The Broadway Theatre, currently home to The Great Gatsby, turns 100 today.
While its name may be a touch confusing in conversation, the Broadway has reason to be proud of its moniker; it is one of the only Broadway theatres to actually have its entrance on Broadway. While the streets name has become shorthand for the entire theatre district, the overwhelming majority of Broadway theatres are actually situated on cross streets (such at 45th Street), and not on the street of Broadway. Only two theatres can boast actual Broadway entrances: the Winter Garden Theatre and the Broadway Theatre.
Like the Winter Garden, the Broadway wasn't always a legitimate playhouse. Unlike the Winter Garden (which began life as the American Horse Exchange), the Broadway was always intended to be an artistic haven.
Opened on Christmas Day in 1924, the theatre was designed by Eugene De Rosa for Benjamin S. Moss, an entertainment impresario who dealt in every manner of show. Initially opening a chain of store-front nickelodeons, Moss soon honed in on the vaudeville and early cinema circuit, creating the largest independently owned and operated motion picture theatre circuit in Metropolitan New York.
The Broadway was originally intended to be the crown jewel of that movie circuit. Originally leased to Universal Pictures in order to screen their films, the theatre was initially named The Colony, as a legitimate theatre named The Broadway was in operation on 41st Street until 1929. The Colony cost $2 million to construct (the equivalent of $36,473,180 today), but photos from its opening day would likely confuse audiences more familiar with its modern look.
The Broadway's original exterior was designed in the Italian Renaissance style, using brick and terracotta, as well as a wrought-iron ticket booth. On the outside of the theatre, there was a very large electric sign, but it was not the shape of the marquee now known today. The building, which initially covered 15,000 square feet of prime real estate, boasted 18 exits in order to allow the theatre to be evacuated in three minutes should an emergency occur. The theatre butted up against the now-demolished Sixth Avenue elevated train line on 53rd Street, leading to the construction of its now trademark soundproof double doors on 53rd Street.
The first film to play the Colony Theatre was The Thief of Bagdad, a silent adventure film starring Douglas Fairbanks that was freely adapted from the Middle Eastern folktale collection One Thousand and One Nights. The film was such a success that it allowed Moss to install an automated air-cooling system, making the Colony one of the only air conditioned theatre spaces in Midtown. In 1927, Moss decided to leave the vaudeville business, steadily selling off all of his theatres except the Colony.
1928 proved to be a banner year for the Colony, beginning its life as a movie house with a bang: On November 18, 1928, Disney's Steamboat Willie animated cartoon premiered at the theatre, making the first time a Mickey Mouse cartoon was released to the public.
Said Variety in its review of the premiere, "Giggles came so fast at the Colony they were stumbling over each other. It's a peach of a synchronization job all the way, bright, snappy, and fit the situation perfectly. Cartoonist, Walter Disney. With most animated cartoons qualifying as a pain in the neck, it's a signal tribute to this particular one. If the same combination of talent can turn out a series as good as Steamboat Willie they should find a wide market if the interchangeability angle does not interfere."
By the end of the year, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. leased the Colony from Moss, after leaving the negotiating table several times due to the high annual rent of the massive theatre: $225,000 a year. This leasing, which also required Ziegfeld to renovate the theatre to transform it into a legitimate house, is where the name was officially changed from Colony to Broadway.
The theatre reopened December 8, 1930, barely a year after the start of the Great Depression, which had wiped out Ziegfeld's considerable fortune and decimated the entertainment industry. Moss took back control, and the first show to play the rechristened Broadway Theatre was Cole Porters' The New Yorkers. The theatre, which now boasted 2,000 seats, was the largest on Broadway—with the unfortunate side effect being the sea of empty seats were difficult to fill. While Moss publicly claimed that the theatre would only host shows with "a price scale that is within the reach of every man's pocketbook," tickets for The New Yorkers cost up to $5.50 (equivalent to $100), which was unaffordable for most people during the Great Depression. The New Yorkers closed in May 1931, leaving the theatre sitting empty.
