"New York City" by Prof. Joe Dorinson and Prof. George Lankevich

NEW YORK CITY
Editor by Peter Rollins, published by Columbia University Press.
New York is America's metropolis, a quintessential urban drama where the dreams, disappointments, and dangers of life are naked and intense. Its enduring power has made the city a favorite subject for both historians and filmmakers, and images from Gotham's history fill the minds of Americans. One of the oldest cities on the continent, Manhattan offers a panorama of themes ranging from wilderness post to revolutionary sparkplug, from vibrant seaport to immigrant ghetto, from capital or the United States to core of capitalist enterprise. As we enter the new millennium, New York's position as "capital of the world" is unquestioned and the city revels in its fabled diversity. It is equally home to international bankers and street peddlers, diplomats and drug dealers, fashion models and displaced persons, the frightened newcomer and the establishment WASP.

Change is built into the very fabric of New York, a continuing process of "creative destruction" which reflects its position as the heart of capitalism. Manhattan is physically a continuous "work-in-progress," a site for architectural innovation that contains more skyscrapers than any other world metropolis. Incessant change makes New York difficult to love, because it is constantly obliterating its own heritage. Beyond such construction is the constant flow of immigration which has characterized the city for over two centuries and made it a melting pot of peoples: Germans, Irish, Jews, Italians and Slavs in the nineteenth century, Puerto Ricans, Vietnamese, Dominicans, Chinese and Russians in contemporary times. A composite so many forces, New York is unique and the endless source of fascination for historians who research its past and artists who seek its hidden dramas.

The diversity of New York demands historical analysis. More than 1100 volumes have attempted to illuminate facets of local history. Arguably, the most impressive of these studies arrive in 1995 when the Encyclopedia of New York City brought together 680 authors to write 4300 articles about the national metropolis. If a single theme emerged from their efforts it was that the infinitely complex "Big Apple" eluded comprehensive description even in a tome of 1320 pages. In 1999 Edwin G. Burrows and Mile Wallace won a Pulitzer Prize for Gotham, a text of 1236 pages which New York's story only up to1898. The authors concluded that their subject was best defined commercially where "sharp practice and money making and real estate lie somewhere near the core of New York's genetic material"(xv). Despite vast erudition and enormously length, neither of these justly acclaimed volumes exhausted their subject. The collision of dreams and reality, shifting yet constant, will no doubt provide the substance of many more studies each year.

History's inability to capture the essence New York furnished an opportunity for filmmakers who probed the "naked city" through the individual stories of its people. Film, more than words, had the ability to convey the dynamic of a "city that never sleeps." Since the American film industry was born in New York, it is only fitting that the great metropolis has been movie makers’ favorite setting throughout the twentieth century. On May 9, 1893, two years before the Lumiere Brothers thrilled Paris, Thomas Edison demonstrated his kinetoscope process to a packed audience at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. The first film showed men hammering an anvil, and then having a beer. Within a year, Charles Chinnock filmed a boxing match from a Brooklyn rooftop, and, as early as May 1895, eidoloscope shorts were being shown in Manhattan. Edison developed a portable camera so that crews could film everyday city wonders, from bucolic Central Park to elevated trains to the joys of Coney Island; hundreds of popular nickelodeons were in business by 1910. For over a century, from flickering kinetoscopes such as Around New York in 15 Minutes (1905) to modern documentaries such as The New Metropolis: A Century of Greater New York (1998) and Ric Burns’ magnificent twelve hour paean to New York (1999), the city has been a star of American movies.

Until 1920 New York was also the center of movie production. The first version of Ben Hur (1907) was shot in Brooklyn and film’s first Romeo and Juliet (1909) met at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. Companies such as Biograph, Vitagraph, Kalem, and Pathe were among 30 New York companies attempting to monopolize movie production, but the creation of Hollywood after 1910 ended that dream. Nevertheless, corporations such as Universal (1912) and Fox (1914), and moguls like Samuel Goldfish (Goldwyn) began in New York before going west. As late as 1922, 12% of the industry was in New York with William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Studio, Fox, and the Astoria Studio being the largest; Astoria alone made 110 silent films before temporarily closing in 1927. It was in Manhattan that the Fox Corporation tested audio techniques and where Movietone News premiered in 1927. In that same year, The Jazz Singer (the first “talkie”) traced the rise of a nice Jewish boy from the Lower East Side to stardom. Yet the move to California was inexorable, and by 1937 not a single feature film was made entirely in New York. But politically-charged documentary films flourished, and classics such as New York Hooverville (1932), The City (1939) and Native Land (1941) were all produced in the city.

