On Arthur Avenue

Last Sunday it was no. 2390. This Sunday I’m still on Arthur Avenue, famed street of Italian-American culture, and today I’m admiring Arthur Avenue Noodle & Macaroni Manufacturing. I love the words beneath the company name: “di pura semola.” And I love the 6 in the window. It’s not often that you see anything selling for 6¢. Maybe nails in a hardware store.

[Arthur Avenue Noodle & Macaroni Manufacturing, 2376 Arthur Avenue, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

You can see AAN&MM with a different sign in an earlier photograph, found by an assiduous reader. Squint past the pushcarts.

Until recently, no. 2376 was the home of Arthur Avenue Fiasco, an Italian restaurant. “Permanently closed,” says Google Maps. The restaurant’s Facebook page is still up, but the restaurant’s website is gone.

I must mention: in the Italian-American world of my mom’s childhood, all pasta was homemade. None of this manufactured stuff. My mom’s grandmother did the work, cutting by eye with great accuracy. Even spaghetti.

And if you’re wondering about the difference about macaroni and noodles — I am too. That’s a rabbit hole I will eye from a distance, through a manicotti telescope. The distinction might be between tubular and non-tubular pasta, but in Italy, maccheroni can refer to both.

Coming next week, nos. 2374 and 2378. Worth waiting for, believe me.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market

[Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, 3910 13th Avenue, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. As seen from 40th Street and 39th Street. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

The Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market (WIndsor 8-8788) was one of seven New York City markets built in the interest of sanitation, removing pushcarts from the streets and placing them indoors, with the benefits of air conditioning, screening, and hot and cold running water. Two photographs dated 1939 — 1, 2 — show Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the Thirteenth Avenue Market. I think the following paragraph clinches it: the market must have opened in the second half of 1939:

[“Food Distribution on Wartime Basis Is Mapped by City.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 28, 1941.]

But years later, pushcarts were still a problem. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (May 20, 1952) has an article titled “Pushcart Solution: More City Markets.” A photograph of life inside the Thirteenth Avenue market accompanied the article. The caption:

THE SANITARY WAY — The 13th Avenue Retail Market, pictured here, replaced a neighborhood pushcart market and brought the peddlers inside. Here the food is kept free from dust, dirt and flies. Moreover, the enclosed market is easier both to clean and keep clean than the street.

You can see a non-murky version of the still-under-copyright photograph that went with the caption via the Brooklyn Public Library.

And here are two photographs of the market as seen from Thirteenth Avenue:

[Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, 1951. Photograph by Walter Albertin, New York World-Telegram & Sun. From the Library of Congress.]

[Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, 1965. Photograph by Phyllis Twachtman, New York World-Telegram & Sun. From the Library of Congress.]

I have dim memories of the Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, always known as “the market.” It was relatively dim inside, and noisy. Produce was available, of course. I think there were cheap toys for sale, but that might be wishful thinking. My most vivid memory of the market: the red letters announcing its name.

When I was a boy in Brooklyn in the 1960s, there was at least one pushcart still at work on Thirteenth Avenue, on the wide sidewalk at the southeast corner of 39th Street. That spot belonged to Whitey the banana man. Yes, a guy who sold nothing but bananas. They were displayed on a pushcart with plastic grass covering the shelves. And that of course is where we bought our bananas. If I had been older, say, Holden Caulfield’s age, I would have wondered where Whitey went in the winter.

The Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market still stands — now doing duty as a Kosher supermarket.

Bonus: you can see the Bronx’s Arthur Avenue Retail Market (also still standing) in the opening credits of Marty (dir. Delbert Mann, 1955).

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August 5: At least three newspaper articles document the market’s opening on Tuesday, October 5, 1939. Here’s one from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. And two articles — 1, 2 — from The New York Times. Details: the building, a WPA project, replaced a pushcart area between 39th and 42nd Streets. The market housed 137 stands, and was designed in the shape of a T, “a monster T.,” according to the Eagle. It had heat and air-conditioning and a basement for storage. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, quoted in the Eagle: “I think that you people, just the same as those living on 5th Ave. and Park Ave., are entitled to do your buying in stores.”

