Grand Canyon East

A little boy is going to come to New York some day, disappear, then eventually return to his home as a middle-aged man. When his mother says, "Where were you all this time?" he will tell her: "In the line at the Radio City Music Hall." He may even introduce her to the girl he met near the end of the queue, courted between Fifth Avenue and Rockefeller Plaza, and married at Sixth and 50th.

Sometimes three-quarters of a mile long, forming as early as 6:30 a.m., doubling and redoubling upon itself through a maze of sawhorses set up by New York police, the line of people waiting to get into the Music Hall is one of the phenomena of modern show business. Extra long now in the tourist summer (70% out-of-towners), it is something to see in the winter as well, knee-deep in slush and ready for Donner Pass. The Music Hall somehow signifies to the rest of the nation the epicenter of Manhattan show business. Most of the standees agree with the one who said he was there because "everybody down home just knows about it" and the chap six laps behind him who shrugged: "It's unavoidable, like the Grand Canyon."

While Nome Burns. When they finally get inside, audiences see a three-hour spectacle--roughly two-thirds movie and one-third stage show--that is anything but just another overpromoted metropolitan gyp. The customers are paying for spectacorn, and the Music Hall stage is equipped to give it to them 144 ft. wide and 67 ft. deep. The organ, with 375 stop tablets, can sound like everything from a Chinese gong to a glockenspiel, and vibrates so profoundly that it probably shows up on seismographs in the Soviet Union. The fixed lighting system, with a 4,3O5-key control board, is still one of the most advanced in the world, making possible spectacular fireworks and the fondly remembered (1959) burning of Nome: once every three hours, the Alaskan city collapsed onstage in a cold conflagration of light, silk and air.

Fountain displays have slopped more than 150 tons of water onto the stage per day. Niagara Falls once poured out of the wings. A full-sized train chugged uphill. One show used a helicopter, another a four-engine bomber, and a third shot Sputniks into the flies. Chariots have been drawn by live horses galloping on treadmills. Ships have been torpedoed and sunk, descending via the huge, tripartite stage elevator. The Christmas show always features a creche program, and at Eastertime the stage turns into a cathedral, and the girls of the corps de ballet turn into nuns, forming a vast human cross holding lilies in their hands.

Way of Life. Last week, between showings of Fanny, customers got 37 minutes of Americana that included the choir from Centenary College in Shreveport, La., singing Beautiful Dreamer before a backdrop of amiably winking stars. French tumblers sang while they somersaulted, and a ballet was performed before a village bandstand to John Philip Sousa marches, in which the dancers spread their skirts in semicircular swirls, suggesting so many red, white and blue cheese cutters. And, of course, the celebrated chorus line of Rockettes was there, kicking and tapping with brilliant puellageneity. In the end, a glowing reproduction of the Statue of Liberty came rising out of the orchestra pit.

That sort of thing, four times a day, is worth an $8,000,000-a-year gross to Rockefeller Center Inc., which owns and operates the Music Hall. The place has taken in as much as $42,660 in a single day, has grossed more than $169 million since its doors first opened in 1932, and with a total attendance figure to date of nearly 171 million, Music Hall shows have played to the approximate equivalent of the U.S. population. Finding films to go with the stage show is the job of President-Managing Director Russell V. Downing, who freely admits that, since television has forced Hollywood to unbutton its themes, the Music Hall has had to change its standards. Its record moneymakers--The Great Caruso, Mister Roberts, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers--reflect the sort of choices the Music Hall once preferred, but now Downing is accepting gamier movies such as Parrish, Suzie Wong and Where the Boys Are, explaining his selections with the sequined rationalization that they reflect "a way of life."

Producers Leon Leonidoff and Russell Markert try to match their own stage ways of life to seasonal variations in the audience. "Naturally, in the fall we'll do a more elegant type of show--for New Yorkers," explains Leonidoff. And what might that include? Leonidoff is trying to line up a team of chimpanzees who play jazz, for example, and Markert is completing the staging of a number in which a girl will be perched atop a pink cloud while an offstage voice sings Sitting on Top of Cloud Nine. Later in the same program, 15 girls will sit on the capitals of 15 Greek columns, wearing white robes and holding golden trumpets--all of which will be preceded by a medley overture from Liszt. During Yom Kippur, it will be replaced by the Kol Nidre.

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