The Marine Theater

The ushers hustled everyone to their seats. They wore the Jones Beach State Park uniform.  Blue and white.  There were seahorse emblems on their hats and epaulets.

Limousines were parked in their special lot while VIP guests ate 5 star meals in the dining room. Soon they would be whisked to their special box seats right up front with each box manned by an attendant to bring food and drink at their whim.

Guy Lambardo’s Royal Canadians were warming up in the orchestra pit on the audience side of the moat. They were the house orchestra for the lineup of Broadway shows produced especially for Jones Beach Marine Theater. This beautiful outdoor venue, overlooking the Atlantic on Long Island’s southern shore. These were not travelling shows, these were dedicated productions starring the biggest names in musical theater.  The orchestra finished warming up and petered out.  Then the house lights began to dim almost imperceptibly, and there was the unmistakable hum of outboard motors as the ramps between the stage and the shore were retracted from the moat.

Suddenly the orchestra launched into a fanfare. Backstage, someone dialed a rheostat and the houselights dropped to zero. The only lighting was from the stand lights in the orchestra pit and navigation lights out in the bay.  Suddenly there is the roar of twin marine diesels at full power.  A carbon arc light makes a show of  searching the water until it lands on a speeding wooden Chris Craft runabout.  Guy Lambardo is at the helm and he comes to a dramatic stop right in front of the conductors box.  He hops out of the boat and onto the stage and immediately he strikes up the Star Spangled Banner.

The shock and awe complete, the spotlight flicks off and the Orchestra begins the overture. Carousel.  A show set on the seashore. And this was what it was like to see a show at the Jones Beach Marine Theater.  And this was a State Park, one of the finest in the world, which is just as Robert Moses had intended.  People will rave about Radio City Music Hall,  but in its day, Radio City was just another big art deco theater in a city that was full of big art deco theaters. The Marine Theater was something totally unique.

It still operates today as a concert venue.  The moat has been filled in with seats and the VIP dining rooms are gone.  It is undoubtedly an amazing venue for an outdoor concert,  situated on that bay next to the Atlantic. It was built with depression era recovery money. Built for no other reason than to entertain people, and more than a little vanity on the part of Moses. Like Hoover Dam and so may other great works, it put people to work and left an enduring legacy.  

I was privileged to be able to experience it as it was originally intended.

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