Tag Archives: RKO Radio Pictures

Vanished New York City Art Deco: The R-K-O Roxy / Center Theatre. Part 1 Construction.

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December 29th marks the 84th anniversary of the R-K-O Roxy Theatre’s opening. To honor the anniversary, Driving For Deco will feature four articles focusing on this magnificent Art Deco Theatre.

 

RKO Roxy Theatre

The R-K-O Roxy Theatre, 6th Avenue & 49th Street. Photo taken shortly before opening in 1932.

Rockefeller Center stands in the middle of Manhattan as a monument to early 1930’s moderne architecture and design. Anyone with even a passing interest in the Art Deco style is familiar with the Radio City Music Hall. Few are aware that the Music Hall had a sister theatre, the R-K-O Roxy / Center Theatre. Located at 6th Avenue and 49th street it is often confused with the original Roxy Theatre (1927-1960) or just forgotten. The two Roxys couldn’t have been more different stylistically. The original Roxy, very large and very ornate, epitomized the classic movie palace. Nicknamed the “Cathedral of the Motion Picture”, with a Spanish inspired interior and nearly 6,000 seats it was the largest theatre in the world in 1927.

 

 

1928-1929 Rockefeller City and The Metropolitan Opera

 

The old Metropolitan Opera House

The old Metropolitan Opera House (1883-1966), circa 1932. NYPL Digital Collections.

By the 1920’s the Metropolitan Opera had outgrown its original home at Broadway and 39th Street (1883-1966). The Opera association considered a number of sites around the city, but rejected them for various reasons. What the Metropolitan needed was a new benefactor and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874-1960) became that benefactor. Rockefeller leased several blocks in mid Manhattan from Columbia University. By the 1920’s these blocks of brownstone houses were seedy and home to many speakeasies. Rockefeller felt that by providing a new home for the Opera he would also be improving the neighborhood.

 

Future Site of Rockefeller Center

1931 6th Avenue & 48th Street. Future site of the R-K-O Roxy / Center Theatre. William J. Roege Photograph – MCNY.org

 

The plans for this site included the new opera house and plaza; also a hotel, an apartment house, a department store and many upscale shops. These buildings of around thirty-five stories in height would surround the theatre. Rockefeller’s idea was to make this the cultural heart of the city and its finest shopping district.

 

 

The stock market crash in October, 1929 radically altered the plans of the Metropolitan Opera and “Rockefeller City”. The New York Herald-Tribune reported on December 6, 1929:

Opera Drops ‘Rockefeller City’ as Site Of New Home

The project of building a new Metropolitan Opera House in “Rockefeller City” has been abandoned, it was announced yesterday.

Both sides rather suddenly agreed that insurmountable obstacles stood in the way of the project which, a few days ago, appeared to be certain of realization. A spokesman for John D. Rockefeller, Jr. said that the plans for the development of the $105,000,000 “Rockefeller City” site, which consists of most of the three blocks between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Forty-eighth and Fifty-first Streets, would proceed. “But the set up will have to be totally changed, ” he said. “Our plans so far have all been based on the idea of the opera house as the center of the development.”

1930

 to the Rescue

With the Metropolitan Opera dropping its plans for a new home, Rockefeller needed to find a new tenant for his project. The Radio Corporation of America turned out to be that client. By 1929 RCA had become the entertainment giant of the world. They were one of the top manufacturers of radio sets and tubes. The parent company of the National Broadcasting Company, which consisted of two nation wide networks, the Red and the Blue, had just branched out into the motion picture industry with the formation of R-K-O Radio Pictures. On February 15, 1930 The New York Times was the first to report on this new venture:

NEW THEATRE SEEKS ROCKEFELLER SITE

ROXY REPORTED AS HEAD

NATIONAL BROADCASTING CO., GENERAL ELECTRIC AND R-K-O SAID TO BE LINKED IN MIDTOWN PROJECT

A large theatrical venture which will exploit television, music radio, talking pictures and plays in one immense building has been proposed to be erected on the site assembled by John D. Rockefeller  Jr. for the new opera house.

