EARL CARROLL THEATRE
By ED SULLIVAN

Opening on February 25, 1922 on the Southeast corner of 7th Avenue and 50th Street is a building designed by Architect: George Keister, The Earl Carroll Theater.

The Earl Carroll Theater had two lives in two theaters on the same site. The first Earl Carroll Theater was built by the producer with money supplied by Texas oil baron William Edrington, Carroll's principal backer.

Among the theater's technical innovations was the "horizant," a permanent cyclorama painted on the curved back wall of the stage house. Directly in front of the horizant was a trench allowing actors to cross the stage without being seen by the audience.

The theater opened with a three-act melodrama, Bavu, written and directed by EARL CARROLL. The author, director, producer, composer, and lyricist was best-known as the producer of the annual revue series, EARL CARROLL'S VANITIES. Bavu closed after 25 performances. The show is completely forgettable save for the fact that in the cast was the future movie star William Powell. The second and third productions at the theater were also flops. Just Because, a musical comedy, opened on March 22 and ran for only 46 performances. Raymond Hitchcock's Pinwheel was an even bigger failure. It opened on June 15 and closed after 35 performances.

Finally the theater had a hit with producer Laurence Schwab's The Gingham Girl (8/28/22). The show ran 322 performances. The next hit in the theater was the first edition of Earl Carroll's Vanities. The show opened on July 5, 1923, with music and lyrics by Carroll. He also produced and directed the show. The revue series was planned as a rival to FLORENZ ZIEGFELD'S Follies.

With the advent of the Depression, Carroll's fortunes floundered and he was forced to rent the theater to Radio Pictures for $12,750 a month plus half the taxes. The company was going to use the theater to premiere its film production of Rio Rita, originally a show produced by Ziegfeld. As if in reaction to their plans, Carroll leased Ziegfeld's old stomping ground, the NEW AMSTERDAM THEATRE, for his next edition of the Vanities.

The old Earl Carroll Theatre seated only 1,000 people, making it unsuitable for the large productions to which Carroll aspired. When Ziegfeld built his own new theater in 1927, Carroll, unfazed by his financial problems, set about to build a new space of his own. Edrington remained Carroll's chief backer. They bought the land east of the original theater for $1 million and leveled the building on that site. The builders retained the office building atop the old theater but tore out the theater itself.

Columnist ED SULLIVAN wrote about the plans for the new theater:

If you have walked along 49th or 50th Streets just east of Seventh Avenue you have seen in skeleton form the temple that will house the Earl Carroll "wonder works" this coming season on the same site where the former Earl Carroll Theater stood for nine years. The theater is in the "strictly modern" style in the "straight and setback" lines of the new skyscrapers.

If you've happened to notice a man hurrying here and there in an old smock "riding the whole horse," watching the builders, experimenting with costumes and colors and listening to the boys from Tin Pan Alley as they chanted their melodies, it was the indefatigable Mr. Carroll. It is hard work but he can stand it because he grew up in theaters.

In dwelling on the impending innovations of this, his latest and greatest project, he said, "What I want to be remembered for are the changes I have made in the theater, even if they are quickly forgotten."

A very canny showman is Mr. Carroll, and a student of the public. So he has thought it all out. He took time out to say, "All that is wrong with show business today is the prices that are charged." The way around high prices, he intimated, is by mass production, and "The form to which mass production best adapts itself is the big revue."

So Mr. Carroll, a logician for all his persistent elegance, will concentrate on big revues, and his new edifice will seat 3,000 people with a $3 top, even for opening night.

Next Thursday evening, therefore, Earl Carroll—who knows how to make an entrance—will submit that a new $4,500,000 theater, bearing his name, will be opened and ready with the ninth Vanities to do business. It will be a milestone. One has Mr. Carroll's word for this.

Carroll spent $4.5 million of Edrington's money on his new theater. Architect William Keister and interior designer Joseph Babolnay created an Art Deco masterpiece. The new lobby was 3 times as large as the old one. Remarkably, the new theater's seating capacity was also tripled. There were seats for 1,500 patrons in the orchestra alone. The boxes seated 200 people, and the loge and balcony areas seated 1,300. To utilize the space to its maximum, the 60-by-100-foot space under the balcony was given to lounge areas. The theater was the first to be completely air-conditioned backstage, in the auditorium, and in the public areas.

