My Bohemian Cahier



The Bronx





My Bohemian Cahier,



note from myself:
INTRO:
The collective Bohemia got it's own cultivation and ended around 1960 in Manhattan...!!, although the movies often got a later producing-era, and even today that's still alive.
Like a timeless Gang-Bang-Doodle.....

....My personal Bohemia, My Bohemian Cahier:
...."when in the nighttime you sit on your chair, no activities to do, then your Bohemian Cahier-opens itselfe before your eyes; very soothing and relaxing..., and like this you can make a scrapbook out of it."....
(by the way: why don't you start making your own scrapbook, your own Bohemia...?
Like making a scrapbook of your 'sensitory-field' upto 1960.
That is, things you didn't do actually by walking through life, but it's a scrapbook about your life-path through your senses (sensabilities) upto 1960.))
La Boheme involves SO much:
movies/musicals/art/actors/mafia/casino/nightlife/poetry/writing, etc....,
but also the much more softer things like:
plants/birds/little rivers/mountains and hills/valleys/snowdrops, etc....
Just enjoy making your own gathering-book from your own Personal Bohemian Cahier, it's just fun and great pleasure.

- Ode and thanks to MANHATTAN!
that brought the whole world to its feet-



The deep groove in my Bohemian Cahier goes until the year 1960, when the lights went off and instant at the same time newborn entities revealed itself.
Seen the fact that Manhattan is timeless and never-ending, I decided to use also much more later dated materials.
So, even today you can still feel the echoes of an tremendous extremely "GRAND-ERA" gone by,

LENY, Marion de Voogd
SEE THE INDEX OF THIS BOHEMIAN CAHIER










BROADWAY

coming up soon





Doris Day Films (with audio)



List of Universal Pictures
List of Musicals
List of Best American Movies

Broadway theatre
The Lion King at the New Amsterdam Theatre, 2003Broadway theatre is the most prestigious form of professional theatre in the U.S., as well as the most well known to the general public and most lucrative for the performers, technicians and others involved in putting on the shows. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking world. Broadway theatre, or a Broadway show, refers to a performance, usually a play or musical that appeals to a mass audience, presented in one of the thirty-nine large professional theatres with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The shows that reach Broadway and thrive there have historically been perceived as more mainstream and less cutting edge than those produced Off- and Off-Off-Broadway or in regional non-profit theatres such as the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Movies shot in the areas of The City below:
shooting for street-scenes

Shot in The Bronx:
  • A Bronx Tale, Robert de Niro (1993)... about an Italian-American kid in the 1960's
  • Fort Apache, the Bronx,(1981) ... about the crime-hidden South Bronx
  • I like it like that, (1994) ... about a young black Puerto-Rican model
  • Hanging with the Homeboys, (1991) ... about four guys from a Bronx neighborhood


    • Shot in Manhattan:
  • Hester Street, Joan Micklin Silver (1975) ... about Jewish immigrants living on the Lower East Side, but the movie is shot in Greenwich Village
  • Breakfast at Tiffany's, (1961, Audrey Hepburn) ... great visions of Manhattan
  • Midnight Cowboy, (1969) ... about the borough
  • The Muppets take Manhattan, (1984)
  • !!Forty Deuce, Paul Morrissey (1982) ... Shows the real face of Manhattan: Dangerous...! TimesSquare


    • Shot in Brooklyn:
  • Saturday Night Fever, (1977)... about a Brooklyn-based character
  • Sophies Choice (1982) ... coming from Auschwitz and settling in post-WorldWar-II Brooklyn
  • Moonstruck, (1987) ... fabulouslooking borough, with Cher


    • Shot in Queens / Staten Island:
  • Godfather Part-2, (1974)
  • Donnie Brasco, (1997)
  • Easy money, (1983), Rodney Dangerfield ... satire on the life in the borough


    • Famous NewYork Musicals:
    1930's: Glory-years of Musicals on Broadway

  • 42nd Street, (1933)
  • On the Town, (1949), Frank Sinatra: 'it's a helluva town'
  • The Band Wagon, (1953)
  • Guys and Dolls, (1955)
  • West Side Story, (1961)
  • Saturday Night Fever, (1977)
  • NewYork, NewYork, (1977)


    • City-chronicles in movies:

  • Woody Allen: "Manhattan", "Broadway Danny Rose", "Crimes and Misdemeanors"
  • Spike Lee: "She's Gotta Have It", "Do the Right Thing", "Summer of Sam"
  • Martin Scorcese: "Mean Streets", "Taxi Driver", "After Hours", "Goodfellas", "The Age of Innocence", "Bringing Out the Dead"


    • Some Broadway Premieres:

  • "Angels in America", Walter Kerr
  • "Born Yesterday", Lyceum
  • "A Chorus Line", Schubert
  • "Chicago", Richard Rodgers ("46th Street")
  • "Falsettos", John Golden
  • "Porgy and Bess", Neil Simon ("Alvin")
  • "South Pacific", Majestic
  • "Sweet Charity", Palace
  • "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?", Belasco
  • "Ziegfeld Follies", New Amsterdam
  • "Cabaret", Liza Minelli


    • More Movies and Location-Shooting:

  • "Regeneration", (1915), Raoul Walsh
  • "The Crowd", (1928) ... the contrast between rich and middle class
  • "On The Town", musical, (1949) ... with openingnumber: "NewYork, NewYork"
  • "The Lost Weekend", (1945) ... The real NewYork, about an alcoholic writer
  • "Saboteur", Alfred Hitchcock, (1942) ...shows the Radio City Music Hall / Statue of Liberty / NewYork Harbour
  • "KingKong", (1933)
  • "Cotton Comes to Harlem", (1970)
  • "The French Connection", (1971)
  • "Mean Streets", (1973)
  • "Serpico", (1973)


    • World's biggest Movie-Database
    Movie-Trailers

  • List of films set in NewYorkCity
  • List of Gangsterfilms
  • Mafia Movie Database


    • Home-entertainment:

    Watch a Movie:
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  • "20th Century Fox"
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  • Movies-Hub.com

    • 1929:
    A quarter of the U.S.-filmproduction happened in NewYork. The accent, and specially by the 1970's was on: Location-shooting: Streets- and Subway grime. The boom continued in the 1980's and during the 1990's it became easier to shoot street-images.
    note: 1930-1950: most visions of NewYork were made on Hollywood back lots




    PARAMOUNT PICTURES:
    Key phrases: Continental style and wit, anarchic comedy, DeMille spectacles, relative creative freedom.
    Executives: Adolph Zukor as NY money man, Jesse Lasky as studio chief, followed by several others in later years.
    Stars: Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Fredric March, Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Sylvia Sidney, Cary Grant, Carole Lombard, W.C. Fields, Mae West, The Marx Brothers, Maurice Chevalier, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Ray Milland, Fred MacMurray, Alan Ladd.

    METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER:
    Key phrases: Glamorous stars, safe middle-class appeal, high budgets and production values.
    Executives: Nicholas Schenck ruled from NY. Louis B. Mayer was studio chief. Irving Thalberg was production chief in the early 30s, followed at his death by a complex network of producers. Mayer's son-in-law David Selznick was an important producer there for a while.
    Stars: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Wallace Beery, Norma Shearer, James Stewart, Hedy Lamarr, Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Melvyn Douglas, Greer Garson, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Rosalind Russell, Katharine Hepburn (from the 40s on), Robert Montgomery, Margaret Sullavan, Gene Kelly, Lana Turner, Ava Gardner.

    WARNER BROTHERS:
    Key phrases: Tough, fast-talking urban dramas, swashbucklers, biopics, low-budget, working class values.
    Executives: Harry Warner was money man, rascally younger brother Jack was studio chief. Daryl Zanuck ran production in the early 30s. Hal Wallis was later one of their more prominent producers.
    Stars: Bette Davis, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Errol Flynn, Joan Blondell, Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Mary Astor, Paul Muni, Ann Sheridan, Olivia De Havilland, Jane Wyman.

    FOX, later 20TH CENTURY-FOX:
    Key phrases: Folksy Americana, stories and musicals aimed at a rural or small town audience, John Ford dramas.
    Executives: The maverick William Fox founded the company. After he went bankrupt, it was merged with a new outfit named 20th Century - Joseph Schenck (Nick's brother) was the money man, and Daryl Zanuck was studio chief.
    Stars: Janet Gaynor, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Loretta Young, John Wayne, Betty Grable, Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Gregory Peck (after Selznick), Victor Mature, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark.

    RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum):
    Key phrases: Eclectic, New York sophistication, experimental, theatrical.
    Executives: No real mogul - studio by committee much of the time, which may be one reason why RKO foundered. Selznick was a producer there for a time. Pandro S. Berman was perhaps their most consistent producer. Dore Schary produced there in the 40s.
    Stars: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn (before her jump to MGM in the 40s), Irene Dunne (for awhile), Cary Grant (ditto, after Paramount), Maureen O'Hara, Orson Welles, Robert Mitchum (during the Howard Hughes reign).

    THE MINORS:
    The minors owned no theater chains. Therefore they relied on deals with the majors to have their films exhibited. Their budgets (and profit margins) were a lot lower, and they generally borrowed stars from the majors since they couldn't afford to keep their own under contract.

