Did anyone know there was just a TCM theatrical showing of South Pacific?
It was a showing of the blu ray of the general release not roadshow version. What in the world was the point of that? Does the Todd AO original release no longer exist or can no longer be restored? Shades of Hawaii as concerns the roadshow cut.
CC Cinema Treasures would not be nearly as good without you here.
But you are at times a curmudgeon. Sometimes we all meet on one page and then go off on tangents which might interest some if not all of us. Discussing the best possible way of seeing a roadshow print in 2018 of Hawaii on a page devoted to the theater where it had its world premiere seems especially apropos.
Unless somebody decides to rebuild the theater and show a roadshow print its blu ray is the best we can do. It seems the contributors who attended these theaters when they were single theaters are fewer and fewer.
Thank you for posting it. I’ll check it out. Some of those Mad magazine parodies of the films themselves were pretty funny. Especially Sound of Music and the combined parody of 3 films: On a Clear Day You Can See a Funny Girl Singing Hello Dolly Forever. Still the best most scathing send up of Streisand and I’m a fan of hers and those 3 films.
Any many of those big roadshow lps ended up in the bargain bins which is how I was able to afford them as a kid.
It was the bombs not the hits.
You wouldn’t find Funny Girl, Oliver or Sound of Music.
The cutout of Finian’s Rainbow came wrapped with the souvenir program.
Anybody remember the MAD magazine parody of reserved seat newspaper film advertising? A picture of IMPORTANCE and that kind of thing? Yes it was funny but I think those old advance ads for big movies was very cool.
Thank you for that billboard photo. Those old painted Times Square movie ‘spectaculars’ were quite wonderful. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think that the two small boats were sticking out making it 3D but maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me as it doesn’t look that way there.
Also on the blu ray.com review it says even first run 70mm blow up engagements were in mono. How odd for a roadshow epic film made in'65.
I saw it when it came to the suburbs so I obviously saw the cut version. But I remember the boys in elementary school talking about the topless women(wow!) which were not cut out. I guess they considered it a family film because it was in a National Geographic natives are different way.
I remember seeing the Demille billboard spectacular for Hawaii when I was a boy and was it ever impressive.
I’d love to see a close up color photo of it.
Why wouldn’t Twilight Time put out the roadshow version like they did for Khartoum? The problem with that film is the soundtrack used was a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix when a 6 track exists. Also their Exodus transfer was taken from a 35mm print and not 70mm as the movie was filmed.
You’ve got to be careful with these blu rays. I understand though Khartoum is in any case visually stunning so I’ll end up paying through the nose for it on ebay.
MC I believe that advert was ‘76 not '77(correct me if I’m wrong). That was the ad used for the Rivoli where I saw the film in Oct of that year. It was Columbus Day.
It was an overwhelming experience and at the end the print said Cinerama with the logo. I remember this distinctly because I had never seen a Cinerama film. I believe two years later when the Rivoli had it again they might have used a smaller screen because it was not nearly as impressive and at the end it said 70mm. In fact I believe it said Super Panavision 70.
Somebody on this site said that Sweet Charity used a smaller screen because Universal did not want to pay for the D150 screen. Of course the specifics and accuracy of all this minutiae is lost with time.
Ken Roe, interesting about the Astoria getting a new large screen in ‘65 because on its page it says after the successful run of Half a Sixpence through much of '68 the theater was then gutted and remodeled for the 70mm CCBB. Sixpence was Panavision.
I still find 46 ft incredibly small for major first run showings of SOM and SP in the huge Dominion. I would have been very disappointed. But these must hold the record for the longest movie runs in the world. Anybody know of any films that played longer elsewhere? Rocky Horror midnight shows do not count.
Anybody know the size of the screen when it was a 70mm roadshow house? Never a roadshow musical unlike every other roadshow house. Always epics. I believe the last roadshow film there was Shoes of the Fisherman.
Also interesting but I believe Hawaii was in Panavision and mono. This seems incredible for such a huge film in the mid 60s. But then unfortunately The Sand Pebbles and Zhivago were Panavision as well.
On the Dominion page it says its Todd AO screen was 45 ft wide? It is this possible? It is pretty darn small for London’s most successful roadshow house in terms of lengths of runs.
Also 47 ft for the Odeon LSQ is pretty small as well. Hardly screens that are going to envelope you in vast theaters. I’d like to know what the size of the Warner screen was for its 60s 70mm films before it became a quad sadly before my trip to London in the mid 70s.
Sorry looks like I asked you this last year and you gave the dimensions. Honestly I think the two multiplexes where I saw Cleopatra 5 years ago had larger screens. NY is a frustrating place for those of us in love with wide screen revivals. I’m jealous of those on the west coast.