Nevertheless, the WPA’s New York Panorama (1938) was correct when it concluded that “the influence of New York on the cinema constitutes a unique cultural relationship”(284). In a real sense Americans have two hometowns, their own and New York City. Every citizen knows the harshness of immigrant life, the elitism of Park Avenue, the crassness of Madison Avenue, the rowdiness of the Bowery, and the glitter of Broadway even if these New York locations were never experienced personally. The earliest American films had a New York edge, dealing openly with urban problems, assimilation, and social conflict. D.W.Griffith's, The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) and Intolerance (1916), and those offshoots of Fritz Lang 's Metropolis (1926), certainly offered different views of the city but both recognized its inherent dramatic possibilities. From glorious penthouse to squalid slum, New York provides directors with extremes of success and failure, altruism and social pathology, danger and romance. The city had everything for filmmakers, but it also could repel ordinary Americans. Movies warned them that New York was best experienced at a distance; it was Sodom on the Hudson, a city of ambition, vice and cruelty where virtue counted for little. Yet it was endlessly fascinating. It is not surprising that the American Film Institutes list of the 100 best films includes 23 set in the city, from #1 Citizen Kane to #100 Yankee Doodle Dandy.

It was New York that taught America that “going to the movies” could be a special occasion. By the time of World War I, when personages such as Gloria Swanson, Marion Davies, Norma Talmadge, and Pearl White lived in Manhattan, it was essential that studios have theaters as spectacular as their stars. The first movie “palace” probably was Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel’s 1800 seat Regent Theater (1913) in Harlem; by 1927 he would open a “cathedral” to motion pictures on Broadway where 6000 patrons watched shows in refrigerated comfort. Every studio created its own version of filmgoer’s heaven, and so the Strand (1914), the Rivoli (1917), the Capital (1919) and the Paramount (1926) were born. After 1920 the Loews Corporation built dozens of lavish theaters in every city borough to present the films of MGM. The culmination of all this effort came on December 27, 1932 when the Radio City Music Hall opened, offering film and stage shows (Rockettes) that thrilled audiences for 50 years. Unlike most of the palaces, Radio City survives today with its restored interior designated a New York landmark.

As Americans made movie going their greatest source of entertainment, what did they learn about New York? “All the nations under heaven”—Frederick Binder and David M. Reimers observe—gravitate to New York City, drawn to Gotham in search of success, love, adventure, escape, or privacy. In the 1930s, as Depression engulfed the nation no other city offered the immigrants, the poor, the ambitious, and the already rich a greater sense of opportunity. It was the one place offering everyone a new deal. King Kong (1933) established a checkered pattern in black and white: of innocence in conflict with corruption. Wrenched from his natural habitat, Kong retaliates against a cruel city but is brought down by technology and by unrequited love for beauty as represented by Fay Wray. In the climactic scenes, the Empire State Building—completed only in 1931 and already symbolic of New York—is equally the star and it easily survives Kong’s assault. Busby Berkeley charted happier endings in his musicals, especially 42ND Street (1933) where chorus girls start as understudies and come out as stars. The Empire City represents survival of the fittest, but the hard city would always reward talent. All around glittering Broadway were dark, horrific slums such as Hester Street (1975). Whether immigrant or native-born, troubled teenagers like the Dead End Kids discovered that grinding poverty and a hostile environment could often lead to crime. Life in New York could alienate anyone: like Babyface Martin (Humphrey Bogrart) in Dead End (1937), Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972), and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976). Hollywood did try to teach the kids that crime does not pay. In Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), two boys from the slums take different paths. Pat O’Brien becomes a priest and James Cagney, a criminal. Because sociologists in the 1930s stressed the environment (nurture) over heredity (nature), Father Jerry Connelly converts the Dead End Kids through basketball but needs help from Cagney to die doing a “good deed.” Abandoning his usual strut and swagger, Cagney complies. Feigning panic and fear, he goes to the electric chair as an object lesson.