    UNIVERSAL:
    Key phrases: Horror movies, weepies, low-budget musicals and dramas.
    Executives: Carl Laemmle was the founder. Thalberg was briefly studio chief before going to MGM. Laemmle's son Carl Jr. ran things through the mid-30s, when the studio was bought by other interests.
    Stars: Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Margaret Sullavan (before she jumped to Metro), Deanna Durbin, Marlene Dietrich (after she left Paramount), Abbott & Costello.

    COLUMBIA:
    Key phrases: Frank Capra, screwball comedy, Rita Hayworth.
    Executives: Rude, boorish Harry Cohn was the big fish in this little pond.
    Stars: Jean Arthur, Barbara Stanwyck (for awhile), Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford. Virtually everyone else of note was borrowed from another studio.

    THE INDEPENDENTS:
    The difference between "independents" and "minors" was that, generally, the independents produced on a picture-by-picture basis rather than as a studio, although the lines could be fuzzy sometimes.

    SELZNICK:
    Key phrases: Big-budget prestige productions, Hitchcock.
    Executives: Why, David O. Selznick, of course.
    Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, Gregory Peck, Jennifer Jones. Most talent was bought from the majors.

    GOLDWYN:
    Samuel L. Goldwyn was an illiterate mogul with a talent for malapropisms, and a touching desire to make films out of literary classics. He hired all the New York stage writers he could get, as well as English stars like Ronald Colman, Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. Mostly he borrowed stars from other studios. Sometimes the results were quite good, especially from director William Wyler: Dodsworth, Dead End, Wuthering Heights, The Little Foxes, The Best Years of Our Lives. He made mistakes too - most memorably in his grooming of Anna Sten as the next big star. But his ratio of good-to-bad was pretty impressive, considering the low output.

    DISNEY:
    Walt Disney didn't invent film animation, but he brought it to a level that no one else dreamed possible. His studio invented the animated feature - Snow White began a series of successes that hasn't stopped yet. Technically, Disney's animation was better than any of the competition, although in terms of content there will always be champions of Warner Bros. and the Fleischers (makers of Betty Boop and Popeye, also independents). Disney expanded into live action film in the 50s.

    WALTER WANGER:
    Wanger was a maverick with a much more sporadic output than Selznick or Goldwyn, but he's notable for being a forerunner of the sort of independent producer that eventually triumphed in the 50s, putting together pictures by offering short-term contracts to selected directors and stars. His credits include Stagecoach, Foreign Correspondent, and some interesting films directed by Fritz Lang.

    UNITED ARTISTS:
    UA was a different sort of animal. Not a studio, really (although it had tiny production facilities), but more a distribution company for independents, with a few scattered theater holdings. It was founded by four movie titans: Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith. The idea was to provide a way for independent producers to get their product onto screens. Goldwyn used UA, as did Britain's Alexander Korda for his films, and other independents such as Walter Wanger and Hal Roach. UA came into its own in the 50s, when the studios were being broken by the antitrust rulings. The lack of overhead gave it the freedom to bid for stars and producers at that time, and it became a successful production company into the 60s.

    POVERTY ROW:
    We tend to think of the studio era in terms of its successes - the classic films like Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, or Grand Hotel. But Hollywood survived on a steady output of lesser vehicles, the B-pictures and programmers, the eighty percent or so which are now largely forgotten. The "Poverty Row" studios specialized in only these kinds of movies - cheap westerns, cheap adventures, cheap entertainment of all sorts.
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    Cinescene.com
    FILMSALON



    Manhattan is loosely divided into downtown, midtown, and uptown regions, with Fifth Avenue demarcating Manhattan's east and west sides.
    Manhattan is connected by a bridge and tunnels to New Jersey to the west, and to three New York City boroughs—the Bronx to the northeast and Brooklyn and Queens on Long Island to the east and south. Its only direct connection with the fifth New York City borough is the Staten Island Ferry across New York Harbor, which is free of charge. The ferry terminal is located at Battery Park at its southern tip. It is possible to travel to Staten Island via Brooklyn, using the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811, called for twelve numbered avenues running north and south roughly parallel to the shore of the Hudson River, each 100 feet wide (30 m), with First Avenue on the east side and Twelfth Avenue in the west. There are several intermittent avenues east of First Avenue, including four additional lettered avenues running from Avenue A eastward to Avenue D in an area now known as Alphabet City in Manhattan's East Village. The numbered streets in Manhattan run east-west, and are 60 feet wide (18 m), with about 200 feet (61 m) between each pair of streets. With each combined street and block adding up to about 260 feet (79 m), there are almost exactly 20 blocks per mile. Fifteen crosstown streets were designated as 100 feet (30 m) wide, including 34th, 42nd, 59th and 125th Streets, some of the borough's most significant transportation and shopping venues. Broadway is the most notable of many exceptions to the grid, starting at Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan and continuing north into the Bronx at Manhattan's northern tip. In much of Midtown Manhattan, Broadway runs at a diagonal to the grid, creating major named intersections at Herald Square (Sixth Avenue and 34th Street), Times Square (Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street) and Columbus Circle (Eighth Avenue/Central Park West and 59th Street) A consequence of the strict grid plan of most of Manhattan, and the grid's skew of approximately 28.9 degrees, is a phenomenon sometimes referred to as Manhattanhenge (by analogy with Stonehenge). On separate occasions in late May and early July (for 2006 the exact dates are May 28 and July 12), the sunset is aligned with the street grid lines, with the result that the sun is visible at or near the western horizon from street level. A similar phenomenon occurs with the sunrise in January and December (January 11 and December 2 in 2006).
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    TimesSquare

