October, 2007
A New York State of Mind
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I hope you will indulge me if I veer off the specific topic of movies for this journal entry.
It’s odd to feel like a tourist in your own hometown, but that’s exactly how my wife and I felt in early October when we made our first trip to New York City together in five years. Every now and then Entertainment Tonight sends me there for a press junket and I try to cram as much as I can into 24 hours or less, but this was an actual vacation week and it was wonderful. (I deliberately didn’t want to do any business on this trip.)
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We began the week by taking in the late show of Les Paul and his Trio at Iridium on Broadway. The 92-year-old guitar guru and musician has been holding forth at this club for more than a decade, but bookings have shot up since the airing of a PBS American Masters special last month, so we felt lucky to get in. He puts on a very entertaining show, and allows for spontaneity. The evening we were there someone told him Celeste Holm was in the audience and he recalled having dated her in Chicago “a hundred years ago.” He urged her to do a song, and from the audience, in her now-whispery voice, she obliged with “You Make Me Feel So Young,” aided and abetted by her husband Frank Basile. I think everyone in the audience felt very lucky to be there on that particular evening.
One of the constants in my experience of living in, and now visiting, New York is that I always seem to run into people. The next day, while walking on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village (having just had lunch at my favorite restaurant in the world, John’s Pizza) I was hailed by my old friend Eric Spilker, whom I hadn’t seen in years. I mentioned the fact that we’d seen Celeste Holm and he immediately held forth on the subject of 20th Century Fox musicals of the 1940s. Eric pointed out that although “You Make Me Feel So Young” was introduced in Three Little Girls in Blue (though not by Holm), it didn’t become a standard until Frank Sinatra revived it in the 1950s, while another song which was generously plugged in the movie, “This is Always,” never made the grade.
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I make specific mention of John’s Pizza because I find that many of the things I miss most about New York have to do with food. I’ve never tasted another pizza to compare with John’s, which comes out of a brick oven installed (like the uncomfortable wooden booths that line the place) in the 1930s. Similarly, bagels and delicatessen food don’t taste the same in Los Angeles as they do in New York, which is why we made a pilgrimage to the Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue, and also tried the new Junior’s of Brooklyn that opened last year on Shubert Alley in the heart of the theater district.
Even simple, unheralded convenience stores and delis have surprising goodies in the City. One such place next to our hotel had something I’d never seen before. I’ve always loved black-and-white cookies, although I much prefer the chocolate side to the vanilla. Well, one enterprising bakery has figured out a solution that’s so simple, I don’t know why no one thought of it before: all black and all white cookies. Genius.
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How can you tell a tourist from a native New Yorker? Tourists look up, while New Yorkers walk purposefully, usually looking down or straight ahead. We were definitely tourists, in spite of our hometown heritage. We saw the city with fresh eyes, admiring architectural details and great buildings we’d never noticed before. Having read Daniel Okrent’s fascinating book about Rockefeller Center, Great Fortune, I took special notice of the many art-deco panels and relief sculptures (like the one pictured above) that decorate those magnificent midtown buildings.
I wonder how many people who swarm through Times Square have any idea that the current home of the Hard Rock Café was once the fabled Paramount Theatre, where Frank Sinatra had the bobby-soxers swooning in the 1940s. The distinctive script lettering of Paramount remains intact above the Hard Rock marquis, as you can see. Next door at 1501 Broadway the Paramount office building remains intact, with attractive brass detailing that hints at the nature of its original tenant’s form of business. There used to be a huge bas-relief plaque of the Paramount mountain logo on the floor of this building, and when the company moved to the Gulf + Western building some years ago, a publicist named Bill Kenly, the lone film buff on the staff, made sure that the company uprooted this medallion and reinstalled it at the corporate offices uptown. I honestly don’t know if it still has a home at Paramount’s current office space on Broadway at 51st Street, but I hope it’s still there.
