Radio City Music Hall

The Music Hall had two screening rooms: Preview A and Preview B. Preview A was large enough that they could do staff screenings for the Rockettes and stage crew on the supper break (when “Gone With the Wind” opened they screened one half each night for two nights, since it was too long for the staff to catch on a dinner break). Screening new features each night for the staff may not have been entirely altruistic on the part of management — it kept the crew out of bars during the long break! The smaller room was the RKO screening room when the company occupied the office building built over the lobby. There was a common lobby area outside the two rooms with steps leading down to a set of doors on the Music Hall roof which opened out on a short walk which led to doors into the RKO
building, so RKO staff could cross over into the Hall for screenings without having to go down to street level. It probably was in one of those two screening rooms that “Citizen Kane” was first screened in New York. Robert Wise, who was the editor, recalls hand carrying the film to the Hall for a screening for select press members. Both rooms eventually became Cine-Mix an early film re-recording and mixing facility, and then became idle when Cine-Mix got too big for the space. I frequently screened shorts for Charles Hacker, the Hall’s Chief Operating Officer and Frederic Kellers in Previw B, as well as worked on film effects for the stage shows in that room. We were able to keep copies of a number of shorts that the Hall played, and if it was a quiet day, Fred would ask if we could go up and screen something. When I left, the rooms were being used as offices, but the booths were still there used for storage (they are nitrate capable booths and therefore built like bunkers). One of the projectors with a lamphouse used in the Rear Projection booth backstage is now on display at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens.

Sunflower was in the fall of ‘70 and I remember seeing it at a packed Saturday morning perf but don’t remember people being unhappy at the dubbing though it was certainly obvious. The movie was mediocre and the stage show was pretty bad. I just don’t think at this point in time the Music Hall could have shown anything else. There just wasn’t any product that would have been suitable for the place. The effects of the collapse of the studio system were hitting the Hall especially hard just then. Last night TCM showed their CG doc including shots of the crowds going into the Hall for the Phil Story and North by NW. Talk about eating yourself up over what you missed.

“White Christmas” was the only film to run in horizontal VistaVision at the Hall. Century did produce a VistaVision projector with an optical soundhead in the usual position, althouth the feed reel was under the soundhead. I had the oportunity to run a Century VistaVision projector (without the soundhead) to do effect dailies on “Men In Black”,“Jungle 2 Jungle” and “Michael”. It was an interesting experience, since a misframe looks like a split screen, and framing is left to right rather than up and down. The Hall had 35mm mag capabilities from the start of CinemaScope, although weak on the surround channel. There were actually two complete mag systems installed as well as two optical systems with a switch that literally switched between optical system #1 and #2 and mag system #1 and #2. The Hall was always big on back-up. I have a picture of Ben Olevsky in his office with a wall of RCA sound racks installed behind him. All four projectors had mag penthouses installed. When the fifth projector was installed (where one of the VistaVision projectors had been placed), it didn’t have mag capability, but we still had the three 35/70mm machines and retained the 35mm penthouse on the #1 projector. In the VistaVision section of the American Widescreen Museum site, I think there’s a picture of one of the VistaVision projectors at the Hall, and you can just see the gel changer on one of the high-intensity effects spots next to it.

Frederic Kellers was also involved in the choice of Robin and Marian as the Easter 76 show. I remember him expressing his dismay at the absolutely abysmal turnout for that one and staring at him in total disbelief wondering well what in the world did you expect!

REndres, thanks a lot for the VistaVision info. You have confirmed what I belived the facts to be relating to that. I assume then no other films were ever projected in VistaVision at the hall? I understood Century did eventually build a VistaVision projector complete with a sound head shortly after “White Christmas”. I recall them being installed at the Paramount, RCMH never installed them?
One other question regarding magneic prints, did RCMH play all of those great MGM musicals of the 50s and 60s in four track mag or perspecta? or for that matter prior to the 35/70mm projector installations, did they ever use four track mag at all?.

Frederic Kellers, who was Vice President of House Operations for the Hall, and involved with the film selection, told me that the most complaints they ever received about a film were about “Charade” particularly as a Christmas show. He said the most mentioned scene was where James Coburn takes out a pin and stabs the corpse of Hepburn’s husband while it is lying in state in the church.

According to Ben Olevsky, the Hall ran the pre-Christmas run of “White Christmas” in horizontal VistaVision with the track run interlocked on one of the four projectors in the booth. (The VistaVision projectors were put on either side of the booth in the slide projector/effect spots openings. This created a sound problem, since those rooms also contained follow spots, and there was no glass in the ports. They put Duveteen over the openings which was used to cut down the noise. According to Ben, you could hear the machines running as you came up to the booth on the Executive elevator when it reached the First Mezzanine! He didn’t mention the sound being Perspecta, although I had Perspecta schematics in my filing cabinet, and some perspecta test reels. It probably was used for MGM releases at the time rather than “White Christmas”. Since the VistaVision heads were put together in very little time, the intermittents which were running at double speed (180'/minute)took a beating, and Ben said Larry Davee from Century was in almost every day with a replacement. The machines were removed at the end of the “White Christmas” run. According to Theo Gluck of Disney in a paper he wrote on wide screen processes there is some evidence to suggest that horizontal VistaVision prints (including some Hitchcock pictures) were run in London after we had stopped using the machines here in the States for theatrical exhibition.

