Radio City Music Hall
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
1260 6th Avenue,
New York,
NY
10020
116 people
favorited this theater
Showing 126 - 150 of 3,322 comments
The “Christmas Spectacular” keeps on zooming in the 21st Century. What would “Roxy” and Leon Leonidoff think? View here
Tonight’s mtv video music awards is being shown live from this venue.
Lots of mistakes in that book so don’t take it as any kind of bible.
Did anyone read “An affectionate history of the world’s greatest theater” by Charles Fransisco Published in 1979. I found it at my local library. I found out that it had not been taken out in years so I asked if I could buy it from them. The rats kept putting me off until I found it new on amazon so I bought it new from them. It’s a very good book with lots of photos from the beginning to 1978. It also has a listing of every movie that played there and the year it was shown.
Films like Matilda as posted by NYer were intentionally programmed along with the staggeringly bad stage shows. The people in charge wanted to make sure business was lousy so they could close the place. Absolutely no effort was any longer being made to make the Music Hall worth going to. Even the tourists were avoiding it like the plague.
Notice Leonidoff retired just when the ballet company was disbanded. Because this meant the Music Hall would no longer be able to stage any more of its spectacles and the stage would be sparsely populated. Embarrassing everybody on stage and in the audience.
How were the Tonys?
During their first year of operation, the Music Hall and New Roxy were often advertised together for their location in Radio City, “Show Place of the Nation.” A typical ad from June, 1933, can be seen here
Apropos CC’s posted ad.
Plaza Suite was in no way a family film. And in no way was this film going to match anywhere near the success of BITP or Odd Couple. But look at those cheap prices even for ‘71.
Rhapsody in Blue was a wonderful Music Hall spectacle staple and this was sadly the last time it was done.
I attended the Tonys at Radio City in 2001. That was the year The Producers took home a lot of gold. We had first tier seats. The seats adjacent to ours were occupied by the proud parents of a gypsy who was making his Broadway debut in the revival of 42nd Street. I believe they had travelled from Ohio or some other midwestern state to watch him perform with the ensemble. And in the row ahead of us, I spied the actor Jason Isaacs (The Patriot, Harry Potter) viewing the proceedings through a pair of Opera glasses.
When they were held in Broadway theaters no. The Music Hall is so large that yes.
I don’t think Tony tickets are actually offered for sale to the general public, but I could be wrong…
I’m sure anybody can go and pay face value. Looks like the least interesting race in Tony history and that’s saying something. Even on theater chat sites there isn’t much interest. Scalpers even sell tickets to easily available Broadway shows. I guess there are enough tourists who aren’t aware how this works. England now has draconian laws for a show like Hamilton to avoid this kind of thing. And a current British music star who has a concert tour coming up has a complex system in place to make sure his fans can buy tickets at face value. There is even discussion about people presenting ID when purchasing tickets. Which means of course no gifting of tickets. It might be a price to pay for going to a hit show.
Scalpers are offering tickets for the June 10th “Tony Awards” ceremony at RCMH for upwards of $500 each. Details here
Easter Sunday fell on March 29th in 1964, while NYC was breathlessly awaiting the grand opening on April 22nd of its first World’s Fair since 1939-40. The Music Hall brought in “The Pink Panther” and new stage show on the next day.
Concerning NYer Pink Panther ad. That’s very early for a post Easter film. How many weeks did Henry Orient play and what date was Easter that year?
And did Pink Panther open everywhere before opening in NY? That’s unusual as well.
If I had a time machine it’s one of the top films I would have chosen to see at the Hall.
Comfortably Cool posted White Cliffs of Dover announcement.
Amazing that June Lockhart who plays the grown up Elizabeth Taylor is still with us.
A wonderful movie.
Article on Radio City Music Hall with photos, cut-away diagram published in a 1933 issue of Popular Science, and a 2013 plan for “America’s Got Talent.”
The auditorium’s acoustics are mentioned in the book “Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?: Experiencing Aural Architecture”, by Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter, pp109-11. (Direct link to p109.)
It says that the walls and ceiling were constructed of more than 1000 tons of Kalite sound-absorbing plaster, and the reverberation time was estimated at >1 second, noting that this is a very short time for an auditorium of such volume. Of course, today this could hardly be considered acceptable for the screening of movies.
Mike (saps), you will find those lists around page 73.
Art Deco apartment inside Radio City with photos.
http://www.messynessychic.com/2018/04/05/the-secret-art-deco-apartment-hidden-inside-radio-city-music-hall/
I wish there was a way to bookmark the pages that contain the lists and dates of movies that played here.
Am I going blind? Streisand didn’t star in What’s Up Doc? O'Neal was the only star?
Look at March 28 upload.
If you look at the Wikileaks entry, “KING KONG” opened at 99,000 seats in NYC, (so 50,000 was more than enough). The second week dropped 50%, due to the Roosevelt bank holiday and the fact most exploitation films do just that. Still, it was a huge success.
I just posted a NY Times ad for King Kong in the photo section. It says “50,000 Seats Were Not Enough”. The date was March 3, 1933.
NYer with all due respect I appreciate many of your photos but do you feel perhaps in the photo section we should concentrate on the Music Hall’s history as a presentation house rather than a concert venue? Personally I feel a bit of a pang when I see these ads. I realize the Hall still exists because of these concerts but I like seeing people celebrate its glory years as a film and stage show house which made it a cinema treasure.
Thank you for that. I thought it odd it was put into a doc on the Roosevelts and the depression. It seems to come out of nowhere as a consequence of the bank holiday.