Paramount Theatre (Manhattan)
Rapp & Rapp |
The Paramount Theatre was a 3,664-seat movie palace located at 43rd Street and Broadway on Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Opened in 1926, it was a showcase theatre and the New York headquarters of Paramount Pictures. Adolph Zukor, founder of Paramount predecessor Famous Players Film Company, maintained an office in the building until his death in 1976. The Paramount Theatre eventually became a popular live performance venue. The theater was closed in 1964 and its space converted to office and retail use. The tower which housed it, known as the Paramount Building at 1501 Broadway, is in commercial use as an office building and is still home to Paramount Pictures offices.
Following the closing of the Times Square Paramount Theatre, two other theaters in Manhattan have had the same name: the Paramount Theatre at Madison Square Garden and a now-demolished movie theater at the Gulf and Western Building (15 Columbus Circle). The Brooklyn Paramount Theater, also in New York City, opened in 1928.
History
The Paramount Theatre opened on November 19, 1926, with the gala premiere of Herbert Brenon's God Gave Me Twenty Cents, with guests including Mayor Jimmy Walker, Thomas Edison, Will H. Hays and Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. as guests. The stage gala was produced by John Murray Anderson.[1]
The theater housed one of the largest and most admired
The murals in the theater's dome, Grand Hall and Elizabethan Room were painted by the Chicago-based artist Louis Grell. Grell was noted for murals that he painted in the 1920s and 1930s in many Rapp and Rapp-designed theaters in the Paramount-Publix chain.[4]
The Paramount began hosting live music along with its feature films as the
Leo Fuld, Billy Eckstine, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis all enjoyed success performing there.
With the theater spin off in 1950, Paramount Pictures rented the theater to
The last showing under United Paramount Theatre (UPT) ownership was The Carpetbaggers. The theater closed on August 4, 1964, under UPT ownership, only to be reopened later that year on September 4, owned by Webb and Knapp.[1]
The theater was gutted and turned into retail space and office space for
The Paramount's
-
Advertisement for the Paramount Building, with the Paramount Theatre behind at left (April 17, 1926)
-
Mina and Thomas Edison at the opening of the Paramount Theatre (November 19, 1926)
-
Jesse Crawford at the Wurlitzer
See also
- Madison Square Garden. For a short while in the late 1980s and early 1990s, The Theater at Madison Square Garden was called the New Paramount Theater after a corporate merger. Before it was called the Paramount, it was known as the Felt Forum.
- 1501 Broadway
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8108-6636-2.
- ^ "Paramount Theatre". New York City American Guild of Organists. Retrieved March 28, 2023.
The Paramount organ was so successful that Fox Studios placed an order in 1928 for four identical organs to be installed in their theatres in Detroit (Op. 1894), Brooklyn (Op. 1904), St. Louis (Op. 1997) and San Francisco (Op. 2012).
- ^ Paterson, Geoffrey (March–April 2008). "The Recordings of Organist Richard W. "Dick" Leibert, Part 2: The Westminster Years (1955–1960)" (PDF). Theatre Organ. American Theatre Organ Society. p. 40. Retrieved January 26, 2021.
- ^ Marquis Who's Who in America[full citation needed]
- ^ "N.Y. Para Half Million". Billboard. January 3, 1942. p. 3. Retrieved March 28, 2023.
- ^ October 20, 1934. New York Amsterdam News[full citation needed]
- ^ Lyrics of "Singin' with the Big Bands". www.songlyrics.com. Retrieved February 11, 2014.
- ^ "Love Me Tender Trivia". IMDb.
External links
- CinemaTreasures.org: ParamountTheatre
- The New York Paramount (Wichita Wurlitzer, archived)
- Louis Grell Foundation
- Paramount Theatre stage manager's records, 1936–1956, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts