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From today's New York Post by Lou Lumenick
http://nypost.com/2016/01/20/the-ziegfeld-was-doomed-from-the-beginning/
I first reported four years ago that the Ziegfeld Theatre could close because of million-dollar-a-year losses.
But I’m still saddened by my colleague Steve Cuozzo’s scoop that Manhattan’s only large single-screen movie house will finally be shuttered and turned into an event space called the Ziegfeld Ballroom.
I’ve covered the closings of many movie theaters for The Post over the past 15 years, including some once-iconic venues like the Criterion in Times Square, the Tower East on East 72nd Street and Manhattan’s first twins, the Baronet and the Coronet. But I always hoped that the Ziegfeld would survive, though the economic odds were stacked against it. It still has the best projection and sound of any movie theater in the city.
A loving (if much less elaborate) homage to the long-gone movie palaces that once lined Broadway and Seventh Avenue, the 1,131-seat Ziegfeld was swimming against the multiplex tide engulfing the movie exhibition industry from the day it opened in 1969.
For many years, it was one of the most famous theaters in the country, hosting glitzy movie premieres. It was revenue from these events that kept the Ziegfeld afloat as it became harder and harder to fill what became Manhattan’s largest theater after the 2,100-seat Astor Plaza (which opened in 1974) became a concert venue now known as the PlayStation Theatre in 2005.
Studios cut back dramatically on premieres after the 2008 stock market crash, and losses at the Ziegfeld — which sometimes closed for weeks at a time for lack of movies that could fill its thousand seats and killer competition from the Lincoln Square IMAX — reached around $1 million a year, I was told back in 2012.
In 2013, Cablevision — which leased the theater from the owners of the neighboring skyscraper built on the site of an older Ziegfeld on Seventh Avenue — turned over management to Bow Tie Cinemas, which bought all the venues in Cablevision’s now-defunct Clearview Cinemas chain.
It was hardly surprising when Cablevision CEO James Dolan said in April 2015 that the Ziegfeld would “probably’’ close as a movie venue. The company subsequently issued a statement that the space would remain open “for the foreseeable future,’’ but that was hardly reassuring.
At the time, I reached out to figures in the repertory film community about the possibility of operating the Ziegfeld as a nonprofit like Hollywood’s similarly sized Egyptian Theatre, which is run by the American Cinematheque. Their short answer: It would be an awesome venue, but the operating expenses would be prohibitive.
While I’m glad it’s not being torn down like so many of its predecessors — and will have a post-movie life, much like the glorious Kings Theatre in Brooklyn — I, like many New Yorkers, will deeply miss the Ziegfeld.
I have many memories of the place, from a press screening of “The Deep’’ with James Cameron in attendance to a matinee date to see a revival of “Vertigo’’ in 70mm with a woman who later became my wife. But the handwriting was on those red velvet curtains when I checked out the very sparsely attended opening day of “Super 8’’ at the Ziegfeld in 2011. That film’s director is back at the Ziegfeld with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,’’ which is probably the last film to show there.
http://nypost.com/2016/01/20/the-ziegfeld-was-doomed-from-the-beginning/
I first reported four years ago that the Ziegfeld Theatre could close because of million-dollar-a-year losses.
But I’m still saddened by my colleague Steve Cuozzo’s scoop that Manhattan’s only large single-screen movie house will finally be shuttered and turned into an event space called the Ziegfeld Ballroom.
I’ve covered the closings of many movie theaters for The Post over the past 15 years, including some once-iconic venues like the Criterion in Times Square, the Tower East on East 72nd Street and Manhattan’s first twins, the Baronet and the Coronet. But I always hoped that the Ziegfeld would survive, though the economic odds were stacked against it. It still has the best projection and sound of any movie theater in the city.
A loving (if much less elaborate) homage to the long-gone movie palaces that once lined Broadway and Seventh Avenue, the 1,131-seat Ziegfeld was swimming against the multiplex tide engulfing the movie exhibition industry from the day it opened in 1969.
For many years, it was one of the most famous theaters in the country, hosting glitzy movie premieres. It was revenue from these events that kept the Ziegfeld afloat as it became harder and harder to fill what became Manhattan’s largest theater after the 2,100-seat Astor Plaza (which opened in 1974) became a concert venue now known as the PlayStation Theatre in 2005.
Studios cut back dramatically on premieres after the 2008 stock market crash, and losses at the Ziegfeld — which sometimes closed for weeks at a time for lack of movies that could fill its thousand seats and killer competition from the Lincoln Square IMAX — reached around $1 million a year, I was told back in 2012.
In 2013, Cablevision — which leased the theater from the owners of the neighboring skyscraper built on the site of an older Ziegfeld on Seventh Avenue — turned over management to Bow Tie Cinemas, which bought all the venues in Cablevision’s now-defunct Clearview Cinemas chain.
It was hardly surprising when Cablevision CEO James Dolan said in April 2015 that the Ziegfeld would “probably’’ close as a movie venue. The company subsequently issued a statement that the space would remain open “for the foreseeable future,’’ but that was hardly reassuring.
At the time, I reached out to figures in the repertory film community about the possibility of operating the Ziegfeld as a nonprofit like Hollywood’s similarly sized Egyptian Theatre, which is run by the American Cinematheque. Their short answer: It would be an awesome venue, but the operating expenses would be prohibitive.
While I’m glad it’s not being torn down like so many of its predecessors — and will have a post-movie life, much like the glorious Kings Theatre in Brooklyn — I, like many New Yorkers, will deeply miss the Ziegfeld.
I have many memories of the place, from a press screening of “The Deep’’ with James Cameron in attendance to a matinee date to see a revival of “Vertigo’’ in 70mm with a woman who later became my wife. But the handwriting was on those red velvet curtains when I checked out the very sparsely attended opening day of “Super 8’’ at the Ziegfeld in 2011. That film’s director is back at the Ziegfeld with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,’’ which is probably the last film to show there.
