Ed – Judging from the two copies in my collection (and many from previous years before Hall’s version), it appears that the Music Hall updated their souvenir booklet every time there were major changes in personnel. Ben Hall originally wrote it in the mid-sixties, when the phrase you refer to was “more than thirty years”. The bulk of the later versions (I know of at least two) used Ben’s original text, with names changed and a paragraph altered or added here and there and many changes to the photos and captions, including new covers. The added writing does have a similar “turn of phrase” in a couple of spots, so they might well have been channeling him!
I’ll never forget the last time I saw Ben, which was at the very first of Virgil Fox’s “Heavy Organ” Bach and light shows at the Fillmore East in early December of that year. Every organist in town was there, it seemed – certainly the ones who appreciated a good show – and Virgil did not disappoint. The place was sold out and the lines stretched around the block. His spotlit rhinestone-studded heels were the hit of the performance! Ben and I had a few brief words on the way to our respective seats in different parts of the balcony and arranged to get together in early January to discuss a revised version of “The Best Remaining Seats” that his publisher had apparently asked him to work on for its tenth anniversary in 1971. He wanted to talk to me about designing and producing it, and start going through his files with him to select photos from the thousands he had accumulated since the book first came out. As you can imagine, this was pretty heady stuff to a 20-year-old graphic design student with a love of theatre organs and movie palaces! Alas, two weeks later he was gone and that was that. I got “the call” the day before I left to go home for Christmas – those were NOT happy holidays that year!
If I’m not mistaken, the wonderful historical descriptions of the organ and the theatre on the New York Theatre Organ Society web page (the ones that Patsy quotes and EdSolero links to above) were written by the late Ben Hall in 1970. I was an NYTOS member and a junior at Pratt Institute at the time and had the pleasure of working with Ben on the 1970 ATOS Convention souvenir booklet that he was putting together. He wrote similar pieces about each of the organs and theatres being used for the convention and asked me if I would design and produce the booklet and create illustrations of each of the consoles – he wanted to do something different from the usual photographs. It appears as if the NYTOS webmaster felt – rightly so IMHO – that Ben’s words could not be improved upon. (In any case, they own the copyright on the booklet.)
I was also charged with redecorating the console of the Wurlitzer for the same convention (someone had sprayed the entire case with gold monochrome gold paint and the desire was to have it look something like it did up to the mid-sixties – a mottled glazed background with gilded ormolu). Talk about a learning curve!
In my post of November 9, 2004, I describe what the theatre looked like in those days. The sound of that instrument in the room was breathtaking. The University wanted the organ used during the basketball games and back then my friend Jim Leaffe played most of them. He was a classical organ student with a love for the theatre organ and had a unique modern jazz style. The fact that he was the same age as the students and was playing hits of the day made him very popular. He was very proud of the fact that he was the only member of the Seneca tribe to become a theatre organist! He even recorded the instrument, an amazing album called “Blue Heron”. Look for it on eBay.
I remember a number of NYTOS-sponsored concerts on the organ, which was restored and taken care of by an all-volunteer crew led by Bob Walker. Over the years, Bob gave the instrument the TLC and fastidious attention it deserved. Without his dedication I doubt that the instrument would have been kept in as excellent condition as it was.
One of the most touching moments occurred during Don Baker’s homecoming concert in February (I think) 1971. It was his first time playing the organ since he had been on staff shortly after it had opened. The concert was the first NYTOS event since Ben Hall’s murder the previous December, and we asked Don if he would play a tribute to Ben, which he readily agreed to. The number we asked him to play was one of Ben’s favourites, the theme from the “Little Orphan Annie” radio program. Trouble was, Don didn’t know it! I stood beside him just before the concert and whistled the melody to him, twice, as he memorized it with his eyes closed. About five selections into the concert he explained the tribute and then played the most beautifully subdued, almost reverent, arrangement of what is really a pretty bouncy tune. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place by the time he finished. That one is on record, too, on a Don Baker album called “Homecoming”, which features excerpts of this concert.
Melders – Organ-ized is, in fact, correct. According to David L. Junchen on page 157 of what was to be the third volume of his massive Encyclopedia of the American Theatre Organ, just published by the American Theatre Organ Society as “The Wurlitzer Pipe Organ – An Illustrated History”: “[The New York Paramount] organ was the first four-manual, thirty-six rank organ, the largest of all Wurlitzer models, later called Fox Specials by the factory since the four subsequent examples built in 1928 all went to Fox theatres.” He goes on to quote Crawford himself as saying he did not design the Paramount organ but only specified that certain ranks be included: “Someone at the Wurlitzer factory made up the specifications. Contrary to common belief, I did not specify that the organ was to have such ranks as the Musette, the French Horn, the Dulciana and some of the other ranks that were included. These ranks, the entire stoplist as a matter of fact, would have been hard to improve upon. The final result was very satisfying to me.”
I had the dubious honour of being part of the volunteer crew that removed the Brooklyn Fox organ in the winter and spring of 1971. The slave console was still there, too. Organ-ized was almost correct about those – the pistons between the manuals all worked, too, through the same setterboards as the main console. But all the stop tabs were dummies, just for show. It was a huge undertaking to lower all that pipework and over-scale percussions from the proscenium chambers, and not much easier to get it all out of the side chambers, either!
