MAMMOTH CINEMAS IN NEW YORK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20110, 31 March 1928, Page 15 (Supplement)

MAMMOTH CINEMAS IN NEW YORK

VAUDEVILLE PROGRAMMES SUBMITTED.

Everyone nas heard of “Roxy’s’ in New York, that vast block of ma

sonry, not without beauty, which houses an auditorium seating 6000 ai»e sweeping out like a great fan from a stage which is huge, but looks small. Not far away is the Paramount building, the foyer of which towers up m severe marble arches and the upper atmosphere of which blazes with illumination from a forest of chandeliers that strike beams on the polished surface of the high "hall. It seems the custom to deprecate the existence of these mammoth cinemas; 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 cinemas have a certain exuberant style of their own (writes an English visitor), ano the Paramount in New York would probably not strike a visitor from tne planets as more startling than Versailles must have been in its inception. or the “Chinese" in Hollywood as more fantastic than the Roy 1 Pavilion at Brighton. Besides as cinemas, they arc very comfortable and show films magnificently.

Of course, films unadulterated arc hardly ever to be found in the United States. A great many cinemas show a vaudeville programme with a film tacked on the end of it.