VINTAGE THEATRE CATALOGS: Souvenir program books from "Oliver!" (B'way 1963), "This is Cinerama" (1952) and the Radio City Music Hall (1968).

OLIVER!

The 1963 Oliver! was the first West End musical transplant to become a hit on Broadway and also the first to feature a vista scene changes in large scale, with a revolving unit set by the visionary Sean Kenny.

Georgia Brown (Nancy) and Bruce Prochnik (Oliver).

Two principal players went on to further fame and fortune: Davy Jones later of the Monkees and Barry Humphries later of Dame Edna.

The play opened in January, 1963 at the Imperial Theatre and ran 774 performances. Davy Jones then toured with the National (left), while a bus and truck played smaller towns like Atlanta.

Originally condemned in New York as "a poperetta," Oliver! has outlived its critics.

CINERAMA

Cinerama, like IMAX, was a film process that required a special theatre. It utilized three 35MM projectors, each in its own booth, with a fourth film machine to reproduce the seven audio channels from magnetic stripes. The curvature of the ribboned picture sheet was almost 150 degrees with an aspect ratio of 2.65.

In 1962 "How the West Was Won" opened at the Capitol Theatre in Times Square and at Atlanta's Martin's Cinerama, formerly the Tower Theatre. "How the West was Won" was the last picture filmed in the Cinerama three-strip process. Later big screen features such as "Mad Mad Mad World" and "2001" were shot in Ultra Panavison and projected from a single 70MM machine.

The original offering "This is Cinerama" opened at the Broadway Theatre in New York in 1952 and played the Roxy in Atlanta four years later.

RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL (1968)

For almost fifty years, Radio City operated as a super-deluxe presentation house, presenting a first run picture and a fifty minute stage show, four times a day. This souvenir program book was penned by Ben Hall, shown here at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, his home town.