While I agree with Jim Rankin’s comments in general, I must say that my recollection from my days there and from speaking to people connected with the organ in the years since is that the University has always been very supportive of the organ. The New York Chapter of ATOS looked after the organ for decades (see the link posted above by LostMemories on Sept.7, 2004) and, as far as I know, still does. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that profit is LIU’s priority, I can understand their need to be accountable for funds spent and the re-fit appeared to be exactly as Jim suggests – as much alteration as was necessary and no more.
I recall that during my time there, any time the crew wanted to work on the organ with the console up, all we had to do was call the University contact and they would have the plug removed for us – as long as we didn’t conflict with any scheduled use of the gym. (Because the University was a union venue, we were not allowed to remove the plug ourselves. And the console was always brought up to floor level by the same crew, lest some wayward gymnast plummet into the basement.) I recall many evenings and weekends leading up to the 1970 ATOS Convention when I was busy redecorating the console and the crew was up working in the chambers, and there would be a basketball practice or gymnastic workouts going on at the same time. The Chapter was also allowed to hold concerts there on a fairly regular basis.
A comment posted above by PeterApruzzese on Feb 7, 2005 tells of plans to rebuild the organ after extensive water damage. Does anyone know what has happened in the intervening nine months?
EdSolero, ERD and R.H – I suspect that the cost of any significant restoration of that magnificent auditorium at this point would be so huge that nobody would want to touch it. I was a member of the New York Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society and was on the organ crew from 1969-71 while I attended Pratt Institute about 15 blocks or so away down DeKalb Avenue.
At that point the original conversion was less than 5 years old. Basically what they had done was to extend a new basketball court floor into the theatre at the level of the original stage until it met the upward slope of the auditorium floor at a point behind the lip of the balcony. From that point to the back wall the room was essentially left untouched on the main floor and the loge (mezzanine), including all the seats and lighting. I remember all of the side pillars separating the side aisles from the seats had curved fronts on the auditorium side that were what appeared to be frosted glass held in by gilded lattice frames. Each of these used to be filled with coloured lamps and was hinged to open so the bulbs could be changed. They were part of the “Wilfred Color Organ” that dazzled the patrons by changing the auditorium’s colour during the shows. The fromt of the balcony and mezzanine were also faced with color-organ lighting, and it was all still there.
From that point forward the walls were torn out from the new floor level to about 10 feet up, along with the choral staircases and ornamental pillars in front of the organ drapes, and replaced with plain facing and padding. The basketball court was set side-to-side with the boards and hoops in the organ arches. The proscenium grand drapery was gone and the stage house had been filled in with offices and classrooms. What had been the stage was stripped bare and filled with retractable bleachers. Classrooms also filled in the top third of the balcony, faced with a cinderblock wall from the balcony floor up to the ceiling. (I was never in those rooms, but I assume the projection booth and all the ornamental walls and ceilings were taken out for this.) The remainder of the balcony, its walls and ceiling were intact but had been stripped of all the loose decoration. Ben Hall told me that the lighting fixtures for the colour organ were all still there but all the bulbs had been removed and, of course, the original board was gone, too. I had never seen it when it was operating as a theatre but it looked as if the original parts of the room still had their original finishes and that the new walls had been finished to roughly match the mottled gold colour. I also remember that at some point in that time all of the remaining original ornamental lighting sconces were removed and replaced with less fragile fixtures.
The original orchestra lift was at that point still intact (they had simply built the new floor out over it), as were the blower room and some other spaces in the basement, but understage was completely modernized. The organ console was on its original lift and a plug had been fitted into the new floor that could be removed so the console could be raised. At its top level, originally stage level, the top of the 6-inch ornamental lip on the lift was just level with the floor so you had to step down into it.
I have not set foot in the place since then, but people who have been there over the years have related sad tales of major structural alterations, and some recent pictures I have seen seem to bear this out. It appears that the entire mezzanine has been torn out to the walls, as has the front third of the balcony, although it looks like the side pillars remain. I may be wrong about this next part, but it looks like the floor has been raised a bit, too. It’s still a magnificent space, and the Wurlitzer sounds even better with the extra flat walls to reflect its might, but to restore it to anything even close to wnat it was would be a VERY expensive undertaking, I think.
Denpiano – Many thanks for the infomation about the new stop tabs. I suspected they were for something like that. I got hooked on the Music Hall organs when I was growing up in Ottawa, Canada, through old Dick Leibert 78s and later his LP series and Ray Bohr’s elegant recording for Reader’s Digest. One of the first things I did when I got to New York was write to Leibert for more information on the organ. He forwarded my letter to the publicity office and I received the whole press package – photo, press release, stoplist and chamber analysis. Had that whole thing memorized in a week! I would be interested in exchanging more thoughts with you on the organ and organists. You can email me privately at , so we don’t take up valuable space here. I wonder if I may have been acquainted with your friend who recently passed away.
Vincent – The years appear to have taken a toll on my ability to recall details – I could have sworn that when I started going to the Music Hall regularly in the fall of 1967 that I only paid 99 cents in the afternoon, but I have checked a few New York Times ads I have in my collection and apparently I was paying more! Prices for the 1968 Easter show (Disney’s “The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band” with “Glory of Easter” and a Markert production “Spring Bouquet” on the Great Stage) were $1.25 to noon, $1.50 afternoons, evenings $2.00 ($2.25 on Fridays), Sat., Sun. and holidays slightly higher. By the following Easter (Disney again, this time “The Love Bug” along with “Glory of Easter” and “The Spring Thing”) the afternoon and evening prices had risen a quarter. Even at $1.75 it was a bargain, especially when you could stay all day if you wanted!
BoxOfficeBill – Thanks for your kind remarks. I figure it’s time I stop lurking and start to contribute what I can. Thanks also to you and Warren and REndres and the other “regulars” for your amazing posts over the life of this page, and other pages on this remarkable site. It blows me away that there is all this accumulated knowledge and experience in one place! I am especially liking the posts of the old programs and ads. I have collected a number of programs from the thirties (the 12- and 16-pagers) and some day when time and commitments allow it is my intention to haul them out of storage and scan and post them here.
And while I’m thanking people, special thanks must go to Patrick Crowley and Ross Melnick for starting this site and making it available to us all – free of charge!! It’s so easy to start taking this site for granted after a while, but it truly is something to be grateful for.
Denpiano – I should have included Ray Bohr in my comment as I was able in my sophomore and Junior years to arrange my classes so that my Friday afternoons would be free, thus enabling me to arrive before the afternoon stage show around 3, hear Ray play that one, stay for the movie and then do the show all over again at 6 with Leibert presiding.
Ray always appeared to be very tense when he played, but his arrangements were excellent and you could tell he really loved that organ. I only wish I had shown up for more house openings, when he would, as I was told much too much later, play for up to half an hour before the first movie. I met him at the stage door a couple of times (I was a teen-age theatre organist groupie) and even exchanged a couple of letters with him later on, and he was always very polite and patient with my youthful exuberance and curiosity.
I also learned to arrange my dates for after 10 and to bring a book so that if Leibert was especially “on” I could sit out the next movie in the grand lounge (in those days it really was both those things) and catch him again at 9. And all for something like 99 cents, as I recall! My interest in Leibert’s astonishing playing, in the Music Hall and in the organ bordered on the pathological in those days, and has not waned much since, despite almost 40 years and the distance to Toronto. Leibert, Bohr and Jack Ward, along with Ashley Miller, Lee Erwin and a few others were as you say the last of their kind. And each had his unmistakable style of playing – you just don’t find that much anymore.
I broke into a broad smile over your comments about the virtual orchestras, coming as they do from the person who takes care of the largest Wurlitzer ever built. The Wurlitzer Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra was marketed the better part of a century ago to be precisely the same thing – a one-person substitute for pit orchestras in theatres where the proprietors couldn’t or didn’t want to pay for all those musicians but wanted the same richness of sound to accompany the films and stage presentations. Eventually just the organists were left, especially in England.
I must admit that I am full of envy that you get to take care of that wonderful behemoth (you must be one of the Bishops, no?), and since you do, I have a question. I have noticed in recent photos of the prompt console that there is an extra stoprail at the bottom on either side – stops that were not there originally. Would you be able to enlighten me as to what they are for? I understand that in the conversion to a solid state relay the original stoplist and stoprail layout was not altered – are these additional Tibia unifications and things for those present-day organists who might not be able to play without them? (LOL)
I am responding to Warren’s October 25 question about Edward Durell Stone being credited as the designer of the Music Hall in the introduction to this page. I don’t know where the writers got their information, but it is true. If you read pages 216 through 232 of Daniel Okrent’s 2003 book “Great Fortune – The Epic of Rockefeller Center” you will find a detailed description of who is credited with what and the process they went through. Carol Herselle Krinsky in her 1978 book “Rockefeller Center” fills in a lot of the detail and provides a number of excellent photos of the auditorium models.
Donald Deskey was proclaimed winner of the interior design competition (more correctly an interior decoration competition) on June 27, 1932 with the announcement that he would be responsible for “the interior furnishings of the Music Hall and its ‘31 auxiliary rooms’ – for the most part, its bathrooms and lounges” plus what Okrent calls “Donald Deskey’s masterwork, an exquisite group of rooms known as the Roxy Suite. If Nick and Nora Charles had lived above a theater, this is what their apartment would have looked like.”
David A. Hanks in his 1987 biography of Deskey says: “At the depth of the Depression, Deskey’s investment of $5,000 dollars for a spectacular presentation, which included numerous color renderings as well as actual samples of carpet and fabric designs, was a risk for his business… The work included thirty lobby areas, smoking rooms, retiring rooms, foyers and lounges… The employment of [leading artists] to assist with the Music Hall scheme was as important as Deskey’s own design for the furnishings. Although each artist worked independently, Deskey coordinated their work to assure an integrated, harmonious whole.”
I hope this adds a bit of clarification. Deskey has been so often credited with the “interior design” of the theatre that he is assumed to have done just that – designed it. In fact, he was in charge of decorating and furnishing interior spaces designed by many others. And what decorations and furnishings they are! Though he apparently hated the Ezra Winter mural in the foyer and the 50th street medallions, the cumulative effect of his work on the interior is what makes the Music Hall so breathtaking when considered as a whole. It is the reason I found the place so warm and comfortable when I went there at least twice a month in my college years from 1967-71 (the real reason was to hear Dick Leibert performing live, but it was so exquisite a space that I just loved to wander about exploring – not wanting to leave).