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Naturally, Alice and I wanted to see some shows, and quite by chance all three Broadway plays that we took in were based on popular movies, a trend that many theater purists find discouraging, just as movie lovers decry Hollywood’s reliance on sequels and remakes. Our first stop was Mary Poppins, just celebrating its first anniversary at the exquisitely-restored New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street. I had known that Poppins’ author P.L. Travers made certain in her contract with Walt Disney that, if there were ever to be a stage production, the Disney screenplay could not be used, and the stage adaptation had to be written by British authors. As it happens, I think Ms. Travers’ requirements became an advantage for the production, since it is not a mere replica of the beloved 1964 movie, but a new presentation which includes some of the most enduring songs from the film as well as newly-written material. Even the order of the songs is different, which makes it possible even for die-hard fans of the film like us to feel as if we’re experiencing something fresh. (That said, no matter how hard they try to “sell” the new song “Anything Can Happen If You Let It,” reprising it as the finale number, the curtain call reverts to "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", to the audience’s great delight. Some things simply can’t be improved upon.)
At the urging of several friends, we also saw Xanadu, a wonderfully inventive goof on the silly 1980 movie which starred Olivia Newton John and Gene Kelly. Who would have thought that such a tacky film could reemerge as a bright, funny, clever evening of theater? The show is mercifully short, at 90 minutes (without an intermission) and irresistible. It’s also nice to see Broadway veteran Tony Roberts bringing his show-business savvy to the otherwise youthful cast.
Finally, when we realized we were going to be in the city for the first previews of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, we swallowed hard, paid an absurd premium price, and went to see it. We aren’t sorry we did. Since the musical is still in previews, it would be unethical and unfair to review it here, so I won’t. Suffice it to say that I think it will be an enormous success.
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One of the things my wife and I miss most about the city is walking, even though we quickly learned that we need to rebuild our stamina. The city is booming, with construction on virtually every street and tourists speaking every conceivable language and American dialect. One of the highlights of the week for us was revisiting The Players, the Gramercy Park club founded by fabled actor Edwin Booth, who lived there in the later years of his life. (His statue stands in the center of Gramercy Park itself.) The club itself is a National Historic Landmark, and sits adjacent to the equally celebrated National Arts Club; in addition, The Players is a repository of show business history, filled with amazing portraits, busts, and
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memorabilia. The club is now sponsoring a series of lunchtime readings by eminent New York actors called Food for Thought. Since this is a rare opportunity for members of the public to visit this historic club, if you are in New York City in the coming months, I would urge you to consult the Food for Thought website.
Many of the most striking and beautiful portraits on those walls were rendered by Everett Raymond Kinstler, including two breathtaking portraits of John and Lionel Barrymore which hang over the pool table in The Grill downstairs (along with a pool cue once used by Mark Twain). Although he is celebrated as America’s foremost portrait artist, Kinstler is also a lifelong movie and theater buff, and his love of actors is clear in his work. (If you aren’t acquainted with his two recent career compendiums, My Brush with Greatness and Everett Raymond Kinstler: The Artist’s Journey Through Popular Culture 1942-1962, I urge you to acquire them. They were compiled and produced with tender loving care by Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr. are available at www.budplant.com.)
I bought and devoured those books over a year ago and felt impelled to write a fan letter to Mr. Kinstler, who responded with great enthusiasm. We’ve since become pen pals, but this was my first opportunity to meet him face-to-face. He was a protégé and friend of the great James Montgomery Flagg, one of my heroes, and hearing him talk about “Monty” is a rare treat.
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I also caught up with my old friend Gary Giddins. Gary and I started out at the Village Voice around the same time in the early 1970s, writing jazz reviews. For me it was a lark, but for Gary it was the beginning of a distinguished career. He left the Voice after thirty years and now contributes occasional jazz pieces to The New Yorker while working on various books, including the second volume of his exceptional Bing Crosby biography.
What most people don’t know is that Gary is as knowledgeable — and eloquent — on the subject of film as he is on jazz. If you don’t believe me, check out his DVD reviews in the New York Sun. Here’s a recent sample.For me, New York is still the greatest—and certainly the most stimulating—city in the world. As a nascent film buff it was a wonderful place to grow up, as I spent countless hours at the Museum of Modern Art and the leading revival theaters of the day (the New Yorker, the Thalia, and later the Regency). In my teens I practically moved into the Lincoln Center branch of the New York Public Library, with its outstanding theater and film archives. And I made lifelong friends with the film buffs who attended William K. Everson’s Theodore Huff Film Society as well as his Friday night screenings at the New School for Social Research. Even local television was a boon to movie-lovers in those days.
Now Los Angeles is home for my wife and me; our daughter was born here, and we’ve made a new life for ourselves. But having revisited Manhattan I know I shouldn’t stay away so long.
