The Code of Mr NYC

As defined by ChatGPT:

Based on the blog’s recurring themes, tone, judgments, nostalgia, and observations over many years, The Code of Mr NYC can be understood as an informal moral philosophy of urban life: love your city fiercely, pay attention to the world around you, preserve what is worth preserving, distrust pomposity, and try to live with curiosity, humor, memory, and a certain New York toughness. 

• Love New York without pretending it is perfect. New York is complicated, contradictory, beautiful, vulgar, historic, changing, and occasionally absurd. Its flaws are part of its character.
  
  
• Pay attention. Notice buildings, streets, neighborhoods, people, restaurants, music, movies, politics, history, and the strange little events that everyone else walks past. A meaningful life requires actually looking at the world.
  
  
• Know your city's history. Today's New York is built on yesterday's New York. Remember the people, places, disasters, triumphs, eccentrics, artists, politicians, and ordinary citizens who created it.
  
  
• Preserve what deserves to survive. Progress is not automatically improvement. New buildings, new money, new technology, and changing tastes should not erase everything distinctive about the city. 
  
  
• Accept that change is inevitable—but judge it honestly. Nostalgia has value, but the past wasn't necessarily better. One person's golden age can be another person's nightmare.
  
  
• Be skeptical of power, wealth, and self-importance. Money and status do not automatically confer wisdom, taste, virtue, or legitimacy. Watch what powerful people actually do rather than what they claim to represent.
  
  
• Respect competence. Good institutions depend on capable people doing their jobs well. Leadership is not merely about the person at the top; it is also about choosing good people and giving them responsibility. 
  
  
• Don't take politics—or politicians—too seriously. Politics matters, but political rhetoric can become theater. Look for facts, consequences, hypocrisy, and the gap between promises and reality.  
  
  
• Keep your sense of humor. The world is frequently ridiculous. The proper response is sometimes outrage, sometimes sadness, and sometimes simply: You have got to be kidding me.
  
  
• Have opinions, but remain capable of changing them. Love and dislike need not be absolute. A person can admire one work by an artist while disliking the rest of their career, or appreciate an era while recognizing its ugliness.
  
  
• Remember the people who mattered. Death does not make someone's cultural contribution disappear. Remembering artists, neighbors, public figures, friends, and ordinary New Yorkers is a form of gratitude.
  
  
• Take pleasure seriously. Good food, music, movies, books, travel, beautiful places, baseball, architecture, nightlife, and simple experiences are not distractions from life. They are life.
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• Have some basic civic manners. You don't have to become polite in the suburban sense. But don't make life unnecessarily difficult for everyone around you: move right on the sidewalk, don't block subway doors, and recognize that public space belongs to other people too. 
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• Be yourself, even when you're a little weird. New York's greatness comes partly from its tolerance for eccentricity. Conformity is not a virtue merely because it is conventional.
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• Don't confuse sophistication with cynicism. You can see corruption, stupidity, hypocrisy, commercialization, and decline without becoming incapable of appreciating beauty or goodness. 
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• Stay curious until the end. The city keeps producing new stories. Keep investigating them. Keep wandering. Keep learning. Keep finding things worth writing about. In one sentence Love the city, remember its past, question its present, enjoy its pleasures, resist its bullshit, respect other people, and never stop paying attention.

That, more than any particular political or cultural position, seems to be the underlying ethical worldview of Mr NYC: a stubborn belief that paying attention to the world—and caring enough to remember it—is itself a moral act.

Review: "Is This Thing On?" (2025)

Late last year a small film came and went that didn't get a lot of fanfare but is actually really good.

Called Is This Thing On?, it's about a middle-aged couples in suburban NYC who seperate. The forlorn husband finds himself accidently turning to stand up comedy to deal with his new, unwanted life, while he soon-to-be ex-wife tries to keep their old life and their kids lives going as before -- just without him.

This movie is something you don't get a lot these days -- a very funny, wonderfully acted story about regular people leading their lives. It was directed by Bradley Cooper, the movie star (who has a supporting role), and it stars Will Arnett and Laura Dern as the erstwhile couple and they excellent. Also in the cast are Christine Ebersole as the mother-in-law and the great actor Ciaran Hinds who plays the father -- and gives a beautiful, understated performance.