Plans for the new development are still nebulous and have not proceeded beyond the preliminary negotiation state. According to the tentative discussion the National Broadcasting Company, General Electric Company  Radio-Keith-Orpheum and other allied groups would unite to form a new type of amusement and theatrical centre.

It is known that the National Broadcasting Company has been ready and willing to equip a theatre for television when conditions were favorable, but to date no suitable place has been found. According to reports of the new venture S. L. Rothafel, “Roxy” would be general director of the enterprise.

Mr. Rothafel declined to discuss a report, saying that he is bound by a contract at the Roxy Theatre for at least two years. Other persons concerned were equally reluctant to discuss the matter. Merlin H. Aylesworth, president of NBC, said he knew nothing of such a plan. Owen D. Young of General Electric decline to discuss the proposal and said: “That is an R-K-O proposition.” Hiram S. Brown, president of R-K-O professed to know nothing of the scheme.

Because the plans are still so nebulous and indefinite there is a possibility that another location may be considered and the union of television, radio, music and theatre carried out on a site other than that controlled by Mr. Rockefeller.

1931 Rockefeller Center model.

Model for Rockefeller Center. March, 1931. Photo from Tumblr.

 

At the time of the above article negotiations had just begun between the interested parties. By June, 1930 most of the details between RCA, NBC & R-K-O and Rockefeller  had been settled upon. The project now became a reality. The New York Times reported on June 17, 1930:

ROCKEFELLER BEGINS WORK IN THE FALL ON 5TH AV. RADIO CITY

Three Square Blocks Will Be Leveled and Project Is to Be Finished in 1933.

Four Theatres Planned

ROXY TO BE THE DIRECTOR

The demolition of three square blocks between Forty-eigth and Fifty-first streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues will begin this Fall, according to a statement issued yesterday for John D. Rockefeller Jr. and a group headed by the Radio Corporation of America, who will erect on the tract a great distribution centre of entertainment and culture.

Four Theatres Planned

As previously reported, the centre is to contain a variety theatre seating 7,000 and a sound motion picture theatre seating 5,000, as well as theatres for musical comedy and legitimate drama, and there is “under consideration” a symphony hall.

Samuel L. Rothafel (Roxy) is scheduled to become managing director of the huge enterprise. Mr. Rothafel would not discuss his appointment yesterday, pointing out that he was still under contract to a film company.  He has taken a leading part in the discussions which led to the formation of the plan.

Specifically in regard to the theatre that would become the R-K-O Roxy, the article continues:

The second theatre, which will have about 5,000 seats, will be especially designed for sound motion pictures and will set new standards, we believe, in this form of entertainment. Theatres built heretofore have been built upon the acoustical and visual principals of the older forms of motion picture entertainment, although sound has since been added to all the larger theatres. This time we shall create a beautiful theatre structure around the radio and electrical developments that have recently revolutionized the motion picture art. It will be a theatre built for the opportunities that sound has brought to the motion picture and the possibilities that may flow from further technical developments.

1932 plan for Rockefeller Center.

1932 rending of Rockefeller Center. Image from Pinterest.

1931 Construction Begins

Indeed work began in the fall of 1930, with the demolition of the brownstones as their leases expired. By the summer of 1931, the land on the Sixth Avenue side of the site was cleared and construction began on the R-K-O Building, the International Music Hall (renamed Radio City Music Hall)  and the R-K-O Roxy.

 

6th Ave. & 49th Street in early 1932.

6th Avenue & 49th Street, early 1932. The start of construction of the R-K-O Roxy behind the brownstones facing the avenue. Photo from NYPL Digital Collections.

1932 Rockefeller Center under construction.

Rockefeller Center under construction, March 2, 1932. Looking west from 5th Avenue. Steel framework of the R-K-O Roxy at center left. Photo from MCNY collections.

