PETER CLARK AND RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL

[BOB FOREMAN]

Photo-essay with over hundred images,

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[SteveB]

Thanks for posting Bob, fascinating bit of theater history.

I‘m really tempted to get a sign made up and stick it on a door in the basement of our theater - “Animal Room”.

 

[BOB FOREMAN]

It might not be sufficiently large for your needs.

 

[SteveB]

It might not be sufficiently large for your needs.

Won‘t matter. It’s for all the design folks and college facilities people who get lost trying to follow basement floor plans that are hopelessly outdated. “Hmm....this room says “Animal Room”, that’s not on this drawing”.

 

[TuckerD]

The basement below RCMH is a maze. I've been told there was a way to get to blue bottle from the tech server room but I never figured it out.

 

[geoffrey hugh]

Photo-essay with over hundred images,

click here

You put this together?? Wonderful!! Fabulous!! I worked at RCMH for a couple years mid 1970s, just before Disney (?) arrived, re-imagining the theater, so it was 'as built'. I guess it was the end of the daily 3 show, 4 movie format. Peter Gennaro was the choreographer for the Rockettes.

I worked mainly electrics, front light. there were a couple of backstage follow spots too, high on the side walls. as a frontlight operator, there were a few positions at which we operated TWO what, Genarcos? can't remember what they were, but i take great pride in having had that task. i've wondered if the Music Hall was the only place (or the last place) that ever did that.

when i left i was training on the original lighting console between the pit and the audience. all bronze fittings, as i recall.

The head Carpenter at the time, John Lemac, once fell from a side bridge to the deck. Survived, because he landed on some cardboard boxes.

Later I played the Fox (Atlanta) with the first show to present following the 'reactivation' of the theater so i guess that was the first time they tried to renovate it. that would be 1976 or so. now that was some joint, but the Music Hall was the queen of them all, including the only theater to come near it, the original configuration of the Met Opera House at Lincoln Center.

I sure appreciate your piece on Peter Clark.

Photo-essay with over hundred images,

 

[BOB FOREMAN]

Thank you sir!

 

[TimMc]

Bob, that was a great piece. Thanks for pulling all those resources together and taking us down... and down... and down... and then upstage... uh. the rabbit hole of these stage machines. I could almost smell the grease.

 

[BOB FOREMAN]

Thank you sir!