Radio City Music Hall
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
118 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 3,331 comments
I’ve just uploaded two pictures I took while touring the place in 2005. Stage seen from balcony with curtains open, and back of the upper balcony. I’ve taken many more of various corridors and rooms of the building and will post some progressively.
Many vintage photos on the MCNY Collections website.
https://collections.mcny.org/CS.aspx?VP3=DamView&VBID=24UP1GZLS07DM&FR_=1&W=1366&H=587
It’s there now.
Thank you but I meant on a page on this site. I went through them all but did not see it. I could be that I overlooked it.
You’ll find it on November 15, 1970.
I’ve never seen the Sunday full page NY Times' ad for Scrooge the ‘70 Christmas movie or even the opening day ad. Is it on a page I’ve missed?
Don’t count on the arch being restored. That is NEVER going to happen. If fact, it may lose even more stage area if the new sound system gets approved.
In response to Vindanpar’s post, I agree with you. The false proscenium and removal of the choral staircase curtains diminish the beauty of the auditorium. This for the sake of lighting effects is just poor, if not a complete lack of showmanship. The contour curtain IS part of the show. The opening program of December 1932 had a complete number to show off the curtain and its effects. The Hall’s centennial is approaching; perhaps a reason for the powers that be (or will be) to restore the auditorium. That said, I’m still glad the Hall is here. Paradise remains not paved.
That added fake arch and the speakers in the auditorium have totally ruined the place. They are inexcusable. And didn’t they ruin the fluidity of the curtain? So much for its art-deco splendor.
My wife worked on the christmas show for 12 prior to 2020. She told me you would not believe how pampered those animals are. They are well taken care of and not in any way abused or anything .
Alec Baldwin is one to talk about safety. He should mind his own business and worry about his own problems. He should also get his facts straight. RCMH isn’t even using the animal agency that he mentions.
Well if she did there is no record of it. She’s never mentioned it despite talking about going for the first time to the Hall to see The Jolson Story and her excitement at BBB opening there and seeing herself on the screen. I saw her live show there. She also I believe did a TV special including the Rockettes.
Question: Did Ann-Margret ever appear on stage in a car during the run of Bye Bye Birdie? A friend says he distinctly remembers her live appearance, maybe it was at the premiere? Anyone know?
Alex Baldwin representing PETA is calling for the elimination of all animals from The Nativity. Not that I care because it’s not Leonidoff’s. It’s a pale cheap imitation looking like it belongs in the midwest somewhere. I saw it once and that was enough. Where I always looked forward to it during its stage show/film period, beautiful. I remember the delight of the audience of the Magi on the horse and the camel.
Screened the World premiere of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Yes 100k in ‘70 was pretty disastrous for such a large operation as the Hall’s. 145k was a very poor opening week. And as the Christmas show was already in rehearsal at the end of Oct and it used sets from previous shows especially The Nativity(what a loss that is! The Leonidoff pageant was a beauty) it would not have been difficult to get it in place in three weeks of rehearsal. Just from the first week’s poor showing the Music Hall audience had no interest in the film. If only the Music Hall had chosen one of Mel Brooks’ very best films The Twelve Chairs. A family friendly film perfect for the Music Hall audiences. Scrooge was a big success opening week and as previously the Christmas season didn’t start until early December it was shortly after that I noticed the season started earlier and earlier. Now it was acceptable to start making money off of Christmas mid Nov when before it would have been considered absurdly early. Manhattan merchants would have noticed this. And from there…
TNYT OCT 30 ‘70 Vincent Canby The real subject of the film, however, is one much closer to Mr. Wilder’s other movie fantasies (“Some Like It Hot,” “Kiss Me Stupid”). That is, sex. To put it bluntly, and profanely, were Holmes and Dr. Watson—Holmes’s biographer, his most earnest admirer and the sharer of his secrets and of his flat— lovers? I suspect that only Billy Wilder would have the nerve to raise such a question, and then to dispatch it in a movie that is gentle enough to become the Thanksgiving holiday attraction at the Music Hall.
TNYT NOV 20 ‘70 Vincent Canby “Scrooge” opened yesterday at the Radio City Music Hall as the Christmas attraction, approximately five weeks early. The last “A Christmas Carol” to play the Hall, a version produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1938, was unveiled three days before Christmas. When the next version opens—I estimate in 2001—it may be on the Fourth of July.
vindanpar – I had a question about one of your old posts:
“The following year’s Billy Wilder disaster Sherlock Holmes which was considered the Thanksgiving film had to be pulled so Scrooge and the Nativity entered a couple of weeks early and precipitated the entire early/mid November Christmas cultural change.”
It’s an interesting idea. I poked around on Newspapers.com, and really can’t find any reports of when the New York stores put up their Christmas windows, so it’s hard to verify. The Rockefeller Center tree lighting has happened the first week in December from the early 30s until today.
I wonder, though, about the underlying premise of the post. Did you get the idea from the 2010 book Some Like It Wilder: “The movie had been booked at the Music Hall in late October as its Thanksgiving attraction, but it was withdrawn before Thanksgiving in the wake of lukewarm public reception.” The author of the book gives no citation.
The numbers from Variety didn’t look all that awful, although I don’t have a ton of comparisions. For instance, I know A Boy Named Charlie Brown, which did close to capacity business, did $290k its second week in 1969. Sherlock Holmes did $150,000 week one, $145,000 week two and $100,000 week three, which sound pretty respectable. Would this have been considered a disaster for a non-holiday booking? These would likely be a sizable piece of the total grosses of the picture.
What I’m guessing is UA knew they had a bomb, but Wilder was likely to do well in NY with sophisticated crowds (perhaps the way Woody Allen duds produced respectable numbers in NY.)
Scrooge got a wide release (outside metro NY) the same day as the Music Hall opening, which suggests the change in programs was planned in advance. The Christmas show requires a lot of logistics, so I doubt that could be moved easily.
Lastly, the only happy part of Walter Mirisch’s description of the Sherlock Holmes debacle in his memoir was the fact that it played at the Music Hall. He was still smarting about the mistakes made 40 years earlier, so I suspect he’d remember getting his show pulled early and not raise that as a positive.
BTW, in my opinion The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a pretty good picture!
The “Christmas Spectacular” starring the Rockettes returns today, November 18th. Details, which include those for a new production number, can be viewed here
rcd55b, thank you for your response.
Radio City was always reel to reel. Sometimes they would bring in a platter for special screenings. When the change to digital started, our film premieres went down drastically. The last 35MM we premiered was Kevin Smith’s “Red State” in 2011. Since then, everything has been shown in digital. The only film we still run is 70MM 3D for the Christmas show.
rcdt55b Did you work there while projection systems changed from platter systems to digital, or was it the latter when you started?
I’m a projectionist there. I’ve been there since 2005. The department head has been there since 2000.
rcdt55b in what capacity do you work for Radio City Music Hall?
Sorry for sounding that way m00se1111. It just shows you how fast things can change. We got 3 new updates within 4 hours that day. The Friday that we shut down, there were about 1000 people in the audience for the 11AM show with people still coming in. 10 minutes before the show they cancelled it. Early that afternoon they tested the other cast and too many were infected so they had to cancel it all.
More confirmation of the inevitable here