There are lots of movies about glamorous people in NYC living glamorous lives but this movie is about the regular, hardworking people dealing with their careers, their families, and their own sense of worth. You should see it!

Review: "Sterling Point" (2026)

Over the years I've enjoyed posting short reviews of movies and TV shows about New Yorkers who travel far from the city and get into wild adventures.

Most recently, it was the show Tulsa King, and earlier it was movies like The Ninth Gate, Shaft In Africa, Angel Heart, Road House, Black Rain, even Ishtar. 

A new entry into this genre is the Amazon Prime show Sterling Point. 

It's about a prim and proper Brooklyn teenager named Annie and her dopey but funny brother Connor who inherit an island in Canada from their estranged grandfather -- and go to check it out.

Lots happens. Friends and lovers are made and lost and made again, buried family secrets are revealed, some pot is smoked, some sex is had, and some silly and serious situations ensue.

It's a great time. The main cast is young, gorgeous, and talented, the adult actors are excellent, and the show manages to be both very funny and emotionally dramatic at once. Really good.

I'll admit I'm biased because, yes, it's a show about displaced New Yorkers but it also takes place somewhere I know and love very well.

Sterling Point is a gorgeous, fun end-of-summer treat. 

Mets, Movies, Cookies, the Japanese & Fireworks!

Last night I went to the Mets-Dodgers game and, yeah, the Mets lost. 

Still, it was one of the more interesting games I've gone to because there was a lot of "extra."

First, it was "Japansese Heritage Night" so there were lots of Japanese people there. And there were also a ton of Dodgers fans. I've never been to a New York home baseball game with that many fans from the other city's team. I didn't realize there were that many Angelinos in NYC but apparently there are. It was weird.

Second, they were shooting a movie at this game. This announcement greeted us as we made our way into Citi Field:

This movie, The Catch, stars Emma Stone and Chris Pine and is slated for release next year. I don't know if the double Oscar-winning and pretty boy were at the game but apparently they shot some of it at the stadium earlier that day. 

And we saw some movie camera guys shooting during the game:

Also, upon our arriving we were given this wristbands. Stay tuned to find out why!

Then we sat down to watch the game. It sucked. But I did manage to get a cookie bucket and record one of two Mets' homeruns.

And once the game was over, we were treated to a East Coast-West Coast Hip Hop fireworks show -- presumably in honor of the East Coast-West Coast baseball game we'd just witnessed. 

And the lights in our wristbands began to glow and yours truly got to be part of a massive rap fireworks lightshow. I managed to keep it real, get jiggy with it, and illuminate the NYC night sky. Yeah boyeeeeeee!

So I got to be part of Japanese heritage, appear in a movie, eat out of a bucket, and partake in a bad-ass fireworks show. Aww yeahhhhhh!

Remembering Billy the Kid: Killer. Old West Legend. New Yorker!

A kid named Henry, born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1859, moved with his family to the West when he was three years old. He grew up to be the most famous killer and criminal of the Old West -- before he was gunned down by the Sheriff Pat Garrett in New Mexico in 1881.

Billy lived to be only 21 years old and yet his legend continues to this day. Movies, songs, books, etc. have practically cannonized this punk kid from NYC who wrote a short, dark chapter in the story of American Manifest Destiny.

Billy was born at 70 Allen Street, in what was then a super-crowded Irish immigrant community. As the Civil War raged, his family got out of town -- way out of town -- migrating to as far West as they could go, beyond what was then the United States and into "the Territory."

His time in NYC was obviously so short, and he was so young, that Billy probably had no memory of NYC. But obviously he inherited the city's grit and toughness -- and it made him a feared and legendary character in the Old West and to this day.

America 250: George III's Failure

I'm fascinated by stories of failure. As a failure myself, it's so much more interesting than success. That's why I read books and watch documentaries about movies that flopped, about wars that went wrong, about various other things that went awry. Somewhere along the way someone made a decision or decisions that seemed correct at the time -- but that turned out instead to be really wrong. Failure is about the intersection of intent with human falibility, about the clash between dreams and reality. 

