A Mighty High-Kicking Comeback

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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.