Roxy Theatre
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
153 W. 50th Street,
New York,
NY
10020
83 people
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Patsy: The Roxy Theatre was located at 50th @ 7th Avenue and the Radio City is located @ 50th @ 6th Avenue. The Roxy Theatre at the time was operated by National Theatres the parent company to Fox West Coast Theatres and other divisions. During the mid 50’s to around the mid 60’s National Theatres started to unload many theatres from the chain, like other chains around the country. Because of business in that market, so they cut all sizes of theatres. So the largest ones were the easiest targets. The Roxy was in their plans because of the size (5000 seats). The property in this market had become more expensive and they could make more money on select locations by just razing the theatre. The old Taft Hotel still stands and a TGIF and other food places are in the front half of where the lobby enterance was. In 1963 National Theatres cut the Fox Theatre in San Francisco from the chain. In the early 60’s the Fox Beverly Theatre in Beverly Hills was cut (but just recently has been razed) and in 1969 the famed Carthay Circle was razed for an
office building. So the bigger the theatre is means there is more square footage for something else. Another that didn’t help the Roxy was theatre was built on the next property going east. So people here have wondered why the Roxy, Capital Theatres could not have been saved. They were just to big for their own good during the 1960’s. 5000 seats is a lot of seats to fill for a movie during this time.
Bryan: On your post of May 20, 04 how does one find the 1930 photos of the balconies and proscenium arch on the link that you have provided? Thanks.
Did it have anything to do with a rivalry between RCMH and the Roxy. In one of the b/w photos on this site it looks like the Roxy was near RCMH?
Could someone tell me why the Roxy was torn down? I know there has been much written about the Roxy, but the why has always escaped me.
Below is an excerpt from How They Met by Joey Green which mentions the Roxy Theater and it’s connection to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
“Before dawn on November 30, 1940, Desi and Lucy eloped by driving from Pierre Hotel in NYC to Greenwich, CT with Desi’s agent and business manager to act as witnesses. Just across the state line in CT, the eager couple could avoid New York’s required waiting period and return to Manhattan, according to Desi’s calculations, in time for his noon performace at the Roxy Theatre. The blood tests, however, took longer than anticipated. Then Desi had to send his business manager into Woolworth’s to buy a brass ring for Lucy. The justice of the peace also slowed things down by insisting upon marrying the couple in a more romantic environment than his office, bringing them to the Bryam River Beagle Country Club to conduct the ceremony before a roaring fireplace. The couple then returned to NYC where Desi, having missed the first of his 5 performances, carried Lucy over the threshold of the Roxy Theater.”
My great uncle, Bee Ho Gray, had a western performance group which performed at a Roxy Theatre in February, 1938. I am not sure which Roxy Theatre he performed in but he spent many years performing on Vaudeville stages in New York and other cities with people like Will Rogers and Bing Crosby. I have an original program from the show which can be seen at:
http://beehogray.com/roxy-theatre.html
Can anyone confirm if this is the same Roxy Theatre by looking at the program?
Thanks,
Clark Gray
www.beehogray.com
Amen to taking the old Theatres for granted. When I was a kid living in San Francisco, my family would take me downtown on Market St to the Palaces. At the time that’s all there was and no reason to believe that would all change. There was the granddaddy of them all the Fox, then the Orpheum, the St. Francis, the Golden Gate, the Warfield, the United Artists and the wonderful Paramount. Today only the Warfield survies as a concert venue, the Golden Gate and Orpheum for legit shows. But alas, no movies have played there since the 60’s. If I only appreciated what I had then. What a shame the younger generation will never see the likes of those again.
So true Stuart, so sad but true, it'a all about the money.
Y'know it was a real crying shame that they had to tear this beautiful theatre down. A lot of wonderful buildings were torn down all over the states around this time. As is always the case, we never seem to appreciate what we already have until it’s gone.
Bob Furmanek, I would love to see that VistaVision info you described. I worked with just about every movie process that came along over the years but never VistaVision.
Are you the “Bob Furmanek” who works in Film?
Are you related to Abbott and Costello and etc. ?
I can’t remember when (Somewhere between 1954 and 1957), I appeared togehter with Abbott and “his” chimp.
If you want, we could stay in contact?