Related reading
All OCA Boro Park posts (Pinboard) : Kubrick Self Service Stores (Next to the market) : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, in color (Forgotten NY)

The Oteris and Marty

Previously on Orange Crate Art:

We visited no. 2376, once the home of Arthur Avenue Noodle & Macaroni Manufacturing. Today we’ll look at the two establishments that once flanked AAN&MM. To the south, the Baccalà Store.


[2374 Arthur Avenue, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Baccalà, salted cod, is a traditional Italian food. No, I’ve never had it.

And just north of AAN&MM, the Oteri Bros. Prime Meat Market.

[2378 Arthur Avenue, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

These photographs would be worth posting for their own sake — they’re beautiful streetscapes. But there’s a bonus.

Danielle Oteri tells some of the Oteri history here and here: her great-grandfather and great-grandmother, Albino and Grazia Oteri, opened the baccalà store in 1918. The Oteris’ son John (Danielle’s uncle) converted the store to a butcher shop post-World War II. Danielle confirms in a Facebook message (thanks, Danielle; thanks, Elaine) that John previously ran a butcher shop for a short time at no. 2378.

The later shop at no. 2374 is the butcher shop in the opening scene of Marty (dir. Delbert Mann, 1955). You can watch here. Look closely and you’ll see the shadow of the street address on the wall.

[Ernest Borgnine as Marty Piletti. Click for a larger view.]

More from Danielle Oteri:

The scenes of Marty working were shot in Oteri’s Butcher Shop. Uncle John had to teach Ernest Borgnine, who also won Best Actor for his performance, how to cut meat, specifically sausage, so that his scenes would be realistic.

Although the screenplay indicates that Marty’s boss was to be named Mr. Gazzara, Uncle John was able to convince them that his name should be used instead, and in the final cut, Marty refers to his boss “Mr. Oteri” at least four times.

In 1980 my Uncle John sold the shop to Peter De Luca, who runs the shop today. Peter has a butcher pedigree as well. He grew up working in his father’s butcher shop on 143rd Street and Morris Avenue. (The current store is named Vincent’s Meat Market in honor of his father.)

Vincent’s Meat Market is still going strong at no. 2374. No. 2378 is now the second-floor residence above the now-defunct Club Fiasco at no. 2376, which took up the storefronts at nos. 2376 and 2378.

You can hear Marty refer to “Mr. Oteri” twice in the scene with Clara (Besty Blair) in the luncheonette and twice in the scene with his cousin Tommy (Jerry Paris) on the Piletti porch. The second (silent) butcher in the opening scene is played by Silvio Minicotti, husband of Esther Minicotti, who plays Marty’s mother Teresa Piletti.

Related posts
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : A corner in Marty (White Plains Road and E. 211th Street) : Happy birthday, Mr. Piletti (Marty and Clara post-Marty)

And from NYC in Film, a detailed look at various Marty locations, with a photograph of Ernest Borgnine and John Oteri. As Marty would say, Holy cow!

On Arthur Avenue

Still in the Bronx this Sunday, on Arthur Avenue, famed street of Italian-American culture. That’s the street where Marty Piletti had his butcher shop.

[2390 Arthur Avenue, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

This is another one of those photographs that have everything. Here everything means women in hats (a mother–daughter pair?), two women in aprons, a man with a cap, a window full of . . . cans of olive oil maybe?, a mystery storefront with . . . fabrics on display?, sawhorses, a sidewalk entrance to a cellar, a tough customer with a tie, improbable watering cans, and a baby carriage. And if you look closely, a bonus, right above 3073 – 43 BX (the block and lot identification).

Today no. 2390 is the M & G Restaurant. The fire escape appears to be as it was when the tax photo was taken.

Related reading
Buono’s Groc., another photograph with everything : More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

Ebinger’s

[An Ebinger’s bakery, 411 86th Street, Brooklyn, New York, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

George Ebinger (1859–1935) opened a bakery in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn in 1898. By 1915, when he retired, he had three stores. By 1930, when the chain was run by his sons, there were forty. By 1950, forty-two. When the chain went into bankruptcy in 1972, there were fifty-four or sixty-seven locations in Brooklyn and Queens and on Long Island, depending on which source you consult.