The firm of Reinhardt, Hoffmeister, Hood & Fouilhoux were the architects chosen to make this new center into a cohesive whole. To a new addition of the firm, Edward Durell Stone (1902 – 1978), fell the task of the architectural design of the theatres. Of the four theatres originally proposed, only the Music Hall and the R-K-O Roxy saw completion and on a slightly smaller scale than announced. The variety theatre (the Music Hall) would have just under 6,000 thousand seats (although publicity said 6,200). The motion picture (R-K-O Roxy) theatre being more “intimate” with only 3,510 seats.

 

1932

The Exterior

The Sixth Avenue front of the R-K-O Roxy.

The Sixth Avenue façade, looking east toward 5th Avenue, of the R-K-O Roxy. Summer of 1932. Photo from NYPL Digital Collections.

 

The façade of the R-K-O Roxy epitomized modern, just like its mirror opposite a block away, the Music Hall. Constructed in limestone, both featured a narrow horizontal marquee and tall vertical signs. Neon lettering in red / orange framed by bands of blue neon on a gray metal background proved very striking.

 

 

Beyond the end of the marquee along the 49th Street side of the theatre, were five large windows. Made by Corning, the frosted glass blocks rose from street level and two had exit doors within them. Above the windows a giant metal and enamel bas-relief, entitled Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth, decorated the façade. Designed by Hildreth Meière (1892-1961), she also designed the bas-reliefs on the 50th Street side of the Radio City Music Hall.

 

Study of Hildreth Meière's Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth. 1932

Study for the metal and enamel sculpture Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth. Hildreth Meière 1932. Photo from the Smithsonian Learning Lab.

Study for Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth

Study for Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth, by Hildreth Meière. Image from hildrethmeiere.org

Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth, 49th Street facade of the RKO Roxy

Hildreth Meière’s Metal and Enamel plaque Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth on the 49th Street facade of the R-K-O Roxy. Image from hildrethmeiere.org

A recreation of this sculpture has been in the Rockefeller Center underground concourse since 1988. Though much, much smaller and more dimensional than the original, it is a nice addition and reminder of the Center’s history.

 

1988 concourse recreation of Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth.

1988 recreation of Hildreth Meière’s Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth. Photo from flickr.

 

In Part 2 we will explore the inside of The R-K-O Roxy and its very successful opening.

Click Here For Part 2

Anthony & Chris (The Freakin’, Tiquen’ Guys)

 

Swing Time – The Pinnacle of a Series

The opening title for Swing Time (1936)

Swing Time Main Title

 

On August 27, 1936, swarms of people lined up outside the Radio City Music Hall. They stood patiently to see the latest film of the greatest dance team the movies had created, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Swing Time, would be their sixth pairing in less than three years.

 

Herald-Tribune newspaper ad for Swing Time

Opening day advertisement for Swing Time. The New York Herald-Tribune 8/27/36

 

Swing Time is musical film perfection. The terrific score by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields has left us with two lasting standards A Fine Romance and  The Way You Look Tonight, the 1936 Academy Award winner for best song. The supporting cast included past Astaire-Rogers’ series regulars Eric Blore, as a fussy dance studio owner and Helen Broderick as Ginger Roger’s wise cracking friend. Musical stage veteran Victor Moore, new to the series, played Fred Astaire’s bumbling magician side kick buddy. Also in the cast, George Metaxa as the band leader who rivals for Ginger Rogers affection. Betty Furness, as Fred Astaire’s fiancée and Landers Stevens the father of the jilted fiancée and off-screen the father of the film’s director, George Stevens.

 

 

Then there is the dancing.  Pick Yourself Up,  is the hot duet.  This was a  feature of their films starting with The Gay Divorcee. Where as the previous hot duets had several changes of tempo, Pick Yourself Up, has only one. A very driving, exciting tempo. The dance culminates in the pair lifting each other back and forth over the dance floor’s low railing.

