto the subway and headed for W 50 Street. The film had its daring moments, to be sure, and also its sexy and its tender ones. I remember that when the great contour curtain descended, we engaged in a lively debate about whether Brick was really an, um, you know, shhing one another so that our frank conversation would not scandalize the tourists and families who sat all around us. It’s a kick to think that little more than a dozen years later Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, and Laurence Olivier would perform in a prime-time television version (I never saw it) based more closely on the play’s uncensored script (or so I’ve heard). It’s also a kick to imagine that today any high school kids might shh one another on any topic whatsoever. And yet films at RCMH allegedly went out of style for lack of suitable GP product.
I was told recenly by one of the top theater organists that the american Theater Organ Society was working on some kind of event for this summer. He said the plans fell through, but that they are still working on something for the near future. Is there any new information on this?
DeanS
I was told recenly by one of the top theater organists that the american Theater Organ Society was working on some kind of event for this summer. He said the plans fell through, but that they are still working on something for the near future. Is there any new information on this?
DeanS
I think Carol Lawerence took over for Ginger after she left. Another very fond memory is when Red Skelton Appeared at the Hall He also met with the pages, and was one of the sweetest people i’ve ever met, in fact he called my girlfriend a dear heart, and you could not get the smile off her face
I also remember Ginger Rogers at Radio City. As I recall, she was a guest star in the show for a 2 week period during the 90 minute summer show that the Music Hall ran during the tourist season from Memorial Day thru Labor Day. Nearing 70 at the time, Ginger managed quite well with slow dance numbers with chorus boys doing most of the faster dancing around her. Somewhere in my archives, I have some Super 8mm footage that I shot during her numbers. All in all I have positive memories of the show although I do not recall what songs Ginger performed.
I used to look forwarded to those summer spectaculars, which were reasonably priced and reminiscent of the stage shows of previous times. Too bad they were discontinued.
Warren I don’t recall her doing any numbers from “Mame” I do rember being a very nice Lday who took the time to meet with the pages.It did run for 90 min.
Now BOB that’s enough. Leave such comments to the Roxy or Paramount page. What would the women in hats and gloves in the first mezz at the latest Greer Garson movie say?
Vincent—
O yes, the show offered that familiar underwater effect with the Corps de Ballet performing behind a scrim, onto which were projected moving images of waves (with music by Debussy, “La mer”), climaxed by Santa’s arrival that turned the ocean floor into a Christmas village (“Christmas-tide” indeed). No bubbles from any broken wind that I know of.
BOB other than the Rockette do you remember anything else about the stage show? That Santa of the Sea finale seems somewhat bizarre. I know that the Kirby flying ballet was often used for the Undersea Ballet. So was the ballet underwater and did they manage to submerge Santa as well? What I would give for films or even photos of some of these stage shows!
Here’s a Program from December 1958:
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O Holy Night! “Auntie Mame†struck a chord with so many people (probably mostly everyone in the ‘40s and ‘50s) who had a “maiden aunt†in the family. Two world wars had depleted the male population sufficiently to produce a couple of generations with a noticeable cadre of unmarried women in their ranks.
Mine had started out her young adult life as a vaudeville songster on the RKO circuit and in Coney Island. There she had met and performed with Danny Kaye, Frank Sinatra, and many others who once brought down the house. The stories! Her career ended when vaudeville ended and my grandparents wouldn’t approve of her performing out-of-town. When she approached her eighties, she left Brooklyn and took an apartment near me in Tiny Town, not too far from Podunk (yes, there is a Podunk, 250 miles west of Times Square). We eventually knew that she was ready for a nursing home when, at our glittering dinner parties, she regaled friends of my generation with her familiar stories, now progressively emebllished, about how “I performed with ‘em all: Kaye, Sinatra, … and Elvis, the Beatles, and Mick Jagger, too.â€
Before the play, there was the novel which I had read on the subway going back and forth to high school. Roz originated the role on B’way, but by the time I got to see the play, Greer Garson had taken over the part. That was a good choice, too, but it was Peggy Cass who tore us all apart with laughter. Those of us in the standing room could barely stay on our feet. She became a regular on the Jack Paar show, won an AA for the film, appeared in a couple of other shows (we went backstage to see her after “A Thurber Carnivalâ€), and then that was that.
For the Christmas stage show, we sat close to the choral staircase on the right in the first row. My friend claimed that he had heard a Rockette fart. I didn’t, and I never believed him too much after that.
I have been a theater manager for twenty five years and had ten more years at the music hall. I have never seen the industry so down The morons who claim to run the buisness have it so low that it will never recover!The reason projection is so bad is that they have cut the projectionist there will come a time when there will be no more projectionist. ronfrompittsburgh hit it on the head dvd home theaters.
Recently TCM has been showing a short Robert Redford tribute to Natalie Wood. One gets to see beautiful letterboxed images from Inside Daisy Clover. This used to play fairly frequently on TV years ago and it never looked like this. While I remember that it was not an especially good movie projected at the Music Hall in Panavision it must have been something to see. Of course at the time everyone probably took it for granted.
Is there any screen couple today as beautiful as Wood and Redford?
I second the motion. Too bad people in the business are not as caring. Heck, they don’t even have projectionists any more. Just kids or managers (who are kids sometimes themselves) do all the so- called projection!! How many times has the picture been out of focus or projected on the masking!! It was so bad onetime at a Lowe’s I asked for a refund. The apature was so out of sync that in closeups the actors lips were barely seen. Guess that’s why I haven’t been to a cinema for almost a year now. Good old DVD on my wide screen home theatre system is the best way to see films today.
Vito—
And my deepest thanks to you and those like you who gave us so much pleasure when you presented films with such care and style in those days. Yes, we indeed noticed, and are now delighted to express our gratitude.
Bill, I can relate to your feelings about projection quality, it has been a passion of mine for over 50 years. I have had my share of battles with exibitors who showed little or no interest in what the picture on the screen looked like, I remember telling one theatre owner to get out of the business. I too was a crank, a trouble making pain in the butt to any one who dared not to take the fine art of projection seriously. I must tell you it warms my heart to know there were folks like you out there appreciating the kind of film presentation I took so much pride in. sometimes my complaints to theatre owners were ignorned with a comment like “don’t worry about it,no one will notice” Well, they were wrong, you noticed.
REndres—
Thanks for your expert technical explanation of those maddening seams. The period I refer to extends from the Panoramic screen era of Summer ‘53 to some time around '56. “High Society” played there that summer (I didn’t see it there then); “Friendly Persuasion” was the Thanksgiving show. I don’t remember noticing seams before Summer '53, not even on the Magnascope screen for special sequences in “King Solomon’s Mines,” “The Greatest Show on Earth,” and other films of the early '50s.
Nor do I recall ever seeing a hot spot at RCMH in those years: much must have depended on where one sat (for me, often at the cross-aisle on either the right or left hand side of the orchestra: as a kid, no obstructive heads in front; as an adult, room to stretch my long legs).
Vito: I was a pint-sized nut about projection quality in those days. Now I’m just a crank.