It was said that "Roxy" a/k/a Samuel Rothafel conceived the look of Radio City Music Hall... Variety, 12/20/1932.
Roxy had been hired away from his namesake, the 1927 Roxy Theatre... Heinl Radio Business Letter, 1/29/1931.
Intended as the world's largest variety/vaudeville theatre or music hall, the super-deluxe $8,000,000 5,945-seat... Daily News 1/5/1933 (cost), seating capacity from drawings, Theatre Historical Society.
The construction of Rockefeller Center at the nadir of the Depression was what economist John Kenneth Galbraith might term "organized support"... "The Great Crash," John Kenneth Galbraith, 1954.
Roxy was entrusted by RKO to work his magic in not one but two new Rockefeller theatres, with a combined seating capacity nearing 10,000, both opening at Christmas and both on Sixth Avenue. The smaller theatre (only $4,000,000 and 3510 seats)... Daily News, 1/5/1933.
To the Rockefellers, RKO paid an annual rent of of $953,972 ...Motion Picture Herald 11/11/1933.
Who exactly was Roxy? A German immigrant, since 1913 he had managed seven movie palaces in Manhattan, each successfully more deluxe until in 1920 he was named manager of the Capitol... "The Best Remaining Seats," Ben Hall, 1961.
There Roxy was plucked from managerial obscurity when he made his initial radio broadcast over WEAF-- AT&T's radio station-- on November 19, 1922... "Commercial Broadcasting Pioneer," William Peck Banning, 1946.
At the new 1927 Roxy, Roxy hit his electrical stride... Motion Picture News, Ward Leonard ad 4/20/1929; Film Daily, 3/13/1927.
In addition to the 750,000 watts of incandescents, nineteen carbon arc front lights produced a "wall of light." Motion Picture News, 6/24/1927.
Described by house designer Clark Robinson as "triangular rather than square," the Roxy stage... Film Daily, 3/13/1927.
Resident set designer Robert Edmond Jones, whose design for the pre-intermission "Night Club Revels" is shown below, left the Hall that night and never came back... "The Radio City Music Hall," Charles Francisco, 1979.
Pre-show publicity proclaimed "a company of 1000 stars and artists... Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 12/23/1932.
Two days later, Roxy opened the second theatre, his new RKO Roxy, and then he himself was carted away on a stretcher... New York Herald Tribune, "Roxy Lets Fly..." 2/15/1933.
Into the void stepped Leon Leonidoff, Roxy's Romanian-born second in command, becoming producer, director, and de facto lighting designer. Below, Leonidoff with his Finnish set designer Bruno Maine at Peter Clark's 1/2" scale working model of the great stage... Fort Worth Telegram, 11/24/1946; New York Times, 8/1/1989; Architectural Forum, September, 1932.
The statistics are astounding. The Leonidoffian stage spectacles became an inseparable partner to the feature films at the newly dubbed "Showplace of a Nation... "Saving Radio City Music Hall," Rosemary Novellino Mearns, 2014; "How I Got My Kicks," Ann Murphy, 2015.
Working beneath Leonidoff (and also stolen from the 1927 Roxy) were New Jersey native Russell Markert, Detroit choreographer Florence Rogge, and Hungarian conductor Erno Rapee... Newsday, 12/13/1990; Motion Picture Daily, 12/29/1942; Motion Picture Daily, 12/19/1937.
The Rockettes, nee Roxyettes, were the precision dancers Russell Markert brought from St. Louis to the 1927 Roxy, famous world-wide for the "exact, machine-like execution of their dance steps," wrote a reporter in 1939... Unattributed article, University of Wisconsin-Madison Library, https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/APDAOZ6LYX2KTK9A
Usually positioned in the next-to-closing spot, the girls "in the line" were once described by Variety as "a block of precision-milled cheesecake..." Variety, 4/5/1950.
America's "only resident ballet company" was Florence Rogge's Corps de ballet, also on the same vacation schedule... Motion Picture Daily, 12/29/1952; 12/29/1942.
The Corps was frequently called upon to augment the Rockettes and vice-versa... Novellino-Mearns, ibid.; Murphy, ibid.