 

 

Waltz in Swing Time is the dance that is up next and like Pick Yourself Up, it too is in one tempo. Arlene Croce wrote in The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book (1972) about Waltz in Swing Time:  “. . . the Waltz has no special story to tell. It is pure white: pure vision and sound. Nevertheless, it is one of those grand, impassioned moonlit dances, and it just flies – it’s the brio of romance. Two minutes  and 45 seconds of unspeakable delight.” As Fred Astaire says just before this number – “This is the moment I’ve been waiting for!” And so has the audience.

 

 

Fred Astaire’s big solo dance number is Bojangles of Harlem, a tribute to the famous dancer, Bill Robinson (1878-1949). Hermes Pan, Astaire’s dance assistant since Flying Down to Rio in 1933 created this Academy Award nominated number. In a career spanning 77 years it is his only appearance in black face. Not to condone the use of black face, at least this number attempts to rise above the stereotypical caricatures of the time. The number tries to be a respectful homage of one artist to another. But it makes it difficult for present day audiences to appreciate.  Astaire gives an interpretation of not Bill Robinson but rather of John W. Bubbles (real name John William Sublett). Astaire considered Sublett the greatest tap dancer of the time. Sublett even gave tap lesson to Astaire in the 1920’s. For Bojangles of Harlem Astaire dresses and dances in the style of Sublett’s character of Sportin’ Life from Porgy and BessBojangles of Harlem is a number in three sections. First the chorus girls dance out from behind sliding doors. Another set of doors open to reveal a pair of gigantic legs, the chorus girls part the legs and we see Astaire sitting on top of a miniature “Harlem”. Astaire and the girls dance. The first section ends with the girls dancing off into the wings.

 

 

The second section starts with the last set of doors opening up to a movie screen. Onto the screen three giant silhouettes of Astaire fade into view. Astaire, in front of the screen dances in and out of synch with the silhouettes. With Bojangles of Harlem, Astaire-Pan employed trick photography for the first time in a dance routine. The shadow idea came to Pan one day on the sound stage while waiting for Astaire to arrive. Three lights at the top of stage cast three shadows on the wall. When Astaire entered the stage Pan showed him the shadows and said it would be fun to add that to the number. Astaire wondered how they could accomplish the effect. Vernon  L. Walker, RKO special effects specialist explained “All you do is get Astaire in front of a screen and photograph his shadows first. Then we take those shadows and make a split screen, and then we photograph Astaire doing the same routine in front of them.”  According to the American Film Institute Catalog entry for Swing Time: “Astaire first danced in front of a blank white screen onto which a strong Sun Arc lamp projected a single shadow. Then he performed the “foreground” dance under normal lighting and in front of another blank screen. This dance was combined optically with the shadow dance, which had been tripled optically in the lab. Simultaneity was achieved by having Astaire watch a projected version of the shadow dance while he performed the foreground dance.” Knowing the Bojangles of Harlem special effects process would require extra time, the number was shot after regular shooting wrapped.  It took three long days to film.

 

 

After the silhouettes leave the screen, Astaire begins the final section of Bojangles of Harlem. For this section Astaire taps and claps his hands in two different rhythms that are off rhythm with the music. Before the audience has a chance to grasp the complexity of all of it, Astaire wraps it up and exits the stage. It is an amazing routine.

 

 

The ultimate number in the film also became the ultimate number of the entire Astaire-Rogers series.  Never Gonna Dance is the most complex dance routine of all their films. The song itself cannot exist outside the context of the film, but it sets the mood for the dance. To quote again from Croce: “In the film it is the end of the affair, in life it is the end of Astaire and Rogers’ Golden Age. On two stage levels linked by glistening staircases there now takes place the supreme dramatic event of the series, a duet moving through a succession of darkening emotions and abrupt rhythmic changes in which we see unfold in dance the story of the film.” Because of the complexity of the dance, Never Gonna Dance became the last sequence shot for Swing Time, in the regular shooting schedule. In previous dances Astaire and Rogers had danced over furniture or up and down a few steps. With this dance they danced up two long flights of stairs on opposite sides of the set. Filming went on all day and then into the early hours of the next morning. Half way through the filming, Rogers’ feet began to bleed. All wanted to call it quits, but Rogers insisted that they finish that night so they could rest the next day. The 47th take was the charm.

