Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Grauman`s Chinese and Radio City Music Hall.

This is topic Grauman`s Chinese and Radio City Music Hall. in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by John Spooner (Member # 1565) on 02-11-2003, 10:26 AM:

Would anyone have some pictures of the projection equipment at these 2 venues If so could you put them up or send them by e-mail to me.
John Spooner. South Australia.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 02-11-2003, 05:59 PM:

The 1934 Neumade catalog in the manuals section has a small pic of the RCMH booth as it existed at that time. (Interesting side note: that catalog came from the Williamsburg Theatre, which was the sister theatre to RCMH--both were built by John D. Rockefeller and both opened within a week of each other).

The Chinese theatre had a pair of AA-IIs and a platter as well as of a couple of years ago, although the booth there has apparently been redone. It's a THX house, but sounded horrible at that time. Hopefully, they have improved things there.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 02-11-2003, 07:49 PM:

The good Mr. Hauerslev has an excellent article on the in70mm.com website about Radio City, written by former head projectionist Bob Endres.

Radio City 70mm Film Presentations

I haven't found any pictures of the Chinese booth, either old or new.

Posted by Thomas Hauerslev (Member # 566) on 02-12-2003, 02:50 AM:

The "Lion King" advert is here.

Will update the images soon.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-12-2003, 04:13 AM:

ORC lamphouses? How is anything even visable at all on the screen? Their 2500 watt lamphouses are barely enough to light a 34 foot screen in scope at a distance of 50 feet! Those things suck! I wish it was just my opinion, but it seems to be fact. Please at least tell me that those ORC lamphouses use horizontal and not vertical placement of the bulbs.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 02-12-2003, 10:59 AM:

Actually those lamphouses use 7K lamps. When properly aligned they can produce a good light. But they require a lot of maintanace to keep it that way

Posted by Bernie Anderson Jr (Member # 410) on 02-12-2003, 11:37 AM:

It also has been confirmed that since opening day the music hall never could achieved16 foot lamberts. Remember that the Music Hall was never designed to run movies. Actually, it was at Roxy's decision that Radio City would only have elaborate vaudeville shows, (Don't know if you ever heard about the almost 6 hour opening night show that was all stage acts.) It was the RKO Roxy one block down on 49th street that was the movie venue. The irony of it all is that the theaters swapped their formats and the Music Hall for 50 years was the premiere palace of NY. So with that, the story goes and has been confirmed that even with carbon arcs, special prints were struck that weren't as dark just for the music hall to get more light on the screen. Actually, I also heard that they had multiple prints sent to them for back up. I've never understood those ORC's were installed.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-12-2003, 02:16 PM:

The vertical lamp design of the ORC, reflecting the visible light with a 45-degree dichroic mirror and having an efficient heat sink for the IR, WAS very good in reducing unwanted radiation heating of the film. [Smile]

But as noted, keeping everything aligned is difficult, and the plasma in the vertical lamp tended to be unstable, causing visible "candlelight flicker". [Frown]

The design was innovative, but somewhat problematic.

Posted by Wes Hughes (Member # 981) on 02-12-2003, 10:08 PM:

As of last year, Manns Chinese was still running AA-II's with platters.

Posted by John Spooner (Member # 1565) on 02-13-2003, 09:45 AM:

Dear colleagues, thank you to date for information posted regards these two venues.