The third non-union component was the Men's Glee Club of twenty-four whose voices were sometimes augmented by the Women's Choral Group of nineteen... Motion Picture Daily, 12/30/1947.
"The world's largest permanent theatre orchestra" of seventy-five worked a six-day week ... Motion Picture Daily, 12/30/1947; Eric Titcomb interview 2023; Novellino-Mearns, ibid.; Murphy, ibid.
The two-hundred sixty-eight employees enumerated above comprised 40% of the "permanent staff" of 622 (down from 748 in 1932)... Motion Picture Daily, 12/30/1947; New Orleans States, 12/22/1932.
At least one of the one hundred and two ushers (forty-five shown here) married a Rockette, which brought hope to an entire phalanx... Motion Picture Herald, 12/14/1935; Novellino-Mearns interview, 2023.
So weak was AGVA that the theatre didn't even close when the Rockettes, Corps de Ballet, and singers struck the Music Hall in 1967 for higher wages... Daily News, 9/17/1967, Associated Press, 9/17/1967; Watertown (NY) Daily Times, 10/4/1967; Daily News, 10/13/1967.
If not at midnight, then at dawn. Such was the case with the 1964 one-shot industrial which featured Rockettes riding Ford tractors at 8:45 in the morning... "New Wide World of Ford," LP liner notes.
In 1953, the advent of the wide-screen CinemaScope process left the Music Hall the only movie theatre in New York which still offered stage shows, except the RKO Palace, which capitulated four years later... Motion Picture Daily, 7/25/1957.
The Music Hall had sufficient clout to defy the Fox mandate and installed a flat picture sheet because "a CinemaScope screen with the standard curve could not be fitted in to the space available above the stage," a maximum of fifty inches. With much hoopla and the Rockettes, the Hall unveiled their seventy-foot wide flat sheet in early 1954... International Projectionist, March, 1954; Motion Picture Daily, 12/29/1942.
Newly hired stage employees at the Hall were rushed to learn its special horizontal nomenclature, without with they would be lost. Stage right was "Prompt side"... Showmen's Trade Review, 4/22/1944; Murphy, ibid.; Novellino-Mearns, ibid.; "Thirty Thousand Kicks," Judith Anne Love (1980); Eric Titcomb, interview 2023.
Looking from OP to Prompt, 50th to 51st... "Carnival for Britain" 2/02/1941, program book.
Like the twin Wurlitzer organ consoles, the Music Hall had twin dressing room towers and an entire service floor above the theatre attic, known as the 8th floor or Studio Level, as seen in this photo showing the back wall of the stage house. The rear projection booth on the back wall of the stage which jutted out... Bob Endres, interview, 2023.
Each dressing room tower had its own stage entrance, and each tower was served by two high-speed, fifteen passenger Otis elevators... Brad Hohle, interview, 2023; Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023; Ann Murphy, interview, 2023; Rosemary Novellio-Mearns, interview, 2023.
For the record, the Music Hall stage lifts were by Peter Clark, not by Otis Elevator... "Contract for 26 elevators to Otis," Motion Picture Herald, 3/12/1932; New York Times, "Awarding of contracts for the stage equipment to Peter Clark," 7/27/1932.
Dressing room accommodations for six hundred were provided, according to press blurbs... Variety, 12/20/1932.
The Rockettes were given the third floor PS and the Corps de Ballet, third floor, OP... Novellino-Mearns, ibid.; Murphy, ibid.
Prompt side dressing rooms were assigned odd numbers, and OP even. Because the dressing room towers at the Hall extended into the auditorium, half the rooms on both sides were smack up against the organ chambers, and the organ was played at least seven times a day... Novellino-Mearns, interview 2023.
On the 7th floor OP was the infirmary, continuously staffed to treat dancers, patrons, or stagehands, as required... Eric Titcomb interview, 2023.
Adjacent to the infirmary were mirrored dormitory accommodations for twenty-five commuter girls "if long train trips make it inadvisable for them to go to their homes..." Eric Titcomb, interview; Motion Picture Herald, 12/14/1935.
Russell Markert (far right) with his Rockettes in the 8th floor large rehearsal room. Prior to the opening of a new show, two weeks of two hour "preps" rehearsals were held Monday through Friday between the first and second stage shows... Murphy, ibid.; Novellino-Mearns, ibid.