    CHINATOWN:
    Chinatown started on Mott Street, Park, Pell and Doyers streets, east of the notorious Five Points district. By 1870, there was a Chinese population of 200. By the time the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed, the population was up to 2,000 residents. By 1900, there were 7,000 Chinese residents, but fewer than 200 Chinese women. A 1995 view southwest along Chinatown's East Broadway, with 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower) in the background.The early days of Chinatown were dominated by Chinese "tongs" (now sometimes rendered neutrally as "associations"), which were a mixture of clan associations, landsman's associations, political alliances (Kuomintang vs Communist Party of China) and (more secretly) crime syndicates. The associations started to give protection from harassment due to anti-Chinese racism. Each of these associations was aligned with a street gang. The associations were a source of assistance to new immigrants - giving out loans, aiding in starting business, and so forth. The associations formed a governing body named the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. Though this body was meant to foster relations between the Tongs, open warfare periodically flared between the On Leong and Hip Sing tongs. Much of the Chinese gang warfare took place on Doyers street. Gangs like the Ghost Shadows and Flying Dragons were prevalent until the 1980s. The only park in Chinatown, Columbus Park, was built on what was once the center of the infamous Five Points neighborhood of New York. During the 19th century, this was the most dangerous slum area of immigrant New York (as portrayed in the movie Gangs of New York). Mott Street in Manhattan's Chinatown in 2004.Much of Chinatown works in an underground economy, where wages are below the mandated minimum wage and transactions are done in cash to avoid paying taxes. This underground economy is responsible for employment of large numbers of new immigrants who lacked the language skills to seek better jobs. This system attracted the garment industry to use large-scale sweatshops in the Chinatown area. Tourism and restaurants are also major industries. Chinese green groceries and fish mongers are clustered around Mulberry Street, Canal Street (by Baxter Street) and all along East Broadway (especially by Catherine Street). The Chinese jewelry shop district is on Canal Street between Mott and Bowery. Due to the high savings rate among Chinese, there are many Asian and American banks in the neighborhood. Canal Street, west of Broadway (especially on the North side), is filled with Chinese street vendors selling imitation perfumes, watches, and hand-bags. This section of Canal Street was previously the home of warehouse stores selling surplus/salvage electronics and hardware. Until the 1970s, the traditional borders of Chinatown were: Canal Street in the North (bordering Little Italy) The Bowery in the East (bordering the Lower East Side) Worth Street in the South Baxter Street in the West
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    HARLEM:
    The arrival of African Americans Marcus Garvey ParkSmall groups of black people lived in Harlem as early as 1880, especially in the area around 125th Street and "Negro tenements" on West 130th Street. The mass migration of blacks into the area began in 1904, thanks to another real estate crash, the worsening of conditions for blacks elsewhere in the city, and the leadership of a black real estate entrepreneur named Phillip Payton, Jr. Harlem experienced another real estate bust in 1904-1905; after the collapse of the 1890s, new speculation and construction started up again in 1903 and the resulting glut of housing led to a crash in values that eclipsed the late-19th century slowdown. Landlords could not find white renters for their properties, so Philip Payton stepped in to bring blacks. His company, the Afro-American Realty Company, was almost single-handedly responsible for migration of blacks from their previous neighborhoods, the Tenderloin, San Juan Hill (now the site of Lincoln Center), and Hell's Kitchen in the west 40s and 50s. The move to northern Manhattan was driven in part by fears that anti-black riots such as those that had occurred in the Tenderloin in 1900 and in San Juan Hill in 1905 might recur. In addition, a number of tenements that had been occupied by blacks in the west 30s were destroyed at this time to make way for the construction of the original Penn Station. In 1907, black churches began to move uptown. St. Philip's Episcopal Church, for one, purchased a block of buildings on West 135th Street to rent to members of its congregation. During World War I, black laborers were actively recruited to leave the southern United States and work in northern factories, thinly staffed because of the war. So many came that it "threaten[ed] the very existence of some of the leading industries of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama." Many came to Harlem. By 1920, central Harlem was predominantly black and by 1930, blacks lived as far south as Central Park, at 110th Street. The expansion was fueled primarily by an influx of blacks from the West Indies and the southern U.S. states, especially Virginia, South and North Carolina, and Georgia. As blacks moved in, white residents left; between 1920 and 1930, 118,792 white people left the neighborhood and 87,417 blacks arrived. Between 1907 and 1915, some white residents of Harlem resisted the neighborhood's change, especially once the swelling black population pressed west of Lenox Avenue, which served as an informal color line until the early 1920s. Some made pacts not to sell to or rent to blacks. Others tried to buy property and evict black tenants, but the Afro-American Realty Company retaliated by buying other property and evicting whites. They also attempted to convince banks to deny mortgages to black buyers, but soon gave up.
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    SOHO:
    Historic district:
    As the artist population grew, the city made some attempts to stem the movement, especially concerned about the occupation of space that did not meet residential building codes, and the possibility that the space might be needed at some time for the return of manufacturing to New York City. Pressured on many sides, the city eventually gave up on attempting to keep all of the Cast Iron District as industrial space, and the area received historical designation as SoHo in 1973. The historic district is officially bounded by Houston Street, West Broadway, Canal Street and Crosby Street. It is noted for the elaborate cast-iron architecture of many of its buildings, most of which date from the late 19th century. These buildings originally housed warehouses and factories. It is also noted for its cobblestone streets, which have all recently been repaved with the exception of Crosby Street, Wooster Street, Mercer Street and part of Howard Street. The neighborhood rose to fame as a neighborhood for artists during the 1960s and 1970s, when the cheap spaces vacated by departing factories were converted by artists into lofts and studios. SoHo's lofts were especially appealing to artists because they could use the wide spaces and tall ceilings that factories and warehouses required to create and store their work. During this period, which lasted into the 1980s, living in SoHo was often of dubious legality, as the area was zoned for light industrial and commercial uses rather than residential, and many residents had to convert their apartments into livable spaces on their own, with little money. However, beginning in the 1980s, in a way that would later apply elsewhere, the neighborhood began to draw more affluent residents. This led to an eventual exodus of the area's artists during the 1990s, leaving galleries, boutiques, restaurants, and young urban professionals behind. SoHo's location, the appeal of lofts as living spaces, its architecture and, ironically, its "hip" reputation as a haven for artists all contributed to this change. The pattern of gentrification is typically known as the "SoHo Effect" and has been observed in several cities around the United States. Thirty years ago a backwater of poor artists and small factories, SoHo is now a popular tourist destination for people looking for fashionable (and expensive) clothing and exquisite architecture. SoHo's boutiques and restaurants are clustered in the northern area of the neighborhood, along Broadway and Prince and Spring streets. The sidewalks in this area are often crowded with tourists and with vendors selling jewelry, t-shirts, and other works, sometimes leaving no space for pedestrians to walk. SoHo is known for its eclectic mix of different boutiques for shopping, including Prada, Chanel, popular skateboard/sneakerhead stores such as Supreme and Clientele, Kid Robot, and the newly established Apple Store. In recent years, however, more mundane chain stores have crept into SoHo, such as Bloomingdale's, H&M, Victoria's Secret, and J. Crew. SoHo has become fairly commercialized. Yet, the southern part of the neighborhood, along Grand Street and Canal Street, retains some of the feel of SoHo's earlier days and is less upscale and less crowded than the northern half. There are even a few small factories that have managed to remain. Canal Street at SoHo's south boundary contrasts with the former's posh shopping district in offering cheap imitation clothing and accessories. Nearby neighborhoods include: To the north: Greenwich Village and NoHo To the east: Little Italy, NoLlta, and the Lower East Side To the south: Chinatown
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    THE BRONX:
    The Bronx in the movies Originally, movies set in the Bronx portrayed densely-settled, working-class, urban culture. Paddy Chayefsky's Academy-award winning Marty is the epitome of this, with its tag line, "What are you doing, Marty? Nothing." This thematic line has continued to some extent as in the 1993 Robert De Niro/Chazz Palminteri film, A Bronx Tale and Spike Lee's 1999 movie Summer of Sam, centered in an Italian-American Bronx community. Other movies have used the term, "Bronx" for comic effect, such as the 1995 Jackie Chan film Rumble in the Bronx (Hong faan kui in Cantonese) -- which had nothing to do with the real Bronx, and "Bronx," the character on the Disney animated series Gargoyles. However, starting in the 1970s, the Bronx often symbolized violence, decay, and urban ruin. In casual French "c'est le Bronx" stands for "what a mess". The wave of arson in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s launched the phrase "the Bronx is burning": in 1974 it was the title of both a New York Times editorial and a BBC documentary film. However, the line entered the pop-consciousness with Game Two of the 1977 World Series, when a fire broke out near Yankee Stadium as the team was playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. As the fire was captured on live television, announcer Howard Cosell intoned, "There it is, ladies and gentlemen: The Bronx is burning". Historians of New York City frequently point to Cosell's remark as a sign of both the city and the borough's decline. A new feature-length documentary film by Edwin Pagan called "Bronx Burning" is in production in 2006, chronicling what led up to the arson-for-insurance fraud fires of the 1970s and the subsequent rebirth of the community. These themes have been especially pervasive in representations of the Bronx in cinema. There are good depictions of Bronx gangs in the 1974 novel The Wanderers by Bronx native Richard Price and the 1979 movie of the same name. They are set in the heart of the Bronx, showing apartment life and the then-landmark Krums ice cream parlor. In the 1979 film The Warriors (film), the eponymous gang go to a meeting in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and have to fight their way back to Coney Island in Brooklyn. The 2005 video game adaptation features levels called Pelham, Tremont, and "Gunhill" (an apparent corruption of the name Gun Hill Road). A somewhat ironic use of this theme is the title of The Bronx is Burning: an eight-part ESPN TV mini-series (2007) about the New York Yankees' drive to winning baseball's 1977 World Series championship. The TV series emphasizes the boisterous nature of the team, led by manager Billy Martin, catcher Thurman Munson and outfielder Reggie Jackson. The 1981 film Fort Apache, The Bronx also portrayed the Bronx as gang- and crime-ridden. The film's title is from the nickname for the 41st Police Precinct in the South Bronx. This movie was condemned by community leaders for condoning police brutality, and for unflattering depiction of the borough; former Young Lords member and Puerto Rican activist Richie Perez formed a protest group, "The Committee Against Fort Apache". By contrast, Knights of the South Bronx, a true story of a teacher who worked with disadvantaged children, is also set in the Bronx. The Bronx was the setting for the 1983 film Fuga dal Bronx, (also known as Bronx Warriors 2 and Escape 2000,) an Italian B-movie best known for its appearance on the television series Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The plot revolves around a sinister construction corporation's plans to depopulate, destroy and redevelop the Bronx, and a band of rebels who are out to expose the corporation's murderous ways and save their homes. The film is memorable for its almost incessant use of the phrase, "Leave the Bronx!"
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  • Neigborhoods of Manhattan
  • Neigborhoods of NewYorkCity
  • Neighborhoods of The Bronx

    • also:      
  • Neighborhoods of Brooklyn
  • Neighborhoods of Queens
  • Neighborhoods of Staten Island

  • GHETTO
  • Barrio
  • URBAN AREA

    Also see:
  • Suburb
  • Rural Areas



    		•


    SPANISH HARLEM:
    Spanish Harlem, also known as El Barrio, is a neighborhood in the East Harlem area of New York City, in the north-eastern part of the borough of Manhattan. Spanish Harlem is one of the largest predominantly Latino communities in New York City. It was formerly known as Italian Harlem, and still harbors a small Italian American population. However, since the 1950s it has been dominated by residents of Puerto Rican descent, sometimes called Nuyoricans. Spanish Harlem extends from East 96th Street to East 125th Street and is bound by the Upper East Side, East River and the Metro-North Railroad tracks along Park Avenue. The general area of East Harlem stretches from the East River to Fifth Avenue and from 91th Street to 141st Street. Both Spanish Harlem and East Harlem fall within Manhattan Community Board 11. The primary business hub of Spanish Harlem has historically been 116th Street from 5th Avenue headed east to its termination at the FDR Drive. Read more