I saw Cleopatra twice in a week when it was released for its 50th anniversary. I had only seen bits and pieces on TV. I thought it magnificent. I find its reputation bewildering. Poor Joe M. He really never recovered. A longer film than GWTW and it flew by.
How large is the screen at the Museum of the Moving Image for 70mm? I saw a cinemascope film there once and found it disappointingly small. Last time I saw Dolly in 70mm was at the Warner Cinerama in ‘78. The Blu Ray is excellent.
Just saw that the roadshow Astoria Theater in London played Paint Your Wagon for an amazing 79 weeks opening in Jan of ‘70. Anybody know how many weeks it played at the State 2? I’m not sure it even play till Easter of '70. That’s a great run considering roadshows were bombing in NY. That’s a great run even at the height of the roadshow era. Around the World played at the Astoria for 104 weeks and I think it was 35mm!
I don’t believe World has played in Todd AO in NY since its initial Rivoli run. Does a 70mm print even exist or is it a lost film? Maybe it’s played in CA or Europe? I’ve never seen it listed in any 70mm festivals. Strange for a film that was so enormously popular.
OK that explains it. I’ve mentioned before that I was walking with my father in front of the Criterion-maybe it was March 17 ‘70 when we went to see the parade and Airport at Radio City- and the Criterion had a huge sign out front saying the performance was sold out. I think that’s why I was surprised it was playing in the suburbs that summer. I thought it would have a long roadshow run.
But then Kubrick predicted a two year run on Broadway for 2001.
Fiddler was an anomaly in that roadshow musicals and epics were pretty much dead at that point. In ‘69 and '70 there weren’t any successful roadshow films that opened. Patton was a successful film but it didn’t seem to run very long at the Criterion on roadshow.
By the summer of '70 it was playing in the suburbs.
And a number of films that were planned to be roadshow were cancelled or if completed changed their marketing strategy and opened continuous run. So by ‘71 Fiddler was a one off and as I said started to play reserved performances in a number of markets.
And even though it had reserved seats it was playing from the beginning for all intensive purposes continuous performances on Saturday and Sunday with extra matinees during the week as opposed to Funny Girl and Oliver’s more traditional schedule.
How many weeks did LaMancha play at the Rivoli? The reviews were so dire I didn’t even bother going. I believe tickets could be bought up until Memorial Day of ‘73 by mail and the film didn’t even make it to Easter.
Also the prime roadshow period I would say ended with Oliver and Funny Girl opening in ‘68 and running reserved seat through '69. After Dolly ended its engagement in early summer of '70 at the Rivoli NY had its first summer without a reserved seat movie since the mid 50s. Even Fiddler by the summer of '72 was playing reserved performances rather than seats in a number of markets.
The last Times Square roadshow I went to was N&A in early ‘72 at the Criterion at a Saturday mat and it was very empty. Sadly for some reason while Loew’s State and the Astor Plaza and even the National would get major first run Hollywood product the Criterion ended up with what I would consider exploitation product. Why this happened I have no idea but it was a very fast fall from the glory days of Funny Girl.
Man of LaMancha was the final nail in the coffin for Hollywood roadshow movies and theaters.
It wasn’t even an exclusive NY engagement which would formerly at least last until the early summer before spreading out to suburban roadshow theaters.
The Century in Paramus was an abysmal theater. A beautiful single screen cut right down the middle so much of the theater was looking at a small screen at an angle.
Also if the Rivoli hadn’t booked this I bet 20th Century Fox would have gotten it for the re-release of The Sound of Music during Easter of ‘73. La Mancha ended well before that and SOM ended up in the dismal National.
When I was in London this was playing King Kong(Jan ‘77 I believe). I had no interest in seeing the film so I didn’t go in. How I regret it! What a façade it had and I love the Yellow Submarine.
I remember reading about someone who saw the film at Radio City. I havn’t seen it but there is a point where Garson says something like ‘Bad girls don’t have babies!’ and the audience in the Hall cheered. It took me a while before I got it. That certainly would not fly today.
And I’m sure tickets at the box office through the Christmas holiday were mostly side seats or too close to the screen.
In William Goldman’s book The Season about the Broadway season of ‘67 to '68 he mentions a theater party lady deciding to get tickets for her groups to the film at the Criterion well before the world premiere because of the very poor theater offerings. There’s no possibility of Streisand canceling and her having a hundred angry theatergoers on her hands.
Did anyone know there was just a TCM theatrical showing of South Pacific?
It was a showing of the blu ray of the general release not roadshow version. What in the world was the point of that? Does the Todd AO original release no longer exist or can no longer be restored? Shades of Hawaii as concerns the roadshow cut.
CC Cinema Treasures would not be nearly as good without you here.