As a hail-mary pass to save his business, Moss attempted to transform the Broadway back into a movie theatre in 1931, which failed to take off. In July 1932, he was forced to sell the theatre to Amalgamated Properties Inc, with Earl Carroll taking over the operation of the space. Briefly renamed Earl Carroll's Broadway Theatre, the theatre hosted The Earl Carroll Vanities, a controversial revue that featured Milton Berle, Helen Broderick, and Harriet Hoctor, which barely managed a run of 11 weeks. Carroll soon rid himself of the expensive theatre, and the space traded hands multiple times: Associated Artists Productions used it to host an opera series, Stanley Lawton and Gus Edwards both leased it, the Nuvo Mondo Motion Pictures Corporation tries to turn it into a destination for Italian films, and (at one point) the space was leased to the Chasebee Theatre Corporation as part of a receivership proceeding against the Prudence Company.
By the end of the tumultuous 1930s, the game of musical chairs came to an end with Lee Shubert and Clifford Fischer in the hot seat: the pair took control in December 1939, with the Shubert family buying the theatre outright in 1940.
Following the end of the Great Depression and the Shubert takeover, the Broadway was transformed into a glamorous theatrical destination. It became one of the most popular homes for transfers: shows that began life elsewhere on Broadway, but when they proved to be big enough hits that they could sell out the massive Broadway Theatre, they transferred over. Still, the theatre maintained its cinema screen as a cost-saving measure in between productions: In 1940, Walt Disney premiered Fantasia on its stage, developing his Fantasound stereo system specifically for the theatre's acoustics.
Throughout the 1940s, the Broadway hosted Rodgers and Hart's Too Many Girls, the Irving Berlin musical This Is The Army, a season of productions from the New Opera Company, the comedy My Sister Eileen, the psychological musical Lady in the Dark, the operetta The Student Prince, Billy Rose's Carmen Jones, and the San Carlo Opera Company. In 1943, the Shubert family's Trebuhs Realty Company formally acquired the Broadway, and it has remained in that organization's control ever since.
Following World War II, the Broadway went through some growing pains as the Shuberts experimented with what productions played best in the massive house. Both Shakespeare's The Tempest and the splashy musical Memphis Bound! had brief runs in 1945. The next year, the Shuberts tried out the operetta Song of Norway and the play A Flag Is Born, as well as a season of ballet and Duke Ellington and John La Touche's musical Beggar's Holiday. Their consensus? The bigger the musical, the better. Unfortunately, their decision came too late, and the venue again changed its focus from stage to screen in an attempt to gather profits.
In 1947, United Artists leased the Broadway for $5,000 a week for one year. Operating as a bespoke movie theatre, the first film UA screened was Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux. The cinema turn proved unprofitable, as movie-palace-style theatres were becoming unpopular with consumers who wanted to sit closer to the screen. But United Artists did manage one more screening: the New York premiere of the banned film The Outlaw starring Jane Russell. The film, which remains one of Howard Hughes' most famous, was banned for obscenity due to Russell's striking sexuality in the film: Its premiere at the Broadway was a significant blow against the early establishment of the Hays Code.
By 1948, the theatre had returned to legitimate use when The Cradle Will Rock relocated to the venue. That was followed by a limited repertory engagement by the Habimah Players (a three-week concert series), and a transfer of Jerome Robbins' High Button Shoes. The Katherine Dunham Company performed at the Broadway in 1950, followed by a then-rarity for the Broadway: the original production of Olsen and Johnson's musical Pardon Our French. Unfortunately, it flopped.
The Broadway turned back its focus to transfers in 1951, presenting the musical Where's Charley? and the play The Green Pastures, as well as a limited engagement of Oklahoma! Mae West's Diamond Lil had a brief run, which was followed by Kiss Me, Kate, ANTA's version of Four Saints in Three Acts, and the return of the all-Black revue Shuffle Along.