It matters not that the sign says Ebinger Bakers ; a Brooklynite went to an Ebinger’s for baked goods. I remember blackout cake and crumbcake. My brother remembers pot pies. Everything was boxed in pale green boxes with brown squiggly lines, and tied with string — brown and white, I think.

The dowdy world took its baked goods seriously. Consider the list of breads in a 1963 Ebinger’s advertisement: pan twist, Pullman, raisin, plain rye, seed rye, smooth top, white mountain, whole wheat, whole wheat raisin, and unsalted white, “all in new re-closable package!”

Ebinger’s was enough a part of Brooklyn reality that it turns up in Gilbert Sorrentino’s novel of Brooklynites, Aberration of Starlight (1980):

What tradition did he keep with religious devotion?

On New Year’s Day, he visited all his surviving relatives to wish them the joy of the new year; at home, he made certain that he had on hand a supply of ladyfingers (bought at Ebinger’s Bakery) and a bottle of sherry with which to refresh any guests who dropped in to wish him and the family the joy of the new year.

See? Ebinger’s, possessive.

[Kings Courier, July 6, 1963. Click for a larger view.]

A New York Times article about the end of Ebinger’s (August 26, 1972) quotes Arthur D. Ulrich, the company’s president and George Ebinger’s grandson: “In these days quality cake has perhaps become a luxury that somehow does not fit into the housewife’s budget.” “Cake,” he says, “has been pushed into the luxury class.” But the article also notes that most of the chain’s customers “had moved from Brooklyn and Queens to Nassau and Suffolk Counties.”

In 1982 the Times reported that a Brooklyn bakery had resurrected the Ebinger name and was thriving, with the blessing of, and original recipes from, George Ebinger’s son Arthur Ebinger. But there’s no sign of that bakery now.

Some other Ebinger’s locations: 1104 Kings Highway, 1707 Kings Highway, 1310 Avenue J, 1704 Avenue M, and 1603 Avenue U. The Ebinger’s our family patronized, at 4907 13th Avenue, is barely discernible in this photograph. It’s to the right of the bank.

All Ebinger’s locations are now located in Brooklyn memory banks.

[Canarsie Courier, October 28, 1993.]

Thanks, Brian.

*

October 18, 2023: An article in the Daily News, “Will the real Ebinger’s please stand up?” (September 22, 1982), casts doubt on the claim that Arthur Ebinger gave his family’s recipes to Lou Guerra, the baker who revived the Ebinger’s name. The article quotes Carolyne Ebinger Czap, Arthur’s daughter:

“What makes me sad,” said Czap, “is that people think these awful things are what my father made. I doubt seriously that Guerra ever met my father.”

Guerra says that Arthur Ebinger gave him the recipes in 1978.

“My father,” said Czap, “was in the hospital and a nursing home for two years before his death. He died in 1977.”

The article cites several sources who say that Guerra used mixes, not fresh ingredients. Ebinger’s used only fresh ingredients.

The Times never revisited its story.

Thanks again, Brian.

Related posts
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

Anthony Bourdain in the Bronx

One word to describe Anthony Bourdain in the Bronx: insufferable. Bourdain insists again and again that he is ignorant of the borough, “ridiculously, shamefully ignorant.” He sits in a Bronx park from which he can see his Manhattan “house” and marvels that he has no idea where he is. (Hint: turn on Location Services.) He describes the borough as a “blank space,” “the great unknown.” The Bronx is also for him, I daresay, the Dark Borough, land of colorful ethnic peoples. Most embarrassing moment: “I didn’t know there were Hondurans here.”

At least Bourdain — or his native informant — had the good sense to include a visit to City Island. But to pass up Arthur Avenue? Where Marty Piletti butchered? Not exotic enough, I guess. Marone.

[The Addeo Bakery appears on screen for a split-second. But no visit to Arthur Avenue.]

Happy birthday, Mr. Piletti

You know how long ago I graduated high school? June 1937. Holy cow! June 1937? What is that, fifteen, seventeen years ago. Holy cow! Sev — let’s see, is that right? Seventeen, that’s right. Where’d it all go? I’m gettin’ old; I’m gonna be thirty-five years old November the eighth. Thirty-five! Wow, time goes on, boy.

[From Marty (1955), directed by Delbert Mann, screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky.]