I'm a fan of failure. 

Therefore, as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, I'd like to share these hilarious clips from the 1994 movie The Madness of King George where George III mourns the "paradise lost" that was "the colonies." Of course two decades later the musical Hamilton would have a more comic take on George III's defeat -- but after 250 years, we won't "be back."

How Many Shots Are There in a "Tootsie" Shot?

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:

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Shaft (1971)

Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Times Square (1980)

Tootsie (1982)

Staying Alive (1983)

The Secrets of My Success (1987)

Working Girl (1988)

Sea of Love (1989)

The Prince of Tides (1991)

Elf (2003)

NYC: The Movie Theater

Summer in NYC is always busy and wild, lots always going on. But one of the best things is that there are lots of free outdoor movies all over the city that friends and family can enjoy.

The most famous one is the long-running free outdoor movies in Bryant Park: I've seen A Streetcar Named Desire, MASH, and others there since I was in high school.

But there's lots more free outdoor movies around town including in Central Park, Riverside Park, the Intrepid and the other four boroughs. It's a cornucopia of cinematic goodness. 

Here's a list of links to all outdoor movies around NYC this summer. All you need is a blanket and water -- and seeing a movie on the big screen with lots of your fellow New Yorkers is so much better than being alone with a streaming service!

Funky Town Redux

Over the years I've blogged a lot about how 1970's and '80s NYC was Funky Town. 

And Funky Town was a big, wild place! 

Here are some more examples of that time, that seems so far away and yet is right around (literally) the corner:

Back in those days trade school commercials were all over NYC television, like these for the Albert Merrill School and Apex Tech (that lovely set of tools is yours to keep after you graduate).

Then there's movies. A lot of great movies were shot on the streets of NYC back then -- The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, and Saturday Night Fever, just to name a few. As you might imagine, shooting them on location could be a challenge. Recently I read about the making of the 1974 original movie The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3. You gotta love it -- it's an action movie that stars Walter Matthau and Jerry Stiller! It's a great NYC movie that mostly takes place on the subway movie but it was a tough movie to shoot in the fall of 1973 -- as this article points out. 

Talking about NYC movies of the 1970s, recently I was on the East Side and walked by The Copinette restaurant that has a plaque outside, commenterating its appearance in the 1971 Oscar Best Picture winner The French Connection.

And of course, there's The Sexy. 

Before AIDS closed them down, sex clubs were prominent around town. Here's previous Mr NYC interviewee and former adult film star Hyapatia Lee talking about her visits to Plato's Retreat and The Hellfire Club and the wild, sexy times she had in this town.

And talking about sexy clubs, one night in 1975 a young songwriter named Van McCoy went to the Apple's Apple nightclub and saw people dancing in an interesting way. He therefore decided to write a song called "The Hustle" and it became one of the most famous, beloved, and iconic disco songs of all time:

So there's just some more examples of Funky Town, a place long-gone but that will forever live in Mr NYC's heart. 

Review: "Hair" (1979)

Recently I came upon an article in the Hollywood Reporter listing 47 iconic movie and TV sites in NYC. Read it here. (Why it's not an even 50, I can't say.) 

One location that's obviously cited is Central Park which has been used in too many movies and TV shows to count. But one of movies that's not on this list but that makes great use of nation's most famous urban park is Hair from 1979. 

Based on the late 1960s anti-war, anti-establishment hippie Broadway smash, it's about a young man named Claude from Oklahoma who comes to NYC on his way to enlist in the army before shipping to Vietnam. (Why a guy from Oklahoma would need to travel all the way to NYC to go into the army is odd but, hey, it's a movie). Anyhoo, while roaming around Central Park one afternoon he comes upon a group of hippies who befriend him and rock his world. He also gets close to a young beautiful society lady who is bored by her preppy boyfriend and upper class life. Eventually it all goes haywire and Claude goes into the army -- before his friends head out to Nevada, trying to rescue him from going to Vietnam. There's a big, surprising, ultimately tragic twist at the end about the randomness of friendship and fate.