The films of the 1930s began the long relationship of New York with the crime story for in the metropolis Crime, according to Daniel Bell, functions as “a queer ladder of success." Its pervasive presence reflects a distortion of American values (128). Robert Warshow describes the urban gangster as the contemporary “tragic hero” (86-88). The modern New York criminal comes in many versions: John Garfield preyed on local fishermen in Out of the Fog (1941); Humphrey Bogart played a psychopathic killer in The Enforcer (1951); Lee J. Cobb portrayed a vicious labor racketeer in On the Waterfront (1954); Peter Falk embodied a crazed killer, Abe Reles, who jumped or was pushed to his death in Murder Inc. (1960). All, however, show the baleful effects of having to succeed by any means. More bureaucratized crime was presented by Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and Robert DeNiro who put their stamp on Mafioso portraiture in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974). Harvey Keitel hooked up with DeNiro as a petty crook to walk the Mean Streets (1973) of Greenwich Village while Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta joined DeNiros’s criminal fraternity in Goodfellas (1990). In pursuit of international drug traffickers, Gene Hackman starred in the greatest car chase ever filmed in The French Connection (1971) under the McDonald Avenue El in Brooklyn. But Hackman’s Popeye Doyle was a flawed cop. The city seems to corrupt even its sworn defenders as indicated in Detective Story (1951), Serpico (1973), Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981), A Bronx Tale (1993), and Cop Land (1997).

If life in Manhattan burned with intensity, the movies discovered that ordinary life could be found in the outer boroughs. Brooklyn became the perfect example of a city, nestled in New York, where release, recreation, and happiness beckoned. Betty Grable starred in Coney Island (1943), a film that captured the glory of America’s first amusement area. Subsequently, Coney Island is featured such movies as The Little Fugitive (1953), about a little Bensonhurst boy who runs away from home—and school. Ten years later, Shirley Clarke’s Cool World (1963) traces the odyssey of a black youngster who descends into a now seedy Coney Island in search of adventure. In the classic “buddy movie,” Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), both party in Coney Island before departing for their crime spree in South America. From the streets of Brooklyn, recognizable film types emerged. Cops, cab drivers, sports fanatics and fools are personified by Jimmy Durante, Jack Carson, Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Sam Levine, William Bendix, Richard Conte, Woody Allen, Phil Silvers, Mae West, Martha Raye, and Lana Turner. No World War II film was complete unless its “universal platoon” featured a resident of “the borough of churches.” William Bendix became the quintessential Brooklyn soldier in Wake Island (1943) and Guadalcanal Diary (1943). His fatal trip in Lifeboat (1944) showed how a gritty Brooklynite faces death, stoically.

New York films have always honored strong women. Alice White in Show Girl (1928), Alice Faye in Girl from Brooklyn (1938), Betty Grable in Sweet Rosie O’Grady (1943), Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl (1944) showed how independent women could master both men and the metropolis. Joan Blondell in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) sensitized Americans to the triumphs and tribulations of ordinary women while Rosalind Russell successfully addressed every problem of urban existence in My Sister Eileen (1942), Auntie Mame (1958) and A Majority of One (1962). The tradition of the smart, talented and complex New York woman is continued by Faye Dunaway in Network (1976), Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman (1978), Tracy Camilla Johns in She’s Gotta Have It (1986), Cher in Moonstruck (1987), and Rene Zwelliger in A Price Above Rubies (1998).