    Lower East Side
    Puerto Ricans
    Boroughs
    Streets in Manhattan


    GHETTO IN THE UNITED STATES:
    The Irish immigrants of the 19th century were the first ethnic group to form ghettos in America’s cities, followed by Italians and Poles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Because there was no official housing segregation against most European immigrants, the second or third generation families are able to relocate to better housing in the suburbs after World War II if possible. Other ethnic ghettos are the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York was predominantly Jewish until the 1950s, and Spanish Harlem also in Manhattan, New York was home to a large Puerto Rican community dated back to the 1930s. Little Italys were predominantly Italian ghettos until the mid 20th century when either most Italian-Americans relocated to suburbs or the residents who stayed in were now economically advantaged. Chinatowns, where most Chinese immigrants settled from the 1850s onward in Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Oakland (Near San Francisco), Los Angeles and other major cities originated as racially segregated enclaves. However, most Chinese Americans no longer reside in those urban sections, but Asian immigration since the 1970s repopulated Chinatowns, even though Little Italys, Chinatowns and other ethnic neighborhoods have become more middle-class in recent times, dominated by successful restaurant owners, family-owned stores and businessmen able to start up their companies. In the Southwest U.S., Mexican Americans had historical low-income urban areas known as barrios located in cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, Houston, Denver, Santa Ana, and San Antonio struggled with issues of crime, drugs, youth gangs and family breakdown. However, middle-class and college-educated Hispanics moved out of barrios for the suburbs. The barrios continually thrived by the large influx of immigration from Mexico, this largely due to the explosion of the Hispanic/Latino population in the late 20th century. The majority of residents in these urban barrios are immigrants directly from Mexico and Latin America. In the United States, between the abolition of slavery and the passing of the civil rights laws of the 1960s, discriminatory mores (sometimes codified in law) often forced urban African Americans to live in specific neighborhoods, which became known as "ghettos". Due to segregation laws, in existence in many US states until the Civil Rights Movement and the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African-Americans of all economic levels had to live in ghettos such as southeast San Diego, South Phoenix, Homewood and the Hill District in Pittsburgh, PA,North Philadelphia, PA, most of Detroit, much of Atlanta, GA, Highland Park, MI, Compton and pats of the San Fernando Valley, South LA, and Crenshaw in Los Angeles, and the Mission District in San Francisco in Bronzeville in Chicago, Gary, Rockford, St. Louis in Missouri, Mattapan in Boston, Massachusetts, Harlem in New York City and in Paterson, New Jersey. 1960s civil rights laws allowed wealthier African Americans to emigrate to formerly all-white communities. (Generally, those were suburbs located outside of the urban areas.) Because those who were wealthier in the African American community were leaving the urban area, the result was an economic collapse for many of the ghettos. They became zones of abandonment, below-average wealth, poorly-maintained housing, and high crime. By the 1970s, the Robert Taylor Homes, located in Chicago's Bronzeville, was home to the poorest and third-poorest census tracts in the United States. The formation of the ghetto and the black underclass forms one of the most controversial issues in sociology. One of the earliest studies of the modern phenomenon of ghetto formation was Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 work The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, usually simply referred to as the Moynihan Report. The Moynihan Report pointed out that black welfare cases and unemployment were beginning to "disaggregate", that is, the number of black welfare cases were rising while unemployment was falling. The Moynihan Report also pointed out that a quarter of all black children were born to unmarried women and that the percentage was rising. The Moynihan report described the ghetto as a "tangle of pathologies" and predicted that conditions would worsen, not improve, despite the Great Society.
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    GANGS

    Our Gang - The Little Rascals

    The Hispanics
    The Latinos

    HEBREW



    GREENWICH VILLAGE:
    Greenwich Village is located on what was once marshland. In the 16th century Native Americans referred to it as Sapokanikan ("tobacco field"). The land was cleared and turned into pasture by Dutch settlers in the 1630s who named their settlement Noortwyck. The English conquered the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam in 1664 and Greenwich Village developed as a hamlet separate from the larger (and fast-growing) Manhattan. It officially became a village in 1712 and is first referred to as Grin'wich in 1713 Common Council records. In 1822, a yellow fever epidemic in New York encouraged residents to flee to the healthier air of Greenwich Village, and afterwards many stayed. Greenwich Village is generally known as an important landmark on the map of bohemian culture. The neighborhood is known for its colorful, artistic residents and the alternative culture they propagate. Due in part to the progressive attitudes of many of its residents, the Village has traditionally been a focal point of new movements and ideas, whether political, artistic, or cultural. This tradition as an enclave of avant-garde and alternative culture was established by the beginning of the 20th century when small presses, art galleries, and experimental theater thrived. During the golden age of bohemianism, Greenwich Village became famous for such eccentrics as Joe Gould (profiled at length by Joseph Mitchell) and Maxwell Bodenheim, the dancer Isadora Duncan, as well as greats on the order of Eugene O'Neill. Political rebellion also made its home here, whether serious (John Reed) or frivolous (Marcel Duchamp and friends set off balloons from atop Washington Square arch, proclaiming the founding of "The Independent Republic of Greenwich Village"). In Christmas 1949, The Weavers played at the Village Vanguard. The Village again became important to the bohemian scene during the 1950s, when the Beat Generation focused their energies there. Fleeing from what they saw as oppressive social conformity, a loose collection of writers, poets, artists, and students (later known as the Beats) moved to Greenwich Village, in many ways creating the East-Coast predecessor to the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene of the next decade. The Village (and surrounding New York City) would later play central roles in the writings of, among others, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Dylan Thomas, who collapsed while drinking at the White Horse Tavern on November 9, 1953. Greenwich Village played a major role in the development of the folk music scene of the 1960s. Three of the four members of The Mamas and the Papas met there. Village resident Bob Dylan was one of the foremost popular songwriters in the country, and often developments in New York City would influence the simultaneously occurring folk rock movement in San Francisco, and vice versa. Dozens of other cultural and popular icons got their start in the Village's nightclub, theater, and coffeehouse scene during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, notably Peter, Paul, and Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Nina Simone. The Greenwich Village of the 1950s and 1960s was at the center of Jane Jacobs's book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which defended it and similar communities, while critiquing common urban renewal policies of the time. Greenwich Village was also home to one of the many safe houses used by the radical anti-war movement known as the Weather Underground. On March 6, 1970, however, their safehouse was destroyed when an explosive they were constructing was accidentally detonated, costing three Weathermen (Ted Gold, Terry Robbins, and Diana Oughton) their lives.
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    Well, let's get onto BROADWAY....!



    Look/Read and Listen
    and Filmography:
    Doris Day
    Marlene Dietrich
    MarilynMonroe
    Maurice Chevalier
    Greta Garbo
    French Films
    Mireille Matthieu
    Barbara
    Edith Piaf
    Brassens
    Ferre
    Le Hall
    Le Hall 2
    		 Movies:
    Movies / MovieDatabase
    		 List of compositions by George Gershwin

