Roxy Theatre

ken mcc…isn’t that the Center…the second movie theatre at Radio City?

Vito:
Thanks for the extra information on presentation…..makes me feel much better! And no, you were not anal about the non-sync stuff. We did the same thing.
We only had one full time projectionist (Chief) and the rest of us were part-time. However he instilled presentation into us from day one. If anything was not right it wasn’t just our Chief…but the manager too….who would be chewing us out.
Thats why I cringed reading your post about the lack of proper masking. Even after being away from all that for 47 years, I still shake my head at the complete lack of presentation at the multiplexes.

I remember well that 78rpm pre-show, intermission music to this day, complete with hiss, pops and scratches and other assorted surface noise. Even with theatre sound systems that de-emphasized high frequencies it was still noticeable. For that matter with the sometimes careless handling of vinyl, the LP’s and 45’s weren’t always any better.

You boys have great memories of the early scope days. We sure had fun in the booth putting on a show. Yes,it ws policy with some circuits to never show the masking move. As a matter of fact Century theatres insisted on Delux presentsations at all their theatres. Delux meaning closing the curtains between shorts, trailers etc, as well as bringing uo the stage lights, then opening the curtain and lowering the lights at the start of the feature. Another rule was “Never Cut a Record”, that meant you never faded a song out or cut it half way through to start the show. We would always wait for a song to finish, sometimes if there ws only a minute or so before showtime we would simply stop the music then and not allow another song to start. By the way, we played 78 RPM records, later we had
45 RPM and then tape.

Wow !! I sure do remember those early days of scope. Our Fox and other theatres did the same thing. After the previews, cartoon, news on the regular size screen, the main curtain would close and instantly the projector would switch to the scope film and the curtains would open to reaveal the full screen. Obviously as the main curtain closed the masking unseen to the audience would open. The contrast from the smaller format to the wide format was something to behold. It was especially effective with those old Fox films with that fanfare and logo. The good old days..Nothin' like em'. Of course, everyone, including myself just took all that showmenship for granted. Good-bye to yesterday!!

Yes Peter it sure does.
Or as they say, ya gotta do what ya gotta do :))

Stan, what you have described was very common in theatres without movable masking. Often, as I wrote before, the footlights were defused enough and refocused to show only on that portion of the screen not being used. A sort of red glow would be seen surrounding the picture area.
In addition, we had theatres which had to remove the curtains completely in order to accommodate the new bigger screens. The proceniums were simply not wide enough for the traveler curtains to open past the ends of the screen. Theatre owners wanted the widest screens possible. So rather than refit the entire mechanism the curtains were removed. Fortunately since most traveler curtains open to completely disappear behind the procenium it was not a problem, but in some situations they did not, happily, this happened in only a few theatres. Two of the theatres I worked in on Staten Island at the time, the Liberty in Stapelton and the Lane in New Dorp, removed the curtains. The Liberty only lated about two or three years after converting to scope and the Lane was the last theatre on SI to install the process. The Paramount was the first theatre to install scope for the “The Robe”, we opened on Christmas day and spent most of Christmas Eve doing the installation. The curtain was not removed at the Paramount. Some locations would show a slide which would be projected from the booth featuring some sort of scenic design or in some cases a picture of a curtain was projected on to the screen.

Thank you Vito, I look forward to hearing from you!

Bob

Hi Vito,

We are in the process of writing a comprehensive series of articles to accurately document the post-Cinerama/pre-CinemaScope widescreen era. We intend to document our work with original source materials from the studios and trades. The article would be similar to our piece on the 3-D release of HONDO: http://www.3dfilmpf.org/info.html

I would be very interested in talking with you concerning your experiences at that time. If you’d like to help set the record straight, would you please go to my profile and send me a note?

Thank you very much!

Bob

We certainly did use a buzzer or ring system at the Hall. When I started there they didn’t use Clearcom headsets for communication, and all the cues between the frontlight and projection booths, D Cove frontlight booth and the stage were given by buzzer cues (and yes they could be heard in the audience since none of the frontlight booths had glass in the ports.) The stage manager’s position had a panel with switches on it that selected which position would receive a cue from the stage — thus the manager could select any one of the frontlight booths or all of them at the same time. In projection each of the Magnascope control panels at the projectors had a stage buzz button on it, as well as a button to buzz the organists. At the end of a feature we would give an eight minute warning to get the stage manager and stage control board electrician in position, then a two minute buzz, and finally a “go” buzz to bring the contour in. We would also give a buzz at the end of the pre-show material (cartoon, trailers, short subject) for the traveller —the house golds, to be brought in and then re-opened for the feature. The buzz cues still were used when I left in 1999 to start film material, be it feature presentation or film effects in the stage shows such as the Christmas Spectacular. It still works better than trying to hear the cue on an intercom over the lamp fan noise, and at the projectors a light at each machine lights when the buzz is given as well. (By the way, of all the switches on the stage manager’s panel only the projection booth one has a white knob on it and it sits alone labelled “Kinema Booth”) While projection could change the Magnascope masking from the booth, the stage drapes were always brought in by a stage electrician. (In the case of the Hall a very good idea — you want someone down there when you’re moving a 3 ton contour controlled by 13 motors to make sure you’re not crushing a Rockette or a camel!)

Thanks for clarifying Vito.
I was thinking after I posted that maybe using the curtains was preferable to some screens I remember where the masking was so far off that there was a foot of picture each side of it..and on top. Either the gates were cut wrong or someone was too lazy to re-adjust the masking.
As for the stagehands union…I remember in the 60’s one elegant Toronto movie theatre where the projectionist had to hit a buzzer in the booth that sounded backstage so a union stagehand could operate the huge curtain. Of course the audience could also hear the buzzer.

Very interesting about the no masking in the old days. The Roxys screen does look very small for the venue as pointed out earlier. Does anyone have a picture of the full scope screen? Nice to compare. Also, did masking ever rise and lower in any of the time square theatres? Seems to me in some theatres in the west, the masking both rose and lowered as well as opening and closing for scope and flat films. Flat the masking would come in from the sides but would rise as well. Then with scope the masking would lower as the sides opened? Was that my imagination or did some theatres actually use that method? Maybe I’m thinking Vista vision.