My email address:
Best regards
Ralph Heid
Fascinating, and thank you for taking the time to answer. You provide a rare insight which I certainly appreciate.
No, I don’t know you personally. But I did find a website about you and that’s where I read about the “Hurricane on the Xylophone.”
Mr. Furmanek?
Please answer.
regards Ralph Heid
Hello Bob Furmanek
My first question: do you know me? How do you know about “The Hurricane on the Xylophone”?
Yes, I am still “going strong” and I still use this Logo.
-What can you tell us about appearing in a stage show at the celebrated Roxy?
I guess it was one of my greatest times in showbusiness. As much as I remember (I was 10), I got pulled out on ice by some Roxyettes, standing with my xylophon on a big platform which looked like a heart. I did'n only want to make my act as an xylophonist, but I also wanted to be on stage on other occations, because I wanted to iceskate. One of the dancers EMANUEL DEL TORO went to town with me to buy some skates and we went to the rockefeller plaza to learn. It only needed 2 or 3 days and I was very secure on he skates. So finally the director Mr. Rothaffel permitted me to be a few minutes in a gypsy-scene, where the were some “gypsys” dancing and I had the pleasure to be on ice with them. I also got a specia permission from New Yorks mayor, because I was actually to young to appeare on stage for such a long time in the US.
-What were the backstage areas like, and were they still well maintained at this late stage in the theaters history?
As a child you see things different and you also remember them different. But for me it was one of the most impressing backstage “life” I had in all my time as an entertainer. I will never forget our dressingroom! It was huge and resembled a smaller Hotel-Suite. Yes, it was old! even the elektricity was old, I think you called it AC! I remember, because once we brought our portable TV set but it just broke down because of that. But it still was very nice for those days. There was even a bed in the dressingroom and a personal shower and toilet.
-How many shows did you do a day, and what occupied your time while the feature was playing?
There were 4 shows a day and sundays (maybe also saturdays, I can’t remember), there were 5 shows.
I know, everyone would say: “what poor child”, but that’s not true. I loved what I was doing and my act only about 10 minutes. he other minutes I was on skates with the gypsys, I really wanted that. Nobody could stop me. I allways was a stage person and I still am.
Between the show, when the feature-film was running, I either went out with my parents to eat, or I had a little nap in the dressingroom, or I played with the Roxyettes in the rehearsal-room, or I went adventures thru the whole theatre from up to down and side to side. sometimes I went on stage in front of the screen (the audience did'nt see me….. I think) to watch the film wich was very big so close. And if I wanted to go in the theatre to watch the film, there were allway two bodygards taking care, that nothing bad would happen to me.
We stayed at the BELVEDERE HOTEL on 48th street.
There’s much more to tell you, but hopefully I answered your questions with this.
I like to hear from you again and I like to know, if you know me?
Best regards from Switzerland
Ralph Heid
http://www.heid.net
Mr. Heid; are you still known as the “Hurricane on the Xylophone?”
What can you tell us about appearing in a stage show at the celebrated Roxy? What were the backstage areas like, and were they still well maintained at this late stage in the theaters history? How many shows did you do a day, and what occupied your time while the feature was playing?
Just a quick question of screen sizes. What theater (worldwide) has the record for the largest screen ever? Anyone know?
Hi
I know, you are in middle of a discussion, but still I would like to find someone who can remember the little guy MISTER RALPH (that’s me) who playes the xylophone and appeared in the ROXY 1956/57 in a show called SPOTLIGHT 1957 and the film was either “THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT” or “HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON”.
It would be so nice to talk about old times.
Regards
Ralph Heid (Mister Ralph)
http://www.heid.net
The pressbook for HELL’S ISLAND mentions the New York Paramount doing that for their VistaVision presentations. Over the weekend, I’ll copy and post the exact description. It was quite interesting, and points to the level of showmanship which existed in theaters at that time.
Yes Bill, We actually copied the idea in the burbs by showing news, trailers etc in a 1.33 format, then doing a “delux”, which was to close the curtain, raise the stage lights, and then open the curtain to expose the scope screen, this was especially effective when we played the volume a DB or two low for the optical (mono) stuff
and then raised the volume when the scope feature hit in 4 track mag sound. It was especially impressive when it was the Fox fanfare. Of course Leo the lion was good too.