When the musical Hair hit Broadway in 1968, it was a stunning, crazy, and almost dangerous thing. America was mired in the hopeless Vietnam war and the anti-war, hippie movement was gaining steam (Woodstock would be a year later). This musical rocked the culture, a show that was both highly political and highly entertaining -- plus, at various points, the cast members took their clothes off. Richard Nixon, right after he became President, imagined that he'd go to a show and, as soon as cast got naked, he'd get up and walk out, showing his solidarity with the Silent Majority, the squares in the "real America" (fortunately he never did it although it would have been lit). Like A Chorus Line, Rent and Hamilton later on, this show defined its time. 

But when the movie came in 1979, times had changed. Vietnam was over, Watergate and stagflation had and were traumatized the nation, and this movie already seemed like a museum piece. It was of and about another time. Hair the movie was moderately successfull but didn't have the same resonance as it had had on Broadway 11 years earlier. 

The movie was directed by Milos Forman, who had just won Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and would, later on, do so again for Amadeus. Hair is somewhat forgotten from his filmography. The cast is amazingly -- especially a young Treat Williams (RIP) as George, the hippie leader, and Beverly D'Angelo, the bored young deb. Claude is played by John Savage who had just had a huge success in The Deer Hunter. He's a good actor but rather miscast -- he's not really believable as a young Okie. The rest of the mostly unknown cast is quite good, including the late, wonderful Nell Carter singing in the park at night.

Still, there's something about the movie that sorta doesn't work -- it reminds me of the Rent musical, a great, brilliant show put to film that somehow, someway, sucks the life out of the story and score. But I still suggest seeing it for the music, the cast, and beautiful shot Central Park. 

Remembering Vanessa Del Rio, NYC's Greatest Adult Star

In the wild heyday of the NYC adult film scene of the 1970s and '80s, no star shone brighter than that of Vanessa Del Rio's. 

She was the Judy Garland, the Barbra Streisand, the Meryl Streep of that time and place -- quite simply, the best. She was famous and iconic in her time and remains so almost 40 years since she quit the business.

Born and raised in Harlem, Vanessa was the quintessential New Yorker -- and a striking contrast to most of the adult performers of her time and after. She was Latina, curvy, tough talking, odd-looking -- and a stunning, gorgeous ball of fire. From 1974 to 1986 she made roughly 80 movies, many of her as the star. And her various co-stars -- both male and female, and including some of the biggest names of the time -- were both the most fortunate of pepole as well as her helpless prey, so insatiable were her performances. She was amazing!

In the decades since she left the business, Vanessa has popped up here and there. She appeared on NYPD Blue and also had an entire Taschen book made about her. She's on social media and appreciates her fans. Now in her 70s, she lives quietly (I believe on Staten Island) and lives a fairly quiet life. But her legacy will never be quiet -- it will rage on forever.

The Saga of the Ansonia: NYC's Most Notorious Building

If a building could be called a Drama Queen, then NYC's most drama-filled building is the Ansonia on West 73rd-74th street and Broadway. 

I've blogged about it a few times over the years -- and, again, did so long before many others, being ahead of my time!

It was built in the 19th-century by a copper heir named W.E.D Stokes who wanted to make it an urban Utopia -- a place where its residents could retreat from city's nuttiness and enter into a world of peace and happiness. It had sound-proof walls so that families could live quietly, and Stokes even had the idea of a roof-top farm (he was well-ahead of his time).

But soon the Ansonia became a den of inequity, with its rich tenants using its sound-proof apartments for parties and affairs. The Continental Baths opened in the basement, becoming a gathering for gay men. And it's also where Plato's Retreat existed for many years, NYC's most famous swingers club.

It's where the 1992 movies Single White Female was set (I've blogged about that too).

But it's not only sex and psychos that made the Ansonia drama filled -- from Day 1 it was a money-pit, Stokes's creation driving him into poverty. And it is the most litigated building in NYC history, with lawsuits flying between tenants and owners for decades. 

