I didn't realize that it had a name but it does: that shot ... that shot when a person or a couple of people are walking the crowded streets of NYC, a long-lense camera focusing on them as we follow their journey -- both literal and existential -- is called "the Tootsie shot."
That's because, in the 1982 classic Tootsie, we follow the crossdressing hero played by Dustin Hoffman as he/she walks the crowded Manhattan streets as they try to restart their acting career as a woman.
I just listened to an entire podcast episode about this particular shot, and how variations of it appear in different ways in many NYC movies. But what this shot contains, what all the version of it contains, is the same visual meaning -- that of a person, alone in NYC, is starting a new journey that will change his or her life.
And here's the thing: "the Tootsie shot" is much older than Tootsie itself. In the 1969 classic Midnight Cowboy -- more than a decade before Tootsie -- Hoffman himself walks on the streets in a crowd, bellowing his classic line, "I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here!"
There are many examples of this famous shot from different NYC movies over the decade -- including two with John Travolta playing the Brooklyn dancer Tony Menero.
Here are some great examples of "the Tootsie shot" in some classic NYC movies:
On this date 47 years ago, the 41st Vice-President of the United States, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, died of a heart attack. He was 70.
"Rocky", as he was known, was the scion of one of the richest families on Earth, and had been the governor of New York State from 1959 to 1973. His legacy in this city and state was significant, as I blogged about many years ago. In 1974 he became Vice-President after President Nixon had resigned and Gerald Ford became president. Rockefeller left office in 1977 and returned to NYC.
Two years later he was dead.
On the night of January 26, 1979, it was announced, as you'll see below, that he had died in his office at Rockefeller Center while working on a book in the presence of his bodyguard.
Ehhh ... not really.
Actually Rocky was in an East Side townhouse that he owned with his secretary Megan Marshack. This townhouse appears to have been a very classy love nest. Rocky and Megan were banging on the floor -- apparently she was riding him cowgirl when the old man had a heart attack. Now she obviously should have called 911 right away as that might have saved his life. But no. Instead she made a series of phone calls to her psychiatrist and her friend who rushed over to the townhouse. Together, apparently, they got Rocky dressed and then the friend called 911. But it was too late. The mighty Rocky -- billionaire, governor, Vice-President, titan of his times -- had died in the most tawdry way possible.
For days and weeks afterwards the scandal fascinated the NYC tabloids. But then ... it just kind of petered out.
The Rockefeller's used their wealth and power to cover it up quite effectively. Rocky was creamated the very next day so no autopsy was performed. Megan Marshak, and presumably her friend, signed NDAs and were probably paid off. Also, it helped that at the same time this scandal was unfolding there was a revolution going on in Iran and that grabbed the headlines. And, of course, Rocky was out of office so this incident had no real political implications.
There were no criminal charges. No arrests. No lawsuits. No legal actions of any kind. No tell-all books or teary interviews or multi-part true crime documentaries.
Amazingly, Megan Marshak remained quiet until her death in October 2024. She lived a relatively productive, and regular life. She worked at CBS News in NYC for almost 20 years before moving to Calfornia and living there until her death. She married later in life, had no children, and died in relative obscurity. Interestingly she was also 70 years old when she died, the same age as the great man she shtupped to death.
Half a century later, most New Yorkers probably haven't heard of Nelson Rockefeller much less the scandalous way that he left this mortal coil.
This blog has existed for two decades under three different NYC mayors. Unsurprisingly I have a blogged from time to time about the mayors and the elections that make them.
Currently there is a very crowded Democratic primary for mayor that includes a Muslim Socialist, a disgraced ex-Governor (and they're the frontrunners), yet another doomed Comptroller, and a bunch of Others. In some ways this primary resembles the 1977 mayoral election -- an unpopular, failed mayor who has become so irrelevant that the question isn't should he be replaced but by who, and lots of people are running to be that replacement.
And one of them might be a guy named Cuomo.
Recently there was a contentious debate amongst the candidates, and it's clear how high the stakes are for each of them -- and the city.
But the bigger, more unanswerable question is "what makes a good mayor?"
Elections and campaigns are all about who is the best, most appealing candidate but, sadly, that doesn't always translate into doing the best job. And as this article states, most of all, New Yorkers think being a good mayor means being a good manager. They think the mayor should essentially be a great COO, making sure that city services are delivered consistently and well, keeping the metaphorical trains running, supervising the machinery of government and ensuring its smooth operation.
Here's the dirty secret: managing the city isn't really the job of the mayor.
Part of the job of the mayor is appointing the people who manage the city, and then appointing the people who manage the managers. The real job of the mayor is to make policy, to sign or veto laws passed by the City Council, to work with the state and federal goverment to get the city money and laws favorable to it, to be the city's main cheerleader and public spokesperson -- and to handle all of the politics that flow from all that.
In short, the job of the mayor is not to manage the city on a daily basis -- it's to determine the course of its history for years and decades to come. Mayors need to be big picture thinkers, visionaries, conducting the great orchestra of city government, policy, politics, and media -- not just be its manager.
Sadly whoever becomes the next mayor will be not have the same kind of robust local reporters covering them. For example, the great NYC muckraker Tom Robbins has died. He wrote, on and off, for the Village Voice for decades, and who lifted the stones and looked underneath what was going on in this city for decades. His kind are becoming obsolete and this city, no matter who runs it, will be all the poorer for it.