It might be of interest to some that the stage show that played with “Sayonara” (see BoxOfficeBill’s October 5 post above) was recorded by RCA Victor the following March and released later that year as the Living Stereo album “Christmas Holidays at RCMH” (LSP 1010). It has recently been re-released by Classic Compact Discs (www.classicrecs.com) under the same title, as LSOCD-1010. The new CD sports the same wrap-around cover shot of the Rockettes in red from the Kodak Colorama display in Grand Central Station that year, and includes a scaled-down but unedited version of the original multi-page booklet with the story of producing the show and tons of full-colour backstage photos – plus another Rockettes fold-out!
The recording starts out with the original Nativity in its entirety, the segue into the show, the Cinderella Ballet, the Commercial Carollers, the Rockettes dance routines (all that’s missing is the sound of 72 tap shoes going at it!) and the finale. I never saw the original show, so someone may want to enlighten me on this, but the primary “theme” song, if you will, of the show on the recording was the recent hit song “Chances Are”. It shows up in the part before the ballet and again in the finale. I am curious about this because the songs used were usually listed in the programme and in this case neither “Chances Are” nor “Cinderella” by Eric Coates are credited.
In any case, the crowning glory of the recording for this lifelong Dick Leibert fan is a 10-minute Christmas organ medley – what some of us believe to be his single most perfect recording. It is the first stereo recording by Leibert of the big organ. It is also the first appearance of his own piece “Under the Chrictmas Mistletoe”. He often told the story, with variations each telling, that he was noodling around playing anything that came to him while the engineers were setting their levels, and the producer questioned one of the livelier pieces he had played, an Irish jig he had written years earlier and called “Brickbats and Shillelaghs”. According to Leibert, he did some quick thinking and said it was a Christmas piece he had written called “Under the Christmas Mistletoe” – a title that perfectly matches the cadence of the first four bars of the music. The producer suggested they put it into the medley, and it became an instant hit with organ fans, being published not long after and showing up on another Leibert-RCA Christmas album years later.
I have found both the album versions (mono and stereo) and the new CD version on eBay and they are well worth the price to any RCMH fan. It is also especially valuable as the only record (literally) of Leonidoff’s original Nativity pageant (see previous discussions on the more recent Christmas Spectaculars, above), save for an inferior recording (IMHO) of a later show released in the early seventies on another label.
Close your eyes and listen to the CD through earphones and you will think you are right there in the Hall. It’s hard to tell if the orchestra was recorded in the studio or in the theatre, but it is obvious to these ears that the organ used with the orchestra during the segue from the Nativity into the show (called the “Interlude” on the album) is the big one in the theatre and not the smaller one in the studio upstairs. If anyone can enlighten me on that, I would be grateful. This album has been part of my Christmases for the past 42 years and I never get tired of it.
One each of the curved and flat railing sections shown in the photo posted by Warren on Aug. 26 have been incorporated into the railing at the top of the three-storey escalators feeding the garish Famous Players Paramount that opened a few years ago here in downtown Toronto. They are part of a sort of shrine to the Times Square Paramount that has been set up in a no-traffic cul-de-sac on what is the main level of the theatre, on the third floor. Several photos, including this one, are on display along with a short video outlining the original’s history and how this new monstrosity that passes for a movie theatre came to have them. Nice to know that something has survived, even in these depressing surroundings. Problem is, you don’t even see it until you’re on the escalator going down to leave the place.
The status of this theatre should be changed to “Demolished”, and the new Panasonic Theatre should become a separate listing. As jLangdon notes above, the old building, except for the facade wall from the second floor up, was torn down. I walk past the site on my way to work every day and watched the process this past spring. Even what is left of the facade is barely visible behind a post-modern screen treatment. The new Panasonic Theatre is completely new construction literally from the ground up.
In spite of this, every review of the new show (or of the new theatre, for that matter) that I have read in the local press insists in referring to it as a “renovation” or “refurbishment” of the New Yorker Theatre. As with the January 17 article posted above, I suspect these words are from corporate press releases and not original research on the part of any of the writers. Calling this a “renovation” or “refurbishment” is the same as if someone were to refer to the parking lot that covers the site of Toronto’s late-lamented Uptown Theatre as a “renovation”. I think not.
Ed – Judging from the two copies in my collection (and many from previous years before Hall’s version), it appears that the Music Hall updated their souvenir booklet every time there were major changes in personnel. Ben Hall originally wrote it in the mid-sixties, when the phrase you refer to was “more than thirty years”. The bulk of the later versions (I know of at least two) used Ben’s original text, with names changed and a paragraph altered or added here and there and many changes to the photos and captions, including new covers. The added writing does have a similar “turn of phrase” in a couple of spots, so they might well have been channeling him!