    Growing up on the streets of Hoboken, New Jersey, made Frank Sinatra determined to work hard to get ahead. Starting out as a saloon singer in musty little dives (he carried his own P.A. system), he eventually got work as a band singer, first with The Hoboken Four then with Harry James, then Tommy Dorsey. With the help of George Evans (Sinatra's genius press agent), his image was shaped into that of a street thug and punk who was saved by his first wife, Nancy. In 1942 he started his solo career, instantly finding fame as the king of the bobbysoxers - the young women and girls who were his fans. About that time his film career was also starting in earnest. Known as "One-Take Charlie" for his approach to acting that strove for spontaneity and energy, rather than perfection, he was an instinctive actor who was best at playing parts that mirrored his own personality. A controversial public affair with screen siren Ava Gardner broke up his marriage to Nancy Barbato. After a vocal cord hemorrhage all but ended his career, he fought back and won the coveted role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953). He won an Oscar for best supporting actor, yet still didn't have widespread acceptance in Hollywood. He continued to give strong and memorable performances in such films as The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Suddenly (1954) and, especially, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) - probably his best film. For the rest of the 1960s he concentrated mainly on lighter roles, playing hard-boiled private eyes and hamming it up with his Rat Pack buddies Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.. Of these films, The Detective (1968) and Ocean's Eleven (1960) are the best. His last lead role was as the aging detective in The First Deadly Sin (1980). He gave a moving performance that was a fitting finale to a long and rich career.
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    Liza Minnelli was born on March 12, 1946, the daughter of Judy Garland and movie director Vincente Minnelli. She was practically raised at MGM studios while her parents worked long hours there and she made her film debut at fourteen months of age in the movie In the Good Old Summertime (1949). Her parents divorced in 1951 and, in 1952, her mother married Sidney Luft, with sister Lorna Luft and brother Joey Luft subsequently being born. Her father, Vincente Minnelli, later married Georgette Magnani, mother of her step-sister Christiana Nina Minnelli. At sixteen, Liza was on her own in New York City, struggling to begin her career in show business. Her first recognition came for the play "Best Foot Forward" which ran for seven months in 1963. A year later, Judy invited Liza to appear with her for a show at the London Paladium. This show sold out immediately and a second night was added to it. Liza's performance in London was a huge turning point in both her career and her relationship with her mother. The audience absolutely loved Liza and Judy realized that Liza was now an adult with her own career. It was at the Paladium that Liza met her first husband, Peter Allen, a friend of Judy's. Liza won a Tony award at age nineteen and was nominated for her first Academy Award at age twenty-three for the role of Pookie Adams in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969). Other dramatic roles followed and, in 1972, she won an Oscar for her performance as Sally Bowles in the movie Cabaret (1972). The seventies were a busy time for Liza. She worked steadily in film, stage and music. She and good friend Halston were regulars at Studio 54, the trendiest disco club in the world. Marriages to filmmaker Jack Haley Jr. and Mark Gero, a sculptor who earned his living in the theater followed. Each marriage ended in divorce. Over the past years, her career has leaned more towards stage performances and she has a long list of musical albums which she continues to add to. She teamed with Frank Sinatra in his "Duets" CD and Sammy Davis Jr. joined them for a series of concerts and TV shows which were extremely well-received. She has had to deal with tabloid stories of drug abuse and ill-health and has had a number of high profile stays at drug-rehabilitation clinics. Her hectic schedule may have slowed down in recent years, but she still has a large following of immensely loyal fans who continue to cheer her on.
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    Natalie Wood was born on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco, California, as Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko. Her parents were Russian émigrés who spoke barely comprehensible English, but they changed the family name to Gurdin after becoming US citizens. When she was just four years old, Natalie appeared in her first film, Happy Land (1943). A production company had come to Santa Rosa, California, where the Gurdins were living and Natalie won a bit part of a crying little girl who had just dropped her ice cream cone. With stars in her eyes for her daughter, Mrs. Gurdin packed the family and moved south to Los Angeles in the hopes that more films would come her daughter's way. Unfortunately, they did not, at least not at first, and the family continued to scrape by much as they had done in Santa Rosa. In 1946, Natalie tested for a role in Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). She was only seven at the time, and flunked the screen test. Natalie's mother convinced the studio heads to give her another test, and this time she was convincing enough that they gave Natalie the role. In 1947's Miracle on 34th Street (1947), she won the hearts of movie patrons around the country as Susan Walker in a film that is considered a Christmas classic to this day. Natalie stayed very busy as a child actress, appearing in no less than 18 films in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Not all the films she appeared in were successful -- in fact, two of them were the more notorious duds of the period. In 1948, Natalie appeared in Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948), a film best left undeveloped and in the can. The other was The Silver Chalice (1954), a film so awful that years later co-star Paul Newman, who debuted in the film, took out an ad and apologized for the movie when it came to television. When she was 17, Natalie appeared in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) with James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Dennis Hopper. She played Judy, a rebellious high school student who was more concerned with hanging out with the wrong crowd than being a sweet teenager like her contemporaries. The result was her first Academy Award nomination and a defining moment in her development as an adult actress. She appeared in Splendor in the Grass (1961), West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962) (1962), and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). While Natalie was reported to be unhappy making West Side Story (1961), the film did win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. In short, it was a smash hit. Although she wasn't nominated for an Academy Award in that one, she did receive nominations for her roles in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). Unfortunately, she didn't win for either of them. After This Property Is Condemned (1966), Natalie stayed away from Hollywood for three years to have time for herself and to consider where she was going. When she did return her star quality had not diminished a bit, as evidenced by her playing Carol Sanders in the hit Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). From that point on, Natalie didn't work as much. She spent most of her time raising her family. She made a few television appearances, but nothing of substance with the exception of the TV mini-series "From Here to Eternity" (1979) (mini). After making The Last Married Couple in America (1980), Natalie began work on Brainstorm (1983) in 1981 with Christopher Walken. She did not live to see it released. On November 29, 1981, she was sailing on the yacht she shared with her husband, Robert Wagner, and their friend Walken, when Natalie fell in the ocean while trying to board the dinghy tied up alongside the yacht and drowned. She was 43 years old. Natalie had made 56 films for TV and the silver screen, and it's hard to say what she could have done while making her comeback. Brainstorm (1983) was finally released in 1983.
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    Born in Grand Island, Nebraska, Henry Fonda started his acting debut with the Omaha Community Playhouse, a local amateur theater troupe directed by Dorothy Brando. He moved to the Cape Cod University Players and later Broadway, New York to expand his theatrical career from 1926 to 1934. His first major roles in Broadway include "New Faces of America" and "The Farmer Takes a Wife". The latter play was transfered to the screen in 1935 and became the start-up of Fonda's lifelong Hollywood career. The following year he married Frances Seymour Fonda with whom he had two children: Jane and Peter Fonda also to become screen stars. He is most remembered for his roles as Abe Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which he received an Academy Award Nomination, and more recently, Norman Thayer in On Golden Pond (1981), for which he received an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1982. Henry Fonda is considered one of Hollywood's old-time legends and was friend and contemporary of James Stewart, John Ford and Joshua Logan. His movie career which spanned almost 50 years is completed by a notable presence in American theater and television.
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    Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in 1949, a decision for which he was severely criticized when his star began to dim in the 1960s and he was excoriated for squandering his talents. No actor ever exerted such a profound influence on succeeding generations of actors as did Brando. More than 50 years after he first scorched the screen as Stanley Kowalski in the movie version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and a quarter-century after his last great performance as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), all American actors are still being measured by the yardstick that was Brando. It was if the shadow of John Barrymore, the great American actor closest to Brando in terms of talent and stardom, dominated the acting field up until the 1970s. He did not, nor did any other actor so dominate the public's consciousness of what WAS an actor before or since Brando's 1951 on-screen portrayal of Stanley made him a cultural icon. Brando eclipsed the reputation of other great actors circa 1950, such as Paul Muni and Fredric March. Only the luster of Spencer Tracy's reputation hasn't dimmed when seen in the starlight thrown off by Brando. However, neither Tracy nor Olivier created an entire school of acting just by the force of his personality. Brando did. Born Marlon Brando Jr. on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando, Sr., a calcium carbonate salesman and his artistically inclined wife, the former Dorothy Pennebaker, "Bud" Brando was one of three children. His oldest sister Jocelyn Brando was also an actress, taking after their mother, who engaged in amateur theatricals and mentored a then-unknown Henry Fonda, another Nebraska native, in her role as director of the Omaha Community Playhouse. Frannie, Brando's other sibling, was a visual artist. Both Brando sisters contrived to leave the Midwest for New York City, Jocelyn to study acting and Frannie to study art. Marlon managed to escape the vocational doldrums forecast for him by his cold, distant father and his disapproving schoolteachers by striking out for The Big Apple in 1943, following Jocelyn into the acting profession. Acting was the only thing he was good at, for which he received praise, so he was determined to make it his career--a high-school dropout, he had nothing else to fall back on, having been rejected by the military due to a knee injury he incurred playing football at Shattuck Military Academy, Brando Sr.'s alma mater. The school booted Marlon out as incorrigible before graduation. Acting was a skill he honed as a child, the lonely son of alcoholic parents. With his father away on the road, and his mother frequently intoxicated to the point of stupefaction, the young Bud would play-act for her to draw her out of her stupor and to attract her attention and love. His mother was exceedingly neglectful, but he loved her, particularly for instilling in him a love of nature, a feeling which informed his character Paul in Ultimo tango a Parigi (1972) when he is recalling his childhood for his young lover Jeanne. "I don't have many good memories," Paul confesses, and neither did Brando of his childhood. Sometimes he had to go down to the town jail to pick up his mother after she had spent the night in the drunk tank and bring her home, events that traumatized the young boy but may have been the grain that irritated the oyster of his talent, producing the pearls of his performances. Anthony Quinn, his Oscar-winning co-star in Viva Zapata! (1952) told Brando's first wife Anna Kashfi, "I admire Marlon's talent, but I don't envy the pain that created it." Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School, and was mentored by Stella Adler, a member of a famous Yiddish Theatre acting family. Adler helped introduce to the New York stage the "emotional memory" technique of Russian theatrical actor, director and impresario Constantin Stanislavsky, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in American acting and culture. Brando made his debut on the boards of Broadway on October 19, 1944, in "I Remember Mama," a great success. As a young Broadway actor, Brando was invited by talent scouts from several different studios to screen-test for them, but he turned them down because he would not let himself be bound by the then-standard seven-year contract. Brando would make his film debut quite some time later in Fred Zinnemann's The Men (1950) for producer Stanley Kramer. Playing a paraplegic soldier, Brando brought new levels of realism to the screen, expanding on the verisimilitude brought to movies by Group Theatre alumni John Garfield, the predecessor closest to him in the raw power he projected on-screen. Ironically, it was Garfield whom producer Irene Mayer Selznick had chosen to play the lead in a new Tennessee Williams play she was about to produce, but negotiations broke down when Garfield demanded an ownership stake in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Burt Lancaster was next approached, but couldn't get out of a prior film commitment. Then director Elia Kazan suggested Brando, whom he had directed to great effect in Maxwell Anderson's play "Truckline Café," in which Brando co-starred with Karl Malden, who was to remain a close friend for the next 60 years.
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    WEST SIDE STORY:
    West Side Story is a musical written by Arthur Laurents (book), Leonard Bernstein (music), and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics). The story is based loosely on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which was, in turn, based on a narrative poem by Arthur Brooke entitled The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562). Set in Manhattan's Upper West Side, the musical explores the rivalry between two teenage gangs of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The young protagonist, Anton ("Tony"), who belongs to the white gang, falls in love with Maria, the sister of the leader of the rival Puerto Rican gang. The dark theme, sophisticated music, extended dance scenes and focus on social problems marked a turning point in American musical theater. Bernstein's score for the musical has become extremely popular, including "Something's Coming", "Maria", "America," "Somewhere," "Tonight", "Jet Song", "I Feel Pretty", "One Hand, One Heart", and "Cool". The original 1957 Broadway production, directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins and produced by Robert E. Griffith and Harold Prince, marked Stephen Sondheim's Broadway debut. It ran for 732 performances (a successful run for the time), before going on tour. The production garnered a Tony Award nomination for Best Musical in 1957, but the award ultimately went to Meredith Willson's The Music Man. The show has enjoyed an even longer-running London production, a number of revivals and international success, and spawned an innovative, award-winning 1961 musical film of the same name. West Side Story is produced frequently by local theaters and, occasionally, by opera companies.
    Background In 1949, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins planned to write a modern story, based on Romeo and Juliet, for a new musical called Gangway, which was later changed to East Side Story – a Shakespearean conflict set in New York City slums. Taking place on the east side of Manhattan, the plot was to focus on a young Italian-American Catholic boy who falls in love with a Jewish girl who has survived the Holocaust and immigrated from Israel to America. It was to be set during the Easter-Passover weekend celebration.[1] The conflict was to be centered around anti-semitism of the Catholic "Jets" and resentment of the Jews or "Emeralds" (a name that made its way into the script as a reference). But the creators came to feel that the story was already dated and that its themes had already been covered in plays like Abie's Irish Rose, and so the piece was shelved – for almost five years.[2] In 1954, upon seeing a new wave of migration from Puerto Rico and reading news of gang wars, Laurents changed the characters' background: the lead, Anton, changed from an Italian-American to a Polish-American, and Maria changed from a Jew to a Puerto Rican.
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     A BRONX TALE:
    The movie opens in 1960 with Lorenzo Anello's (Robert De Niro) son Calogero (Francis Capra) witnessing a murder committed by the local Mafia boss, Sonny (Chazz Palminteri). When Calogero chooses to keep quiet when questioned by police officers, Sonny takes a liking to him. Calogero starts visiting Sonny and his posse almost every day, much to the dismay of his father, a hard-working bus driver struggling to make ends meet. Eight years later, in 1968, Calogero (now played by Lillo Brancato Jr.) has grown into a young man. He will eventually have to make the choice between his two mentors. He also pursues an interracial relationship with an African American girl named Jane (Taral Hicks), and has to cope with this while being in the company of racist friends who coincidentally attack the girl's brother and his friends, and who later plan to raid an African American neighborhood. A Bronx Tale is generally ranked with other great films of the Mafia film genre. It contains several violent scenes, including a savage beating of a biker gang by the Mafia, and Calogero's friends' tragically botched incursion into the African American neighborhood. A Bronx Tale was filmed in three New York City neighborhoods. Though set entirely in the Bronx, only one of these locations was actually in that borough. The Fordham neighborhood in which Calogero lives was actually filmed in Astoria, Queens; the black neighborhood said to be on and around Webster Avenue was actually filmed at East 15th Street and Gravesend Neck Road in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn; finally, the scene set on the Bronx's City Island was actually filmed in that location.
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    FORT APACHE, THE BRONX:
    The film stars Paul Newman, Ken Wahl, Danny Aiello, Rachel Ticotin, Edward Asner and Pam Grier. The film is set in the decayed South Bronx region of New York City following the day to day activities of NYPD Officers Murphy (Newman) and Corelli (Wahl) who work out of the local police station nicknamed "Fort Apache" as it has the feeling of an army outpost in a territory foreign to the officers who work there. The precinct itself is one of the worst and most delipidated in the department, approaching demolition and largely staffed by officers who have been unwanted or transferred out of other precincts. Additionally, the precinct is of little use to the largely Puerto Rican community as only 4% of the officers are Hispanic in the largest non-English speaking section of the Bronx according to retiring precinct captain Dugan. Throughout the film, Corelli and Murphy's attempts to maintain law and order by protecting and serving the community are conflicted with corrupt fellow officers, a newly appointed police captain, rioting due to police brutality, and issues related to the deaths of two rookie officers at the start of the film. It was based on the book by Tom Walker.
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    42ND STREET:
    42nd Street is a 1933 musical film, set on the famous Manhattan street of that name, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The script was written by Rian James and James Seymour, from the novel by Bradford Ropes. The film was directed by Lloyd Bacon with choreography by Busby Berkeley. Songs were by Harry Warren with lyrics by Al Dubin. The film is a fast-paced, backstage movie musical, one that changed the film musical forever and was so financially successful that it saved Warner Bros. studios from bankruptcy. Many decades later, in 1980, it was made into a hit stage musical of the same name. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 2006 this film ranked #13 on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals.
    42nd Street