Marty Piletti celebrates his ninetieth birthday today. If you’ve wondered what’s happened since 1954:

Marty and Clara Snyder married in 1955, after a nine-month courtship. They bought a house in the Bronx. Marty’s mother Theresa and Aunt Catherine stayed on in the old place.

Marty bought his boss’s butcher shop, which is still in business on Arthur Avenue, now Piletti’s Fine Meats. It was Clara who convinced Marty in 1962 to change the name: “You’re a good butcher,” she told him. “People like coming to your shop.” Today, Piletti’s serves both the Arthur Avenue Italian community and faintly bohemian customers from Manhattan.

Clara went on teaching chemistry in the New York City schools. She passed up the job in Portchester, but she did become the first female head of a science department in the New York City school system, at Theodore Roosevelt High School, Marty’s alma mater.

Marty and Clara have a daughter, Diane (b. 1956), and a son, George (b. 1958). Diane graduated from New York University (as did Clara), went to the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, and became a surgeon. She lives and works in Englewood, New Jersey. George went to Fordham University. He studied briefly for the priesthood (like his father’s cousin in Chicago) but then became a history teacher at the Bronx High School of Science. In 1988, he left teaching to take over the butcher shop and has never looked back. He still makes his home in the Bronx.

Clara retired in 1990; Marty, in 1991. A year later, they moved to Englewood to be closer to Diane, her husband Ranesh Singh (a pediatrician), and their two daughters, Linda and Stephanie, now in college. Remembering his mother’s disapproval of Clara, Marty used to joke with Diane, asking her why she couldn’t bring home “a nice Italian boy.” Mrs. Piletti and Clara, by the way, became very close. “You picked such a fine girl,” Marty’s mother once told him.

Both Marty and Clara (now eighty-five) are active and alert. They enjoy reading, shopping, and watching the Food Network, the History Channel, and Turner Classic Movies. They have no interest in DVDs. When they’re out walking, they still get stopped by people who ask if they’re that nice couple from the movies.

Arthur Blythe (1940–2017)

The alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe has died at the age of seventy-six. The San Diego Union-Tribune has an obituary.

Arthur Blythe’s sound on alto is immediately recognizable, a calling card printed in a bold cursive, so to speak. Here are five of my favorite Blythe recordings:

Bush Baby : God Has Smiled on Me : In a Sentimental Mood : Lenox Avenue Breakdown : Miss Nancy

[Full disclosure: “God Has Smiled on Me” is one of my favorite recordings by anyone, ever.]

One series, eleven movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Max, TCM, Tubi, YouTube.]

Let Us Prey: A Ministry of Scandals (dir. Sharon Liese, 2023). “I was born and raised in a strict religious environment, or as most people would call it, a cult”: so says one interviewee in this documentary series. Women who were raised in Independent Fundamental Baptist households speak their piece: about patriarchy and pedophilia, about preachers with the power of mini-gods, about schools (so called) that are, in effect, prisons, and about the effort to speak out and get justice. Given one woman’s account of languishing in an isolation room and wondering why God would let that happen to her, I would have liked to hear these women speak about their present religious belief or lack thereof — it seems an urgent matter to address. Harrowing stuff, and there are many reasons to proceed with caution, or not at all. ★★★ (M)

*

Moonstruck (dir. Norman Jewison, 1987). Two days and nights in Brooklyn Heights, as the moon gets in everybody’s eyes. At the center of the story, the Castorinis: a father (Vincent Gardenia) having an affair, a mother (Olympia Dukakis) sensing that he is, a grandfather (Feodor Chaliapin Jr., son of the great bass) devoted to his dogs, and a daughter, Loretta (Cher), who’s about to marry a diffident yet boorish fellow, Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello). And then there’s Johnny’s estranged brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage), whom Johnny asks Loretta to invite to the wedding — and heck, everyone knows this movie already, right? Wonderful Italian-American stuff, never piled on too thick. ★★★★ (T)