In 1973 a movie called Serpico starring Al Pacino about the corruption whistler-blower NYPD cop Frank Serpico came out. To this day it remains a classic flick with one of Pacino's best early career performance (it came out between the first two Godfathers).
Then in 1976 a TV series called Serpico starring a guy named David Birney about an NYPD cop named Frank Serpico who busts other corrupt cops came out, ran for 15 episodes, got cancelled, and was promptly forgotten.
This being Mr NYC, I'm naturally interested in little forgotten cultural nuggets like this. And even though it wasn't a great show, it's certainly an interesting late 1970s slice-of-life. The show's pilot aired in April 1976 and then for half-a-season from September 1976 to January 1977.
Interestingly enough (for me) the show aired at the same time the recently deceased Jimmy Carter was elected and when yours truly was born. It also went off the air at the start of one of the most consequential years in NYC history.
If you have any interesting in watching this show, you can actually see the whole series here. And believe it or not, as of this writing, Frank Serpico is still alive at the age of 88!
This year marks the 50th anniversary of The Power Broker, Robert Caro's brilliant book about the career of NYC master builder Robert Moses.
I've blogged A LOT about Robert Moses over the years and you can find it all, including my own review of The Power Broker, right here (there's also a big exhibition about it at the New-York Historical Society).
When Caro wrote in the book in the last 1960s and early 1970s, he was a young man looking to reveal the story behind how Moses built NYC. By this time, Moses himself was an old man, looking back at his controversial legacy.
Now, fifty years later, Moses is long dead and Caro himself is an old man, looking back on the legacy of his book about the man and what he did to NYC.
Below you can see a 1977 interview that Moses gave to publica television about his career and the book that made him infamous. And then you can watch a very recent 2024 interview with Care reflecting how his great book came to be.
And Alison Steele, the Nightbird, was in all of her radio glory, broadcasting on WNEW FM ("in ... stereo ..."). On this night/morning, she had dubbed herself the "Lovebird" and played romantic songs upon request and recited poems about love. She was at the top of her game, her voice confident, smooth and soothing, the greatness of her "theater-of-the-mind" on full display.
Even almost thirty years after her death, and fifty years after this specific broadcast, she sounds as fresh and wonderful as ever, her voice truly timeless.
And she really touches your heart when she talks and plays music about love. A classic.
The 1970s and '80s was the Golden Age of the TV mini-series, as I recently blogged about. In many ways, it started specifically in 1977 with the historic mini-series Roots, a powerful saga about the history of slavery in America. Later on there would be other big historical TV epics like North & South, AD, The Winds of War, and others.
Then there was stuff like 79 Park Avenue.
Debuting the same year as Roots, 79 Park Avenue does not get the same kind of cultural respect. It's about a young woman trying to "make it" in NYC and decides to do so by becoming a Madam. It's a trashy story based on a trashy book. SEX! REAL ESTATE! NYC! SOFT-FOCUS PHOTOGRAPHY!
All the feels.
What's actually interesting about the series is that it was produced in the '70s but based on a novel published in the '50s about a story set in the '30s. It's a nostalgic-look at a nostalgic-look about a nostalgic-look of NYC.
It also stars the character actress Lesley Ann Warren and even Raymond Burr in a non-Perry Mason role.
What's also fascinating to realize is that, even though this series is totally forgotten today, it scored an audience of between 16-20 million people on the nights in October, 1977 is was broadcast. Today a show that gets half that many viewers is considered a huge success -- so, by today's standard, this would be a blockbuster.
Before the 21st century Golden Age of Television, the 1970s through the 1990s was the Golden Age of the Television Mini-Series.
Whenever regular TV shows went on vacation, the networks would broadcast these multi-episodes series that were a little less than a movie but a little more than a regular TV show. Some of these mini-series, like Roots from 1977 or the 1980s civil war drama North & South, were great, classic TV. But a lot of it was stuff like the 1987 soapy mini-series I'll Take Manhattan, based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Judith Krantz (who wrote a lot of these kinds of books that then became mini-series).
The show's IMDB description tells you everything you need to know about it: "Maxi Amberville tries to save the magazine empire her father built, but her treacherous uncle stands in the way." The Amberville's are supposed to be a Murdoch-like, more like Sy Hersch-like, family running a magazine company very much like Conde Nast. The spirit of this show -- family members battle for control of a media empire -- is basically Succession thiry-years earlier, although nowhere near as funny, well-written, well-acted or well ... everything ... as the HBO show. The story is formulaic, the acting hammy, the dialogue stupid, everything's predictable and dopey.
So why does Mr NYC choose to remember it?
Because it's a relic,a time-stamp, of its age -- the Go-Go 1980s Reagan-era business drama that was very popular at the time. And because it's a very NYC story -- Money! Sex! Publishing! Betrayal! Donald Trump! Lots of shots of the World Trade Centers! Lots of music with saxapohones! Secretative calls being made in phone booths in the pouring rain in at nighttime! It's all there.
The most interesting thing about it is the cast -- it's truly a time capsule of actors and actresses whose careers were either on the way up or on the way down.
Valerie Bertinelli plays the heroic Maxi. She had just finished her long run on the hit TV show One Day At A Time and this show, one gueses, was supposed to demonstrate her great acting chops. She is a great actress but this show was clearly not the right vehicle in which to do so.
The always wonderful Barry Bostwick plays her father, the company's founder, and he's probably the best thing in it. A just-about-to-be James Bond Timothy Dalton is in it as are veteran TV actors Jack Scalia and Perry King who plays the no-good rotten scheming villanous uncle as a no-good rotten scheming villanous uncle.