The Ansonia is, of course, the inspiration for the fictional Arconia in Only Murders in the Building (although it's not filmed there). 

Yes, the Ansonia is so drama-filled that it's had podcasts and videos made about it (see below). It's quite a saga!

Review: "The Ice Storm" (1994 & 1997)

As a young, overeducated man who grew up with lots of books in the house, I will confess that I had literary pretensions. I dreamed about writing a great book that would be critically acclaimed and would sell big and would be turned into a hit Oscar-winning movie and that I would be rich and famous and happy for the rest of my life.

Yeah, so that didn't happen. I became Mr NYC instead. 

But I will confess that, when I was operating under such a delusion, I wanted to write like Rick Moody whose 1994 novel The Ice Storm became a great movie in 1997.

As I write this post, ice has consumed the life of NYC ergo my thoughts are turning to the meaning of ice, of what ice can represent -- beyond the expanding molecules of H2O. 

The Ice Storm is a very funny, very dark story about two families in New Canaan, CT, a wealthy suburb of NYC. The story takes places over Thanksgiving, 1973 where the fates of two families tragically collide while an ice storm bears down on them. Interspersed with the domestic drama -- focused on adultery, alchoholism, teen sex & "swapping", drugs, and lives held together by lies -- are wry commentaries about the popular and political culture of early 1970s America. The country is enjoying movies like The Exorcist and books like Breakfast of Champions while the Watergate scandal envolopes the nation -- the idea that darkness and corruption are endemic to the very soul of the country that the characters live in (the October 1973 Saturday Night Massacre had just occurred, as shown below). 

In a sense, they and us are already doomed.

The novel is a great read although you'll want to take a breather every so often. Moody's writing is funny but also deeply sarcastic and cynical, very "in quotes", often mocking and derisive in tone. The best word to describe the novel is "acerbic." But the humanity in the darkness of these characters' lives cuts through, and that's what makes it a powerful read. And it has an interesting twist at the end. 

The movie is also powerful although a bit more overtly emotional. It was directed by Ang Lee who would later go on to make big hits like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. The cast is amazing -- Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver along with a young Christina Ricci and Elijah Wood. Even more interesting is that this was the film that brought Tobey Magiure, pre-Spiderman, and Katie Holmes, pre-Dawson's Creek/Tom Cruise, into prominence. And it's beautifully directed and shot, the beauty clearly at odds with the ugly lives portrayed.

It also is something of an NYC movie -- this is a story about the commuters, the people who live comfortably outside the city but whose jobs and identities exist there. And at one point the Tobey Maguire character flees to a night of booze and drugs and a failed attempt at sex at an Upper East Side apartment before he flees to Grand Central Terminal before the very real "ice storm" prevents him getting home. 

What The Ice Storm reminds us is that darkness and corruption in the personal and political lives of America is nothing new -- it seems to be our constant, perenial existential state. I'm personally interested in this story because it's set just a few short years before I was actually born -- given me a sort of window into the world that I was soon to join.

And given the current weather both real and political, it's a book and a movie more timely than ever.

Highly recommended. 

Catherine O'Hara in "After Hours" (1985)

When the notification popped up on my phone that the comedic genius Catherine O'Hara died, I put my phone down and hoped that I was just imagining it. But no. It's sadly real -- she's gone, and our world is a lot less funnier.

The tributes to her career are numerous, and the media and public are recalling her works in movies like Beetlejuice I & II, Home Alone, the Christopher Guest mockumentaries, as well as the great TV shows that bookended her career -- SCTV in the late 1970s/early 1980s and Schitt's Creek in the last twenty-teens. 

But here at Mr NYC, we remember the off-beat work of great talents, most especially involving those related to the city. And in 1985, between her stint on SCTV and her later big hits, Catherine had a small role in the wackiest movie that Martin Scorsese ever made -- After Hours. 

In fact, her future Home Alone co-star John Heard is in it, along with the late Terri Garr. Please check out the Mr NYC After Hours archive -- and remember one of the greatest comic actresses of her era and a movie from a different time in the life of NYC. RIP. 

