How to Automat

Let Richard Conte and Coleen Gray demonstrate:

[From The Sleeping City (dir. George Sherman, 1950). Click any image for a larger view.]

Much of The Sleeping City was filmed at Bellevue Hospital, so I think it’s safe to assume that the setting here is a genuine Automat. Note the array of extras: salt and pepper, sugar, ketchup, mustard (I think), and honey or syrup.

Here’s a spectacular compilation of the Automat on film. It’s missing the scene from That Girl in which Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) makes ketchup soup in an Automat. But was that a real Automat?

In its heyday, the Automat was all over New York. Advertisements in the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory announce forty-five cafeterias and thirty-two retail shops: “Take home Pies, Cakes, Breads, Rolls, Cooked Foods same as served at Automats. ‘Less Work for Mother.’”

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Here, thanks to a thoughtful reader, is a menu of sorts in photos. The roll Ann Marie eats indeed resembles the top-right rolls in the first photo.

Related reading
All OCA Automat posts