*

Underworld U.S.A. (dir. Samuel Fuller, 1961). A great late noir, with Cliff Robertson as Tolly Devlin, who at fourteen sees unknown gangsters beat his father to death, continues in his own life of crime, and now, in his thirties, is prepared take revenge. Economical, fast-paced storytelling at first, but things get bogged down later with endless scheming. Standouts in the supporting cast: Beatrice Kay as a surrogate mom, Robert Emhardt as a crime boss with a sun lamp, and Dolores Dorn as Cuddles, a low-level drug runner who dreams of a new life with Tolly. I love the bare and utterly unrealistic streetscapes: watching the action, I know that it’s taking place in the movies. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Window (dir. Ted Tetzlaff, 1949). From a story by Cornell Woolrich. I could watch this movie again and again, for its tenement apartments, narrow staircases, fire escapes, and its sense of the city as a secret maze best navigated by children. It’s a fable, a cautionary tale about a boy (Bobby Driscoll) given to making up stories, and who finds his parents and the police skeptical when he announces that he’s just seen someone murdered. It’s beyond sad that Driscoll would be found dead at the age of thirty-one in an abandoned building — the very setting for much of the action here. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The City of the Dead (dir. John Llewellyn Moxey, 1960). I found it in a list of great B-movies. Perhaps not great, but it teems with atmosphere and unease. The premise: a college professor (Christopher Lee, yikes) directs a diligent college student (Nan Barlow) to a Massachusetts village to further her research on witchcraft in colonial America — a village that appears to be made of fog, gravestones, and strange voices. If you admire Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962), you’ll likely admire this movie, which might be one of Harvey’s influences. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Bad Education (dir. Cory Finley, 2019). Based on the true story of Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman), a school superintendent who with his assistant Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney) defrauded a high-achieving Long Island district of millions. That’s no spoiler: the real surprises here come in the way that the truth, with all its complications, emerges, as Rachel Bhargava, a student-reporter for the school paper (Geraldine Viswanathan), begins to ask awkward questions. (Here is Rebekah Rombom, the real-life model for the student-reporter, on her role in breaking the news of the scandal (gift link).) My favorite moments: the visit to Park Avenue, the call to the “consulting firm.” ★★★★ (M)

*

So Well Remembered (dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1947). It feels like two movies, both taking place as the war in Europe comes to an end, and neither to be missed. One is the story of a crusading newspaper editor and former member of Parliament (John Mills) who looks back on his life in journalism and public affairs; the other, the story of a man (John Mills) who looks back on the damage wrought across three generations by an ambitious heiress (Martha Scott). The political and the personal merge in unexpected ways in this movie, long believed lost, and recovered by a member of the Macc Lads, a punk band from Macclesfield, England, where the movie’s exteriors were shot. With Trevor Howard as an alcoholic doctor and Richard Carlson as an RAF pilot. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Dangerous (dir. Alfred E. Green, 1935). “I’m bad for people,” says Joyce Heath (Bette Davis), once a icon of the American theater (modeled on Jeanne Engels), now a shambles of an alcoholic who’s convinced that she’s a jinx who brings harm to anyone she comes close to. Aiming to bring her back to stardom is Don Bellows (Franchot Tone), a suave architect who renounced life as a banker after seeing Heath on the stage. Their relationship takes two wild turns late in the movie (Elaine called them both), but the story then speeds to a sudden, ultra-sappy resolution. Great performances (Davis won an Oscar), clichéd script, and it’s fun to wonder what this movie might have been before the Code. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Black Friday (dir. Arthur Lubin, 1940). The two cultures, the humanities and the sciences: when gangster Red Cannon (Stanley Ridges) and courtly old professor of English George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges) are the victims of a drive-by shooting, Dr. Ernest Sovac (Boris Karloff), Kingsley’s best friend, works a miracle by saving Kingsley’s life with a transplant of the gangster’s brain. No wonder the revived professor occasionally morphs into Red, losing his pince-nez and acquiring slicked-down hair and a chalk stripe suit. What’s odder: even though he now has Red’s brain, the professor can still recite swaths of English poetry. Bela Lugosi plays a gangster, but the real star of the movie is the fellow who gets third billing: Stanley Ridges, who really seems to be two actors. ★★★ (YT)