It is appropriate that the Statue of Liberty (1886), symbolic of New York City, is a woman. This beacon of freedom coupled with that magnificent skyline makes you want to sing, in harmony with a sound track emitting the unforgettable melodies of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, and Richard Rodgers. In the 1930s, Americans longed for fascinating rhythm and yearned for happy days. It was Swing Time (1936) that propelled Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers into super-stardom. The New York musical embraced many of the clichés issuing from the “American Dream”-- including the challenges and the dangers of success. Witness Tin Pan Alley (1940), Ziegfield Girl (1941), Babes on Broadway (1941), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Cover Girl (1944), On the Town (1949), The Band Wagon, Kiss Me Kate (both 1953), Guys and Dolls (1955), The Joker Is Wild (1957), Bells Are Ringing (1960), West Side Story (1961), Funny Girl (1968), Sweet Charity (1969), and New York, New York (1977). These films trumpeted the inspiring American success story, which Frank Sinatra captured in the memorable lyric: “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”

In addition to its unique people, Brooklyn has a bridge that illuminates many films. Completed in 1883, the great bridge is both a conduit and metaphor as American Studies scholars David McCulloch and Alan Trachtenberg have demonstrated. The Brooklyn Bridge made the consolidation of greater New York inevitable. “The City,” however, is located on one end of its imposing span. Manhattan is the destination for New Yorkers on the make. Thus, John Travolta had to cross over the bridge after Saturday Night Fever (1977) possessed him. Johnny Weismuller, the “Ape Man,” jumped from the bridge in Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942). Frank Sinatra was inspired to croon a love-song in It Happened in Brooklyn (1947). Gene Kelly danced across in On the Town (1949) and doomed Meryl Streep drank champagne on it in Sophie’s Choice (1982). Other means of transport are available to ambitious New Yorkers. Melanie Griffith took the Staten Island Ferry to Wall Street for fame, fortune and the Mr. Right. She had a Ford (Harrison) in her future. And the lonely, homely Bronx butcher, Marty (1955) took the subway to find love in a Manhattan ballroom. Paul Mazursky rode the subway to sever umbilical ties to a predatory mother in Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976).

Directors love New York because its well-known locations immediately establish sense of place, class, status, and ambience. It is a city of the “haves,” “have-nots,” and “wannabes.” Their respective life-styles elicit the style and substance of most film scripts. The intersection of high, low, and middle has always generated enormous profit for Hollywood. Starting in 1934, a series of six Thin Man films coupled William Powell and Myrna Loy as high society detectives who glide through society exuding charm, wit while consuming copious amounts of alcohol. Vicariously, viewers enjoyed the end of spoiled rich girl, Claudette Colbert’s journey into the muscular, bare chested embrace of Clark Gable in It Happened one Night (1934). Viewers also laughed at the role reversals in My Man Godfrey (1936) which featured William Powell as a rich man pretending to be poor--a rich man who devotes himself to helping his new friends from the "Hooverville" along the East River.
Obviously, New York, the microcosm of America, believes that rich is better. Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift) made money his goal in the futile pursuit of plain but wealthy Catherine Sloper (Olivia DeHaviland) in The Heiress (1949); years later, the haunting Henry James saga reappeared with the more apt, original title, Washington Square (1997) . Truman Capote’s Holly (Audrey Hepburn) does “it” lightly for money in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). For the love of money, Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) sleeps with old ladies and cons them out of their savings in The Producers (1968). Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) almost convinces the audience and nearly seduces the idealistic Buddy Fox (Charlie Sheen) to believe that “greed is good” in Wall Street (1987). Money is power and power in New York is always intimidating. Citizen Kane (1941), Meet John Doe (1941), The Great Gatsby (1949, 1974), Executive Suite (1954), The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and Network (1976) all preach the gospel of success! Rarely does the “little man” (what now?) strike back unless he is a Prince among paupers like Howard (Woody Allen) in The Front (1976).

Whether engaged in pride, prejudice, or patriotism, New York has always fought for the American way of life. Spying and subversion became a concern in the fight against fascism. Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), All Through the Night (1942), Saboteur (1942), The House on 92nd Street (1945)—the latter, a brilliant example of semi-documentary filmmaking—established the genre. The films crafted during the Cold War, however, seemed devoid of such creative fire: sparked more by the “great fear” of communist infiltration than a love for artistic presentation. This foible also pertains to the allegedly subversive A King in New York (1957) by an aging Charlie Chaplin and Daniel (1983) based on a novelized account of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Beyond a stirring On the Waterfront (1954)—Elia Kazan’s cinematic rationale (or rationalization) for informing—the rest of the anti-Communist films like I was a Communist for the FBI (1951) can be cast into a trash heap in New Jersey.