The interior of the building was a classic Art Deco design. The walls were covered with black velvet. Brushed aluminum accented the interior. The lobby area was covered in polished black vitrolite, streaked with brown. The carpeting was in 3 shades of green and the seats covered in plush coral-colored fabric. The orchestra seats were equipped with little lights so patrons could refer to the program during the show. The dressing rooms, decorated in chrome, silk, and satin, were as well appointed as the audience area. The performers had their own tables with triple mirrors. There was also a complete intercom system as well as a gymnasium, showers, a safe for valuables, a refrigerator, and, by the stage, a mirror room for last-minute checks on makeup and costumes.

The stage area boasted two elevator platforms, like those in Radio City Music Hall, which enabled the orchestra to be raised from the basement to stage level while playing. Sixty stagehands were required to operate the stage machinery. Five thousand Berliner acoustical discs were put into the walls to control the acoustics. Six speakers were placed in the auditorium to boost the stage sound, and 20 more were placed in the lounges and lobby. Because of the highly polished and reflective surfaces throughout the theater, lighting became very important. In true Art Deco style, the lighting was concealed. A console in the orchestra pit controlled the indirect lighting effects. Each fixture had four colored circuits: red, blue, white, and green. Radio City Music Hall later copied this idea. Carroll finished off the theater by hanging a now-famous sign over the stage door: "Through These Portals Pass the Most Beautiful Girls in the World."

The theater's premiere attraction was Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1931 (8/27/31), which opened with the Depression in full swing. There was a staff of 84 men in the house. They were all at least 6 feet tall and dressed in dark uniforms with chrome highlights to match the inside of the theater. There was no box office, but rather a long table with 8 attendants in front of the ticket racks. During intermission the ushers wheeled a huge chrome-plated tank down the aisles and dispensed free ice water to the audience.

Despite (or perhaps because of) its opulence, Carroll couldn't make the theater a success. The show was especially lavish and could not recoup its cost on the low ticket prices. It also was expensive to operate the giant theater and maintain its lavish interior. Within 6 months Carroll lost the theater. He was sued by the Seven Fifty-five Corporation for $366,632.90. Carroll also owed $64,952.20 for 3 months' back rent, taxes, and interest.

Ziegfeld decided to take it over. He changed its name to the Casino and reopened the space with a revival of his great hit Show Boat (5/19/32; 181 performances). During the run of Show Boat Ziegfeld died and the show closed. GEORGE WHITE, the third big producer of an annual revue series, used the theater for Melody (2/14/33; 80 performances), one of the last Broadway operettas. It was written by SIGMUND ROMBERG and Irving Caesar.

A vaudeville show entitled Casino Varieties opened next. In an attempt to counter the effect of the Depression on the box office, its top ticket price was $1.50. This was the theater's last legitimate show. The theater closed only four years after its opening. Clifford Fischer, a former agent for the Orpheum circuit, took up the theater's lease. He took out the seating and put tiers in the balcony and orchestra, upon which he installed tables. Fischer, responding to a wave of enthusiasm for all things French that was sweeping over New York, called the new theater-restaurant the French Casino. It was the second such conversion, following the lead of the Casino de Paris (see NEW YORKER THEATRE, which had been the Gallo Theater. Later, the Manhattan Casino was made out of Hammerstein's Theater (see ED SULLIVAN THEATER) on Broadway at 53rd Street. Of all the Manhattan casinos, the French Casino was the most successful. The theater opened on Christmas Day 1934, featuring a show modeled on the Folies Bergère—an

ironic touch, because this was Earl Carroll's inspiration also. The revues at the French Casino were very successful. The glamorous theater was perfectly suited to the spectacular shows on the stage.

The French Casino prospered until showman Billy Rose, owner of the Casino de Paris, bought the building. He redecorated the interior in a more Latin manner and extended the stage out from the proscenium. He renamed the space the Casa Manana, featuring a $2.50 price for dinner, dancing, and the show. It opened on January 10, 1938, and closed by the end of the year.

In 1939 the 6-story office building fronting 7th Avenue was razed. The auditorium and stage house still stood, but the interiors were replaced with retail space. A Whelan's drugstore and then a Woolworth's took the place of the magnificent theater. When the Woolworth's was torn down in 1990, the theater was discovered above the store's false ceilings. Unfortunately, it was too late to save any of the theater itself.