There's also a few actors who went on to greatness: Jane Kaczmarek, thirteen years before Macolm in the Middle, Chris Noth a few years before Law & Order and Sex and the City, a pre-My Two Dads/Step-by-Step Staci Keanan, and, most notably, future Oscar-winner Julianne Moore ten years before Boogie Nights.
Also, future President and aspiring fascist dictator Donald Trump has a cameo because they filmed some of it at Trump Tower and gave him an obligatory cameo. You might otherwise call this show Trump's Bedtime for Bonzo.
It has to be seen to believed. But I'll give this show credit -- 1987 was the era of Bonfire of the Vanities NYC, the start of the crack epidemic, when people loved to hate this city -- and this show, at that time, dared to celebrate it.
Here are a couple of episodes (you can find the rest on YouTube) as well as some clips and promos. It was truly part of a TV era we probably will never see again.
Lin Manuel-Miranda is probably the most famous son of Washington Heights.
The other is Henry Kissinger.
The 1970s US Secretary of State, who died at age 100, was a refugee from Nazi Germany when his family settled in Washington Heights in 1938. Henry only lived there a few years, going to George Washington High School (other alumni include Alan Greenspan, Harry Belefonte, Maria Callas, Ronnie Spector, and Manny Ramirez) before heading off to Harvard and foreign policy fame and fortune.
Amazingly, Kissinger's mother lived in Washington Heights until she died in 1998!
After Kissinger's historic run as Presidents Nixon and Ford's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State from 1969 to 1977, Kissinger returned to NYC and lived in style as a foreign policy "consultant" and advisor, a sort of international wise man. He was capital-R Respectable, an icon of the high society circuit, and consulted by Presidents of both parties for his foreign policy wisdom -- mainly due to his role in opening US relations with China in 1972.
Of course, during his time in power, Henry also oversaw the carpet bombing of Cambodia, the defeat in Vietnam, and encouraged right-wing coups in Chile and Argentina that led to decades of dictatorship -- he was responsible for an incalculable number of deaths. His fans say that he was simply a practitioner of realpolitick, seeing the world as it is, not as we want it to be, and acting accordingly. His detractors say he was a war criminal who should have stood trial.
Well, whatever his legacy, Henry Kissinger was a child of NYC who made good in order to do bad.
The idea of an underground, an underworld or, as I once blogged about, the underwelt, is something I'm constantly fascinated by. This blog is an underground blog if there ever was one -- totally outside the gaze of, and unconnected from, the mainstream media, the square world.
This makes me an underground blogger -- an underground NYC blogger to be precise.
The idea of an underground writer, someone's whose work is mostly unknown and whose readership is small but passionate, is certainly something I can relate to. Many of them write about subjects that don't interest most people (like this blog) even if they're about some universal like sex and politics -- or the world's greatest city.
So it's with great interest to read that the brilliant filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is currently making a movie (possibly his last) about an underground writer from the 1970s. Few details about this movie are known except that it's tentatively called The Movie Critic, takes place in 1977, and is based on the life of a movie critic named William Mangold nom de plume Jim Sheldon who wrote movie reviews for a porn mag. Making a movie about an underground critic is certainly bold, the kind of unexpected story that Tarantino usually tells and that makes his movies so great and different.
And if any other movie director, especially one as good as Tarantino, wants to make a movie about an underground NYC blogger, i.e. me nom de plume Mr NYC, I'm is happy to serve as the inspiration for such a project. Get in touch!
The streets of NYC have so much romance attached to them that there have literally been great songs written in their honor -- "The Sidewalks of New York", "Across 110th Street", and "Positively 4th Street" just to name a few.
Right now, and until the end of October, there's an exhibit in Greenwich Village called Village Voices 2002 where, on the streets of the beloved neighborhood, there are boxes with small exhibits and recordings that tell you the history of the streets their located on.
The streets of NYC have a magic to them, representing the limitless possibilities of this city in concrete and steel.
But the streets of NYC also have an obvious menace. Danger lurks on them, intertwined with the glamour and excitement of the city. And while the streets of NYC are always fascinating to traverse, it's another thing if that's where you have to live, where you are forced to make your home. The expression "out on the streets" is as scary a threat as there is.
One Year, a podcast series that chronicles little-known or forgotten news stories from years past (recent seasons were 1977 and 1995) is currently doing a season on 1986. Their latest and last episode from this season is called "The Man From Fifth Avenue" about a movie of the same name that none of us have ever or will ever see but that became something a scandal in that summer 36 years ago. It follows a man named Joe being evicted from his apartment on the Upper West Side -- he faces life "on the streets", hurtling towards certain death in penury. This episode, which is a must-listen, tells the story of this man and his predicament, a fascinating NYC story that is way more complicated and with a much more unbelievable backstory than any of us could have imagined.
So why was the The Man From Fifth Avenue a scandal? Because it was -- ready for this? -- a piece of communist Soviet propaganda. This "movie" was created, with Joe as the willing tool, to demonstrate the greed and cruelty of American capitalism to Soviet citizens, to make them appreciate their "workers paradise" -- never mind that their country had many homeless people "on the streets" too. The problem for the USSR was that this movie came out around the same time as the Chernobyl disaster that would expose the venal dishonesty and incompetence of the Soviet system -- and that would lead to its demise five years later.
