This rare April 1956 photo features the Loews State Theatre in Times Square during the original U.S. theatrical run of Godzilla, King of the Monsters! Because the 1954 original Godzilla film wasn’t released in U.S. movie theaters during its initial release, this New York City run marked the first-ever theatrical release for any Godzilla movie in America.

Across the street, the Holiday Theatre still has the banner for the failed Tom Helmore, Inger Stevens play Debut, which had an abbreviated five performance run from February 22nd to 25th of that same year.

The iconic kaiju film Godzilla, King of the Monsters! was directed by Terry O. Morse and Ishirō Honda. The movie is a heavily re-edited American localization of the 1954 Japanese original. The film was a Japanese-American co-production, with the original footage produced by Toho, along with additional footage produced by Jewell Enterprises. Godzilla, King of the Monsters! stars Raymond Burr, Takashi Shimura, Momoko Kōchi, Akira Takarada, and Akihiko Hirata, with Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka as Godzilla. In the film, Burr plays an American reporter covering a giant reptilian monster’s attack on Japan.

The new footage for the movie was produced with Burr interacting with body doubles and Japanese-American actors in an attempt to make it seem like Burr was part of the original Japanese production.

The play Debut was written by Mary Drayton and based on the novel “Maria and the Captain” by Isabel Dunn. Directed by John Gerstad, actress Inger Stevens made her debut in the production, after gaining experience performing in summer stock and television.

The play proved to be a flop but Inger had a sense of humor about the experience. She was quoted as stating “I was on Broadway for six months without actually being there. I opened in a play at the Holiday Theatre called Debut. It lasted four days and was a dismal failure. The theatre closed, but my name remained in lights on the marquee until the theatre reopened six months later.”

Holiday Theatre, located at 1567 Broadway near 47th Street, was renamed the Odeon Theatre in 1958, when it resumed showing movies, which it had prior to the facility being called the Holiday. In 1975 it was again renamed the Forum 47th Street Theatre, and five years later in 1980 the theater was re-christened again for the last time, as the Movieland.

Sources: ingerstevens.blogspot.com, en.wikipedia.org, ibdb.com