During these turbulent years, New Yorkers continued to cope with “lives of quiet desperation” as in The Lost Weekend (1945), Marty (1955), 12 Angry Men (1957), A View from the Bridge (1962), The Pawnbroker (1965), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Taxi Driver and Network (both 1976) that sometimes erupt in rage (“I am mad as hell and won’t take it anymore!”) and violence. We learn from The Last Exit to Brooklyn (1990) that for many, like Jean Paul Sartre, there is no exit. A creative and desperate soul could change genders like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (1982) to impersonate a soap-opera queen. A destructive and desperate soul man could start a riot on a steamy, summer's day with Spike Lee in Do the Right Thing (1989). Suddenly, one summer, art imitated reality when a distraught white man robbed a bank in Brooklyn and took hostages on a Dog Day Afternoon (1975).

Hollywood shunned the New York proletariat. For a glimpse into how the other half lived, viewers had to tune in to television. The Goldbergs led by matriarch Molly; The Honeymooners, Ralph and Alice; and All in the Family of Archie and Edith provided the only mass-mediated slice of working-class life in New York. Later police dramas like N.Y.P.D. Blue sustained this tradition. Most viewers, however, were exposed to middle-class singles or upper-class professionals like CPW, The Cosby Show, Spin City, Veronica’s Closet and Friends. Perhaps, the need for escape into fancy matched the concern for profit.

It was after World War II that America experienced social engineering with Hollywood in tow: charting the route out of the asphalt and into the trees. New York’s planning czar, Robert Moses paved the way with new roads. Thousands of urban residents followed the exodus into suburbia. There, one found splendor in the crab-grass frontier where Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948). The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (1954), however, soon discovered that he could not escape from trouble. Goodbye Columbus (1965) meant farewell to New York City and hello to Westchester. Though Philip Roth’s novel originally pitted Newark against Short Hills, New Jersey, Hollywood shifted locales because of New York’s universality. White flight, urban blight, territorial fights ensued. The tax base eroded. The city pitched toward bankruptcy in the early 1970s. No film has fully chronicled that story although the machinations of Al Pacino’s City Hall (1996) seem to demonstrate that this, too, will come.

What saved the city? The clue to survival, embedded in history, can be found in the films that chronicle city life across the decades. More than any other, New York has the power to laugh at itself. Staccato bursts of laughter issued primarily from the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera (1935). Fortified with S.J. Perelman scripts, Groucho--the “shnorrer” as explorer--and his brothers plunged into gleeful nihilism. “When I came to this country, I didn’t have a nickel in my pocket. Now, I have a nickel in my pocket.” To that pillar of piety and symbol of WASP stolidity, Margaret Dumont, in A Day at the Races (1935), he proposes: “Marry me, and I’ll never look at another horse.” In response to one of her inane comments, Groucho quips: “That remark covers a lot of territory. As a matter of fact, you cover a lot of territory. Is there any truth to the fact that they’re going to tear you down and put up an office building?” No one—person or profession—remained safe from Marx’s demolition derby. The tradition of Jewish humor animates Neil Simon in The Odd Couple (1968), Plaza Suite (1971), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1974) and The Sunshine Boys (1975) and the films of Woody Allen: Play It Again, Sam (1971), Manhattan (1979), Stardust Memories (1980), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Radio Days (1987). Arguably the best film of this brilliant if neurotic New Yorker is Annie Hall (1977), which paints a vivid contrast between Anglo-Saxon and New York urban-ethnic culture. Alvie Singer (Woody himself) refuses to move (unlike the Dodgers and the movies) to Los Angeles where “the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.” He knows that the air is clear there only because “they take their garbage and make it into television shows.”