I’ll never forget the last time I saw Ben, which was at the very first of Virgil Fox’s “Heavy Organ” Bach and light shows at the Fillmore East in early December of that year. Every organist in town was there, it seemed – certainly the ones who appreciated a good show – and Virgil did not disappoint. The place was sold out and the lines stretched around the block. His spotlit rhinestone-studded heels were the hit of the performance! Ben and I had a few brief words on the way to our respective seats in different parts of the balcony and arranged to get together in early January to discuss a revised version of “The Best Remaining Seats” that his publisher had apparently asked him to work on for its tenth anniversary in 1971. He wanted to talk to me about designing and producing it, and start going through his files with him to select photos from the thousands he had accumulated since the book first came out. As you can imagine, this was pretty heady stuff to a 20-year-old graphic design student with a love of theatre organs and movie palaces! Alas, two weeks later he was gone and that was that. I got “the call” the day before I left to go home for Christmas – those were NOT happy holidays that year!
If I’m not mistaken, the wonderful historical descriptions of the organ and the theatre on the New York Theatre Organ Society web page (the ones that Patsy quotes and EdSolero links to above) were written by the late Ben Hall in 1970. I was an NYTOS member and a junior at Pratt Institute at the time and had the pleasure of working with Ben on the 1970 ATOS Convention souvenir booklet that he was putting together. He wrote similar pieces about each of the organs and theatres being used for the convention and asked me if I would design and produce the booklet and create illustrations of each of the consoles – he wanted to do something different from the usual photographs. It appears as if the NYTOS webmaster felt – rightly so IMHO – that Ben’s words could not be improved upon. (In any case, they own the copyright on the booklet.)
I was also charged with redecorating the console of the Wurlitzer for the same convention (someone had sprayed the entire case with gold monochrome gold paint and the desire was to have it look something like it did up to the mid-sixties – a mottled glazed background with gilded ormolu). Talk about a learning curve!
In my post of November 9, 2004, I describe what the theatre looked like in those days. The sound of that instrument in the room was breathtaking. The University wanted the organ used during the basketball games and back then my friend Jim Leaffe played most of them. He was a classical organ student with a love for the theatre organ and had a unique modern jazz style. The fact that he was the same age as the students and was playing hits of the day made him very popular. He was very proud of the fact that he was the only member of the Seneca tribe to become a theatre organist! He even recorded the instrument, an amazing album called “Blue Heron”. Look for it on eBay.
I remember a number of NYTOS-sponsored concerts on the organ, which was restored and taken care of by an all-volunteer crew led by Bob Walker. Over the years, Bob gave the instrument the TLC and fastidious attention it deserved. Without his dedication I doubt that the instrument would have been kept in as excellent condition as it was.
One of the most touching moments occurred during Don Baker’s homecoming concert in February (I think) 1971. It was his first time playing the organ since he had been on staff shortly after it had opened. The concert was the first NYTOS event since Ben Hall’s murder the previous December, and we asked Don if he would play a tribute to Ben, which he readily agreed to. The number we asked him to play was one of Ben’s favourites, the theme from the “Little Orphan Annie” radio program. Trouble was, Don didn’t know it! I stood beside him just before the concert and whistled the melody to him, twice, as he memorized it with his eyes closed. About five selections into the concert he explained the tribute and then played the most beautifully subdued, almost reverent, arrangement of what is really a pretty bouncy tune. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place by the time he finished. That one is on record, too, on a Don Baker album called “Homecoming”, which features excerpts of this concert.
Melders – Organ-ized is, in fact, correct. According to David L. Junchen on page 157 of what was to be the third volume of his massive Encyclopedia of the American Theatre Organ, just published by the American Theatre Organ Society as “The Wurlitzer Pipe Organ – An Illustrated History”: “[The New York Paramount] organ was the first four-manual, thirty-six rank organ, the largest of all Wurlitzer models, later called Fox Specials by the factory since the four subsequent examples built in 1928 all went to Fox theatres.” He goes on to quote Crawford himself as saying he did not design the Paramount organ but only specified that certain ranks be included: “Someone at the Wurlitzer factory made up the specifications. Contrary to common belief, I did not specify that the organ was to have such ranks as the Musette, the French Horn, the Dulciana and some of the other ranks that were included. These ranks, the entire stoplist as a matter of fact, would have been hard to improve upon. The final result was very satisfying to me.”
I had the dubious honour of being part of the volunteer crew that removed the Brooklyn Fox organ in the winter and spring of 1971. The slave console was still there, too. Organ-ized was almost correct about those – the pistons between the manuals all worked, too, through the same setterboards as the main console. But all the stop tabs were dummies, just for show. It was a huge undertaking to lower all that pipework and over-scale percussions from the proscenium chambers, and not much easier to get it all out of the side chambers, either!
While I agree with Jim Rankin’s comments in general, I must say that my recollection from my days there and from speaking to people connected with the organ in the years since is that the University has always been very supportive of the organ. The New York Chapter of ATOS looked after the organ for decades (see the link posted above by LostMemories on Sept.7, 2004) and, as far as I know, still does. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that profit is LIU’s priority, I can understand their need to be accountable for funds spent and the re-fit appeared to be exactly as Jim suggests – as much alteration as was necessary and no more.