Orchestra rehearsals, open to company members, were held between the first and second shows on Wednesdays preceding dress rehearsals in the 8th floor broadcast studio, which could accommodate three hundred and which was equipped with its own Wurlitzer pipe organ. For performances, conductors used an illuminated baton, invented by Erno Rapee's trap drummer Bill Gladstone... Novellino-Mearns, interview, 2023; Dean Irwin, interview, 2023; Daily News, 10/06/1961.
The entire length of the 8th floor on the 51st Street side contained the hat, shoe and costume departments all under the supervision of Florence Rogge's sister Harriette... Scranton Tribune, 7/23/1946.
Also on the 8th floor were two preview film theatres, "B" with individual comfortable chairs, designated for use by RKO execs, and-- as a perquisite to help discourage chronic alcoholism among staffers... Bob Endres, interview, 2023; Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023; Novellino-Mearns, interview, 2023.
During their first full year 1933, the Music Hall was geared to a one-a-week production schedule, meaning a new film premiered and a new stage show opened every Thursday morning... Novellino-Mearns, ibid.
The Music Hall was a legit theatre on an unrelenting movie theatre schedule, like a pressure cooker or a newspaper. "Hell week" was the name given to the four days of sunrise onstage rehearsals... Love, ibid.
In Leonidoff's first years, the weekly schedule varied between four and five shows a day... Daily News, 1/09/1933, 9/01/1934, 9/03/1935, 9/02/1936, 9/06/1937, 9/05/1938.
...the length of the stage show fluctuated from half an hour to a whopping eighty minutes for his 1934 tabloid version of "Madame Butterfly" on "a stage large enough to hold half the Island of Japan." To compensate, for the length of "Butterfly" feature films were selected with running times shorter than the opera... Murphy ibid.; Daily News, 11/06/1935, 10/13/1937; Hollywood Reporter, 5/03/1934; "Change of Heart" 77 minutes, "Stingaree" 76 minutes.
His next and final opera, "Onteora's Bride" (1934) ran only thirty minutes, and by 1938 the stage show running time had settled in at thirty-nine minutes... Daily News, 11/16/1934; Variety, 7/19/1938.All the "hell week" stage rehearsals were early morning affairs, beginning at 7 AM and running three hours until the doors opened for the first film. Piano rehearsals Monday for the Corps de ballet; Tuesday for the Rockettes; and Wednesday a technical rehearsal without scenery, because the great stage wasn't great enough to store more than one production at a time... Novellino-Mearns, ibid.
The Music Hall rehearsal table on the twelfth row contained a rear-illuminated translucent lighting plot and a selection of forty numbered gel colors, and cues were constructed by rehearsal letters which corresponded to the lighting switchboard... Ed Sullivan, Daily News, 8/04/1933; Variety, 12/20/1932.
The five-scene preset stage lighting switchboard, which will be discussed in great detail later, was "a lighting machine sufficiently flexible to serve the needs of any of our productions," wrote Eugene Braun, the head electrician reputed to be co-designer of the board... International Projectionist, July, 1947; Radio City Music Hall: A Technical Discussion, Lyman Brenneman, 1999." (Marquee magazine, Volume 31, No. 3, 1999, Theatre Historical Society.)Rockettes interlocked one another gently at the waist so no one could be pitched inadvertently into the pit... Murphy, ibid.; Love, ibid.
Preparations for the Thursday morning dress rehearsal began at 4 AM when the stage crew began hanging sets and setting lights. Some newly-delivered stage sets could be readied upstage of the picture sheet during the last Wednesday night film, but anything hung downstage had to wait until dawn... Bob Endres, interview, 2023; Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023.
4 AM Thursday was also the time allotted for the testing of film effects, if any were to be employed in the stage show, either from the front projection room or from the projection room embedded into the upstage wall. Projectionists also remained on duty Tuesday and Wednesday nights after the last film to pre-screen two prints of the new feature, one each night... Bob Endres, interview, 2023; photo, Motion Picture News, 3/07/1937.