There's another way to think about this movie and how it relates to our lives today: it was an early piece of disinformation -- although this time targeted at the Russians and not Americans -- that would eventually come back to haunt us in our presidential election 30 years later. It's also a reminder that while communism fell in the Soviet Union/Russia, what came afterwards was equally scary. And, closer to home, it was an example of dislocation and gentrification that have rocked NYC in the decades since. This propagandistic movie was a giant lie that also exposed certain uncomfortable truths.
The streets of NYC have always held, and always will hold, so much promise and so much danger.
Almost all of my blog posts this week have been about actors so I think I'll end the week by writing about one more -- the late, great Ben Gazzara.
The quintessential character actor, Gazzara had a long and impressive career. A native of NYC, a child of Italian immigrants growing up in Kips Bay, Gazzara got his start in local theater and the Actors Studio before his big break, starring in the original production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955, directed by Elia Kazan.
Numerous plays, films and TV appearances followed through the 1950s, '60s, and 70s, including A Hatful of Rain and movies with the John Cassavettes including the classic Husbands in 1970 and Opening Night in 1977.
Gazzara's brief flirtation with movie stardom happened in the 1970s when he starred as Al Capone in Capone (1975) and the Peter Bogdanovich classic Saint Jack in 1979, playing an American running a prostitution ring in Singapore -- a thriller about the depths of human greed and depravity.
Gazzara continued to work into the 1980s and 1990s, and I became aware of him when he had another golden era in the late 1990s with such classics as David Mamet's brilliant thriller The Spanish Prisoner, the super dark comedy Happiness by Todd Solandz, and as the sleazy Jackie Treehorn in the The Big Lebowski.
Then in 2002 he won an Emmy for his role in the HBO movie Hysterical Blindness.
A few years later I saw him on the Broadway stage in a revival of the Clifford Odets play Awake and Sing! He was an adorable, charming presence in that first-class revival.
Gazzara died in 2012, leaving behind an amazing body of work. A great NYC, the last of a great acting breed.
The legendary New York filmmaker Woody Allen doesn't give a lot of interviews -- let alone a long one on the radio. But Woody just gave one to Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air and it's great.He talks about his career, his movies, his philosophy on life (basically, that is sucks) as well as his new film, Whatever Works, starring Larry David.
You can hear it ... here. Interesting thing about this movie: Woody actually wrote this script more than thirty years ago, in 1977, around the same time Annie Hall came out. Like many of Woody's movies, he wrote the first draft and then left it in the drawer for a while (in this case, a long while) before resuscitating it. Let's hope this movie was worth the wait!
On the face of it, the 1970s movies Serpico and The Turning Point couldn't be more different: the former is a real-life story about dirty cops, the latter is a fictional story about ballet.
But watching them makes you realize they share a lot in common: besides both movies being made in the 1970s in NYC, they are gritty, brutal, totally realistic deep-dives into high-pressure, competitive, all-consuming worlds that their denizens both love and revile, that reach into the very cores of their being, enthralling and warping them, and completing devouring their lives.
Back in the 1970s Hollywood used to make movies like these, movies where not everyone and everything was beautiful, where the world was reflected back to us in all of its deformed glory, where we saw and heard people who were in pain, and where things didn't always end happily. These movies were overshadowed by many othe great classics from that time (The French Connection, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, Rocky, Star Wars, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, you name 'em), but these two slice-of-life movies of believable realism cut just as deep emotionally as any of those other great '70s flicks.
Serpico stars Al Pacino as real-life cop Frank Serpico who "blew the whistle" on massive, entranched corruption within the NYPD, leading to the Knapp Commission and major reforms. Serpico (who's still alive!) was an odd fit with the NYPD, more of a hippy than a tough guy, someone who didn't believe violence and brute force necessarily meant good policing, and someone who didn't think corruption should ever be "business as usual". He took his life into his hands to expose the corruption and, afterwards, quit the NYPD and left the country. Directed by Sidney Lumet at the height of his career, the movie was made just a year after the main events in the film so it was an almost real-time retelling of how and why Serpico changed the NYPD -- and the whole city -- forever. Pacino was just then becoming a star -- the first Godfather movie had just come out and he was just about to start work on the second one -- but this film showed his incredible range, his ability to transform into complicated people, the depth of a soul that is both revealing and mysterious. The film is also a very realistic look at what NYC was like back in the early 1970s and, watching it now, you see how much the city has changed while also realizing that problems with policing are, well, perennial.
The Turning Point is much different but no less intense: as someone who had experience in the world of professional ballet, I can tell you that it's a tough, insular, and unforgiving world. People in ballet LOVE balletto an irrational level, it completely dominates their minds and bodies, they speak and think and do nothing else. They sacrifice their lives and physical, mental, and emotional well-being in pursuit of career in it. There is no divide between their personal and professional lives. This film asks but doesn't attempt to answer this question: at what price glory? Shirley McClaine stars as DeeDee, a woman who relinquished a ballet career to move with her former dancer husband Wayne (Tom Skerritt) to Oklahoma City and raise a family and live a quiet life. Events ensue bringing DeeDee and her daughter Emilia to NYC where Emilia shines with the company, and where DeeDee enounters her frenemy Emma (the always glorious Anne Bancroft) who started with the company at the same time as DeeDee, stayed, and become a big ballet star. There are affairs, fights, and great performances throughout the film that show, in raw and gorgeous ways, the constant fight between ambition and personal happiness, between career and family, about understanding your real values, and the sacrfifices and sadness that go with both. The film offers no easy answers and does what all great movies do -- it shows and doesn't tell (including showing lots of great ballet dancing). It's a film that moves you and makes you think about own life and values.
