The Paramount Theatre opened on November 19, 1926, with the gala premiere of
Herbert Brenon's
God Gave Me Twenty Cents, with guests including Mayor
Jimmy Walker,
Thomas Edison,
Will H. Hays and
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. as guests. The stage gala was produced by
John Murray Anderson. The theater housed one of the largest and most admired
theater organs built by the
Wurlitzer company. Designed for the famous organist
Jesse Crawford, the organ was used for solos and to accompany silent films. The organ had 36 ranks of voiced metal and wooden pipes weighing a total of 33 tons. Crawford, who advised on the construction and installation of the organ, was the theater's featured organist from the 1926 opening until 1933. The organ continued to be played intermittently throughout the Paramount's history by
George Wright and other noted organists. In 1959, a recording of
Richard Leibert playing the Wurlitzer organ,
Sing a Song with Leibert, was produced by
Westminster Records. The murals in the theater's dome, Grand Hall and Elizabethan Room were painted by the Chicago-based artist
Louis Grell. Grell was noted for murals that he painted in the 1920s and 1930s in many
Rapp and Rapp-designed theaters in the Paramount-Publix chain. The Paramount began hosting live music along with its feature films as the
swing era got underway.
Glen Gray's orchestra was the first live band to play there during the week of Christmas 1935. Over the following years, the Paramount became the leading band house in the United States, as performers such as
Benny Goodman,
Jack Benny,
Tommy Dorsey, the
Andrews Sisters,
Ray Herbeck,
Harry James,
Phil Spitalny,
Xavier Cugat,
Fred Waring,
Eddy Duchin,
Gene Krupa,
Augusto Brandt,
Bill Kenny &
The Ink Spots,
Glenn Miller, and
Guy Lombardo played extended runs there. The use of the Paramount by the
big bands was immortalized in
Barry Manilow's 1994 song "
Singin' with the Big Bands" from the album of the same name.
Leo Fuld,
Billy Eckstine,
Perry Como,
Frank Sinatra,
Dean Martin and
Jerry Lewis all enjoyed success performing there. With the theater spin off in 1950, Paramount Pictures rented the theater to
United Paramount Theatres. Also,
Buddy Holly & The Crickets performed "
Peggy Sue" there after becoming a big hit. The last showing under United Paramount Theatre (UPT) ownership was
The Carpetbaggers. The theater closed on August 4, 1964, under UPT ownership, only to be reopened one month later on September 4, owned by Webb and Knapp.
The Beatles 1964 United States summer tour concluded there with a charity concert for Cerebral Palsy on September 20. On February 21, 1966 after a run of the James Bond film,
Thunderball, the Paramount was closed for good and later gutted and turned into retail and office space for
The New York Times. The entrance arch was closed in and the marquee removed. There was no trace of the theater remaining, but in 1999, a large section of the Broadway office building was leased by
World Wrestling Federation (WWF), which recreated the famous arch and marquee (with the Paramount logo restored) and developed the space into
WWF New York, a themed club and restaurant, though after
a legal battle with the
World Wildlife Fund in 2002, the complex was renamed The World. The
WWE operation closed in 2003, and the location then became home to the
Hard Rock Cafe, relocated from its previous home on 57th Street. The Paramount's
Wurlitzer organ was removed prior to the theater's demolition and installed in the
Century II Convention Hall in
Wichita, Kansas in 1968. The organ continues to be used today for concerts and other events. File:"Paramount Building" "Times Square New York City" ad in Motion Picture News (March 6, 1926 to April 24, 1926) (page 622 crop).jpg|Advertisement for the Paramount Building, with the Paramount Theatre behind at left (April 17, 1926) File:Mina Edison and Thomas Edison at the opening of the Paramount Theatre. (4736c0d437e543b28c9190bd15db5839).jpg|Mina and
Thomas Edison at the opening of the Paramount Theatre (November 19, 1926) File:JesseCrawford-Wurlitzer.jpg|
Jesse Crawford at the Wurlitzer ==See also==