Rockettes "take five" to watch the Corps de ballet. On the seat backs can be seen a few of the 3,416 Kliegl program lights... Showmen's Trade Review, 4/22/1944.
Downstage of the orchestra pit, a passerella or runway, known as the ramp, was occasionally installed and shown below in the 1962 "Disneyland USA." Bob Lachenauer, interview, 2023.
The Undersea Ballet was one segment which pulled out all the stops, production-wise. Lighting man Gene Braun's fellow Hungarian, Alexander Strobl who invented phosphorescent paint (and also Sterno), bathed the great stage in bushels of ultra-violet light... Miami Herald, 8/27/1978; Film Daily, 6/22/1936; Bob Lachenauer interview, 2023.
Undersea Ballet was a permanent fixture in forty years of rotating repertoire, performed a dozen times between 1935 and 1972 and arguably choreographer Florence Rogge's best spectacle ever... Newspapers.com 1935-1972; Variety, 5/08/1935.
Not the least of the technical details to be worked out in a Music Hall dress was the matter of stage elevator cues and how to avoid pitfalls. Here the Rockettes dance con molto just downstage of the gaping hole left by Elevator Two, while the orchestra on the band car plays atop Elevator Three. When a lift was down, a stage manager concealed in each wing kept close watch over their charges... Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023.
"30 minutes to Overture!" -- "20 minutes to Overture!" -- "5 minutes to Overture, ladies and gentleman!" boomed the voice of the Head Stage Manager over the dressing room call system, complete with program monitor, "wired for radio" forty years before such systems became standard equipment... Love, ibid.; Novellino-Mearns, ibid.; Variety, 12/20/1932.
The orchestra on the band car atop the pit elevator, 100,000 pounds all told, rose swiftly from its minus 16-'6" preset position to a dramatic landing at Overture position (minus 2'-0") and the show began... Eric Titcomb, interviews, 2020, 2023.
Most of the 662 opening performances went smoothly, but occasionally accidents happened, such as when in 1969 the twenty-one-year-old lead trumpeter of the guest band act fell backwards and down onto Elevator One, which was preset 9'10" below the stage deck and laden with Rockettes... Murphy, ibid.; Daily News, 5/20/1969; Miami Herald, 9/12/1969; Impact of Brass band members Doug Smith and Rick Docen, interviews, 2023; Bob Lachenauer, interview, 2023.
At the conclusion of every first performance, the company was summoned to the 8th floor large rehearsal rooms for "corrections." On the Thursday of an opening, the production crew was expected to remain on duty from 4 AM until the end of the last stage show performance, at the conclusion of the eighteen hour dress rehearsal day... Novellino-Mearns, ibid.; Bob Endres, interview, 2023.
In weeks when a new show did not open and the movie and stage shows were held over, mandatory "holdover" rehearsals were conducted after the first stage show on Thursday morning to incorporate those dancers, Rockettes and Corps, returning from their week off... Novellino-Mearns, ibid.; Murphy, ibid.; Love, ibid.
The next year, and for the next forty, the show was in the hands of Leonidoff who perfectly understood the Hall: "Our stage is so big you can't fill it with talk!" He was also a man with a sense of humor. One time, during a Nativity dress, Leonidoff turned to Choral Director Will Irwin and asked in his Romanian accent, "Vill! Where did you find such stupid wise men?" At another, "Jesus Christ! That camel looks like a cockroach!"... Francisco, ibid.; "Backstage at Radio City Music Hall," Dean Irwin, 2021; Murphy, ibid.
For Christmas, Easter, and summer shows, school choirs or glee clubs were engaged as performing supernumeraries (with billing) and were boggled by the world of the Music Hall... Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, October, 1959.
At the first Easter show in 1933, besides the Roxyettes' "Easter on Parade" Leonidoff presented a Nativity-like tableau entitled "The Last Supper..." Francisco, ibid.
Despite the fact that they were played on the same set, "The Glory of Easter" should not be confused with the bona fide Easter church service which was held in the Hall beginning in 1939... Showmen's Trade Review, 3/31/1945; Tecumseh Chieftain, 4/04/1940; Daily News, 3/26/1951; New York Times, 4/06/1953; Newsday, 4/13/1974.
