Along with the almost-complete disappearance of palace-sized movie theatres with balconies over the last 30 years is the abandonment of super-sized, building-mounted promotional art. We still have the huge billboard posters along L.A.’s Sunset Strip and along 42nd Street between Eighth Avenue and Times Square, but it’s really a shame that today’s moviegoers will never know the visceral thrill of standing before flamboyantly large movie promotions attached to big marquees (or building walls above marquees) that were common in Times Square until the mid ’60s. They had a real Collossus of Rhodes-type aura. What’s life without a little grandeur?
Wall art for the 1943 Kismet atop the Astor in Times Square.