I recall that during my time there, any time the crew wanted to work on the organ with the console up, all we had to do was call the University contact and they would have the plug removed for us – as long as we didn’t conflict with any scheduled use of the gym. (Because the University was a union venue, we were not allowed to remove the plug ourselves. And the console was always brought up to floor level by the same crew, lest some wayward gymnast plummet into the basement.) I recall many evenings and weekends leading up to the 1970 ATOS Convention when I was busy redecorating the console and the crew was up working in the chambers, and there would be a basketball practice or gymnastic workouts going on at the same time. The Chapter was also allowed to hold concerts there on a fairly regular basis.
A comment posted above by PeterApruzzese on Feb 7, 2005 tells of plans to rebuild the organ after extensive water damage. Does anyone know what has happened in the intervening nine months?
EdSolero, ERD and R.H – I suspect that the cost of any significant restoration of that magnificent auditorium at this point would be so huge that nobody would want to touch it. I was a member of the New York Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society and was on the organ crew from 1969-71 while I attended Pratt Institute about 15 blocks or so away down DeKalb Avenue.
At that point the original conversion was less than 5 years old. Basically what they had done was to extend a new basketball court floor into the theatre at the level of the original stage until it met the upward slope of the auditorium floor at a point behind the lip of the balcony. From that point to the back wall the room was essentially left untouched on the main floor and the loge (mezzanine), including all the seats and lighting. I remember all of the side pillars separating the side aisles from the seats had curved fronts on the auditorium side that were what appeared to be frosted glass held in by gilded lattice frames. Each of these used to be filled with coloured lamps and was hinged to open so the bulbs could be changed. They were part of the “Wilfred Color Organ” that dazzled the patrons by changing the auditorium’s colour during the shows. The fromt of the balcony and mezzanine were also faced with color-organ lighting, and it was all still there.
From that point forward the walls were torn out from the new floor level to about 10 feet up, along with the choral staircases and ornamental pillars in front of the organ drapes, and replaced with plain facing and padding. The basketball court was set side-to-side with the boards and hoops in the organ arches. The proscenium grand drapery was gone and the stage house had been filled in with offices and classrooms. What had been the stage was stripped bare and filled with retractable bleachers. Classrooms also filled in the top third of the balcony, faced with a cinderblock wall from the balcony floor up to the ceiling. (I was never in those rooms, but I assume the projection booth and all the ornamental walls and ceilings were taken out for this.) The remainder of the balcony, its walls and ceiling were intact but had been stripped of all the loose decoration. Ben Hall told me that the lighting fixtures for the colour organ were all still there but all the bulbs had been removed and, of course, the original board was gone, too. I had never seen it when it was operating as a theatre but it looked as if the original parts of the room still had their original finishes and that the new walls had been finished to roughly match the mottled gold colour. I also remember that at some point in that time all of the remaining original ornamental lighting sconces were removed and replaced with less fragile fixtures.
The original orchestra lift was at that point still intact (they had simply built the new floor out over it), as were the blower room and some other spaces in the basement, but understage was completely modernized. The organ console was on its original lift and a plug had been fitted into the new floor that could be removed so the console could be raised. At its top level, originally stage level, the top of the 6-inch ornamental lip on the lift was just level with the floor so you had to step down into it.
I have not set foot in the place since then, but people who have been there over the years have related sad tales of major structural alterations, and some recent pictures I have seen seem to bear this out. It appears that the entire mezzanine has been torn out to the walls, as has the front third of the balcony, although it looks like the side pillars remain. I may be wrong about this next part, but it looks like the floor has been raised a bit, too. It’s still a magnificent space, and the Wurlitzer sounds even better with the extra flat walls to reflect its might, but to restore it to anything even close to wnat it was would be a VERY expensive undertaking, I think.
Denpiano – Many thanks for the infomation about the new stop tabs. I suspected they were for something like that. I got hooked on the Music Hall organs when I was growing up in Ottawa, Canada, through old Dick Leibert 78s and later his LP series and Ray Bohr’s elegant recording for Reader’s Digest. One of the first things I did when I got to New York was write to Leibert for more information on the organ. He forwarded my letter to the publicity office and I received the whole press package – photo, press release, stoplist and chamber analysis. Had that whole thing memorized in a week! I would be interested in exchanging more thoughts with you on the organ and organists. You can email me privately at , so we don’t take up valuable space here. I wonder if I may have been acquainted with your friend who recently passed away.
Vincent – The years appear to have taken a toll on my ability to recall details – I could have sworn that when I started going to the Music Hall regularly in the fall of 1967 that I only paid 99 cents in the afternoon, but I have checked a few New York Times ads I have in my collection and apparently I was paying more! Prices for the 1968 Easter show (Disney’s “The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band” with “Glory of Easter” and a Markert production “Spring Bouquet” on the Great Stage) were $1.25 to noon, $1.50 afternoons, evenings $2.00 ($2.25 on Fridays), Sat., Sun. and holidays slightly higher. By the following Easter (Disney again, this time “The Love Bug” along with “Glory of Easter” and “The Spring Thing”) the afternoon and evening prices had risen a quarter. Even at $1.75 it was a bargain, especially when you could stay all day if you wanted!