Lee Shubert leased the theatre in 1952 to Cinerama Productions, who added a wide screen in one final attempt at using the theatre as a movie house. Briefly rechristened the Cinerama Theater on September 30, 1952 with the film This Is Cinerama, the venue returned to legitimate use less than a year later with the transfer of the long-running Rodgers and Hammerstein hit South Pacific.
South Pacific locked in the Broadway's future as a legitimate house; the musical ran from 1949 to 1953. Its reputation now turned around, the Broadway hosted several live engagements in 1955, including those by dancer Antonio, the Comédie-Française, the Katherine Dunham Company, and the Azuma Kabuki Troupe. The musical Mr. Wonderful, starring Sammy Davis Jr., ran for nearly 400 performances, and the short-lived musical Shinbone Alley was soon replaced by the transfer of The Most Happy Fella, staving off the flop reputation the theatre had begun to accrue in the 1940s. The Broadway hosted another short-lived musical in 1958, The Body Beautiful—luckily, a quiet focus on dance allowed the house to again avoid the hit to their reputation: the Ballets de Paris, the Ballet Español, and the Théâtre National Populaire bolstered the Broadway's reputation for high brow entertainment.
In 1959, the Broadway was refurbished just in time for the opening of what would be their biggest hit thus far: Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim's musical Gypsy, which ran until 1961 to great fanfare and acclaim.
By the 1960s, the Broadway was well on its way to esteem, blending musical theatre and high-class entertainment throughout the season. American Ballet Theatre and the Martha Graham Company performed at the venue before the musical Tovarich with Vivien Leigh and Jean-Pierre Aumont opened in 1963, as did the Obratsov Russian Puppet Theatre and the Noël Coward musical The Girl Who Came to Supper. The Broadway then hosted the Folies Bergère, and the revue Zizi with Zizi Jeanmaire in 1964.
Their next musical, Hal Prince's Sherlock Holmes-inspired Baker Street, was not as much of a success as expected, but the play The Devils picked up the slack, followed the next year by another musical, A Time for Singing. Lincoln Center Theater's production of Annie Get Your Gun moved to the Broadway in September 1966. It was quickly followed for the transfer of musical Funny Girl at the end of the year. The Harkness Ballet performed at the Broadway for three weeks in late 1967, and the Kander and Ebb musical The Happy Time ran for 286 performances in 1968. This was followed by transfers of the musicals Cabaret and Mame, finishing out the decade on what should have been a high.
Unfortunately, the Shuberts did not agree. In late 1969, the Shuberts proposed razing the theatre in order to construct a skyscraper with a new, smaller theatre at its base. The project, which would have used a zoning bonus that allowed office-building developers to erect theatres in exchange for additional office space, was approved, and plans for a 43-story building was drawn up—containing a three-level, 1,800-seat theatre as well as a shopping arcade. In 1971, the plan was abandoned, and the Shuberts briefly took their hands off the wheel with the space, turning their focus to their other theatres while the Broadway continued to operate as usual, hosting a blend of musical transfers and mixed-success originals. The musical Purlie opened at the Broadway in March 1970, and was soon followed by Fiddler on the Roof, which transferred to the Broadway just in time to become that era's longest-running Main Stem show (it ran eight years on Broadway, two of it at the Broadway Theatre).
The theatre hosted the 26th Tony Awards in April 1972, and was renovated later that summer in preparation for the musical Dude, which only lasted for two weeks.
The Chelsea Theater Center's version of the operetta Candide opened in March 1974, and ran for close to two years, the theatre's capacity was reduced to 900 seats to accommodate the production. July 1976 saw a revival of the musical Guys and Dolls with an all-Black cast. Soon after, The Wiz, moved in, and stayed for one-and-a-half years. The musical I Remember Mama had been announced for the Broadway, but it was relocated last minute to make way for the musical Saravà, which opened in March 1979 and flopped after four months. Thankfully, Hal Prince was just around the corner: the legendary director-producer was fond of the Broadway, and with the theatre suddenly available after Saravà's failure, he seized the opportunity to place his new project in the space: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita, which lasted from 1979 to 1983.