*

A Matter of Life and Death (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946). A deeply strange and deeply moving story that begins with an RAF pilot, Peter Carter (David Niven), at the controls of a burning plane, talking with surnameless radio operator June (Kim Hunter), giving her some last words to convey to his mother and sisters. Peter, it appears, has been scheduled to die, but he doesn’t, due to an error in the workings of an undefined great beyond, and still alive, he promptly meets up with and falls in love with June. When a representative of the beyond demands that Peter come along so that the books remain properly balanced, a celestial trial begins, with Peter and June’s future in the balance. Extraordinary imagination, extraordinary celestial set design, and, in the aftermath of World War II, extraordinary pathos in the scenes of all those service members making their way into the world beyond. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Revolt of Mamie Stover (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1956). I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jane Russell in a movie, and I’m happy to know from this one that she could act. Here she plays Mississippi-born Mamie, who we’re meant to understand is a sex worker, forced by the police to leave San Francisco, determined to make a new life in Honolulu, where she’s hired as a hostess at a dance hall (with a hallway of private rooms behind a curtain). Mamie’s life is complicated by a romance with a serviceman and writer (Richard Egan) who’s determined to take her away from the life she’s leading. The dance hall’s proprietor, Bertha Parchman (Agnes Moorehead) — named for the prison farm? — has other ideas. ★★★★ (CC)

*

American Fiction (dir. Cord Jefferson, 2023). Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is a Black American writer and professor who who draws upon ancient materials (The Frogs, The Persians) for his novels, and he’d like those novels to be shelved in the Fiction section of the bookstore, not in African-American Studies. With a mother (Leslie Uggams) sinking into dementia and needing memory care, Monk hits upon a scheme to make some money: like Jim Trueblood in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, he will give a white audience what it wants: a story of dysfunction, sorrow, and violence, presented to a publisher as the work of a fugitive ex-con writing under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh. And the white folks love it, with predictable and unpredictable results. I loved this movie for its cutting comedy and its depiction of a family both whole and scarred — and now I need to read Percival Everett’s novel Erasure. ★★★★ (V)

[I take back what I wrote about The Holdovers: I now think that American Fiction might be the best new movie I see all year. Here is the bookstore scene, filmed in what I immediately recognized as Brookline Booksmith, posing as a chain store.]

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

Jonathan Schwartz and WKCS

1949: Jonathan Schwartz, eleven years old, lived with his parents in a penthouse at Ninety-fourth Street and Lexington Avenue. There he created a radio station:

A radio station was born from the newly invented Electronic Baby-Sitter, a device that, when placed by a crib, would transmit any disturbance to a radio in another room at 600 on the dial, where there was no New York station. I used the Electronic Baby-Sitter as a microphone, placing it in front of my record player. The result in the living room and in my mother’s room and in my father’s study was nothing short of what my mother called “a miracle.” The music that I was playing in my room was as clear as a chime on every radio in the house. My father’s battery portable, which rested on a bed table by the brown couch, gave me the big idea.

I took it, one morning, down the back stairs of the building, all twelve floors, to the street.

The reception remained clear as my father changed the recordings in my room. Absolutely clear, even on the street, even across Ninety-fourth and down Lexington toward Ninety-third.

I lost the signal a block from home, but it returned and became its powerful self in the lobby of our building.

A real opportunity here. A real station, WKCS, in honor of my mother.

Jonathan Schwartz, All in Good Time: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 2004).

As Schwartz explains, the station’s call letters “had the W for the eastern stations, the K for western stations, and the KCS for my mother’s initials, Katherine Carrington Schwartz.” (His father was the composer Arthur Schwartz.) The schedule, distributed to every apartment in the building:

Monday–Friday, 7:00–7:30 A.M., The Sunrise Salute
Saturday and Sunday, 7:00–8:00 A.M., The Weekend Salute

Jonathan Schwartz, disc jockey, grew up to be Jonathan Schwartz, disc jockey, writer, Sinatra maven. You can still hear Schwartz on the weekends: The Saturday Show and The Sunday Show run from noon to four (Eastern Time) on WNYC-FM, 93.9, streaming at wnyc.org. Some jazz, some pop, some show tunes, some familiar, some rare and out of the way. It’s difficult to stop listening.

Tenuously related posts
Call Letter Origins
96th and Lexington

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, DVD, Max, TCM, YouTube.]