BoxOfficeBill – Thanks for your kind remarks. I figure it’s time I stop lurking and start to contribute what I can. Thanks also to you and Warren and REndres and the other “regulars” for your amazing posts over the life of this page, and other pages on this remarkable site. It blows me away that there is all this accumulated knowledge and experience in one place! I am especially liking the posts of the old programs and ads. I have collected a number of programs from the thirties (the 12- and 16-pagers) and some day when time and commitments allow it is my intention to haul them out of storage and scan and post them here.
And while I’m thanking people, special thanks must go to Patrick Crowley and Ross Melnick for starting this site and making it available to us all – free of charge!! It’s so easy to start taking this site for granted after a while, but it truly is something to be grateful for.
Bravo to you all!
Denpiano – I should have included Ray Bohr in my comment as I was able in my sophomore and Junior years to arrange my classes so that my Friday afternoons would be free, thus enabling me to arrive before the afternoon stage show around 3, hear Ray play that one, stay for the movie and then do the show all over again at 6 with Leibert presiding.
Ray always appeared to be very tense when he played, but his arrangements were excellent and you could tell he really loved that organ. I only wish I had shown up for more house openings, when he would, as I was told much too much later, play for up to half an hour before the first movie. I met him at the stage door a couple of times (I was a teen-age theatre organist groupie) and even exchanged a couple of letters with him later on, and he was always very polite and patient with my youthful exuberance and curiosity.
I also learned to arrange my dates for after 10 and to bring a book so that if Leibert was especially “on” I could sit out the next movie in the grand lounge (in those days it really was both those things) and catch him again at 9. And all for something like 99 cents, as I recall! My interest in Leibert’s astonishing playing, in the Music Hall and in the organ bordered on the pathological in those days, and has not waned much since, despite almost 40 years and the distance to Toronto. Leibert, Bohr and Jack Ward, along with Ashley Miller, Lee Erwin and a few others were as you say the last of their kind. And each had his unmistakable style of playing – you just don’t find that much anymore.
I broke into a broad smile over your comments about the virtual orchestras, coming as they do from the person who takes care of the largest Wurlitzer ever built. The Wurlitzer Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra was marketed the better part of a century ago to be precisely the same thing – a one-person substitute for pit orchestras in theatres where the proprietors couldn’t or didn’t want to pay for all those musicians but wanted the same richness of sound to accompany the films and stage presentations. Eventually just the organists were left, especially in England.
I must admit that I am full of envy that you get to take care of that wonderful behemoth (you must be one of the Bishops, no?), and since you do, I have a question. I have noticed in recent photos of the prompt console that there is an extra stoprail at the bottom on either side – stops that were not there originally. Would you be able to enlighten me as to what they are for? I understand that in the conversion to a solid state relay the original stoplist and stoprail layout was not altered – are these additional Tibia unifications and things for those present-day organists who might not be able to play without them? (LOL)
I am responding to Warren’s October 25 question about Edward Durell Stone being credited as the designer of the Music Hall in the introduction to this page. I don’t know where the writers got their information, but it is true. If you read pages 216 through 232 of Daniel Okrent’s 2003 book “Great Fortune – The Epic of Rockefeller Center” you will find a detailed description of who is credited with what and the process they went through. Carol Herselle Krinsky in her 1978 book “Rockefeller Center” fills in a lot of the detail and provides a number of excellent photos of the auditorium models.
According to Okrent, “responsibility for the Music Hall fell to [architect Wallace K.] Harrison… to Harrison must go much of the credit for the theatre’s radical break with the recent history of American theater architecture”. Harrison hired Stone to work on the project and it was Stone, along with a team of architects and others, who evolved the final auditorium design using René Chambellan’s clay models. Krinsky writes: “Edward Durrell Stone who was in charge of the designs of both theaters [the Music Hall and the Center] worked on this problem [of the organ grilles] during the summer… Raymond Hood then suggested concealing the grilles behind radial lines on the ceiling… By September 17 [1931], a model with this arrangement was ready, complete with Stone’s scalloped curtain design.” Okrent credits Roxy with the idea of three shallow cantilevered mezzanines instead of one huge balcony, and says that he insisted on only two things: red seats and at least 6,201 of them so there were more than in the Roxy Theatre, which he had left in early 1931. Okrent continues: “the finished auditorium accommodated only 5,960, but Roxy got his number up to the required 6,201 by counting the seats in the orchestra pit, the operators' stools in the elevators, the chairs in front of the makeup mirrors in the powder rooms.” Okrent credits Stone with the exterior innovation of concealing the fire escapes behind metal screens, and with the vertical signs and marquees. He continues: “Inside the building he was responsible for all the public spaces that give the Music Hall its grandeur. The most notable of these was the Grand Foyer…”
Donald Deskey was proclaimed winner of the interior design competition (more correctly an interior decoration competition) on June 27, 1932 with the announcement that he would be responsible for “the interior furnishings of the Music Hall and its ‘31 auxiliary rooms’ – for the most part, its bathrooms and lounges” plus what Okrent calls “Donald Deskey’s masterwork, an exquisite group of rooms known as the Roxy Suite. If Nick and Nora Charles had lived above a theater, this is what their apartment would have looked like.”
