A Mighty High-Kicking Comeback

By John Greenwald.

It was a dream palace, an exuberant art deco fantasy, but year after year fewer people came. Despite its exalted status as a temple of family entertainment and the "Showplace of the Nation," Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall would have closed if a few changes had not been made. And what changes they were! Where Snow White once graced the screen, Madonna has become a queen of the stage. In the hall where the movie King Kong premiered, the closest thing to a horror show these days is a concert by the shockrock group Twisted Sister. In addition to the high-kicking Rockettes (who still show up from time to time), audiences are now treated to sights such as 12-ft. dancing mummies and walls of flame.

The jarring transformation worked, and the people came back. Radio City Music Hall Productions revealed last week that it earned $2.5 million in 1985, the first annual profit for the world's largest indoor theater since 1955. Said Richard Evans, chairman of the company and chief architect of the comeback: "Call it the Miracle on Sixth Avenue or whatever, but the Music Hall is again the vibrant, healthy entertainment center that it once was."

After taking charge of the Music Hall in 1980, Evans quickly dropped traditional family entertainment in favor of more contemporary fare, from bacchanalian rock concerts by the likes of Iron Maiden and Adam Ant to comedy acts featuring such stars as Bill Cosby and Eddie Murphy. Evans also brought in a few old reliables, including Johnny Mathis and Liberace, who broke box- office records last year by filling the 6,000-seat auditorium for 21 performances. At the same time, Evans has turned the Music Hall into an entertainment conglomerate that sponsors concerts elsewhere, produces plays and TV specials, and stages sales meetings and gala product introductions for major corporations.

The live performances, which form the core of the theater's new format, represent a return to the Music Hall's earliest days. Those who attended the opening night on Dec. 27, 1932, saw 17 acts, including Ray Bolger, Martha Graham and the Flying Wallendas. But Depression-era audiences were eager for the escapism that Hollywood films provided, and the house soon became famous for world movie premieres.

By the 1940s the Music Hall was the most popular entertainment attraction in Manhattan. Both New Yorkers and tourists waited hours for tickets to the opening of such postwar films as Mister Roberts, An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain. Along with the movie, they saw the Rockettes, the troupe of 36 dancers who remain the living symbols of the hall.

But suburban theaters and the public's desire for something racier than family fare gradually drove attendance down. It fell from 5 million a year in 1967 to less than 2 million a decade later. By 1978 Rockefeller Center, the Music Hall's owner, planned to close it for good. That prompted a nationwide outcry that led New York City to designate the interior a landmark that had to be preserved. After a $2.5 million renovation that restored the original appearance of everything from the 24-karat gold-leaf ceiling to the murals in the bathrooms, the Music Hall reopened on May 31, 1979.

Evans, now 41, arrived a year later brimming with ideas. He had been president of Leisure General, an Atlanta-based company that specialized in rescuing ailing recreation firms. He recalls: "One of my concerns when I first got here was that for 48 years you had to be Snow White to get on the Radio City Music Hall stage. I felt that to keep the Music Hall vital and viable, we would have to appeal to a variety of audiences." He began with a flourish by booking the Grateful Dead, a legendary rock group, for eight sold- out performances.

The concert business, though, proved difficult to penetrate. Few bands or singers saw the venerable theater as a desirable place to play, and some managers even refused to return telephone calls. That forced Scott Sanders, $ head of the concert division, to crisscross the country in an effort to drum up acts. "It wasn't easy sailing at first," says Sanders, 29. "But what this house has that no other has is that it's Radio City Music Hall, and they don't build theaters like this anymore." Indeed, the hall now accounts for more than half of all concert tickets sold in the New York City area. The 120 performances booked last year were, on average, 97% sold out.

Some acts can change the character of the theater and its surroundings. Neighboring office workers were startled last year to find the streets packed with Wanna Be's--teenage Madonna look-alikes--when the singer appeared. Inside the auditorium, guards had to tackle one ardent fan and drag him from the stage. Yet the glittering hall is not the worse for rock fandom's wear. To help keep it that way, audience members have been asked to check their leather-and-chrome-sp iked wristbands at the door.

Big-name acts are just some of the spectaculars that the Music Hall stages. Its annual Christmas show, which played 119 performances last year, featured a "living Nativity" scene that included three camels, two donkeys and five sheep. Last month the theater joined others in Washington and Atlanta in a televised birthday tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. The TV division also produces such specials as the annual MTV Video Awards, at which rock videos are honored, and the Night of 100 Stars series, which featured some 300 performers when the second installment aired last year to benefit the Actors' Fund of America.

Evans has mimicked a strategy used by the Olympic Games and signed up sponsors who last year paid a total of $750,000 for the right to link their names to the hall. American Airlines, for example, is the official domestic airline of Radio City, while Coca-Cola is its designated soft drink. The list of sponsors also includes Chevrolet, New York's Westin Plaza Hotel and even L'eggs, which has been named the official purveyor of panty hose to the Rockettes.

Crowds of out-of-towners have long taken tours of Radio City to marvel at its magnificence. Says Evans: "The Music Hall ranks with the Statue of Liberty and the United Nations as a must-see attraction." Thanks to his savvy choice of entertainers, more and more tourists and New Yorkers alike are coming to see the show.

With reporting by Jane Van Tassel/New York