Sports provide both social identity personal escape. In the arenas, people of all classes, ethnicities and cultures gather. They speak a common language and build community. In addition, sports heroes serve as role models for youngsters. Gary Cooper gave a fine interpretation of Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) while Babe Ruth still waits for an actor equal to his gargantuan stature in baseball. Both William Bendix in The Babe Ruth Story (1948) and John Goodman in The Babe (1992) proved unequal to the task. Trailblazer Jackie Robinson played himself opposite Rube Dee as his beloved wife, Rachel in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950). Paul Newman put on a new face to play boxing champ Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). When three major New York sports teams crested in 1969-70--the Mets in baseball, the Jets in football, and the Knicks in basketball--they brought city residents together and no doubt contributed to Mayor Lindsay’s successful bid for reelection. Later, Ken Burns crafted a compelling documentary on baseball with New York City as a major focal point. The best of this genre, Martin Scorcese’s Raging Bull (1980) provided a gritty look at the boxing game through the troubled life of Jake LaMotta.

Even today, New York remains the city of immigrants and their children. From early settlers seeking their fortune to the more recent Yuppies, Gotham continues to lure the “huddled masses” and the upwardly mobile classes. This trend is effectively, indeed comically, related in a film tradition that began with The Immigrant (1917). Modern variations on this theme resonate in America, America (1963), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Coming to America (1988), The Green Card (1990) and the low-budget “sleeper” The Brothers McMullen (1996) while Hester Street (1975) and Little Odessa (1994) transmit discordant notes in the movement toward Americanization.
Beyond money and power, New York also fulfills the romantic needs of “strangers in the night.” Whether in the clutches of The Seven Year Itch (1955) or ensnared by The Goodbye Girl (1977); unable to blot out An Affair to Remember (1957) or erase Stardust Memories (1980), Eros thrives in Gotham. If love seems better the second time around, casual sex can be prohibitively expensive in All About Eve (1950), The Apartment (1960), Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Fatal Attraction (1987). America’s love/hate affair with city continues in cinematic makeovers. The Out-of-Towners (1970) projected a dangerous city unleavened by Neil Simon’s humor. A remake in 1999 starring Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn was less funny to be sure; but the new version etched a less acid, more positive portrait with a happy ending. Despite the obligatory mugging, Martin gets the job and Hawn, the luxury apartment. In short, they take Manhattan. Love, tolerance, and tourism convey an up-beat message. New York can arouse the Sleepless in Seattle (1993); overcome fake orgasms in When Harry Met Sally (1989) and provide true orgasmic feasts in the world’s best restaurants. Here in the global city, one finds an open-door policy towards single mothers, ailing children, gay men and women, creative eccentrics, and the process of metamorphosis through love experienced by Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets (1997), a James Brooks film which projects the miracle of resurrection. Like the proverbial phoenix emergent from the ashes, New York is back because of its gritty, resilient, immigrant "never say die" populace.

The Turning Point (1977) serves as metaphor for that pivotal decade: the 1970s. New York became the dominant subject for filmmakers. The Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences awarded Oscars to Midnight Cowboy (Hall 1969), The French Connection (1971) Godfather (1972), Godfather II (1974), Annie Hall (1977), Kramer v. Kramer (1979). In addition to inspiring the best American movies in the last decades of the twentieth century, Gotham recaptured its lost status as a producer of films as well as Hollywood’s prime location. Astoria Studios reopened in 1975 and has produced such films as Thieves (1975), Ransom (1996) and First Wives Club (1996) as well as an abundance of TV shows. During the long tenure of Mayor Ed Koch (1978-1990), the city joyfully welcomed film companies and in the 1980s no less than 60 films were shot annually. Labor costs and recalcitrance caused a downturn early in the 1990s, but, as the century ended, New York was the locale for 213 features in 1997, 221 in 1998. In the process, filmmaking enriched the city by $3 billion a year. By 2000 Queens alone had four studios. Chelsea Pier attracted filmmakers and a major sound stage development was planned for the government-divested Brooklyn Navy Yard. Fittingly, the Museum of the Moving Image (1988) chose to locate itself in New York, a city that has more film students than the rest of America. Like authors such as Woody Allen, Martin Scorcese, Sidney Lumet, and Spike Lee, these students will never have to leave New York to examine the great spectrum of human possibility. The city will remain vital to the history of film in America--and the essence of American identity.
Joseph Dorinson & George Lankevich