David A. Hanks in his 1987 biography of Deskey says: “At the depth of the Depression, Deskey’s investment of $5,000 dollars for a spectacular presentation, which included numerous color renderings as well as actual samples of carpet and fabric designs, was a risk for his business… The work included thirty lobby areas, smoking rooms, retiring rooms, foyers and lounges… The employment of [leading artists] to assist with the Music Hall scheme was as important as Deskey’s own design for the furnishings. Although each artist worked independently, Deskey coordinated their work to assure an integrated, harmonious whole.”
I hope this adds a bit of clarification. Deskey has been so often credited with the “interior design” of the theatre that he is assumed to have done just that – designed it. In fact, he was in charge of decorating and furnishing interior spaces designed by many others. And what decorations and furnishings they are! Though he apparently hated the Ezra Winter mural in the foyer and the 50th street medallions, the cumulative effect of his work on the interior is what makes the Music Hall so breathtaking when considered as a whole. It is the reason I found the place so warm and comfortable when I went there at least twice a month in my college years from 1967-71 (the real reason was to hear Dick Leibert performing live, but it was so exquisite a space that I just loved to wander about exploring – not wanting to leave).
It might be of interest to some that the stage show that played with “Sayonara” (see BoxOfficeBill’s October 5 post above) was recorded by RCA Victor the following March and released later that year as the Living Stereo album “Christmas Holidays at RCMH” (LSP 1010). It has recently been re-released by Classic Compact Discs (www.classicrecs.com) under the same title, as LSOCD-1010. The new CD sports the same wrap-around cover shot of the Rockettes in red from the Kodak Colorama display in Grand Central Station that year, and includes a scaled-down but unedited version of the original multi-page booklet with the story of producing the show and tons of full-colour backstage photos – plus another Rockettes fold-out!
The recording starts out with the original Nativity in its entirety, the segue into the show, the Cinderella Ballet, the Commercial Carollers, the Rockettes dance routines (all that’s missing is the sound of 72 tap shoes going at it!) and the finale. I never saw the original show, so someone may want to enlighten me on this, but the primary “theme” song, if you will, of the show on the recording was the recent hit song “Chances Are”. It shows up in the part before the ballet and again in the finale. I am curious about this because the songs used were usually listed in the programme and in this case neither “Chances Are” nor “Cinderella” by Eric Coates are credited.
In any case, the crowning glory of the recording for this lifelong Dick Leibert fan is a 10-minute Christmas organ medley – what some of us believe to be his single most perfect recording. It is the first stereo recording by Leibert of the big organ. It is also the first appearance of his own piece “Under the Chrictmas Mistletoe”. He often told the story, with variations each telling, that he was noodling around playing anything that came to him while the engineers were setting their levels, and the producer questioned one of the livelier pieces he had played, an Irish jig he had written years earlier and called “Brickbats and Shillelaghs”. According to Leibert, he did some quick thinking and said it was a Christmas piece he had written called “Under the Christmas Mistletoe” – a title that perfectly matches the cadence of the first four bars of the music. The producer suggested they put it into the medley, and it became an instant hit with organ fans, being published not long after and showing up on another Leibert-RCA Christmas album years later.
I have found both the album versions (mono and stereo) and the new CD version on eBay and they are well worth the price to any RCMH fan. It is also especially valuable as the only record (literally) of Leonidoff’s original Nativity pageant (see previous discussions on the more recent Christmas Spectaculars, above), save for an inferior recording (IMHO) of a later show released in the early seventies on another label.
Close your eyes and listen to the CD through earphones and you will think you are right there in the Hall. It’s hard to tell if the orchestra was recorded in the studio or in the theatre, but it is obvious to these ears that the organ used with the orchestra during the segue from the Nativity into the show (called the “Interlude” on the album) is the big one in the theatre and not the smaller one in the studio upstairs. If anyone can enlighten me on that, I would be grateful. This album has been part of my Christmases for the past 42 years and I never get tired of it.
One each of the curved and flat railing sections shown in the photo posted by Warren on Aug. 26 have been incorporated into the railing at the top of the three-storey escalators feeding the garish Famous Players Paramount that opened a few years ago here in downtown Toronto. They are part of a sort of shrine to the Times Square Paramount that has been set up in a no-traffic cul-de-sac on what is the main level of the theatre, on the third floor. Several photos, including this one, are on display along with a short video outlining the original’s history and how this new monstrosity that passes for a movie theatre came to have them. Nice to know that something has survived, even in these depressing surroundings. Problem is, you don’t even see it until you’re on the escalator going down to leave the place.
The status of this theatre should be changed to “Demolished”, and the new Panasonic Theatre should become a separate listing. As jLangdon notes above, the old building, except for the facade wall from the second floor up, was torn down. I walk past the site on my way to work every day and watched the process this past spring. Even what is left of the facade is barely visible behind a post-modern screen treatment. The new Panasonic Theatre is completely new construction literally from the ground up.
In spite of this, every review of the new show (or of the new theatre, for that matter) that I have read in the local press insists in referring to it as a “renovation” or “refurbishment” of the New Yorker Theatre. As with the January 17 article posted above, I suspect these words are from corporate press releases and not original research on the part of any of the writers. Calling this a “renovation” or “refurbishment” is the same as if someone were to refer to the parking lot that covers the site of Toronto’s late-lamented Uptown Theatre as a “renovation”. I think not.