But you are at times a curmudgeon. Sometimes we all meet on one page and then go off on tangents which might interest some if not all of us. Discussing the best possible way of seeing a roadshow print in 2018 of Hawaii on a page devoted to the theater where it had its world premiere seems especially apropos.
Unless somebody decides to rebuild the theater and show a roadshow print its blu ray is the best we can do. It seems the contributors who attended these theaters when they were single theaters are fewer and fewer.
A 1953 film got a GP rating?
All the kids of the early 50s seeing this film without parental supervision is wrong.
Thank you for posting it. I’ll check it out. Some of those Mad magazine parodies of the films themselves were pretty funny. Especially Sound of Music and the combined parody of 3 films: On a Clear Day You Can See a Funny Girl Singing Hello Dolly Forever. Still the best most scathing send up of Streisand and I’m a fan of hers and those 3 films.
Any many of those big roadshow lps ended up in the bargain bins which is how I was able to afford them as a kid. It was the bombs not the hits. You wouldn’t find Funny Girl, Oliver or Sound of Music. The cutout of Finian’s Rainbow came wrapped with the souvenir program.
Anybody remember the MAD magazine parody of reserved seat newspaper film advertising? A picture of IMPORTANCE and that kind of thing? Yes it was funny but I think those old advance ads for big movies was very cool.
Thank you for that billboard photo. Those old painted Times Square movie ‘spectaculars’ were quite wonderful. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think that the two small boats were sticking out making it 3D but maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me as it doesn’t look that way there. Also on the blu ray.com review it says even first run 70mm blow up engagements were in mono. How odd for a roadshow epic film made in'65.
I saw it when it came to the suburbs so I obviously saw the cut version. But I remember the boys in elementary school talking about the topless women(wow!) which were not cut out. I guess they considered it a family film because it was in a National Geographic natives are different way.
I remember seeing the Demille billboard spectacular for Hawaii when I was a boy and was it ever impressive.
I’d love to see a close up color photo of it.
Why wouldn’t Twilight Time put out the roadshow version like they did for Khartoum? The problem with that film is the soundtrack used was a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix when a 6 track exists. Also their Exodus transfer was taken from a 35mm print and not 70mm as the movie was filmed.
You’ve got to be careful with these blu rays. I understand though Khartoum is in any case visually stunning so I’ll end up paying through the nose for it on ebay.
Star Wars was'77 so MC you are correct.
MC I believe that advert was ‘76 not '77(correct me if I’m wrong). That was the ad used for the Rivoli where I saw the film in Oct of that year. It was Columbus Day.
It was an overwhelming experience and at the end the print said Cinerama with the logo. I remember this distinctly because I had never seen a Cinerama film. I believe two years later when the Rivoli had it again they might have used a smaller screen because it was not nearly as impressive and at the end it said 70mm. In fact I believe it said Super Panavision 70.
Somebody on this site said that Sweet Charity used a smaller screen because Universal did not want to pay for the D150 screen. Of course the specifics and accuracy of all this minutiae is lost with time.
Ken Roe, interesting about the Astoria getting a new large screen in ‘65 because on its page it says after the successful run of Half a Sixpence through much of '68 the theater was then gutted and remodeled for the 70mm CCBB. Sixpence was Panavision.
I still find 46 ft incredibly small for major first run showings of SOM and SP in the huge Dominion. I would have been very disappointed. But these must hold the record for the longest movie runs in the world. Anybody know of any films that played longer elsewhere? Rocky Horror midnight shows do not count.
Wasn’t there a huge Kodachrome print of this hanging in the Grand Central Concourse? Certainly one of the best photos of the Rockettes I’ve seen.
It seemed to be famous at the time.
Anybody know the size of the screen when it was a 70mm roadshow house? Never a roadshow musical unlike every other roadshow house. Always epics. I believe the last roadshow film there was Shoes of the Fisherman. Also interesting but I believe Hawaii was in Panavision and mono. This seems incredible for such a huge film in the mid 60s. But then unfortunately The Sand Pebbles and Zhivago were Panavision as well.
On the Dominion page it says its Todd AO screen was 45 ft wide? It is this possible? It is pretty darn small for London’s most successful roadshow house in terms of lengths of runs.
Also 47 ft for the Odeon LSQ is pretty small as well. Hardly screens that are going to envelope you in vast theaters. I’d like to know what the size of the Warner screen was for its 60s 70mm films before it became a quad sadly before my trip to London in the mid 70s.
Sorry looks like I asked you this last year and you gave the dimensions. Honestly I think the two multiplexes where I saw Cleopatra 5 years ago had larger screens. NY is a frustrating place for those of us in love with wide screen revivals. I’m jealous of those on the west coast.