From the Criterion Channel’s Pre-Code Divas feature

The Divorcee (dir. Robert Z. Leonard, 1930). A tour de force for Norma Shearer as Jerry, a rich young married who gets even with her one-night-stand adulterous husband Ted (Chester Morris) by having a one-night stand of her own. Her husband objects — and the movie makes clear his hypocrisy. Complications follow, in this marriage and that of Paul (Conrad Nagel) and Dorothy (Judith Wood), who married after she was disfigured in a car wreck caused by his reckless driving. Look for Robert Montgomery as Ted’s friend Don, and Charles R. Moore, a member of later Preston Sturges’s stock company as First Porter Opening Window. ★★★★

Night Nurse (dir. William A. Wellman, 1931). Here we have a new nurse, Lora (Barbara Stanwyck), her colleague and roommate Maloney (Joan Blondell), a bootlegger (name unknown until the last scene), an alcoholic mother of two young girls, and the mother’s murderous chauffeur Nick (Clark Gable), intent upon keeping the mother drunk as her daughters starve to death. (There’s a trust fund he’s after.) Toss in a drug-addicted doctor, some grim hospital jokes, and gratuitous scenes of Stanwyck and Blondell undressing, and glory in the shock of the pre-Code world. Stanwyck’s Lora has courage and smarts as the fierce protector of the helpless girls, and as — I can’t help seeing it — Mary Richards to Blondell’s Rhoda Morgenstern. ★★★★

Daughter of the Dragon (dir. Lloyd Corrigan, 1931). “I have taken the oath of a son”: so says Princess Ling Moy (Anna May Wong), vowing to exact the vengeance her father Fu Manchu (Warner Oland) demands of her as he dies. The Hamlet-like scenario is complicated by two love stories, with the princess (a professional dancer) drawing the attention of an English aristocrat (Bramwell Fletcher) and a dashing Chinese detective (Sessue Hayakawa) working with Scotland Yard. Wong is an extraordinary screen presence: her character made me think of Louise Brooks, if Louise Brooks were murderous and not just insouciant. With mind control, poisoned tobacco, a secret passageway, and moments of wild violence. ★★★★

Back Street (dir. John M. Stahl, 1932). From a novel by Fannie Hurst. True romance — or is it self-abasement? — run rampant: Ray Schmidt (Irene Dunne) gives up a position as the highest-ranking woman in her firm to live in a paid-for apartment as the mistress of banker-philanthropist Walter Saxel (John Boles). Best scene: Walter’s son confronts the adulterous pair. “There isn’t one woman in a million who’s ever found happiness in the back streets of any man’s life.” ★★★★

Three on a Match (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1932). Three girls from P.S. 62 take different paths in life: Mary (Joan Blondell) is a thief turned showgirl; Ruth, a stenographer (Bette Davis); Vivian (Ann Dvorak), the unhappy wife of a wealthy lawyer (Warren Williams). An overheard conversation in a beauty parlor reunites the three women, with dramatic changes in fortune to follow. Dvorak is the standout here, and her desperation and courage bring the story to a shocking end. With copious alcohol, implicit cocaine, and Humphrey Bogart. ★★★★

[The other movies in this feature: Hell’s Angels, Dishonored, No Man of Her Own, Scarface, This Is the Night, Baby Face, Design for Living, I’m No Angel, and She Done Him Wrong. Also these two.]
*

Tár (dir. Todd Field, 2022). I’ve never been impressed by Adam Gopnik — see his inane comments on Armstrong, Ellington, and Proust — so any movie that begins with the real Gopnik interviewing the fictional conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) is already in danger of losing me. This movie did lose me: it’s one of the most pretentious I’ve seen, dropping knowing shorthand references to musical personalities and institutions with alarming frequency. Lydia Tár is driven, humorless, manipulative, sexually exploitative, and vengeful: we’re meant, I think, to ooh and aah at the posh furnishings and tsk deeply at her personal history — and tsk again, perhaps, at the punishment exacted for that history (all while not laughing at her conducting). What bugs me most is the movie’s spooky, faintly stalker-y, supernatural dimension, never made enough of: what’s it doing there? ★★ (DVD)

[For a markedly different take on the movie, see an essay by Dan Kois. It’s spoiler-rich.]