 

 

At the helm of Swing Time was George Stevens. At the time Stevens was the top director on the RKO lot. The year before he successfully directed Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams. Up to this time Mark Sandrich directed most of the Astaire-Rogers films. Pandro S. Berman, RKO production head, originally intended that Sandrich and Stevens would alternately direct these films. Berman’s plan did not come to fruition and Swing Time became the only one directed by Stevens. Stevens’ began his career as a cinematography and later a director at the Hal Roach Studio. He learned his craft well and this training served him in a career that would last over forty years and include such classics as Gunga Din (1939), Woman of the Year (1942), A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956).

 

 

The floor of the remodeled Silver Sandal.

The stylized city on the floor in front of the orchestra stand in the remodeled Silver Sandal.

 

Van Nest Polglase head of the art department at RKO and his assistant Carroll Clark designed the sets of all the Astaire-Rogers film up to 1938’s Carefree. And all the films through 1937 had one huge set piece. Affectionately known as the “big white set”, this always served as the background for the big dance number. “Big white set” examples are seaside hotel of The Gay Divorcee, the fashion salon in Roberta and the Venice set of Top Hat. The big set pieces in Swing Time are loose adaptations of some actual night clubs. The Silver Sandal in the film derives its name from the Manhattan prohibition era club, The Silver Slipper. A remodeling of the club, midway through the film gives it an even more sleek, moderne appearance.

 

The first Silver Sandal set.

The Silver Sandal set as it appears in the earlier part of Swing Time.

 

On screen credit for the second Silver Sandal set and the Bojangles of Harlem costumes went to John Harkrider. That credit is only somewhat true. Harkrider only “designed” the part of the set seen in the Bojangles of Harlem number. A number photographed on a different stage from the Silver Sandal set. Credit for the Silver Sandal sets goes to Polglase and Carroll.

 

 

Club Raymond is an amalgam of two actual night clubs The Clover Club and The Rainbow Room. The Clover Club on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood did offer its patrons illegal gambling, like Club Raymond. But the obvious inspiration was The Rainbow Room, the very swank restaurant on the 65th floor of the RCA Building. Even the view from Club Raymond was the view from the Rainbow Room.

 

 

Aside from the art direction the sets featured some of the best designs in moderne style furnishings. Fred Astaire’s character’s dressing room among all the other Art Deco items has a terrific chrome tube chair. The chair made by the Lloyd Loom Manufacturing Company was a creation of the industrial designer KEM Weber.

 

Silver Sandal dressing room.

A dressing room in the Silver Sandal. Betty Furness sitting in a KEM Weber designed chair.

 

The desk lamp, prominently featured in this scene is a product of the Markel Corporation of Buffalo, New York. This lamp today sells between $500.00 – $1,000.00.

 

Markel Desk Lamp

Sitting on the desk is a rare Markel Corporation lamp.

 

Other wonderful sets and furnishings include, George Metaxa’s suite. A very sleek bachelor apartment.

 

 

And the dance studio, the obvious place for the romance to start in an Astaire-Rogers film.

 

 

Swing Time marked the artistic high of the RKO musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  But the financial high had already been hit with Top Hat the year before. Swing Time would be the last film to use the formula that had started with The Gay Divorcee (1934) and repeated in Top Hat. Roberta (1935) and Follow the Fleet  (1936) shared a different plot formula. Starting with 1937’s Shall We Dance the writers looked for inspiration outside of the insular world of the previous Astaire-Rogers films. While all the RKO Astaire-Rogers films are good at worst and near sublime at best, Swing Time marks the end of the Golden Age for the series.

 

 

The final clinch.

Swing Time – The final clinch.

 

 

End Credit

Swing Time End Credit

 

Anthony & Chris (The Freakin’, Tiquen’ Guys)

 

If you liked this post, you might enjoy these earlier posts:

Art Deco meets Italian Futurism

Modernistic Background for Zaniness