So if you want to see two old NYC movies that feel just as relevant today as they were more than 40 years ago, I can't suggest Serpico and The Turning Point enough.
There are movies, there are documentaries, and then there are visual meditations -- films that don't tell a story, exactly, but that through images and words make you think and ponder them as well as wonder how they relate to your life.
Such is the case with News from Home.
In 1976, the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Ackerman came back to NYC after having lived here for a couple of years in the early 1970s. She wanted to document the city that had played an important part in her development as a director. Ackerman shot huge amounts of footage of Manhattan street scenes, starting in Tribeca, working upwards to Midtown, and then uptown and towards the Bronx. Eventually it ends on the Staten Island Ferry, pulling away from the mighty isle, the great buildings looming and moving away (including, of course, the World Trade Centers). The city moving away from her is clearly metaphoric.
Most of the scenes are of people walking and cars rushing by on busy streets, at all hours of the day and night, with numerous forays into the subway. It is pure 1970s NYC, presented totally unfiltered and without sentimentality.
During the film, there are occasional voiceovers, done by Ackerman herself, reading from letters her mother sent to her while she was living in NYC a few years earlier -- the "news from home." The letters are about the mundane life her family is living back in Belgium and asking how she is enjoying life in the city. There are no shocking revelations from the letter, nothing dramatic. The film and letters are simply about how life passes by, both literally in the streets of the city and figuratively in the lives of people. Its simplicity is what makes News From Home so powerful.
Chantal Ackerman was a fascinating and pioneering director who sadly died in 2015. Read more about her and her incredible work here and watch News From Home below.
“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime … "
In the early 1990s, when I was a youngster, the Golden Age of Television had yet to arrive. There were no streaming shows and cable television didn't have many original (or good) shows then. The big networks still ruled absolutely. Hit shows were watched by twenty to thirty million people each week, and even lesser-rated shows got around ten million or so viewers. The audience sizes back then are unimaginable today. This was the era of LA Law, Doogie Howser, thirtysomething, Cheers, The Cosby Show, Growing Pains, Dallas, etc. -- shows about lawyers, doctors, cops, families, etc. which were mostly boring to me and my fellow adolescents. But there was one show that was a huge exception, standing out and shining brightly like a star, a show that my friends and I were utterly obsessed with – Quantum Leap. Quantum Leap was one part science fiction, one part history lesson of the second half of the twentieth-century, and one part buddy comedy. It’s about a brilliant scientist named Sam Beckett who, in the late 1990s, builds a time machine called Project Quantum Leap and finds himself “leaping” into the bodies and lives of different people at different places in the past. Sam is accompanied on his leaps by his friend from the future, Al – a cigar-chomping, quip-a-minute retired Navy man who appears as a hologram (Al steps into something called an imaging chamber at Project Quantum Leap linked to Sam’s brain, and only Sam can see and hear him – except for, as we learn, small children and the mentally disabled). In each episode, Al tells Sam what history he must change, what he needs to “make right that once went wrong” so that Sam can then “leap out” and into a new adventure or – as is always teased – back home to the future.
And for a show about time-travel, it’s fair to say that Quantum Leap was way ahead of its time. When Sam landed in a new place and time each week, the episode would hook the viewers in with the music and clothes and scenery – and that would brilliantly set the stage to introduce the characters and, more deeply, force us to confront much that was uncomfortable in our recent past. Years before #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, Quantum Leap made Americans reckon with their county’s ingrained racism and sexism. While the stories and characters might be sentimental, it was always brutally honest: yes, the South in the 1950s was racist as hell; yes, the New York City corporate world of the 1960s was sexist as hell (this was more than 25 years before Mad Men felt the need to remind us week after week); yes, the military was deeply homophobic; yes, the Cuban Missile Crises and Kennedy Assassination made everyone nuts; and yes, the Vietnam war was a tragedy that haunts our country, even to this day. Yes, the second half of the twentieth century in America was a wild, crazy place -- and Quantum Leap dramatized it so well and so originally. Quantum Leap ran from 1989 until 1993 and each week was a masterclass in writing, acting, and production Along with shows like Twin Peaks, Larry Sanders and The Days and Night of Molly Dodd, it paved the way for the Golden Age of Television that we enjoy today. As I mentioned, for a show that jumped around several decades between the 1950s and 1980s, the costumes were extremely important. And the costumes on Quantum Leap were brilliant – they accentuated the characters, gave them a dimensionality beyond the story and script, rooted them not only in the time and place they were living in but also were extensions of who these particular people were – and helped us understand what was going wrong with them so that Sam could set their lives to right. Almost all the costumes on Quantum Leap were the work of one man, Jean-Pierre Dorleac, a name that popped out every week in the opening credits. Jean-Pierre has had a truly legendary career in show business, designing costumes for the original Battlestar Gallactica in the late 1970s and other classic shows like Max Headroom, Airwolf, and Jake and the Fatman as well as movies like The Blue Lagoon and The Only Thrill. He’s won an Emmy and worked in theater and opera as well, all over the world. His long and successful career is a tribute to his great talent and eye for how the costume can help make the character. Jean-Pierre has a lively Twitter presence and, while he had a long and varied career in many mediums, it’s clear that his time on Quantum Leap was very special to him. He was the costume designer for almost every episode (except the last five) and he probably had the biggest, most challenging, and most enjoyable costume design job in all of television history. That’s why it was AWESOME that Jean-Pierre was kind enough to answer some of Mr NYC’s fanboy questions about his career, his work on Quantum Leap (especially some of the NYC episodes), and what he thinks the legacy of the show is in the 21st century, almost 30 years since it went off the air. Thank you so much for doing this interview Jean-Pierre. First, I would like to say thank you very much for your interest in my work, especially “QUANTUM LEAP.” Tell us a little bit about your background and how you became a costume designer. I have been in show business since I was 10 years old, when I was featured in a review in England (where I received my formative education) singing and dancing to a popular song of the era. “Keep Your Sunny Side Up.” My performance, which turned out to