Dragonwyck at the Roxy

The Roxy, built in 1927 as the “cathedral of motion pictures” with about 6,000 seats, was the premier movie palace in Manhattan for five years, until Radio City Music Hall stole its thunder, as well as its creative team and much of its audience. In the opinion of some, it was the most magnificent theater of all, a Spanish baroque extravaganza. After the opening of the Radio City Music Hall, the Roxy had gone into decline finding it difficult to book top movie attractions. In the 1930s, Twentieth Century Fox took over ownership and made it their New York City flagship. Unfortunately, in the opinion of some, they also modernized the interior.

The Roxy had a big hit with Fox's DRAGONWYCK, a Gothic romance starring Gene Tierney and Vincent Price. If the critics were to be believed, it also had the best stage show of the movie palaces that week. The reviewer for Variety said audience members were dabbing their eyes from laughing at the jokes of Jackie Miles, a top stand-up comedian of the day. who did bits about a horse player, comic strips, a finance company, taxes and the movies. The reviewers praised the overall production value of the show, particularly the costumes and sets of the opening number set in the Gay '90s, which drew applause even before the show began. Paul Villard provided narration to the number, a la "Our Town." The Buccaneers, a male sextet, joined by a chorus sang. This led into a modern ballet version of "Frankie and Johnny" by Lee Sherman, a recently discharged Brooklyn boy. Billboard called it "brilliant and exciting." The Lane Brothers, a rope skipping knockabout vaudeville acrobatic act, followed.

The special guest attraction was Connee Boswell, a white Southerner whose jazz vocal styling influenced many other singers, including Ella Fitzgerald. Miss Boswell, one of the Boswell Sisters before going solo in 1936, had contracted polio when she was three. She performed from a wheelchair raised up on a platform and covered by a gown designed to make it appear as if she were standing. Billboard said she was "brought out in good taste" She sang two hits of the day, "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief" and "Personality" Variety said she looked “pert” and hit “the bell solidly” despite little help from the house band, which seemed to have trouble staying on beat. Billboard thought "neither song did too well" but that she finished off with bang with a dramatic rendition of "What is America to Me?" After her set she concluded the show by leading the audience in a sing-along, a Roxy tradition. Here she is in a 1942 movie singing "Falling Star." There are other other clips at YouTube.

"Dragonwyck" had opened to some hilariously derisive reviews among the praise and huge box office the week before. John McCarten in The New Yorker found the villain’s habit of dispatching unwanted wives by feeding them azaleas, particularly amusing. The movie was based on Anya Seton’s best-selling Gothic romance, a popular genre in 1940s movies as well as in novels. It was set, as the genre demanded, in a gloomy manor house, but in this case the old dark manse was located along the Hudson River rather than on the English moors. The time was 1844 when the semi-feudal system by which the patroons of upstate New York ran their vast estates was under attack by the forces of democracy, or so Miss Seton, who prided herself in her extensive historical research, would have it. But it was the creaky floorboards, ominous shadows and the locked tower room and not the history lesson that most interested the crowd of moviegoers.

The movie had solid A picture credentials. It was produced by Ernst Lubitsch who originally was to direct until he fell ill. It reteamed Brooklyn-born Gene Tierney with Vincent Price, one of her co-stars in both the 1944 smash hit “Laura” and “Leave Her to Heaven,” a big Christmastime hit that had won the actress an Oscar nomination. Joseph L. Mankiewicz wrote the screenplay and took over as director, his first time out at the helm. Seton had a new novel on the best-seller list that week, The Turquoise, another historical romance, this time set in old Santa Fe.

In “Dragonwyck,” Tierney played an innocent, religious farm girl who comes to the grand home of a distant relative to serve as governess and becomes infatuated with the brooding, mysterious lord of the manor, a morphine addict and, even worse, an atheist, played in all his malevolent glory by Price. Before Lubitsch pulled out, Gregory Peck was to have played the male lead, a far more likely candidate for Tierney’s romantic attraction than the sneering Price. The supporting cast included handsome Glenn Langan, being groomed by the studio for leading man roles, and character actors Walter Huston, Jessica Tandy, Anne Revere and Spring Byington.

The movie had press supporters. According to the ad that ran in The New York Times on Sunday April 14, Kate Cameron of the Daily News thought the movie was “Absorbing! Beautiful! Rich! Arresting!” "Kate Cameron" was actually a pen name that had been inherited by Loretta King, sister of the wife of Daily News founder Joseph Patterson, when she took over the position of lead film critic at the paper. A notorious soft touch for Hollywood A pictures, apparently she wrote mostly in adjectives and exclamation marks, or so the ad copywriter would have us believe. Lee Mortimer, the critic for the competing Hearst tabloid, the Daily Mirror, is quoted as saying the movie was "one of the most startling and sensational pictures of this or any year," which could mean just about anything. Whatever the press reaction, “Dragonwyck” was a hit, almost matching the record box office pace set at the theater by “Leave Her to Heaven.” It was also the number one movie for the month at the national box office according to Variety. It is out on DVD and plays now and then on television. Here is one of several scenes available at TCM.