AMERICA’S GIANT KINEMAS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 86, 10 January 1928, Page 3

AMERICA’S GIANT KINEMAS

“HOT AND COLD RUNNING ENTERTAINMENT”

For gorgcousness, comfort, and size the picture theatres in tlie United States .bear away all palms, writes Iris Bai;ry, in the “JXaily Mail.” Everyone tins heard of "Roxy’s’ in New York, that vast block of masonry, not without beauty, which houses a. small town within itself besides an auditorium seating GWX) and sweeping out like a great tan from a stage which is huge but looks small. , There are cafeterias, lounges, a broadcasting station, a-sumptuous flat, practice rooms, floor above floor; the orchestra, a really good one, includes 11G performers. The attendants, groomed to the last fraction in courtesy, number scores No one can escape a visit to this huge kinema without being shown—and with what pride!—the carpet in the foyer, woven in a single piece and said to bo 1 lie largest carpet so made. • Not far away is the Paramount building, th foyer of which towers, up in severe marble arches and the upper atmosphere of which blazes with illumination from a forest of chandeliers that strike gleams on the polished surface of the high hall. . It seems tho custom to deprecate the existence of these mammoth kinemas; just as in Hollywood the inhabitants almost apologise for the quite astonishing “Chinese” theatre recently opened there. But in actual fact these gargantuan and wildly decorated kinemas have a certain exuberant style, of their own: and the Paramount in New York would probably not strike a visitor from tho planets as more startling than Versailles must have been in its inception, or (lie “Chinese” in Hollywood as more fantastic than tho Royal Pavilion at Brighton. Besides, as kinemas, they arc very comfortable and show films magnificently. Of collide, films unadulterated are hardly ever to be fojHid in the United States. A great many kinemas show a vaudeville programme with a film tacked, on to the end of it. The rest do less magnificently what. Mr. Lotliapfel. of “Roxy’s,” docs and stage an immense prologue io the picture along with musical interludes. This is rather annoying to anyone who wants to see films, as it may be necessary (as it was for the writer when visitin- (ho "Oriental” at Chicago) to wait hours before any motion picture makes its appearance; and the tableaux viv'ints ballets, orchestral interludes, iazz bands and what not that are provided arc not. all first rale. It is rattier annoying, 100, not to be allowed to smoke. , films for more critical audiences are also shown- at. smaller ■ picture theatres specialising in Continental pictures, revivals of worth-while films of all kinds, experimental or travel films, and oddibßut at least these new Enemas do deserve their nickname of cathedrals of motion pictures,” even though it may bo true, as ono of the weekly magazines gibes, that they exist only to provide half-wits with “hot and cold running entertainment.”