re: Arkansas and the SEC: Champions of innovation

quote:

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Radio City Music Hall (Edward Durell Stone, PhDFA '51)

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When the stock market crashed in 1929, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. held a $91 million, 24-year lease on a piece of midtown Manhattan property properly known as "the speakeasy belt." He decided to build an entire complex of buildings on the property-buildings so superior that they would attract commercial tenants even in a depressed city flooded with vacant rental space.

The search for a commercial partner led to the Radio Corporation of America, a young company whose NBC radio programs were attracting huge audiences and whose RKO studios were producing and distributing popular motion pictures that offered welcome diversion in hard times. Rockefeller's financial power and RCA's media might were joined by the unusual talents of impresario S.L. "Roxy" Rothafel.

Since 1933 more than 700 movies have opened here. They include the original King Kong; National Velvet, the film that secured Elizabeth Taylor's hold on the silver screen; White Christmas; Mame; Breakfast at Tiffany's; To Kill a Mockingbird, starring former Radio City usher, Gregory Peck; Mary Poppins; 101 Dalmatians; and The Lion King.