The Bowery Boys: New York City History
PODCAST The Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen has a mysterious, troubling past. So what happens when you throw a few ghosts into the mix? Greg and Tom find out the hard way in this year’s ghost stories podcast, featuring tales of mystery and mayhem situated in the townhouses, courtyards and taverns of this trendy area of Midtown West.… Read More
PODCAST The story of New York City’s most colorful profession. Television audiences are currently obsessed with shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and FX’s Pose, presenting different angles on the profession and art of drag. New York City has been crucial to its current moment in pop culture and people have been performing and enjoy drag performers for well… Read More
Grand Central Terminal has seen millions of people rush across its Main Concourse over the past one hundred years, and more than a few movies have captured that commuter ebb and flow. But while Grand Central is occasionally a backdrop for romance — especially during World War II, when returning soldiers would arrive to meet… Read More
In 1910, D.W. Griffith made one of first films ever produced in Hollywood, CA, appropriately called In Old California. Before then, film production companies were scattered throughout the United States, with two of the most successful based here in New York City. The American Vitagraph Company, originally located at the Morse Building on 140 Nassau… Read More
The Bowery Boys Obsessive Guides look very, very closely at a classic movie filmed in New York City, finding buried history, additional context and a few secrets within various scenes and plot points. Filled with film spoilers so read this after you’ve seen the movie — or use it to follow along as you watch… Read More
PODCAST Rudolph Valentino was an star from the early years of Hollywood, but his elegant, randy years in New York City should not be forgotten. They helped make him a premier dancer and a glamorous actor. And on August 23, 1926, this is where the silent film icon died. Valentino arrived in Ellis Island in 1913, one of… Read More
Above: While Sherlock Holmes made his film debut in 1900, he hit the stage a bit earlier. William Gillette was the most acclaimed Sherlock of the day, touring the United States in a play he co-wrote with the detective’s creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. After a tryout in Buffalo, the play made its debut at… Read More
Bond Clothing Store sign was a mainstay of Times Square in the 1940s and 50s. For more on Bond’s unusual transition after that, read my article from 2007 on Bond International Casino. Picture courtesy Life Magazine, Lisa Larsen photographerNew York Neon is the Bowery Boys Book of the Month for July, a superb review of the… Read More
The second film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture was hardly a movie at all. ‘The Broadway Melody’, a frothy Hollywood revue about the mounting of an frothy Broadway revue, was a total celebration of every strength and weakness of the early Broadway stage, and a hopeful sign that the New York… Read More
Millions and millions of hours of television and film have been made within the five boroughs since the invention of the camera. But have you ever wondered where the very first roll of film was ever shot? That distinction most likely goes to a nondescript rooftop studio built atop a building at 1729 St. Marks Avenue… Read More
Hunter and gadabout Paul Rainey: An accidental matinee idol Catching a movie this weekend? Many New Yorkers had the same plan one hundred years ago, but the experience was vastly different. Motion pictures in 1912 were shorter, without sound and in black-and-white, of course, but they were sometimes presented as part of a set of… Read More
Maneater: Theda Bara in an unconventional portrait. Her publicist claimed it was her lover and that ‘not even the grave could separate them’.“A vampire is a good woman with a bad reputation, or rather a good woman who has had possibilities and wasted them” — Florenz Ziegfeld Progressive, liberated women were clearly so frightening one… Read More
Mentioned in our podcast this week was the precursor to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the three-story ‘centre of Brooklyn culture‘ known as the Brooklyn Athenaeum and Reading Room. Founded in 1848 and incorporated in 1852, the Athenaeum was a combination concert hall, store for intellectuals and library (in an era before public libraries), serving… Read More
The recent trailer to Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, aka ‘Moulin Rouge in Manhattan’, seems to have left everyone in a state of awe (and horror) in its vivid, hyper-electro-glossy depiction of Prohibition-era New York. And it left many feeling slight panic, even apoplexy, especially considering the entire spectacle will be rendered in 3D when… Read More
Our favorite randy, drunken Madison Avenue suits return this Sunday with an extra-special long episode of ‘Mad Men‘ this Sunday. As with prior seasons, I’ll try and follow up most shows on Monday with a little historical commentary. The wonderful thing about this show is that they’re nothing if not hyper-sensitive about historical accuracy. From hints… Read More