Somewhere in Queens there is a ...

NYC The Movie Star

This blog has chronicled how NYC and the movies go together like salt and pepper, oil and vinegar, pancakes and syrup -- you get the idea. The most amazing of all cities, the most visually arresting and culturally dynamic and humanly diverse of all places, has easily and magically fit with the most advanced and dynamic of all art forms from the very beginning. 

NYC and the movies are a match made in heaven, a perennial happy marriage.

In whatever movie is set in NYC, the city serves as both backdrop and star. It supports and defines the plot, the characters, the entire raison d'etre for whatever movies it's in. 

This massive article explores the always romantic role NYC plays in the movies -- a role that is sometimes dark, sometimes lighthearted, sometimes mysterious -- along with amazing behind the scenes pictures of movies being shot here over the decades. 

And with cinematic production in NYC booming, expect this love affair to continue forever and for this big movie star never to dim.

Greta at the United Nations

Welcome to NYC, Lebeau

Last year I interviewed the great entertainment blogger Lebeau of Lebeau's Le Blog.

Little did I know then that Mr. Lebeau had never been to NYC before but, recently, he made his first trip to our fair city and, as always, he blogged about it brilliantly. Read it about here! 

They Made the City a Better Place

Apologies if you are starting to think that Mr NYC is turning into some kind of extended obituary page but recently two New Yorkers died who certainly merit recognition -- two New Yorkers who made this city a better place.

The first is a woman named Betty Corwin who, almost 50 years ago, came up a with a simple and brilliant idea -- record Broadway shows and put them into a catalogue at the New York Public Library. She spearheaded this program and ran it for years. Generations of theater fans and professionals were then able to go to the library and watch shows they would otherwise never had seen -- the lightening in a bottle that is great theater, captured forever thanks to her. Rest in peace.

The second is a man named John L. Keenan, a former soldier and NYPD police detective. If you made a movie about this guy's life (someone should) it would be easy to sell: he landed at Normandy as part of the D-Day invasion back in 1944, he was a lifelong buddy of JD Salinger's (fellow D-Day survivor), and then, in 1977, he caught Son of Sam -- he actually made the guy confess! What a life! What a legacy! 

De Blasio Drops Out

Wallis Simpson in NYC 1974

When I hooked up with my wife I made a great sacrifice -- I moved to Queens. I literally crossed a bridge (the Triborough to be exact) to be with my lady love. 

Into Queens for a Queen, you might say. Never regretted it.

All guys do this -- make some kind of sacrifice to get with dames classier than they are (and my wife is WAY classier than me, like that's a surprise). But no one made a greater sacrifice for love than King Edward VIII who renounced the British Imperial throne in 1936 to marry the woman he loved, American divorcee Wallis Simpson. (As King, he was the head of the Church of England and the head of the church couldn't be divorced or married to a divorced woman back then). This guy gave up a crown, gave up a job he'd spent his whole life preparing for, gave up living in palaces and castles, gave up being a world leader, gave up the literal family jewels, gave up ruling an empire that spanned a quarter of the globe -- for a chick!

Even now, 80+ years later, it boggles the mind that someone would do such a thing. Imagine being a KING, a literal real-life KING, ruling an EMPIRE, the BIGGEST EMPIRE IN HISTORY -- and giving it all up, walking away from it all, vacating your destiny, abandoning everything you have including your family, for, you know ... some dame.

I guess I'm just not enough of a romantic to understand it (don't tell my wife). Almost a century later, it still boggles the collective mind that something like that happened.

Edward VIII died in 1972. He and Wallis lived in exile in France for the last 20 years of his life. But in 1974, Wallis made one of her final visits to the United States when she came to NYC. Even almost 40 years after the abdication and Edward's death, she still fascinated the media and the public at large who would besiege her whenever she came back to her homeland.

What was it about Wallis, what magic did she wield, what sorcery did she exercise, what qualities did she possess, that made a King renounce his Kingdom in order to "hook up" with her?

Let's face it -- she wasn't some great beauty. And, from everything I've read, she wasn't some kind of stunning intellect or even a particularly nice person. Her earthly charms seem elusive.

So what was it then?

Pre-verts have speculated that she had some kind of other-worldly carnal power over the King (you know, she gave great "luvin'" and knew "tricks") but this doesn't really wash. Prior to meeting her, the King (then Prince of Wales) had been with lots and lots of women so that probably wasn't it. My theory -- she was like the mother he never had. Edward's own mother was a monster so, instead of truly loving Wallis, she instead filled an emotional void he'd carried around his entire life. And, for that, beacuse of these mommey issues, this not particularly beautiful or interesting woman rocked an empire to the core and changed the course of world history.

When Wallis came to NYC in 1974 she was an elderly widow simply visiting friends and doing some shopping. She could have been and was, in many ways, just about anyone. At this moment, the Watergate scandal was raging and a presidential resignation -- much like the abdication, something that had previously been thought of as unthinkable -- was on the horizon. And yet the fascination with Wallis and her role in history remained unabated even then -- and even today, more than 30 years after her death.

Elizabeth Warren Rocks NYC

Eddie Money RIP

As a kid in the 1980s, listening to the now-gone radio station WPLJ, I loved the songs of Eddie Money. 

The child of an NYPD family from Brooklyn, Money went his own way, breaking into the music biz and moving to California, then turning out a string of big hit songs like "Think I'm in Love," "Two Tickets to Paradise", "I Wanna Go Back" and -- my two favorites -- "Walk on Water" and "Take Me Home Tonight."

These were rousing, musically dense, and heart-wrenching songs. Money's voice was full of longing, anguish, love, and determination. He was a crooner, a balladeer, the kind of popular singer who don't really have today but was big once upon a time. After a run of huge success, Money's fame receded but he kept touring, kept performing, and even appeared earlier this year on the new Netflix show "The Kominsky Method." 

Eddie Money died today from cancer at the age of 70. I couldn't find out much about his life since it appears that he was married to the same woman for 30 years, had 5 kids, and never got arrested or sued or into some big accident. He seems to have lived a stunningly normal life for someone who was such a talented singer and big star. But he was part of my childhood that is sadly gone and, both as a son of NYC and a singer, he'll be missed. 

Take your ticket to paradise, Eddie. You earned it. 

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