(ALMOST) ALL THE REST Judging by Kim Holston’s overly expensive Movie Roadshows, the roadshow section here at NowReViewing has managed to include the vast majority for the heyday period between the mid 1950s and 1972. See Pull Down menu at left. On this page, in the collage above and in the left column, are remnants—frontals of souvenir programs of slipped-from-memory hardtickets and would-be contenders. A few covers are by necessity imagined. As absentees become available, expect updates; if any are worth writing about, comments will appear on this page. The following is free form bavardage. Just for clarity, The Robe, How to Marry a Millionaire, Knights of the Round Table, The Egyptian, High Society and Guys and Dolls weren’t reserved seaters; they were prestige “events,” all in CinemaScope or VistaVision, with programs. Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty, the first animation in 70mm, using Super Technirama, was technically not a roadshow, either, but played exclusively in many urban venues specializing in large screen format. (In Chicago, at the Sate Lake, in a 13 week run starting 2/12/1959.) Based on Ernest Hemingway winning the Nobel prize for literature and the Pulitzer for The Old Man and the Sea, the movie version starring Spencer Tracy was treated solemnly as a roadshow in some major cities; at left is the American booklet and rollover for the Japanese version. The 1958 British A Night to Remember opened as a reserved seater in New York and L.A. but, in spite of excellent reviews, box office was dismal and promptly relegated to continuous showings. Anthony Mann’s Cimarron opened and quickly flopped in L.A. and N.Y. using the format and while unable to find a matching program, I recently found two internationals, a Danish at the left and, if you rollover, a German booklet. The Grant/Sinatra/Loren travesty The Pride and the Passion and the musicals Gypsy and The Music Man probably had programs in the planning stage, axed when the films failed to get the go. Ordering up one of those Random House-like hardcover jobbies, Hatari! was being prepped for roadshow, augmented by the excitement of the then-exotic Henry Mancini score. Assessing Howard Hawks’s cut as a sloppily scripted vacation, regretting not giving cinematographer Russell Harlan a widescreen process to capture Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and unhappy with John Wayne’s improbable romance with Elsa Martinelli, Paramount correctly sensed the audience would be more lasso cowboys than movie program buyers. Vincente Minnelli’s remake of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was also a probable go as hardticket until MGM read the results of the first test preview, after which Alex North’s score and Ingrid Thulin’s voice were jettisoned. (12/2020) Often movie studios would start off pushing biggies such as Giant, The King and I and Vidor’s War & Peace as roadshows in New York and L.A., only to pull the plug in other cities. Chicago ran all three sans hardticket, and wisely exhibited Blake Edwards’ 1965 archaic slapsticker The Great Race at the State Lake with a 35mm print and continuous performance for sixteen weeks, achieving better results than the few cities daring the format with a 70mm blowup. Sometimes there were dumb political considerations for opening reserved seat: Sunrise at Campobello and In Harm’s Way suffered short runs in Washington. After initial poor reviews and poorer box office response, movies like The Hallelujah Trail and Custer of the West vacated the format. Conversely, 2001 was building larger if not more stoned audiences with repeaters and word-of-mouth at Chicago’s Cinestage, even after 36 weeks, only to be pulled for the contract-obligated holiday babysitter Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, bounced after 17 weeks. (School night viewings left the theatre half empty.) Sometimes movies opened in Europe as roadshows—for example, Carl Foreman’s The Victors, Mary Poppins, The Golden Head, The Great Waltz, Lafayette, The Comedians, Where Eagles Dare and Kelly’s Heroes—but not in America. Zulu opened posh at the Plaza in London, soon after going wide by loud popular demand; in America, the midwest premiere was at The Loop in Chicago on 6/26/1964, running one month in 35mm Technirama at cp/pp. Half a Sixpence short-circuited fast, pushing director George Sidney to “voluntarily” retire but kinder hearts understood he couldn’t work around the PSA on Tommy Steele’s frightful adult odontiasis; briefly roadshowed elsewhere, the movie opened cp/pp at Chicago’s United Artists. A 70mm blowup, Marooned became the Cinestage’s depressing Xmas ’69 attraction, stranded for thirteen weeks as the venue’s last reserved seater. Another 70mm blowup, Albert Finney’s Scrooge, at cp/pp, opened at the Michael Todd on 11/6/70, lasting 6 weeks. Man of