Here are pages from the special souvenir program for “The Robe: In CinemaScope†at the Roxy in September, 1953:
View link
View link (instructions about simulating CinemaScope in your hand)
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View link (the marketplace orgy: my favorite scene in the movie)
View link (the program’s back cover)
In my post above on 5 March 2005, I’ve described how the cashier bilked my dad out of a few extra nickels by switching to evening prices just as we approached the gilded box office. Still, it was a great show. And the carpets and seats were the plushest in town. But no matter what the program instructs you to do by holding the page ten inches from your nose, the effect of CinemaScope at the Roxy did not correspond to it. The screen seemed exceptionally wide, all the more so because in my eleven-year-old’s fantasies I had imagined that the proportions would have been taller than wide. On previous visits to the Roxy, the theater’s incomparable height awed me, leading me to think that the screen might have stretched from floor to ceiling in a vertiginous arc. It came as a surprise, then, to find to the contrary that the screen spanned uninhibitedly from side to side covering the theater’s incomparable width. The Fox Movietone News on the conventional screen seemed deliberately small and squared-off to exaggerate the breadth of the new process by comparison, as Vito commented last 28 February.
Here’s a program from July 1956:
View link
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And I know it was July 1956, because that year I had to go to summer school, and the trip into Gotham to see “The King and I†amounted to a great act of playing hooky. The film opened on 28 June and received an unprecedented “five stars†from Kate Cameron in the NY Daily News. One of my summer-school pals plotted an unofficial but well-earned day-off to see this cinematic marvel. During the oh-so-sad final scene, we could hear patrons around us sobbing aloud, and as the lights rose and the Roxy’s billowing contour curtain fell, we turned around to see almost all the audience daubing their eyes. The breezy, even chilly ice show lifted our spirits. (You can see a tiny photo of the “Manhattan Moods†stage-set from my Roxy post from last 23 December)Twenty years later, I took my kids to see a revival of this film and slept through it.
A souvenir program was ours for the purchase:
View link
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View link
Here we learned great things about this “filmization†of the B’way musical. But its chief feature was doubtless 20C Fox’s opportunity to beat the drums for CinemaScope55, its latest technological milestone. The program’s cover suggests Yul King-Kong Brynner’s miscegentic captivity of Deborah Fay-Naomi Kerr. That Rita Moreno and Carlos Rivas could play Siamese lovers reminds us of a H’wood where any ethnic other could substitute for any other ethnic.
Vincent and Ed— That was one of the biggest screens in those days, and it was indeed the one on which the Roxy projected its features from Dec. ‘52 until Sept. '53 (think of Disney’s “Peter Pan,” Merman’s “Call Me Madam,” and MM’s “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” the first two of which I saw on it). As I explained in my post of 28 Oct. in response to Warren’s superb photo (and offering a lesser image of my own from that era), the theater prided itself on its unmasked presentation, arguing that soft blue light on the rear curtains reduced eye-strain. My hunch is that the photo might have captured an early-morning gathering of exhibitors in April '53 for a preview of the then-new CinemaScope process.
Well there do seem to be a lot of single middle aged men in the sparse audience and who is that guy in a box in the upper right hand corner with his hand on his hip cruising the crowd?
Makes sense, Warren… Looks like there was an alley under the balcony fire escape that led to 50th Street as shown in your 2nd photo posted in October. In that same photo, you can see where the stage area sort of notches out towards 6th Ave away from the side auditorium wall. That notch is undoubtedly where the loading bay doors were. With that one story building in the way, I couldn’t make out the alley.
Vincent… judging from the photo, I wonder if the theater was rented out for some kind of business meeting. There seems to be a lecturn (a rather ornate one) on stage to the right of that screen, and the screen itself might have been matted (or even a drop down) for a slide show or 16mm industrial-film presentation. There might be an overhead or small slide projector on a platform behind the small audience we see seated in the photo. I agree, its a shame they hid the proscenium behind that drapery.
Thanks to Ed I took a look at Warren’s photos from Oct 27th which I somehow had missed. Boy that screen in the first photo looks small. It’s hard to see how anybody in the rear orchestra or the balc saw anything more than a postage stamp. I mean how does a film like All About Eve or those Betty Grable movies make any kind of impact on a screen that small. And boy do I hate those drapes. The Roxy proscenium was so magnificent. Why would they have covered it up?