Tune-Out for Radio City?

Radio City Music Hall is New York's answer to the Grand Canyon. Everything about it is superlative, including its attraction for tourists, especially at Easter and Christmas. It is the biggest indoor theater in the world, with 6,000 seats, a mammoth 70 ft. by 35 ft. movie screen, and a stage almost big enough for a football game. When the giant organ bellows The Stars and Stripes Forever, dogs, it is claimed, begin howling in Paramus, N.J. For 40 years through wars, depressions and even a strike of its 46 Rockettes, the Music Hall has never closed its doors. Last week, however, because of a dispute with its musicians, the theater was dark for two days. Even though it reopened, rumors abounded that there was still trouble ahead.

The Music Hall's problem is, of course, economic. The stage show is perhaps the best entertainment bargain in town; for as little as $2, a patron has been able to see low-kitsch ballet, precision numbers by the Rockettes, a magic show, an occasional elephant, horses and giant fountain displays. While Rockefeller Center, which owns the theater, is now giving it a $1,000,000 annual subsidy, the money does not make up for a marked drop in attendance over the last two decades. In its peak years in the '40s, the Music Hall attracted 12 million visitors a year, a number which had fallen off to 5,000,000 by 1969 and is now down to 4,000,000. Though the lines outside the box office can still stretch as far as three-quarters of a mile during holidays, week days and nights find the cavernous hall only 10% filled.

No Strike. Though there was not an actual strike last week, management abruptly closed the hall after the musicians' union refused to accept its contract offer. Salaries were a secondary issue. What the musicians objected to was management's cost-cutting plan to get by, when members were away or sick, with a smaller orchestra. Mayor John Lindsay, distressed at the possibility of losing one of the city's biggest tourist attractions, called both sides to meet with him, and the hall reopened.

Though the management firmly denies it, it seems possible that after the Christmas rush, there may be major changes at the hall, perhaps even a subdivision of the '30s Art Deco auditorium into smaller theaters. Barring that, there might have to be a revision in programs. "The kind of family-oriented films we are dedicated to playing are becoming more difficult to find," explains the Music Hall's President Jack Gould. To a generation raised on relatively sophisticated TV variety shows, the dance routines seem simply cornball. Admitted a dancer last week: "Some of the things we have to do are so old-fashioned that we can hear the audience laughing at us." The Bob Hope movie last week was perhaps prophetic. Title: Cancel My Reservation.

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