American Showman by Ross Melnick

Author:Ross Melnick
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 2012-03-10T05:00:00+00:00

THE ROXY THEATRE TAKES SHAPE

The Roxy Theatre was already months late and well over budget by January 1927. That did not dissuade Lubin and other investors from forming a new company, the Roxy Circuit, Inc., capitalized at $150 million and incorporated for the purposes of creating a new chain of theaters in the greater New York area. The Roxy Circuit planned to acquire the Roxy Theatre, the new Roxy Mansion at 58th Street and Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and the future Roxy’s Midway on the Upper West Side. The New York Times reported that Roxy would serve as “Director General of the new enterprise,” while William E. Atkinson, formerly vice president and general manager of MGM, became the Roxy Circuit’s general manager. Ahlschlager was conscripted to build all of “the theatres under Roxy’s control” to create a measure of architectural uniformity.83

Roxy finally moved into the Roxy Theatre on January 5, 1927, determined to meet his new March deadline. Temporary offices were situated in the theater’s dressing rooms while Roxy, chief executives, and other members of the personnel and publicity departments waited for their permanent offices to be finished.84 Lubin and Sawyer may have been worried about the ever-growing cost overruns and construction delays, but Roxy seemed to revel in the chaos. He arrived at the theater in his town car every day, ready to assess the progress of construction and marvel at what he had wrought. “Under lathings,” Allene Talmey recalled, “through all the roar of hammers, over planks and plaster moldings, he crawled to steep himself in his pleasure. He scrambled to the rim of the auditorium, to the great stage where he could admire the orchestra’s spaciousness.”85 And when he tired of the din of the construction, he escaped from the dust and noise to his Steinway Hall studio and office at 383 Madison Avenue.86 To Lubin and Sawyer, the Roxy Theatre was a $10 million gamble, an unaffiliated movie palace in an era of chain management. To Roxy, it was a monument to his career and a site for the industry’s convergent entertainment possibilities. Roxy spent each day imperially deciding on everything from carpet samples to paint tones to seat ends.87

Allene Talmey and numerous journalists of the era noted that these and other flourishes were the physical embodiment of a marketing and egocentric metaphor—that the Roxy, Talmey noted, was “Built on the foundation of the personality of Samuel Rothafel.”88 Roxy publicity materials transmitted this message to journalists. “A tremendous asset of the Roxy Theatre is the fact that it is essentially a theatre built on a personality,” Roxy Theatre press notes stated:

If you want to know the secret of S. L. Rothafel’s outstanding position as a master showman, here it is. He envelops the theatre in his personality. The inanimate structure of steel and stone becomes the visible reflection of the spirit of the man who dominates it. He breathes the breath of life into it. Here is no cold monument reflecting the mechanical atmosphere of an efficient business organization.

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