SEDUCED ON 42ND ST.
I don’t know who writer Susanne C. Stahley’s sources were (“Seedy N.Y. Setting Suits Latest ‘Vanya,’ ” Film Clips, Nov. 6), but I can definitely tell you that the great New Amsterdam Theater on New York’s 42nd Street was not “abandoned for 40 years.”
As a young actor-writer in the late ‘50s, I was privileged to spend many an evening in that moldering heap watching a steady stream of reissues of some of the greatest films ever made.
One rainy night, while standing adjacent to the box office, awaiting a taxi, I glanced upon a piece of peeling papier-mache, and the gorgeous marble it was covering, and it suddenly hit me: “Good lord! This must be Ziegfeld’s famed theater--the place where Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, Marilyn Miller, Will Rogers and his other stars came to give the midnight shows in the Amsterdam Roof Theater.”
And if she did go on to become a porno house, it was well after my acquaintance with her. All hail the Disney Co. for planning to restore her to her true glory; I and her other fans will rejoice on the day that comes to pass.
DICK SHEPPARD
Los Angeles
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