"Out for Justice" (1991) Opening Scene

Okay, I promise, this will be the last Out for Justice post ever on Mr NYC. This is the opening credits for one of the best bad NYC movies ever made. They just don't make movies like this any more than are this balls-to-wall politically incorrect, nasty, and fun. Today movies take themselves much too seriously. But back in 1991 some movies still had a sense humor.

Mr NYC Ahead of His Time

Last year, after my visit to Paris, I blogged about the amazing exhibit there displaying items from the movies of Wes Anderson.

Few directors have as unique an aesthetic as Anderson, all of his movies have a certain look and feel and mood that binds them together. Several of his movies contains objects that are specific to his oddball universe -- part of the painterly look that his movies have.

Anyway, the Wes Anderson exhibit is going on the road and is only now being written about in the USA -- so, my blog post from last year is year another example of how Mr NYC is Ahead of His Time. 

NYC Filming Locations

This is, admittedly, a shameless case of reposting or aggragating but I strongly suggest reading this article about 45 iconic locations for movies set in NYC.

Of course, there are many more iconic locations in much better films than the ones in this article -- but this is a good start.

Rob Reiner RIP

I'm in shock and tears at the awful deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle. Rob made so many classic movies of my youth -- Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, Misery, A Few Good Men -- that his legacy will be burnished into my soul forever. 

My favorite, of course, is his 1989 classic When Harry Met Sally ... Rob and Nora Ephron collaborated to make one of the greatest romantic comedies ever. 

I've blogged about it numberous times of over the years (read it here) but I'll simply add this: at a time when NYC was going through a rough patch (rising crime, the Crack epidemic, government corruption, severe racial tensions) Rob and Nora gave the world this beautiful, hopeful, and very funny movie that celebrated love and NYC. It was a shot of joy in a difficult time and for that New Yorkers will always be grateful.

Rob and Nora are now gone but we will enjoy their work forever. RIP.

Tom Stoppard RIP

Probably the world's greatest playright, Tom Stoppard, has died.

Plays like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, The Coast of Utopia plays, and so many others, were like nothing that had ever been seen before. Stoppard's use of language was brilliant, complex and yet captured your mind and emotions in equal measure.

He was a true genius. 

I saw several of his plays on Broadway -- revivals of Jumpers, Arcadia, The Real Thing (in 2000 and 2014) as well as new plays like The Invention of Love and, most recently, Leopoldstadt. I reviewed this last play, his great swan song, in 2023, as well as the 2011 revival of Arcardia and the 2014 version of The Real Thing. Read them here. 

And yes, Stoppard also wrote for the movies, winning a screenplay Oscar for the 1998 hit Shakespeare in Love. It had the great line, "That woman ... is a woman!" 

Two amazing things about Stoppard's life and career are worth noting.

First, his native language wasn't English. He was borin in Czecholslovakia, escaping the Nazis with his mother in the 1940s, before landing and living the rest of his life in England. From there he would not only learn his new country's language but take it and mold it into magic for six decades. Stoppard is an open-and-shut case for why immigration, and welcoming migrants, is a smart thing to do.

Second, when my parents got together in the late 1960s, they went to the original NYC production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (I actually have one of their Playbills in the family files). Forty-odd years later my wife and I got together, in part, via our mutual love his plays. Kismet.

RIP Sir Tom. We'll probably never see his likes again.

Here is a local NYC news review of The Real Thing from 1984. "Put the right words in the right order and you can nudge the world a little bit." 

Pauline Collins RIP

I was sad to learn this week that the wonderful British actress Pauline Collins has died at age 85. 

She had a long career in movies, TV, and the stage. Her most notable role was for the play and then the movie Shirley Valentine in the late-1980s. In fact, in 1989 she won the Tony Award for Best Actress and had the honor of being given it by Mr. Steve Martin:

But I first saw Pauline in the early 1970s TV series Upstairs, Downstairs where she played the parlor maid Sarah -- a young and motivated working class woman who refused to accept her station in life. She was so good in the role, her performance so touching and heartbreaking, she etched a memorable, multi-layered character that I remember decades after I first saw it. 

She was great. RIP.