    ON THE TOWN:
    On the Town is a musical with music by Leonard Bernstein and book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. It was first produced on Broadway in 1944, and was made into a film in 1949. The musical produced several popular and classic songs, among them: New York, New York, "Lonely Town", "I Can Cook Too", and "Some Other Time". The MGM film opened on December 8 1949. Many changes in script and score were made from the original stage version; much of Bernstein's music was dropped in favor of new songs by the studio's Roger Edens. It starred Gene Kelly as Gabey (who also co-directed with Stanley Donen), Frank Sinatra as Chip and Jules Munshin as Ozzie, as well as Ann Miller (Claire), Vera-Ellen (Ivy) and Betty Garrett (Hildy). It is notable for its combination of studio and location filming, as a result of Gene Kelly's insistence that some scenes be shot in New York City itself. The movie was an instant success for MGM's "Freed Unit", which went on to produce many more popular musicals into the 1950s.
    The musical integrates dance into its storytelling; Robbins choreographed a number of ballets and extended dance sequences for the show, including the "Imaginary Coney Island" ballet. The story concerns three American sailors on a 24-hour shore leave in New York City during war-time 1944. Each of the three sailors becomes enamoured of a particular woman — and the City itself. As the sailors begin their shore leave, Gabey falls in love with the picture of "Miss Turnstiles" (who is actually Ivy Smith). The sailors race around New York attempting to find her in the brief period they have ("New York, New York"). They are assisted, and become romantically involved with, two women, and pair up: Ozzie with Claire DeLoone (an archeologist), Chip with Hildy Esterhazy (an amorous and aggressive taxi driver), and eventually, Gabey with Ivy ("Miss Turnstiles"). Hildy Esterhazy invites Chip to "Come Up to My Place". Claire DeLoone and Ozzie get "Carried Away" in the museum. But for Gabey it's a "Lonely Town". They have a number of adventures before their 24-hours ends and they must return to their ship to head off to war, and a very uncertain future ("Some Other Time").
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    SINGIN' IN THE RAIN:
    Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 comedy musical film starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds and directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen, with Kelly also handling the choreography. It offers a comic depiction of Hollywood's transition from silent films to "talkies". The movie is frequently described as one of the best musicals ever made,[1] topping the AFI's 100 Years of Musicals list, and ranking tenth in its list of the greatest American films.
    Gene Kelly plays Don Lockwood, a silent film star with humble roots as a musician, dancer and stunt man. Don barely tolerates his vapid, spoiled leading lady, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), who is convinced their screen romance is real. After the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, proves to be a smash hit, the head of the studio, R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell), decides he has no choice but to convert the new Lockwood and Lamont film, The Dueling Cavalier, into a talkie. The production is beset with difficulties (most, if not all, taken from real life), by far the worst being Lina's comically grating voice and thick New York accent. After a disastrous test screening, Don's best friend, Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor), comes up with the idea to overdub Lina's voice and they convince R.F. to turn The Dueling Cavalier into The Dancing Cavalier, a musical comedy. Meanwhile, Don falls in love with aspiring actress Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) who is providing the voice for Lina. When Lina finds out, she is furious and does everything possible to sabotage the romance. She maliciously demands that Kathy continue to provide her voice in all future films, but remain uncredited. An irate, but desperate R.F. is forced to agree; Kathy has no choice because she is under contract. The premiere is a tremendous success. When the audience clamors for Lina to sing live, Don and Cosmo improvise and get Lina to lip-synch while Kathy sings into a second microphone while hidden behind the curtain. Unbeknownst to Lina, as she starts "singing", Don, Cosmo and R.F. gleefully raise the curtain behind her, revealing the deception. Lina flees in embarrassment. When Kathy tries to escape as well, Don has her stopped and introduces the audience to the real star of the film.
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    MY FAIR LADY:
    My Fair Lady is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. The show's 1956 Broadway production was a smash hit, setting a new record for the longest run of any major theatre production in history. It was followed by a hit London production, a popular film version, and numerous revivals. It has been called "the perfect musical."
    In the mid 1930s, film producer Gabriel Pascal acquired the rights to produce film versions of several of George Bernard Shaw's plays, Pygmalion being one of them. He approached lyricist Alan Jay Lerner to write the musical adaptation, and Lerner agreed. He and writing partner Frederick Loewe began writing, but they quickly realized that the play seemed incapable of obeying the rules for the construction of a musical. First of all, there was no place for an ensemble. Secondly, there was no subplot or secondary love story. Pygmalion has just one story, and it is a non-love story. Many people, including Oscar Hammerstein II, told Lerner that converting the play to a musical was impossible, so he and Loewe abandoned the project for two years. During this time, the collaborators separated, Gabriel Pascal passed away, and the American musical theatre changed. When Lerner read Pascal's obituary, he found himself thinking about Pygmalion again, and when he and Loewe reunited everything seemed to fall into place. All the insurmountable obstacles that stood in their way two years earlier had disappeared with the transformation of the musical theatre, and they excitedly began writing the show. The musical had its pre-Broadway tryout at New Haven's Shubert Theatre and, starting on February 15, 1956, for four weeks, at the Erlanger Theatre in Philadelphia before opening on March 15, 1956 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York City. It ran for 2,717 performances, a record at the time. The original cast, directed by Moss Hart and choreographed by Hanya Holm, included Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Stanley Holloway, Robert Coote, Cathleen Nesbitt, John Michael King, and Reid Shelton. Edward Mulhare and Sally Ann Howes replaced Harrison and Andrews later in the run. The show's title was derived from one of Shaw's provisional titles for Pygmalion, Fair Eliza. However, when Rex Harrison protested that Lerner and Loewe's originally proposed title, Fair Lady, was too femininely sympathetic, the show's authors added the possessive pronoun "My" to appease the temperamental star. This also made for a pun on "Mayfair lady", which is how the title sounds when pronounced with a Cockney accent. The original Playbill and cast recording sleeve featured artwork by Al Hirschfeld, who depicted Eliza as a marionette being manipulated by Henry Higgins, whose own strings are being pulled by a heavenly puppeteer resembling George Bernard Shaw. The West End production, in which Harrison, Andrews, Coote, and Holloway reprised their roles, opened on April 30, 1958 at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where it ran for 2,281 performances. The show has been revived on Broadway three times - in 1976, directed by Jerry Adler, with Ian Richardson, Christine Andreas, and George Rose; in 1981, with Harrison and Milo O'Shea; and in 1993, with Richard Chamberlain, Melissa Errico, and Paxton Whitehead. The show also had a West End revival in 1979 at the Adelphi Theatre with Tony Britton, Liz Robertson, Dame Anna Neagle, Richard Caldicot, and Peter Land. Produced by Cameron Mackintosh, it was first directed by Robin Midgley and then by the Lerner himself, and choreographed by Gillian Lynne. Mackintosh again produced the show in 2001 at the Royal National Theatre and later the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, with Martine McCutcheon as Eliza Doolittle and Jonathan Pryce as Professor Henry Higgins. This revival won three Olivier awards: Best Actress in a Musical (Martine McCutcheon), Outstanding Musical Production and Best Theatre Choreographer (Matthew Bourne). In 2007 the New York Philharmonic held a full-costume concert presentation of the musical. The concert had a four day engagement from March 7th to 10th at Avery Fisher Hall. It starred Kelli O'Hara as Eliza Doolittle, Kelsey Grammer as Professor Henry Higgins, Charles Kimbrough as Colonel Pickering and Brian Dennehy as Alfred Doolittle.
    "On the Street Where You Live" is a song from the Broadway musical My Fair Lady (music by Frederick Loewe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner). The song later garnered great popularity as a single release. It is sung in the musical by the character Freddy Eynsford-Hill, who was first portrayed by John Michael King in the original production. It has been recorded on many occasions by a variety of performers (including Harry Connick, Jr., Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Perry Como, David Whitfield, and Richard Clayderman) since its publication in 1956. The most popular single version of the song was recorded by Vic Damone in 1956 for Columbia Records, and eventually reached #4 on the Billboard magazine charts. It was also ranked #6 on Cash Box magazine's best-selling records chart. In the the 1964 film version of the musical it was sung by Bill Shirley, dubbing for actor Jeremy Brett, who played Eynsford-Hill. More recently, Mr Hudson & The Library have covered this song for their album A Tale Of Two Cities.
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    CABARET:
    Cabaret is a musical with a book by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned an acclaimed 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions. Originally entitled Welcome to Berlin, it is based on John Van Druten's play I Am a Camera, which in turn was adapted from the novel Mr. Norris Changes Trains and a collection of short stories, Goodbye to Berlin, by Christopher Isherwood. Set in 1929-1930 Berlin on the eve of the Nazis' rise to power, it focuses on English cabaret singer Sally Bowles and her relationship with young American writer Cliff Bradshaw. A sub-plot involves the doomed romance between German boarding house owner Fräulein Schneider and one of her tenants, Jewish fruit vendor Herr Schultz. Overseeing the action is the Emcee, who presides as master of ceremonies at the Kit Kat Klub and serves as a general commentator.
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    THE BELLE OF NEWYORK:
    The Belle of New York is a musical comedy in two acts, with book and lyrics by Hugh Morton and music by Gustave Kerker. Opening in New York in 1897, it ran for only 64 performances. It subsequently transferred to London in 1898, where it was a major success, running for an almost unprecedented 674 performances, and became the first American musical to run for over a year in the West End. The show starred Nellie Stewart and Edna May, whose performance made her a star in London and New York, and postcards of her as Violet were ubiquitous. In London, it was produced by George Musgrove. The work had stiff competition in London in 1898, as other successful openings included A Greek Slave and A Runaway Girl. Long runs in Paris and Berlin followed. There were nine West End revivals over the next four decades and a 1916 film adaptation, Salvation Joan. There was also a 1952 film version with Fred Astaire and Vera Ellen that replaced the original songs with a score by Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren.
    Violet Gray, a Salvation Army girl, reforms spendthrift Harry Bronson. Bronson's wealthy father, Ichabod, is so delighted with his son’s improvement that he insists on Harry breaking off his engagement to fiancee, actress Cora Angelique, and marrying Violet instead. He makes her the heir to his fortune. Violet, however, realises that Harry and Cora truly love each other, and she is intent on Harry getting the inheritance. Violet deliberately shames herself in front of Ichabod by singing the risque "At Ze Naughty Folies Bergčre", so Harry's name goes back in the Will. Harry finally sees the error of his ways and falls in love with sweet, simple Violet.
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    BROADWAY (1929, FILM)