I saw Cleopatra twice in a week when it was released for its 50th anniversary. I had only seen bits and pieces on TV. I thought it magnificent. I find its reputation bewildering. Poor Joe M. He really never recovered. A longer film than GWTW and it flew by.
How large is the screen at the Museum of the Moving Image for 70mm? I saw a cinemascope film there once and found it disappointingly small. Last time I saw Dolly in 70mm was at the Warner Cinerama in ‘78. The Blu Ray is excellent.
Just saw that the roadshow Astoria Theater in London played Paint Your Wagon for an amazing 79 weeks opening in Jan of ‘70. Anybody know how many weeks it played at the State 2? I’m not sure it even play till Easter of '70. That’s a great run considering roadshows were bombing in NY. That’s a great run even at the height of the roadshow era. Around the World played at the Astoria for 104 weeks and I think it was 35mm!
I don’t believe World has played in Todd AO in NY since its initial Rivoli run. Does a 70mm print even exist or is it a lost film? Maybe it’s played in CA or Europe? I’ve never seen it listed in any 70mm festivals. Strange for a film that was so enormously popular.
Looks like a programmer that would open at the Rialto or on 42nd Street. Not even at a major Broadway house let alone the Music Hall.
OK that explains it. I’ve mentioned before that I was walking with my father in front of the Criterion-maybe it was March 17 ‘70 when we went to see the parade and Airport at Radio City- and the Criterion had a huge sign out front saying the performance was sold out. I think that’s why I was surprised it was playing in the suburbs that summer. I thought it would have a long roadshow run.
But then Kubrick predicted a two year run on Broadway for 2001.
Fiddler was an anomaly in that roadshow musicals and epics were pretty much dead at that point. In ‘69 and '70 there weren’t any successful roadshow films that opened. Patton was a successful film but it didn’t seem to run very long at the Criterion on roadshow. By the summer of '70 it was playing in the suburbs.
And a number of films that were planned to be roadshow were cancelled or if completed changed their marketing strategy and opened continuous run. So by ‘71 Fiddler was a one off and as I said started to play reserved performances in a number of markets. And even though it had reserved seats it was playing from the beginning for all intensive purposes continuous performances on Saturday and Sunday with extra matinees during the week as opposed to Funny Girl and Oliver’s more traditional schedule.
How many weeks did LaMancha play at the Rivoli? The reviews were so dire I didn’t even bother going. I believe tickets could be bought up until Memorial Day of ‘73 by mail and the film didn’t even make it to Easter.
Also the prime roadshow period I would say ended with Oliver and Funny Girl opening in ‘68 and running reserved seat through '69. After Dolly ended its engagement in early summer of '70 at the Rivoli NY had its first summer without a reserved seat movie since the mid 50s. Even Fiddler by the summer of '72 was playing reserved performances rather than seats in a number of markets.
The last Times Square roadshow I went to was N&A in early ‘72 at the Criterion at a Saturday mat and it was very empty. Sadly for some reason while Loew’s State and the Astor Plaza and even the National would get major first run Hollywood product the Criterion ended up with what I would consider exploitation product. Why this happened I have no idea but it was a very fast fall from the glory days of Funny Girl.
Man of LaMancha was the final nail in the coffin for Hollywood roadshow movies and theaters. It wasn’t even an exclusive NY engagement which would formerly at least last until the early summer before spreading out to suburban roadshow theaters.
The Century in Paramus was an abysmal theater. A beautiful single screen cut right down the middle so much of the theater was looking at a small screen at an angle.
Also if the Rivoli hadn’t booked this I bet 20th Century Fox would have gotten it for the re-release of The Sound of Music during Easter of ‘73. La Mancha ended well before that and SOM ended up in the dismal National.
Did this play for 3 weeks? Even holdovers of 2 weeks at this time were rare.
What were people doing cutting school and work to fill up those seats during weekdays? Seems impossible to believe today.
When I was in London this was playing King Kong(Jan ‘77 I believe). I had no interest in seeing the film so I didn’t go in. How I regret it! What a façade it had and I love the Yellow Submarine.
I remember reading about someone who saw the film at Radio City. I havn’t seen it but there is a point where Garson says something like ‘Bad girls don’t have babies!’ and the audience in the Hall cheered. It took me a while before I got it. That certainly would not fly today.
And I’m sure tickets at the box office through the Christmas holiday were mostly side seats or too close to the screen.
In William Goldman’s book The Season about the Broadway season of ‘67 to '68 he mentions a theater party lady deciding to get tickets for her groups to the film at the Criterion well before the world premiere because of the very poor theater offerings. There’s no possibility of Streisand canceling and her having a hundred angry theatergoers on her hands.