The long-invisible Paramount Theatre, at 1501 Broadway and 43rd Street, where Frank Sinatra once had bobbysoxers swooning and Benny Goodman's big band had young adults jitterbugging in the aisles, is scheduled to reopen in November as a $25 million wrestling arena and theme restaurant.
The theatre's long-absent, bow-tie-shaped marquee that once advertised all major Paramount New York premieres from the end of the silent movie era through the rise and fall of VistaVision, will be recreated to advertise the World Wrestling Federation's bouts involving such stars as Stone Cold Steve Austin.
The W.W.F. signed a reported fire-sale $9 million deal last week with the beleaguered Planet Hollywood International, which had planned to open its own live-music theme restaurant, Sound Republic, on the fabled site. Planet Hollywood bought the five-story space in 1997 from the owners of the host Paramount Building, and had spent more than $13 million on the planned venue before running out of money.
Robert Gries, an investment banker who heads the group that will develop the W.W.F. complex, said it would also include a theatre, an interactive arcade, a large ground-floor retail, store and a bar. A cabaret might be added to the plans. He termed the site of the W.W.F. entertainment complex, on the northwest corner of West 43rd Street, "a signature property on the most trafficked corner of Times Square."
The 33-story Paramount Building, then the tallest on Broadway north of the Woolworth Building (in what is now TriBeCa), was erected in 1927 under the personal supervision of Adolph Zukor, the founder and president of Paramount Pictures. Zukor kept an office in the building until his death at age 103, in 1977. The architects were the Chicago firm of Rapp & Rapp. The art-deco building's crowning feature was its 19-foot high, 24,000-watt glass globe, surrounded by four clocks on a tower. The light went out in 1942, too visible a target during World War II, and never went on again until December, 1997, when it and four clocks were restored at a cost of $600,000 in anticipation of the Planet Hollywood re-conversion of the Paramount Theatre. The clock tower plays a few bars of George M. Cohan's "Give My Regards to Broadway" 15 minutes before curtain time at nearby Broadway theatres. There is no truth to the rumor that the carillon's tune will be replaced by "The Monster Mash" when the W.W.F. moves in.
The Paramount Theatre was closed in 1964 and converted to stores and office space. The original marquee was removed at that time.