    Roy Lane and Billie Moore, entertainers at the Paradise Nightclub, are in love and are rehearsing an act together. Late to work one evening, Billie is saved from dismissal by Nick Verdis, the club proprietor, through the intervention of Steve Crandall, a bootlegger, who desires a liaison with the girl. "Scar" Edwards, robbed of a truckload of contraband liquor by Steve's gang, arrives at the club for a showdown with Steve and is shot in the back. Steve gives Billie a bracelet to forget that she has seen him helping a "drunk" from the club. Though Roy is arrested by Dan McCorn, he is later released on Billie's testimony. Nick is murdered by Steve. Billie witnesses the killing, but keeps quiet about the dirty business until she finds out Steve's next target is Roy. Billie is determined to tell her story to the police before Roy winds up dead, but Steve isn't about to let that happen and kidnaps her. Steve, in his car, is fired at from a taxi, and overheard by Pearl, he confesses to killing Edwards. Pearl confronts Steve in Nick's office and kills him; and McCorn, finding Steve's body, insists that he committed suicide, exonerating Pearl and leaving Roy and Billie to the success of their act.
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    The major theatrical center of the country, Broadway, is what many people call great. Broadway is a street that has theaters clustered together in the middle of Manhattan. Opening during the 1890’s the name “Great White Way” has evolved because of the brilliantly lighted street. The best playwrights, actors, dancers, and directors spend a long time working at Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway before performing on Broadway. The more this city grows, the more Broadway theaters there are. The "Great White Way" grows in size, number, and magnificence along with New York City. So, if you have any time on your hands, or want to entertain a visitor from another city, entertain them at a Broadway show. It will be something you will remember for your life.

    Old Broadway




    Damon Runyon's Broadway America in the thirties...the hopes and fears of a nation rebounding from Depression doldrums were spotlighted along New York's Broadway. Over 15 miles long -- within city limits -- Broadway wanders from Bowling Green on the business end of Manhattan Island...north through residential Upper Manhattan and into the city of Yonkers. But all this wasn't Damon Runyon's Broadway. His "beat" was the Great White Way...a scant mile of bright lights and brighter nightlife. Runyon was a journalist in the Thirties, and he saw it all --bootleggers, horse players, goldfish swallowers and high society dandies at play. There were youngsters on Broadway, tugging at their dads' jackets, eyes up at the avenue's towers, heading for the movies to be entertained by their storyteller -- Walt Disney. Oh, the thrills and excitement of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Pinocchio! Then there were the open-mouthed oglers watching flagpole sitters. The fad reached its peak in the summer of 1930...Shipwreck Kelly beat all past records by perching sky-high for 50 days and 1 hour! Publicity-mad mothers all over the country boosted youngsters onto pillars and posts...and a 15-year-old named Avon Foreman established the "juvenile flagpole sitting record" by remaining aloft 10 days, 10 hours and 10 minutes! Patrons poured into dance halls to see marathon dancers-- called "infantile" and "barbaric" by turn. When dancers were exhausted..kicking and punching each other to keep awake...people paid admission to watch the couples collapse on the floor. Veteran movie-maker Frank Capra once dubbed Damon Runyon "Creator of the American Fairy Tale" -- the man who mixed magic with real-life on the Great White Way. There's magic in the fantastic names he gave his Broadway characters -- Madame La Gimp, Harry the Horse, Sam the Gonoph. There's magic in the hearts of gold he found under rough-tough exteriors...and in the hilarious comedy plots that always included a tug at the heartstrings. The guys and dolls of Runyon's Broadway came alive in the film Pocketful of Miracles. He must have known a dozen bedraggled, derelict peddlers like Apple Annie, the one he built the story around. Some of them, once respectable citizens, learned reliance on soup kitchens and bread lines. Others turned to panhandling along Broadway...for theatergoers were fast to flip a coin to impress glamour-girl dates. And glamour was "it" in those days. The "frankly feminine figure" had blossomed forth out of slim-boy lines of the Twenties. Sequined chorus girls like Runyon's Queenie Martin drew diamonds and protection from the millionaires and syndicate gang lords. Gangsters, pickpockets and rum runners -- all were grist for Damon Runyon's story mill. Which of New York's feared young toughs did he have in mind when he composed Dave the Dude, who appears in Pocketful of Miracles? Gun-slinging characters like Dave mingled with Broadway's real-life crowds. When Runyon wrote about characters like Judge Henry G. Blake --who was not a judge at all but a "well-dressed bum" -- he must have been thinking of some less lovable habitues of Broadway pool halls and game galleries. In the Thirties when millions of Americans were jobless...nickels pushed into New York's 5,000 slot machines grossed $100,000 a day for their owners. In Pocketful of Miracles, Judge Blake is coaxed from his Times Square hangout to play Apple Annie's socialite husband...in a plot cooked up by Dave the Dude to help Annie. The Cinderella apple hawker, portrayed in the film by Bette Davis, moves from the street into a penthouse high above Broadway -- another Runyon touch, with soft hearts trumps! Little Manuel was a name given to a card-sharp by Runyon in his Cinderella story. Did he invent the tiny make-believe character because he'd gotten such a laugh out of a midget who made news in the Thirties? J. Pierpont Morgan, Jr., was sitting in a Senate committee room one day when a circus press agent thrust a female midget on his lap...and the camera boys had a field day! His "beat" became Runyon's whole life. He put its excitement, danger and glamour before any other interest. Born in one Manhattan (Kansas), he died in another...and didn't permit even death to separate him from his slangy guys and dolls and the Great White Way. When the sports writer-turned-reporter died in 1946, his ashes were scattered over Times Square by his good friend, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, from a plane high above the lights and glitter. Broadway's Damon Runyon wanted it that way.