La Mancha (Xmas ’72, 14 weeks at McClurg Court and eleven at Northbrook’s Edens, both with 35mm prints) and Young Winston (Xmas ’72, ten weeks at US 150 in Oakbrook, 35mm print) were considered the last formal hardtickets and falsely blamed for the format’s demise, as the sign of changing times for downtown moviegoing flashed neon warnings for at least two years prior. The expensive musical flop Hello, Dolly and the epic nincompooper Ryan’s Daughter, after opening as reserved seat to devastating press, were most likely the beginner catalysts for the acceleration of the shoveling of graveyard dirt, as nervous execs switched the movies to special engagement in many cities, granting one or two more viewings per day, having sliced away footage, overture, entr’acte and exit music. The gambit as well as the curiosity over the bad reviews worked for Ryan’s Daughter, becoming the fourth most successful movie in 1971. (There’s this unusual exception: Ryan’s Daughter opened, in 35mm print, at Chicago’s Michael Todd as nonroadshow; seven weeks in, having finally received a 70mm print, the theatre converted to roadshow until end of run a mere eight weeks later. By contrast, Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia played 36 weeks at the Cinestage and his Doctor Zhivago 38 weeks at the Palace.) The gambit didn’t work for Dolly, notwithstanding the successful hard ticket runs of Funny Girl in downtown Chicago—the United Artists first, the Michael Todd second, the Cinestage third, then closing at the Palace with a first-time 70mm print at cp/pp. Anticipated to be a Xmas attraction at one of the Loop’s major venues in spite of studio panic, Streisand’s gargantuan Dolly opened nonhardticket seven months after the N.Y. premiere, in the suburban venues of the Edens and Oakbrook’s UA 150, where, without publicity, it was reportedly projected via the D-150 process. (Who saw it that way?) Downtown Chicago didn’t see Dolly until the crackerbox UA Marina Towers Cinemas opened in late September, 1970. Another Streisand opus, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was slated for deluxe packaging from inception but by end of filming would be a fashion show Miranda Priestly would have enjoyably savaged; undergoing emergency alterations, eliminating Arnold Scaasi’s atrocities and some musical numbers, it opened off-the-rack at the Michael Todd. (7/2024) The knolling for roadshows accompanied Man of La Mancha during its nationwide run—acutely at N.Y.’s celebrated Rivoli—and it wasn’t just the flimsy production pretending to be prestige or its nonmusical stars. (Ross Hunter’s version of Lost Horizon would remind everyone Hollywood has no vaccine to thwart amnesia, threatening to open hardticket but providing Bette Midler the killer chance to quip “I never miss a Liv Ullmann musical,” which would open and immediately bomb at Chicago’s McClurg Court for Easter 1973.) The abusive push of mediocrity onto a weary public coincided with several changes: as with other older movie palaces in urban settings, the Rivoli would soon go twin screen to adapt to the latest demographics of downtown audiences by serving up schlocky smut, blaxploitation and X-rated stuff like Deep Throat as white flighters flocked to well-heeled suburbia and technology-laden movie houses such as the UA Cinema 150s, all of which were defunct by 2003. Closing in ignominy, the Rivoli (and Chicago’s McVickers, Michael Todd and Cinestage) became ripe for real estate scavengers. Not to suggest being tagged For Adults Only was doom for hardticket or advanced tickets/unassigned seats: back in 1961, La Dolce Vita played a healthy 17 weeks at the Michael Todd; James Joyce’s Ulysses had a packed three-day exclusive at the Esquire in 1967; Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris played at the McClurg Court for 17 weeks in 1973. But regurgitation was the prevailing ailment caused by the hype and emptiness of spectacles: Sergei Bondarchuk’s Waterloo was conceived as the roadshow follow up to his gigantic War and Peace, with arty ads and souvenir book readied and Rod Steiger in the title role opposite Christopher Plummer as box office lure, but, repeating history, the epic was a real bog; at cp/pps, it surrendered to attrition in a mere 25 days at Chicago’s Roosevelt in April, 1971. When movie going habits changed from formal to casual, facilitated by sex, drugs, rock and an on-going war, the era of reserved seating evolved into “special engagement,” the buzz term to classify prestige movies—like The Godfather, Tommy, Papillon, The Deer Hunter, Reds, Gandhi and Schindler’s List—and still in use. The roadshow format has been resurrected several times, with dismal results: The infamy of Heaven’s Gate includes the shortest reserve seat run in NYC’s history, scrapped after only three days and cancelled in L.A. before