be quiet entertaining and captivating, launched me on the road of entertainment. I went on to perform in stage productions, radio and eventually television and film as an actor. Sometimes, due to restricted budget, I made my own costumes from scratch. In the sixties when I was studying for a degree in Historic Apparel, I went to work for various designers in Paris as a workroom assistant, shopping textiles, making patterns, and helping in fitting (by handing the designer pins at first). Dior, Cardin, and Givenchy were amongst the notable designers I worked for. I was still doing theater at the time, which at times, required my participation in the costumes I wore. One of the plays I did, “Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m feeling So Sad,” lost its costume designer to illness, and I volunteered to take over. My work created such sensational reviews, I thereafter concentrated more on the designing aspect of entertainment than on being a performer. Soon, because of my special knowledge in 18th Century apparel, I was asked to be the historical consultant to the costume designer for the Royal Shakespeare’s production of Peter Weiss’ bizarre play, “Marat/Sade” concerning the aftermath of the French revolution as performed by the inmates of a mental institution outside Paris. It won many awards and brought me to New York when it opened there, and consequently to Los Angles where the east coast world premiere was staged. I won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award for the costume designs in 1973. Fate had a very funny, supplementary hand in its success, which is fully explained in my book, “The Naked Truth” available at Amazon.com, eBay, and at my website www.jean-pierredorleac.com. In time, I realized through my experiences in the making of costumes for the theater, and the expertise I have developed in couture creations, it had culminated in an ability to create costumes that had an underlying, subliminal message, placing them apart from just being attractive and in sync with the narrative. Within three years I did another two dozen well-known plays in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, New York, Paris, Berlin, London, and Hawaii. And through them, I caught the attention of Edith Head, who then mentored me. Before long, renowned actress, Nancy Walker, requested me to do her costumes alone for her new series in 1977, “Blansky’s Beauties.” Through this, I was inducted into the entertainment’s union, The Costume Designers Guild, that opened more doors to other venues, like my first feature with Henry Fonda, Susan Sarandon and Eileen Brennan, “The Great Smokey Road Block” (a terrible title on a badly shot film with a sensational cast, that bombed). Although I had become pigeon-holed as mostly a period costume designer, Universal recognized my special talents in fantasy and I was offered Battlestar Galactica in 1978, for which I went on to win an Emmy.
I, of course, jumped at the chance to do the show, mainly because it would offer a different aspect of my abilities to the industry as well as the public. You worked on lots of TV shows and movies over the decades but, on Twitter, it seems like your work on Quantum Leap remains close to your heart. How did you end up working on the show? One of the associate producers on Battlestar Galactica was Don Bellisario. Matter of fact, he wrote the script for which I won my Emmy. Following the series demise, Don produced a wonderful show entitled The Tales of the Gold Monkey. During its run, he asked me to do a spinoff series from Magnum P.I, that never was aired, but I did become his favorite designer. So, years later, when Quantum Leap was done, he called me in after they shot the pilot episode, to redo a lot of the scenes in it, specifically an entirely new wardrobe for Dean Stockwell, playing a very sybaritic fellow named “Al.” I stayed and did EVERY show in all the season thereafter, except for the last five when I left the production to do Heart and Souls in San Francisco with Robert Downey, Jr., Kyra Sedgwick, Elizabeth Shue, Charles Grodin, and Alfre Woodard. For nearly every episode you had to design costumes for a different decade between the 1950s and 1980s, as well as for a different part of the country. It must have been a both big creative joy and challenge. How did you approach creating costumes for not only a specific era but also for totally new characters each time? By the time Quantum Leap came along, I had developed a knowledge of the 20th Century that surpassed all the other earlier periods. I don’t think you could fill half-a-page of what I DON’T KNOW regarding the trends in fashion for the last hundred and fifty years. Therefore, QL came easy to me. I didn’t have to do much research for any of the episodes unless I was looking for something that was out of the ordinary. The one thing that comes to mind immediately was the 18th Century stylization for the wedding dress in “Sea Bride”. I wanted to design something lovely, because it was a wedding dress, yet something comical at the same time, so that Beverly Leech has to struggle with it in the opening scene when she has to hide in the ship’s small stateroom closet. I remember combing old 1957 magazines to find that Dior had used a pannier for some of his gowns at that time, and that gave me the idea for the design I needed. Everything else in that show, including the drop-dead red tango dress, and all the shows, thereafter, just came off the top of my head. Character costume ideas come from the script. They are born when I begin to read it and then grow into a full figure by the end. Having learned from past endeavors, I want the character to blend with the other actors so there is continuity within their scenes yet have some unique characteristic that sets them apart. It requires imagination, especially with men, as they aren’t as bedecked as women. There is an adage that goes, “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage.” I saw on Twitter that in one episode you had to create KKK outfits and that it was a hard and painful thing to do. What were some of the hardest costumes you had to create as well as some of the most fun? Having lived and worked on five continents in the same number of decades, I have tried to learn as much as I can about people. One, it helps me incorporate character in my design, and two, I learn about diversity and how it brings individuality to everyone. Each person has something wonderful to express in how they dress, no matter how much someone else thinks differently. Everyone’s ideas and concepts matter. The two things I abhor are bigots and fabulist. I have a hard time with titles as well, as I have always felt they cover a lot of sins. I’ve met as many people with an academic, medical, engineering, theatrical, artistic, and other degrees, as I have met people who know more by experiencing life and learning the hard way through vocational training. I believe the value of someone’s abilities lie in the merit of their work, not how much they can attract the public’s fancy by being a flash in the pan with a glorified handle. Having to generate a faction of history by making KKK robes, as there were none from the 50’s in existence, mainly due to changes in design, I was faced with having to create the actual monstrosities, including The Grand Dragon in red. It upset me very much, just in knowing how abhorrent the sight of them would be to many people that were my friends, especially in the south, where the episode occurred.