I don’t think I ever heard of “Moon Pilot”, I have to look that one up.

The Father of the Bride was fine. The Music Hall mystery of all time was the Nancy Reagan film that followed it.

They only used VistaVision for large format (horizontal Eastmancolor eight sprocket prints) from 1954-1956. Among the last films to be shown in that format were “The Ten Commandments” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much”. All Paramount VistaVision films contained the Perspecta encoding which generated directional sound between three speakers behind the screen but no surround. The exception was “The Ten Commandments” which did have a magnetic stereo mix. I don’t believe any other VV title had a stereo mix other that this film.
Curiously, some of the Hitchcock titles were released in Perspecta
sound include the above mentioned “MWHTM” as well as “To Catch a Thief” and “The Trouble with Harry”. When Hitchcock was involved with the Perspecta encoding is unknown since he never mentioned it in any of his interviews. I did hear original 35mm Technicolor reels of Harry and Thief and they definately had the encoding although it wasn’t used too much. On the thief reel, the only section that used the directional sound was when they were driving around the hills in the car. Otherwise, everything came out of the center speaker. Harry only had music cues on the other speakers. The dialogue was center channel. In comparison the Perspecta prints of Universal’s “This Island Earth” were very lively with sound bouncing around the front three speakers at different volume.

Very few cinemas were actually set up for horizontal VV projection.
It was noticed early on that it generated a dramatically sharper
reduction print in 1.85. One of the problems theaters were having is that when they took standard flat 1.33 movies and artifically
made them into ‘widescreen’ by cropping the top and bottom of the frame and enlarging them (i.e. “Shame”), the image fell apart and became grainy. VistaVision addressed this problem and the Technicolor or B&W print downs generated an ultra sharp and grain free image when enlarged in this fashion. VistaVision negatives were also A&B rolled so that the optical effects like fades and dissolves were the same first generation as the rest of the film. In contrast, CinemaScope films had extremelly grainy and contrasty opticals on dupe stock.

I would classify VistaVision as the best of the ‘cropped’ widescreen processes. Much better than conventional 1.85 or SuperScope. Unfortunately, it was phased out in the sixties along with most of the other technology introduced in the sixties with the exception of 70mm and Panavision. Now only Panavision is left which is certainly better than CinemaScope (less distortion in the anamorphic lenses) but no match for the large format systems. I guess technically SuperScope is still around too although it’s now called “Super 35”.

The most impressive shows I saw at RCMH were the special event presentations after they stopped screening first run fare.
I saw “Napoleon” with the live orchestra and triptych sequence and
“A Star is Born” in Technicolor, CinemaScope and magnetic stereo sound with the extra scenes spliced into the print.

When I was very young my family took me there three times in 1966.
The theater was impressive as were the stage shows but unfortunately, the movies I saw were bad. “The Singing Nun”, “The Glass Bottom Boat” and “Inside Daisy Clover”. I saw the last official release, “Crossed Swords” and that was medicore too. I wish I had seen some of the good pictures they played there over the years. Just my bad luck attending turkeys.

In terms of the projection booth, I believe I read that they installed the lazy 8 horizontal projectors for “White Christmas” but later removed them when VistaVision was used to generate a finer grain reduction print in 1.85 Technicolor rather than using it to project a horizontal Eastmancolor print.

70mm projectors were installed for “Airport” at the director’s request. They later had a 70mm festival at the Hall and showed
“Gone with the Wind” and others in that format. I wish I had attended them.

Although “Gone with the Wind” looked awful in it’s pan/scan blow up print, it was a smash hit in that format and revived several times including a playdate at the Rivoli in 70mm. They didn’t derive it from the 3 strip B&W negative or a Technicolor print. They made a color Interpositive from the seps, then pan scanned it by cropping the tops and bottoms of the color IN and enlarging that part of the frame to 65mm.

3-D would not have been appropriate for RCMH since the distance to the screen would’ve required a lot more luminance from the lamphouse to compensate for the loss of light from polarization. They also would’ve had to install an enormous custom made silver screen. The trouble with silver screens is they lose gain from balconies and from off center seating. The place is too big for so many people to have seen it properly.

The reason RCMH and many Roadshow large screen houses folded in the seventies was the lack of quality mainstream product. After the demise of the production code in 1968, more and more restricted films were released each year. By 1980 there were more R rated films than PG which posed a problem for large theaters that needed general audiences to fill their seats.

This seems to have been the case until the mid 60’s when road show fever took over. Fall ‘61 had Flower Drum Song, '62 had Gypsy and '64 had Mary Poppins. From this point on except for Bullitt the autumn bookings were pretty poor. The summer bookings held up though until 71 when what once was one of the most profitable times of the year became a wasteland.

Also in ‘52, “The Greatest Show on Earth” opened early at RCMH (10 Jan), but didn’t reach the Loew’s nabes until mid-August. Admittedly, it ran for eleven weeks after opening, but an interval of more than four months seems a bit long for its wider circulation. '52 was a dismal, often wild-card year for Hollywood films, as Warren has remarked elsewhere. But it’s fascinating to study for that very reason.