Candy stores of The Naked City

We are in The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1948). Detective Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) is down on the Lower East Side, searching for a killer. It’s a hot day. But look — there’s a candy store.

[Click any image for a larger view.]

And here’s the crowd outside the candy store before or after the scene was filmed.

In New York City language, candy store didn’t signify a shiny mall outlet with enormous tubes of artifically colored treats. My attempt at a definition of a term that has eluded Merriam-Webster, from a 2021 post:

can·dy store \ˈkan-dē-ˈstȯr\ n : an urban retail establishment usu. selling candy, chewing gum, lottery tickets, magazines, newspapers, novelties, tobacco products, and stationery, often with a soda fountain attached

In the twenty-first century, the bodega has replaced the candy store as the center of small-scale urban commerce.

Halloran has come into this candy store on business, but he’s also looking for some refreshment: “Got any cold root beer?” he asks. And Molly Picon replies: “Like ice!” She recognizes the man in a photograph Halloran has been asking about all over the Lower East Side, so right away, Halloran is on the phone to Lieutenant Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald). And so we get to see a second candy store, right across the street.


These two establishments are ready for their tax photographs.

[129 Rivington Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections.]

[130 Rivington Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections.]

And now they’re ready for their close-ups.

[129 Rivington Street. I know — the number reads 123.]

[130 Rivington Street. Click for a larger view.]

If you’re wondering about Deities: Egyptian Deities were a brand of hand-rolled cigarettes, produced by the New York tobacconist Soterios Anargyros.

These buildings still stand. The storefront at no. 129 may still be for rent, as it was in 2023 (Google Maps). The storefront at no. 130 houses a nail salon, Hello Nails.

This post is a mere drop in the urban bucket. Scouting NY has a three-part series on filming locations for The Naked City: 1, 2, 3. And the Criterion Channel has as an exclusive Bruce Goldstein’s astonishingly well-researched documentary Uncovering “The Naked City.” (But contra Goldstein, that is Molly Picon in the candystore, not Celia Adler.)

And as Mark Hellinger never said: There were elevenyteen candy stores in the Naked City. These have been two of them.

Related posts
All OCA candy store posts (Pinboard) : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)