The Ziegfeld, New York’s largest remaining single-screen movie theatre, has been in the news this week because of reports suggesting that the landmark cinema, which is losing a million dollars a year, could close. The theatre is part of the Clearview Cinemas chain, which has recently been put up for sale by owner Cablevision. Cablevision has said that there are no plans to shutter the Ziegfeld, where “The Amazing Spider-Man” is currently showing. If the Ziegfeld does close, it would be but another twist in a history that goes back nearly a century.
In 1925, when the producer Florenz Ziegfeld announced his plan to open a theatre on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street, a Talk of the Town story predicted that an expanding Broadway theatre district might one day extend all the way to Central Park. (Ziegfeld, the impresario who created the “Follies” that bore his name, was the subject of a Profile by Gilbert Seldes in 1931.). Built with the backing of William Randolph Hearst, the original Ziegfeld opened in February of 1927. As reported in our pages, both Charlie Chaplin and the polar explorer Roald Amundsen were among those who attended the première. Our reporter noted that “the theatre itself proved to be a surprisingly attractive,” but lamented that the extra leg room that had been touted as a feature was “not yet wide enough to eliminate the infliction of shin bruises by late arrivals.” That first year, the Ziegfeld enjoyed a huge success with “Show Boat.” “I can’t imagine anyone’s being disappointed at ‘Show Boat,’” our reviewer, Charles Brackett wrote.
The Depression stalled the heralded expansion of the theatre district and, in 1933, the Ziegfeld was converted to a movie house. But in 1944, the producer Billy Rose bought the building for $630,000 and converted it back to a theatrical venue. Clifford Orr interviewed Rose on his plans to restore the Ziegfeld:
In the nineteen-fifties, the Ziegfeld was home to “The Perry Como Show.” The following decade, it briefly reopened as a Broadway theatre before being razed in 1966. A skyscraper now stands on the site. The current Ziegfeld movie theatre opened just a little farther along Fifty-fourth Street, in 1969, and has played host to numerous film premières and other notable events. Some of those we covered were Nelson Mandela’s attendance at a screening of “Cry, the Beloved Country” in 1995, a digitally enhanced version of “Star Wars” in 1997, and a benefit showing of Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster 3” in 2002. We hope that there will be many more to come.
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Illustration of Florenz Ziegfeld, by Abe Birnbaum.