SOURCES

Filmography

a. Films discussed: See text

Annie Hall (1977, F)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944, F)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945, F)
Bye, Bye Braverman (1968, F)
City Across the River (1949 F)
Cover Girl (1944 F)
Dead End (1937, F)
Do the Right Thing (1989, F)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975 F)
Don Juan Quilligan (1945 F)
Guadalcanal Diary (1943 F)
Joe & Ethel Turp Visit the President (1939 F)
King Kong (1933 F)
Murder Inc. (1960 F)
Wonder Man (1945 F)
On the Town (1949 F)
Manhattan (1979, F)
On the Waterfront (1954 F)
The Blackboard Jungle (1955 F)
The McGuerins of Brooklyn (1942 F)
The Little Fugitive (1953 F)
The Producers (1968, F)
Prizzi’s Honor (1985)

b. Additional films to consult: See text

An Affair to Remember (1957 F)
Coney Island (1943 F)
Great Expectations (1998 F)
Lost in Yonkers (1993 F)
Love on the Run (1936 F)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947 F)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1946 F)
My Sister Eileen (1955 F) Nobody's Fool (1995 F) Scent of a Woman (1992 F)
Year Itch (1955 F)
Silent Movie (1976 F)
Sleepless in Seattle (1993 F)
Tales of Manhattan (1942 F)
Weekend at the Waldorf (1945 F)

Documentaries: Films for the Humanities

New York: A City Silhouette #BVL8849
The Biggest Jewish City in the World #BVL3372
I Remember Harlem #BVL170
Divided City: The Route to Racism #BVL7674
Side Tracks: Homeless in New York #BVL8488
Greenwich Village Writers: The Bohemian Legacy #BVL 3021

Bibliography

a. History

Berrol, Selma C. The Empire City: New York and Its People. New York: Praeger, 1995.

Binder, Frederick M. & David M. Reimers. All the Nations Under Heaven: An Ethnic and Racial History of New York City. New York: Columbia UP, 1995.

Burrows. Edwin G. & Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.

Dorinson, Joseph. "Brooklyn: The Elusive Image." Journal of Long Island History. 1.2 (1989): 128-135.

Douglas, Ann. "All Singing, All Dancing, All Gotham." The New York Times. 28 May 1999: E24.

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Lankevich, George J. American Metropolis: A History. New York City: New York UP, 1998.

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White, David Manning & Richard Avedon. The Celluloid Weapon: Social Comment in the American
Film. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972.

b. Film

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Belton, John. American Cinema/American Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994.

Bennett. Michael et al. Rediscovering New York…. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995.

Burns, Ric, and James Sanders with Lisa Ades. New York: An Illustrated History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Borzoi, 1999.

Cowden, Gary. Editor. A Political Companion to American Film. Lakeview Press, 1994.

Durgnat, Raymond. The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and the American Image. London: Faber & Faber, 1969.

Fraser, George MacDonald. The Hollywood History of the World... New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988.

Fyne, Robert. The Hollywood Propaganda of World War II. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994.

Maltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin’s 1999 Movie @ Video Guide. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999.
Works Cited:

Bell, Daniel. “Crime as an American Way of Life: A Queer Ladder of Social Mobility” in The End of Ideology. New York: Free Press, 1964. 127-150.

Bergman, Andrew. We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Film. New York: Harper Colophon, 1971.
Desser, David & Lester D. Friedman. American-Jewish Filmmakers: Traditions and Trends. Urbana, IL: Illinois UP, 1993.
Gelmis, Joseph. “Brooklyn in the Movies” Brooklyn Bridge 4.8 (1999): 58-63.
Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.
Jackson, Kenneth T. Editor. The Encyclopedia of New York City. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995.
Manbeck, John & Mike Olshan, “Brooklyn in the Movies.” New Brooklyn 5.3 (1983): 58-62.
Mast, Gerald & Bruce F. Kawin. A Short History of the Movies. Sixth Edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1996
Rollins, Peter C. Editor. Hollywood as Historian: American Film in a Cultural Context. Lexington, KY Kentucky UP, 1998.

Stern, Lee Edward. The Movie Musical. New York: Pyramid, 1974.

Warshow, Robert. The Immediate Experience. New York: Doubleday, 1962. 86-88.