In other episodes of QL, over the years, I had to come up with Nazi and Russian uniforms, but they were ordered from costume houses. They were not of my creation. But the KKK robes that I watched being constructed, really left me sick. On the other hand, there were many fun things I did for the show that left me elated. There was “Play It Again Sam,” (with the widow who couldn’t help it, if she looked good in black), “Sea Bride,” “One Strobe Over the Line” (glamor, glamor, glamor)“A Single Drop of Rain,” “Glitter Rock,” (Rock the Redhead), “Miss Deep South” (especially the silly Carmen Miranda get-up for ‘Quanta La Gusta’), “What Price Gloria” (Sam’s dinner ensemble with the quivering feather hat), “Private Dancer,” “Southern Comfort” (all those wanton women in lingerie) and “It’s a Wonderful Leap,” among many. Okay, let’s get to the NYC part. You designed the costumes for the brilliant episode “What Price Gloria” where Sam becomes a secretary dealing with sexual harassment. What are your memories about that episode and the challenges of making Scott Bakula an attractive, dignified professional woman in 1961 NYC? It didn’t start with Sam. Nothing ever did. It started with Gloria, who you are supposed to be seeing. She was a gorgeous woman. It’s always easy to dress gorgeous women as everyone looks at their faces, not what they’re wearing. And if she were curvy and appealing, it was even easier. I choose simple sheaths that weren’t revealing in anyway at the office, with smart but subtle jewelry. As the story progressed, I selected more feminine styles when we realized that it wasn’t how Gloria presented herself that was making the wolf howl, it was his vain glorious believe in himself.
I tried to choose designs that were very reminiscent of the early 60’s and especially chic because it took place in New York City’s business world. I was helped in keeping the look light by the fact that it took place in October of 1961, in the Big Apple. Having lived there at the time, I knew what the weather could be like. One of the best episodes of Quantum Leap, as well as maybe the best NYC episode, is “Private Dancer” where Sam becomes a Chippendales’ dancer in 1979 and saves a deaf lady from a horrible fate. That episode is both one of the most hilarious and poignant episodes of TV I’ve ever seen on any show (the beginning of the episode, where Sam leaps into the dancer mid-jump, with screaming women all around, Kool and Gang’s “Ladies Night” blaring in the background is one of the funniest things ever). Also, it was probably the most realistic portrayal of late 1970s NYC I’ve ever seen, the costumes are clearly from the 1970s but don’t have a “paper-dollish” look and seem to capture how these struggling dancers at that time would have really dressed. What do you remember about working on that episode? Well, it wasn’t about putting Sam in next to nothing as the Zorro dressed dancer! That was fun. What was a lot of work, were the dresses to be used in the dance sequences. I had seen Debbie Allen’s choreography in other films and knew I was going to have to have outfits that twirled, floated, and looked seductive, yet classy. They also couldn’t look expensive as these dancers had no money and when they bought things, they tended to stay with styles similar to workout/rehearsal garments. Debbie Allen’s white gown, at the disco, was little more than four panels of triangular shaped wedges of white matte jersey with self-string straps, belt, and a self-wrapped turban. And the red handkerchief dress worn for the final audition by the young girl was silk jersey with a minimal scattering of sequins at the V-neckline and at the edges of the numerous skirt panels. I wanted simplicity at its best for these scenes as the dance was supposed to be the center of attention and where your mind should linger. The last NYC episode I’ll ask about is “It’s a Wonderful Leap” that takes place in 1958. In that episode you had to turn Scott Bakula into a Jewish cab driver. His costume and look in that episode, especially the glasses, is quite memorable (so much so that Stephen Colbert referenced that episode in 2015 because, sadly, it includes a child Donald Trump). I also remember all the costumes had a vibrant, 1950’s feel about them. Was that a fun episode to work on (Trump excluded)? Funny, but I have blanked out tRump being in it! God knows why…ha ha ha ha! Yes, “It’s a Wonderful Leap” was a wonderful show. After the various times I had spent in NYC, I was quite knowledgeable regarding Hell’s Kitchen, so Sam’s costume was quite easy to put together. I think I only bought one hat to the fitting as I knew it was perfect with the turtlenecks, scarf and beaten jacket of a cabdriver. The glasses were something I picked out from a selection that Props had, as they are a prop item on a shoot. Most of my time was spent with my old, dear friend Liz Torres. I had known her since 1975 when she had appeared at the Backlot Room of Studio One, in Hollywood. Liz is one of the most talented actresses in the world who can sing like a bird, dance like a ballerina, and realistically act the hell out a scene. I knew I didn’t have to create much of a character for her as it would all come from her. So, I went for a magical look in whites and grays that didn’t grab your attention, giving away the fact that she was ghost from the 20’s. We made everything, including her hat, shoes, coat, and dress that was beaded. I found old garters and we rolled her stockings down to just below her knees and rouged them…very de rigueur for a flapper of that period. Longshots on television are rare, so when Liz found out there was going to be one on the street, she spoke with the director first, and then improvised the Charleston dance step so the audience could see our efforts with the stockings and garters. She was definitely one of my favorite actresses of all the ones that I’ve ever worked with. The rapport between Sam (Scott Bakula) and Al (Dean Stockwell) was amazing, they worked brilliantly together. Did you ever get to watch them work and create that magic? Yes, many times. I went to the set every day when they were on the lot, and many times when they were on location as well. A major part of my job as a costume designer for film or television, is being on the set to establish a new costume that has never seen before, not even by Dean. Having been in the business for so many years, Dean didn’t like to deal with fittings. So, he and I established a look for him at the beginning. I also had the studio tailor take all his sizes. After a month, we were so in sync, I simple designed his outfits without anyone’s input, and took them to the set the day they worked. He would put them on in his motor home, and then come out with his cigar and parade around the set where all the grips, lighting technicians, sound, camera men and props would ooh and ah about how crazy they were. He loved showing them off as much as he did acting in them. He and Scott worked together in tandem as they were both extremely professional and didn’t mess around; it was always a business, that they made appear like fun. But they always knew their lines and hit their marks right on time. No one had to wait for either of them. Finally, even though the show’s been off the air for almost 30 years, my friends and my wife still love it. What do you think is Quantum Leap’s legacy? Was it one of the shows that paved the way for the later Golden Age of TV? I think its legacy was the great scripts. I don’t remember too many that didn’t hold my interest all the way though. I loved the fact that they also taught some moral responsibility amidst all the foolery. Plus, even though it was achieved though writer manipulation, there was usually a pretty rewarding and uplifting ending that sometime was quite nostalgic. I’m very rewarded by the followers on Twitter, who, for the most part, didn’t see the show when it was first released, but have becomes fans over the decades from the many times it has aired. That is very unusual for a TV series; it hasn’t been that way with the many other shows I’ve done. But I’m forever getting a residual check for the episode I appeared in, “Shock Theater,” so I know the show is always airing somewhere in the world. And I’m grateful after all these years that it has become the phenomenal cult hit it is. Between it, “Somewhere in Time,” and “Battlestar Galactica” my costumes have been exhibited all over the world and I have lectured as much as I have done. Examples of my creations have been exhibited worldwide. Benefits for AIDS Project Los Angeles have celebrated my work, as have The Mannequins Auxiliary of the Assistance League of Southern California where an hour long, dazzling fashion show paraded my creations. The Los Angeles County Museum of Arts showcased my costumes and sketches in their exhibition and book, HOLLYWOOD AND HISTORY: COSTUME DESIGN IN FILM, as well as exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; La Palais de la Civilization, Montreal, Canada; and La Place Vendôme, Paris, France. Recently, ATAS exhibited thirteen examples at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, in a presentation of award-winning television costumes. What a career! What a legacy! Thank you so much Jean-Pierre! Make sure to visit Jean-Pierre’s website and check out his book at the links above. Also, delve into Mr. NYC’s QL fandom here.
Believe it or not, I haven't been watching much TV during this pandemic -- I spend so much time working at my job, taking care of my kids, keeping my house in order, cooking, and occasionally blogging, that my TV time is severely limited. When I do watch something, it's usually for only an hour or so before bed, usually some show that I've recorded or get off a streaming service.
But on the rare occasion when I do catch the news, I've noticed a trend: people who are broadcasting or being interviewed from home, a bookcase behind them, with a copy of Robert Caro's The Power Broker prominently displayed on a top shelf. Just last night I caught two minutes of Erroll Louis on NY1, and there was the mighty tome looming over his shoulder.
I'm not the only one who's noticed this -- today there's a big article about how numerous politicians, journalists, and other assorted NYC bigwigs who appear on TV regularly are making sure that The Power Broker can be seen by the audience. Some politicians, like Congressman Max Rose of Staten Island, downright admit that they put it there just be seen. Displaying this book so clearly to the public is an perfect example of what we might call "intelligence signaling" -- it says, "look how smart, informed, sophisticated, and New York I am. Oh, and I really, really like to read."
Unlike many of these people who've probably never actually read The Power Broker, yours truly has -- I even blogged about it twelve yearss ago. So there! Other suggested big NYC books to have on your bookshelf to show what a super-sophisticated New Yorker you are: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, Underworld by Don DeLillo (might want to throw in White Noise or Mao ii for good measure), maybe some older books like The Great Gatsby, Sister Carrie, and The Age of Innocence, and anything by Vonnegut. And here's 1977 interview with the "power broker" himself, Robert Moses!
So it just snowed in NYC -- in May, 2020. Snow. In May. That's normal, right?
Well, it hasn't snowed in May in NYC since 1977 -- 43 years ago. And it was the coldest day in record in NYC since 1947 -- 73 years ago.
Along with the COVID-19 crises, and the Donald Trump presidential nightmare,the snow in May makes it's easy to ask, "WTF is going on?!" Right now life in NYC feels like the first few minutes of the 2001 Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky -- I think we'd all like to stand in the middle of an empty Times Square and yell.