Brief Encounter (dir. David Lean, 1945), We watched it again (for the third or fourth time?) so as to share it with friends who’d never seen it, and now I’m wondering why it’s never shown up in one of these movie compilations. It’s a profoundly bittersweet movie, the story of two married people, Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) and Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), who meet by chance in a train station’s refreshment room, and whose further chance meetings develop into love. And always time is running out: whistles blowing, an unseen station master announcing incoming and departing trains (the voice of Noël Coward, who adapted his play Still Life for the screenplay). Think of Dido and Aeneas in England — with a difference, because it’s England. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Manic pixie dream girls

Sweet November (dir. Robert Ellis Miller, 1968). I adore Sandy Dennis, who here plays Sara Deever, a Brooklyn Heights resident who every month chooses a new man to move in with her — just for one month — so that she can improve him. Her project for November is Charlie Blake (Anthony Newley), a British manufacturer of boxes, and a man who is, in the language of the time, uptight. For most of its length, the movie feels like a ditzy comedy, with Sara as a manic pixie dream girl and Charlie composing dopey poems and submitting to a mod makeover. That these two people will fall in love is to be expected, but things take a semi-unpredictable turn that casts a new light on all that precedes the end. ★★★★ (TCM)

After Hours (dir. Martin Scorcese, 1985). A chance encounter in a Manhattan coffeeshop pulls hapless word processor Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) into a night of funny, sad, crazy episodes in Soho. Joseph Minion’s screenplay is deadpan funny in countless ways; I began to think of this movie as a Buster Keaton comedy — if Keaton were making the downtown scene in the 1980s. The movie is also a set of dark variations on the manic pixie dream girl, with the women Paul encounters (played by Rosanna Arquette, Teri Garr, Catherine O’Hara, and Verna Bloom) becoming ever more hazardous to his well-being. My favorite line: “It’s not even 2:00 yet.” ★★★★ (TCM)

[I thought I’d seen this movie before, but I had it confused with Something Wild (dir. Jonathan Demme, 1986.]

*

Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God (dir. Hannah Olson, 2023). Amy Carlson, a McDonald’s manager, figured out that she was Mother God, God incarnate, and thus attracted a small group of followers to form Love Has Won, a community in Crestone, Colorado, a town that draws spiritual seekers. This documentary series explores Carlson’s life and death and eclectic theology, which draws upon ancient myth (the Anunnaki), New Age beliefs (portals), pop culture (Carlson was in constant communication with the dead Robin Williams, leader of “the Galactics”), and conspiracy theories (Carlson was queen of the universe, and thus the Q of QAnon), all informed by a vague Manichaeism, all fueled by generous intake of alcohol, tranquilizers, and colloidal silver. And there’s a series of Father Gods (Carlson’s lovers), the last of whom we see wearing an ankle monitor. What would make this three-part documentary more compelling: a Frontline-style narrator, a voice of sanity to counter the unrelieved blather of Carlson’s followers. ★★★ (M)

*

Man’s Castle (dir. Frank Borzage, 1933). In Depression Manhattan, Bill (Spencer Tracy) and Trina (Loretta Young) shack up together — literally, living without benefit of marriage in a makeshift encampment off Park Avenue. Bill, who’s more than a bit of a jerk, has itchy feet — he’s always alert to train whistles and birds taking flight, even with his caring, self-sacrificing, incredibly beautiful partner by his side. A showgirl with money (Glenda Farrell) and a camp hothead (Arthur Hohl) cause trouble; an old alkie (Marjorie Rambeau) is there to step in as a deus ex machina. Remarkably pre-Code, with Bill and Trina lying in a bed together — withnot one foot on the floor. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Now, Voyager (dir. Irving Rapper, 1942). Bette Davis as Charlotte Vale, a young woman deeply damaged by a tyrannical mother (Gladys Cooper). A sister-in-law’s intervention brings Charlotte to a forward-thinking psychiatrist (Claude Rains), who helps her to develop the means to a life of greater freedom. Enter Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid), an architect, unhappily married. After seeing this movie a second time, I think it’d make a great double-bill with Brief Encounter: happiness is happiness, however fleeting, however partial. ★★★★ (TCM)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)