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    LYRICS:
    The lyrics are the words to a song. A person who writes lyrics is called a lyricist (or lyrist, as he or she was sometimes referred to). The meaning conveyed in lyrical verses can be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are so abstract as to be completely unintelligible. In such cases, there is a tendency to emphasize the form, articulation, meter, and symmetries of the expressions. A writer of the text of traditional music forms such as Opera is known as a librettist.
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    Lyrics:
    WEST SIDE STORY:
    MARIA
    TONY
    (spoken) Maria . . .
    (sings) The most beautiful sound I ever heard:
    Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria . . .
    All the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word . .
    Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria . . .
    Maria!
    I've just met a girl named Maria,
    And suddenly that name
    Will never be the same To me.
    Maria!
    I've just kissed a girl named Maria,
    And suddenly I've found
    How wonderful a sound
    Can be!
    Maria!
    Say it loud and there's music playing,
    Say it soft and it's almost like praying.
    Maria,
    I'll never stop saying Maria!
    The most beautiful sound I ever heard.
    Maria.
    More Lyrics fromt The West Side Story


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    CHINATOWN



    The Jeet Kune Do Emblem. The Chinese characters around the Taijitu symbol indicate: "Using no way as way" & "Having no limitation as limitation" The arrows represent the endless movement and change of the universe.
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    CHINESE NEWYEAR:
    It is unclear when the beginning of the year was celebrated before the Qin Dynasty. Traditionally, the year was said to have begun with month 1 during the Xia Dynasty, month 12 during the Shang Dynasty, and month 11 during the Zhou Dynasty. However, records show that the Zhou Dynasty began its year with month 1. Intercalary months, used to keep the lunar calendar synchronized with the sun, were added after month 12 during both the Shang Dynasty (according to surviving oracle bones) and the Zhou Dynasty (according to Sima Qian). The first Emperor of China Qin Shi Huang changed the beginning of the year to month 10 in 221 BC, also changing the location of the intercalary month to after month 9. Whether the New Year was celebrated at the beginning of month 10, of month 1, or both is unknown. In 104 BC, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty established month 1 as the beginning of the year, where it remains.
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    HISTORY OF CHINA:
    The history of China is told in traditional historical records that refer as far back as the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors about 5,000 years ago, supplemented by archaeological records dating to the 16th century BC. China is one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations. Turtle shells with markings reminiscent of ancient Chinese writing from the Shang Dynasty have been carbon dated to around 1500 BC. Chinese civilization originated with city-states in the Yellow River valley. 221 BC is the commonly accepted year when China became unified under a large kingdom or empire. Successive dynasties in Chinese history developed bureaucratic systems that enabled the Emperor of China to control the large territory. China was first united by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC. China alternated between periods of political unity and disunity, with occasionally conquests by foreign peoples, most of whom were assimilated into the Chinese population. Cultural and political influences from many parts of Asia, carried by successive waves of immigration, expansion, and assimilation, merged to create Chinese culture.
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    NIAN:
    In Chinese mythology, Nian (Traditional Chinese: Simplified Chinese: Pinyin: nián shňu) is a beast that comes in spring. The Chinese word for year is based on the arrival of this beast. A phrase for celebrating Chinese New Year, guo nian (Traditional Chinese: Simplified Chinese: Pinyin: guň nián) means the passing of the beast. It is believed that it lives under the sea. It came to attack people at the same time of the year. The Chinese tradition of decorating in red, burning firecrackers, and the lion dance with loud drums and gongs was to scare the beast away.
    The Nian would come to China and eat up people it saw, but in some stories, an immortal was said to have made use of Nian's powers (eating up venomous snakes and killing wild beasts like tigers and lions) before taming it (by flashing his red undergarment to scare Nian, who feared the colour red). Since then, people put up red spring couplets to prevent Nian from coming back. During Chinese New Year, there are two kinds of lion dances. The northern lion Rui Shi (Traditional Chinese: Simplified Chinese: Pinyin: ruě shī) has long hair, floppy ears and a round head without horns. Their name is translated as lions, but they definitely are not the same as African lions. The northern lions fit the description of a Fu Dog. The southern lions, mainly Cantonese, have a single horn at the top center of their heads. The Cantonese lions fit the description of a Nian, but they are not the same as the northern lions. Some legends said the Cantonese lion dance is a reenactment of how Bu Dai tamed the Nian. Read more


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    THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG
    Madame Emery and her daughter Geneviève (Deneuve) sell umbrellas at their little boutique in the coastal town of Cherbourg in Normandy, France. Geneviève is in love with Guy (Castelnuovo), a handsome young auto mechanic who lives with and cares for his godmother along with quiet, dedicated, care-giver, Madeleine (Ellen Farner), a young woman who clearly loves Guy. Subsequently, though, Guy is drafted, and must leave to fight in the Algerian War. The night before he leaves, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant, and feels abandoned, as he does not write often. At her mother's insistence, she marries thirtyish Roland Cassard (Marc Michel), a quietly handsome Parisian jeweler who falls in love with Geneviève and is willing to wed her, even though she is bearing another man's child. The society wedding in a great cathedral, with a tiara being placed on the bride's head, symbolizes her upward social and economic movement. When Guy returns with a leg injury, he learns that Geneviève has married, left Cherbourg and that the umbrella store is gone. He attempts to ease back into his old life, but becomes rebellious due both to the war and to the loss of Geneviève. One day, Guy quits his job after an argument with his boss, and spends a night and a day drinking excessively in seedy port bars. He winds up sleeping with a prostitute named Jenny, whose real name turns out to be also Geneviève. When he returns to his apartment, Madeleine tells him tearfully that his godmother has died. He sees that she loves him, and cleans up his life with her encouragement. With a legacy from his aunt, he is able to finance to own a new "American-style" Esso gas station. He asks Madeleine to marry him, and she accepts, though she wonders if he is asking her from despair at Geneviève's actions. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg: Nino Castelnuovo and Catherine Deneuve.The coda is set in December 1963, approximately five years after the earliest events. Guy is now managing the couple's Esso station. He's with his now upbeat and loving wife Madeleine and their little son François. It is Christmas Eve. Madeleine and François go for a short walk, leaving Guy briefly, after which a new Mercedes pulls in to the station. The mink-clad driver turns out to be a sophisticated, visibly wealthy Geneviève, accompanied by her (and Guy's) daughter Françoise, who remains in the car. They go inside, at first shocked to see each other, and Geneviève explains this is the first time she has returned to Cherbourg since her marriage. Her fairly young mother is now dead. She has only her rich husband and child in her family life. The two converse while Geneviève's car is being filled with gas, and Geneviève asks Guy if he wants to meet their daughter. Without comment, and little reflection, he answers "no", and this leads to their exchanging their final goodbyes. As the film ends, Guy greets his wife with a kiss and plays with his son.
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    (...Les Parapluies de Cherbourg is one of the most beautiful movies ever made with an enchanting and haunting score by Michel Le Grande, and totally focused, sharp and creative direction by Jacques Demy. Catherine Deneuve gives a fine performance in pinkish white makeup with her blonde hair pulled away from her famous face, at twenty playing a seventeen-year-old shopkeeper's daughter who falls in love with a garage mechanic. He is called away to the war in Algeria after making her pregnant. Will she wait for him as the award-winning song proclaims? Will their love endure the long separation?
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    Michel Legrand





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