Even atheists could enjoy "The Glory of Easter" because it ran only eight minutes, and within a few short years, it had taken on a life of its own. In 1942, the Daily News wrote, "'The Glory of Easter' has become something more than a Music Hall tradition... Daily News, 3/30/1942.
Famed drama critic Burns Mantle described the scene in 1938: "Orchestra and organ sweep into Rubinstein's 'Kamenoi Ostrow' while the huge auditorium is still in darkness. And suddenly out of the darkness a monster cathedral is revealed... Daily News, 4/08/1938.
New York theatre expert Michael Zande continues the narrative: "They processed to a large, cathedral-like altar below a huge stained glass window... Michael Zande, interview, 2023.
Undoubtedly the greatest lighting cue in Music Hall history, the effect was produced by two FR-10's, Hall & Connolly High Intensity spotlights, one shuttered horizontally and the other vertically. Projectionist Bob Endres described the scene from the booth: "As the music reached three climactic chords, on the third, the stage buzzed projection... Bob Endres, interview, 2023.
And how many manually-operated spotlights did the Music Hall possess? Two? Four? No, my friend-- 36. The answer is 36! 18 front lights and 18 bridge lights on the stage... "Specifications for the Electrical Systems for the Metropolitan Square Development," Clyde R. Place, 1/11/1932.
There were seventeen ports in the projection level, which was divided into three parts: south, center and north, and each portion contained its own restroom.... Bob Endres, interview, 2023.
One could take the backstage elevators up to the 5th floor and climb through the ceiling catwalks; or take the elevator to the 7th and walk up a flight of stairs to the 8th floor and follow a circuitous path through the Studio level; or take the elevator from Street floor down to the basement (Shops level) crossover and proceed through the basement to front of house... Brad Hohle, interview, 2023.
By far the easiest route was to to enter the building at the 50th Street Executive entrance and take the private elevator there, known as the Executive Car... Brad Hohle, interview, 2023.
Saying "projection, please" to the uniformed car operator would take you directly up to the south end of the Projection level. Jacket and tie were required in the Executive Car, and front light operators and projectionists were not excepted from the rule. The small executive car could fit three comfortably (including operator)... Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023; Bill Savoy, interview, 2023.
A plan of the projection level... Interview, Bob Endres, 2023.
A rapid end-of-show escape route for the front light operators or projectionists was to descend the stairs from projection down to this Promenade and... Brad Hohle, interview, 2023.
Ticket booths (W. 50th Street booth circled in red, below) were located at the base of each of the stairwells, but their original purpose has been lost to time... Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023; Bill Savoy, interview, 2023; Diane Dayermajian, Christine Roussel, Michele Beckerman, Daniel Okrent, emails, 2023.
The walls were not intended to keep Local One men out of the projection room; they had to pass through it to get to the north spotting booth... Bob Endres, interview, 2023; Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023; Show World, 7/31/1909.
Local 35 was the spotlight operators' local, chartered about the same time as Local One (1886), although the exact date is unknown even to the International... Puva Yoka, Finance Ass't. Manager, IATSE, emails, 2023.
After seven long years of bickering... Motion Picture Herald, 4/30/1938.
Without the projectionists, in 1918 Local 35 was ignominiously merged into Local One... Variety, 6/28/1918.
Head electrician (and successor to Gene Braun) Robert Quigley is shown here on an inspection tour of the General Electric MG sets which... Motion Picture Exhibitor, 6/16/1965; Bob Endres, interview, 2023; General Electric Ad, Variety, 12/20/1932.
Moreover, it is best to remember that the operation of a carbon arc involved an element of danger, as evidenced by the 1903 Chicago Iroquois fire... "The Fire at the Iroquois Theatre, Chicago," Edwin O. Sachs, 12/20/1903.
When the split lens was open (as shown here) the lamp functioned as a floodlight; when closed, as a spot... Richard Logothetis, interview, 2023.
An integral condenser lens within the lamphouse served to magnify the brightness of the arc as efficiently as a reflector, and when combined with the split lens, the lamp could sharp focus, frame, and even accept gobos or templates... Bill Counter, Los Angeles Theatres, interview, 2023; Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023; Bob Endres, interview, 2023.
