Changes Noted during Theater Tour in New York

By Betty O’Neal Giboney

Gone from the New York scene are the hippies, the long hairs, the left-conscious sloppy dressers. Back in evidence are the well dressed, the quietly dressed. Their name may not be legion, but they are there in a city which once always had a seasoning of people to whom style was more than fashion, and where appropriateness was the key work.

This change in New York from the 1960s and most of the 70s was evident during the gadding about which took place from Monday through Saturday last week when I was one of 60 people on the Raintree County Opera House Guild New York Theater Tour.

The change, though, did not add up to a return of the 1950s and before. This fact was evident when most of us were in the audience for the Easter Show of Radio City Music Hall. The famous Easter Show and even more famous Music Hall will close forever on April 12. (See editorial on page 17.) We were, in a way, a part of history.

If I have said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. No, I did not dance at the Music Hall as a Rockette. I was a Roxyette at the Toxy Theater, located one block west on 50^th St. at Seventh Ave.

The Music Hall was our (you’ll pardon the possessive when I speak of the Roxy) younger sister by five years or so, conceived and promoted by the same man, S. M. Rothafel, a colorful impresario popularly known as “Roxy.”

Their (Music Hall) shows—and ours (Roxy)—were for family entertainment. While the Roxy Theater was razed in the early 1960s, the Music Hall has carried on until now.

The show the theater tour members was pure nostalgia, dating back to the beginning of the Roxy about 1927. The Rockettes’ precision kicks were unchanged, their routine appeared to be a repeat from many previous years, even their costumes were little changed from the days the troupe had danced at the Roxy Theater in the late 1920s and early 30s—just cut a smidgen shorter, that’s all. The hats could have been remakes of the ones left behind when the Roxy (the man) regime moved out of the Roxy and into the Music Hall.

Easter bunnies, in a ballet, danced in costumes that could have been cut from the same pattern as those made at the Roxy almost 50 years ago for another ballet of coffee pot and teacups.

Glee Club voices were fine and it was a relief to listen to them after the brashness of some Broadway musicals. As a final touch of nostalgia, the organist played, among others, “Love in Bloom,” a hit song of the 1930s.

In a few words, the show was pleasant—and dated.

Some things were new, though. The smell of freshly popped corn I never before noticed in the Music Hall. Even the audience used to be sedate.

The motion picture, “Crossed Swords,” would hardly have made it in the old days. It was rated PG – parental guidance needed. The movie was a remake, with many liberties, of the Mark Twain story of “The Prince and the Pauper.” The PG probably was needed because of some of the violence in the film.

The Broadway Theater has moved on, leaving the Music Hall behind with its nostalgia. Music now is electronically amplified—even as it always has been at the Music Hall—but it is ear-bursting, skull-shattering loud. “Dancin’” made my head ache. But, as the girl of junior high age sitting next to me said, “I guess, when you grow up with loud music, you’re used to it.”

“Hello, Dolly,” of slightly older vintage and by way of contrast, was pure delight with pleasant dancing and singing—and no four-letter words.

I could only conclude (the thought is not original) that things change and everything is in a state of flux.

“ New York ,” I sometimes have said over the years, “has a beautiful soul.” Generally, I could find little agreement. During most of the 1960s and more than half of the 70s, I must admit, I could not see, nor be aware of, that beauty.

But last week, several times I felt faintly that glimmer of hope for the city which was my home for almost 15 of my young and formative years. Maybe the good taste of those well-dressed young women also will become more evident on Broadway and the rest of the city.