opening and in March of 1995 Jefferson in Paris was dared and promptly bombed. The following year Kenneth Branagh’s 70mm “eternal” version of Hamlet running four hours was inexcusably abused by Columbia Pictures’s mishandling of what was a bona fide singular experience needing special attention. In late 2006 Dreamgirls was rolled out as a limited but successful $25-a-ticket engagement in N.Y., L.A. and San Fran to build Oscar buzz. In 2008, Steven Soderbergh’s full length bore Che was given the same treatment, minus the hefty price tag, for the same reason, unsuccessfully. Quentin Tarantino’s 2015 The Hateful Eight, filmed in Ultra Panavision 70, was deliberately marketed as a quasi-roadshow, its 187 minutes receiving full panoply of overture, intermission, souvenir book. The “n” wordfest also comes in a 168 minute version in 35mm, and a 2019 re-edit as four part miniseries on Netflix with a substantial amount of never-before-seen footage. (7/2024)
Have included Citizen Kane in the above collage because it was presented in Chicago at two theatres on Randolph Street: the Woods (see picture below) in a c.p. & p.p. format and just a few blocks west the Palace/Bismarck (no pic available), using the roadshow format. Not entirely clear why, other than the fact RKO was managing them—this before the Supreme Court ruled against studio monoplies of theatre chains—and had financed the movie, and maybe a bit of protective snobbism, separating the polite upper class from the unruly mob, as there was some cryptic fear William R. Hearst, the defacto subject matter, might whip up the latter, as he did put enormous pressure on theatres in major cities not to show the movie, thus its initial box office failure. Locating the souvenir book for 1956’s Helen of Troy at eMovie Poster, it’s got more class than the spectacle itself and somewhat on par with Burton’s Alexander the Great, its Danish program also at left. The very rare program for William Wyler’s 1958 The Big Country is now uploaded and comes with this reminder: Franz Planer’s widescreen imagery and Jerome Moross’s theme promise excitation until we realize four nasties and one pacifist get lost in both. Duplicating Burton’s Hamlet, Olivier’s 1965 Othello was a two-day affair, with London said to be the only venue to get a 70mm blowup. Shot in Panavision, with enlarged theatrical settings, a decent print is available at YouTube, in ways affirming Maggie Smith’s eventual confession to having just about lost it over Larry’s ego, his paralysing stage fright and mischief-making during both the run of the play and its filming. The demand to see the “movie,” increased when receiving four Oscar nominations for acting, compelled Warner Bros. distribution to offer encore runs in university towns and some major American cities. Culture got another boost with 1966’s The Royal Ballet: Romeo and Juliet with Fonteyn and Nureyev, lastng five weeks hardticket at the Cinestage. Opening in N.Y. and L.A. hardticket at the Fine Arts Theatres, Tony Richardson’s 1968 The Charge of the Light Brigade was quickly diagnosed with arty fartiness quarantining the box office. The program for 1971’s Mary, Queen of Scots recollects producer Hal B. Wallis’s hope Vanessa Redgrave as Mary and Glenda Jackson in a second go as Elizabeth I would be another Becket as prestige offering. Only two reasons to see it: the one-on-one showdowns between the queens that historians clearly say never happened. Opened March 3, 1972 at Chicago’s UA Marina Towers, Northbrook’s Edens, Oakbrook’s UA Cinema 150 non-roadshow. (6/2024)
ROLL OVER IMAGES TO ENLARGE Movies shown above and at left: Alexander the Great, Alfred the Great, The Big Country, The Big Fisherman, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Charge of the Light Brigade, Che, Cheyenne Autumn, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Cimarron, Citizen Kane, Cromwell, Custer of the West, Doctor Doolittle, The Egyptian, The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, Genghis Khan, The Golden Head, The Great Race, The Great Waltz, The Greatest Show on Earth, Guys and Dolls, Gypsy, Half a Sixpence, Hatari!, The Hateful Eight, Helen of Troy, High Society, How to Marry a Millionaire, In Harm's Way, Isadora, Jefferson in Paris, Julius Caesar, Knights of the Round Table, LaFayette, Last Tango in Paris, The Leopard, Lost Horizon (musical), Man of La Mancha, Marooned, Mary Poppins, Mary Queen of Scots, The Music Man, The Night of the Generals, A Night to Remember, The Old Man and the Sea, Othello, Papillon, Richard III, The Royal Ballet: Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, 1776, Scrooge, Sleeping Beauty, Sodom and Gomorrah, Song of Norway, Sunrise at Campobello, Tommy, Ulysses, The Victors, Waterloo, Young Winston and Zulu. Text COPYRIGHT © 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved. |