Units placed within the Roxy projection booth were finished in maroon to match the film machines...Exhibitor's Herald, 3/19/1927.
The Music Hall FR-10's in action in 1941. For pickups in the dark, "cheater" markings on the fire shutter above the lamp were a sine qua non for all but the most Zen-like operators. Except for the lack of zoom optics and a trombone, the FR-10's were forerunners to the Super Trouper, introduced in 1955... Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023; Richard Logothetis, interview, 2023; Motion Picture Herald, 12/03/1955.
The two FR-10's in flood or "full round" position, with the split lens open, covering the giant contour curtain... Bob Endres, interview, 2023.
A slowly-turning effects wheel could be fitted with any of forty mica discs, ranging from "a cyclone with flying objects" to "a flood with floating objects"... Transactions of SMPE, August, 1927.
When Music Hall spectaculars demanded the highest grade of effect, a dedicated 35MM film machine was brought into use, and the Hall had a stock film footage library which included "beachy" waves front-projected onto the scrim in the Undersea Ballet... Bob Endres, interview, 2023.
The Hall's thirteen projectionists had jurisdiction over ten 35MM machines: four in the booth, two each in the 8th floor preview theatres; and two in the booth set into the upstage wall, its location shown below... Bob Endres, interview, 2023.
Front light operators received their cues by buzzer, despite the fact that the buzz could be easily heard by patrons in the 3rd Mezzanine where no window glass separated the booth from the house... Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023.
Former assistant stage manager Dean Irwin recalls: "As the overture began, I would hold a rubber-coated button with a long wire connected to the arc lights way in the back of the theater... Dean Irwin, ibid.
Fittingly, Hartmann ended his career at the Music Hall where he was chief assistant to the director of sound maintenance and operation when he died of a stroke in 1941... New York Times, 2/10/1941.
What helped to simply two-for-one operation of the front lights was that they, as well as the onstage carbon arcs, were equipped with outboard remote-controlled dousers... Film Daily, 1/30/1937.
According to an article in the Showmen's Trade Review of April 22, 1944, there were 7,184 light bulbs in the auditorium, not including the 3,416 Kliegl battery-powered program lights on the back of orchestra seats, these devices first introduced the year before at the nearby 3000-seat Earl Carroll Theatre. Interview, Eric Titcomb, 2023, American Seating ad, Motion Picture Herald, 11/21/1931.
To the Chief of Electrical Maintenance, a member of the stage electrics department, fell the daunting task of keeping those 10,000 house lights burning, not to mention the lamps in offices, dressing rooms, and marquee. The first chief was Nick Kronyak, succeeded in 1953 by Chris Rober, Sr., shown below re-lamping a shadow box on West 50th Street. His son would become the stage hydraulic engineer, also a member of the electrics department. Interview, Eric Titcomb 2023, Nick Kronyak obit, Variety, 5/14/1953, Radio City Music Hall pictorials 1968 and 1974.
The proscenium floods were Kliegl 8" 2000-watt "spread lens" spotlights equipped with color changers. The B units, in a stack of eight, were positioned within the downstage half of the smoke pocket... Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023.
All four flying bridges E-F-G-H could be reached from the PS upper side bridge via hinged counterweighted platforms known as "diving boards..." Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023.
The lower bridge arcs can also be seen here, along with E Border, which like all the Music Hall electric pipes, trimmed at forty-two feet above the deck... Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023.
E Border, as with F, G, and H, contained a borderlight and floods as shown below. The borders were on motorized linesets, and the spotlight battens within were motorized and could be tilted from straight down to forty-five degrees... "Specifications for Stage Equipment, Theatre No. 10 of the Metropolitan Square Development."
A commutator ring allowed the turntable circuits to remain hot as the revolve spun.., Eric Titcomb, interview, 2020.AC stage floor pockets contained colored bullseyes designating each circuit color, illuminated via a microswitch when the lid was raised. The circuits were standard 20 amps, but in the six PS and OP pockets one of the four receptacles was rated for 60 amps, amber on PS and green on OP... Eric Titcomb, interview, 2023.
All one-hundred and seven Music Hall clocks were slaved to a master Telechron Clock System... "Specification for Electrical," ibid.