Times Square featured theaters that ran major dramas and musicals, and had first-run movie theaters, before WWII. Afterward it started a steep decline into sex, sleaze and cheap restaurants and bars. Like much of the rest of NYC it hit bottom in the late Seventies and Eighties. Guiliani did help clean it up, and Disney made a major investment in the area. It's safer and cleaner now, but not as, uh, colorful.