Following Evita, the Shuberts again fussed with the zoning permits for the theatre, looking to sell adjacent land without demolishing the theatre itself. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) intervened as it was considering protecting the Broadway as a landmark. In 1982, the city government enacted a law providing zoning bonuses for large new buildings in West Midtown. Following the rezoning (that didn't touch the footprint of the theatre itself), the Shubert Organization leased the Broadway's neighboring 40,000-square-foot site to the Rudin Organization, who constructed the 1675 Broadway office building.
Inside the theatre, the musical Zorba with Anthony Quinn opened, which was followed in 1984 by the musical The Three Musketeers, which only lasted nine performances. In 1985, the Broadway hosted a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I, marking the last Broadway appearance of Yul Brynner.
In 1986, before the theatre could fall until the LPC's protection, The Shuberts renovated the Broadway's interior, and began plans for a massive renovation of the theatre's exterior. The next year, Les Misérables opened at the Broadway.
While the LPC commenced a wide-ranging effort to grant landmark status to Broadway theatres in 1987, the Broadway was among the few theatres for which the LPC denied a landmark status. This made it the only Shubert theatre that was not designated as a landmark, meaning any stylistic adjustments they wished to make to their fleet of theatres could only happen at the Broadway.
In 1990, the exterior renovation was completed: gone was the Italian brick and terra cotta, in was a starkly modern facade made of polished granite and metal. Monolithic, the current exterior renders the space in deep-green and greenish-gray hues, with an art-deco inspired marquee drawing attention to when the block turns from office space into theatre. Following these renovations, the theatre was locked in at approximately 1,763 seats across two levels, dipping the venue just barely below the Gershwin as the second-largest theatre in the Theatre District.
The first show to play the Broadway following the renovation was Miss Saigon, which ran for almost a decade through January 2001. Following Miss Saigon, a number of varied productions descended, including Blast!, the Emmy-winning Robin Williams: Live on Broadway comedy show, the opera La Bohème, John Leguizamo's one-man show Sexaholix, the South Asian musical Bombay Dreams, and the musical adaptation of The Color Purple. The acrobatic show Cirque Dreams had a limited run at the Broadway in 2008, before Shrek The Musical took over, running for two years.
The 2010s was a slightly rocky decade for the theatre: the revival of musical Promises, Promises ran for less than 300 performances, but the musical Sister Act fared somewhat better, with 561 performances. Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons performed at the Broadway in late 2012 before making way for Douglas Carter Beane's version of Cinderella, which became the theatres biggest hit of the decade, running for almost two years. Doctor Zhivago had a short-lived run in mid-2015, but a revival of Fiddler on the Roof proved more successful, opening at the end of 2015 and running for a full year. Miss Saigon returned to the theatre in a revival, running for 10 months. But the decade went out with a whimper, hosting the Rocktopia rock concert and the wonderful-yet-short-lived musical King Kong.
In 2020, the Broadway hosted a revival of West Side Story before the COVID-19 shutdown closed the production permanently. The theatre reopened on April 11, 2022, with the musical The Little Prince, which ran for one month. That production was to have been followed by a series of concerts performed by rock band Weezer, but the concerts were canceled due to poor ticket sales.
The musical Here Lies Love transformed the interior of the theatre in July 2023, but closed after four months. It seems, however, that the Broadway has finally found its hit for the decade: A musical adaptation of The Great Gatsby opened at the Broadway in April 2024, and the production shows no signs of slowing down, although only time will tell if the musical can survive without its two original stars, Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada.
Happy birthday Broadway! May the next 100 years be even more inventive.
