Lunt-Fontanne Theatre - NYC, NY, USA
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Ariberna
N 40° 45.550 W 073° 59.179
18T E 585562 N 4512517
Built in 1910 as the Globe and renamed the Lunt-Fontanne in 1958 in honor of the famed acting couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, this handsome theatre is now owned by the Nederlander Organization.
Waymark Code: WM17R1E
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 03/26/2023
Views: 3
"The house’s most recent productions have been Kristin Chenoweth’s concert My Love Letter to Broadway; Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons on Broadway; Finding Neverland; Motown: The Musical; A Christmas Story: The Musical; Ghost: The Musical; The Addams Family; and Disney’s The Little Mermaid and the long-running Beauty and the Beast (5,461 performances), which moved here from the Palace in 1999.
The 1990s saw Titanic; The Three Sisters; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Hello, Dolly!; Comedy Tonight; The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public; Ain’t Broadway Grand; Catskills on Broadway; and Peter Pan. The 1980s had Sting in The 3 Penny Opera; The Gospel at Colonus; Smile; Uptown … It’s Hot!; Peggy Lee in Peg; Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Private Lives; Sophisticated Ladies; and Sandy Duncan in Peter Pan.
The ’70s found a series of award-winning and popular musicals: The Rothschilds, with Tony Awards for Hal Linden and Keene Curtis; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers (1972); The Pajama Game (1973); My Fair Lady (a transfer from the St. James Theatre); and Carol Channing back again in Hello, Dolly! (1978). During these years there was also the musical Rex, starring Nicol Williamson.
In the 1960s, Sid Caesar shined in the Neil Simon (book), Cy Coleman (music), and Carolyn Leigh (lyrics) musical Little Me, with Bob Fosse winning a Tony Award for his choreography; Martha Graham and her dance company performed; Richard Burton played Hamlet and Hume Cronyn won a Tony as Polonius; Julie Harris went musical in Skyscraper; Norman Wisdom amused in Walking Happy; Marlene Dietrich made a dazzling Broadway debut in concert, backed by Burt Bacharach and his orchestra;How Now, Dow Jones won a Tony for Hiram Sherman; Leslie Uggams played Cleopatra in the musical Her First Roman; and Nicol Williamson also took on Hamlet.
From mid-1932 until 1957, this theatre was a movie house with its entrance on Broadway. In 1958, Roger Stevens and Robert W. Dowling restored the house to legitimacy and returned the entrance to its original 46th Street location. The gala reopening of the theatre starred the Lunts in their final appearance on Broadway, in The Visit. Shortly after, Mary Martin moved in with The Sound of Music, which won five Tonys.
The last musical to play this theatre before it became a movie house in 1932 was Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach’s delightful The Cat and the Fiddle. Before that, Beatrice Lillie had cavorted in Vincent Youmans’s Oh, Please.
In the early years of this house, the comedy team of Dave Montgomery and Fred Stone starred in many hit musicals: The Ziegfeld Follies of 1921 starred W.C. Fields and Fanny Brice, who sang “My Man” and “Second Hand Rose”; and two editions of George White’s Scandals with Gershwin scores opened here."
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