KISS OF DEATH (1947) starring Victor Mature, Richard Widmark and Coleen Gray

YouTube ^ | Dec 17, 2020 (date of YouTube posting)

[ETL]

I just realized that all 3 of those restored NYPD police cars are the same, even though one photo is labeled 1969 and the other two ‘70. Note the identical “1745” license plate on each.

[ETL]

I ran across Richard Widmark shooting an episode of the TV series Madigan in 1972 somewhere in the 80s on the West Side. He was about a block away and it suddenly dawned on me who he was

Interesting. I grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side during the 1960s and near all of '70, but have recently moved to that area that you referred to, Upper West Side. Lots of snooty Libs and movie people here. Still, the area is great. One block from Central Park, where my late parents met around the time this movie was shot, late 1940s. Dad, from Tennessee, was in the Navy on leave visiting the park with a shipmate. Mom, an Italian girl from Manhattan, was at the park with a friend.

[John Milner]

I noticed the Pepsi logo on the sign was of a late 60’s or 70’s vintage.

Probably because I used to collect and deal in soda pop memorabilia and signage. You needed to know when the companies changed their primary logos to know the sign’s vintage.

Now they make ‘collector’ signs with vintage logos on them since there is such demand for vintage advertising.

[DeFault User]

Growing up in New York you’re probably used to running into celebrities, but it was somewhat of a shock for me.

I had landed at JFK that morning and took the bus to Grand Central to wait for a train that was leaving in the evening. My wife and her sister had some jet lag and didn’t want to do any touring. I wasn’t going to waste the day so I headed for some of my favorite haunts in the city, the Metropolitan and the Hayden Planetarium. Like your parents I walked across Central Park from the Metropolitan and at some point just decided to roam around the neighborhood in the 80s (probably looking for something to eat).

[Bratch]

[ETL]

Yes, I had that gif saved, but didn’t want to spoil it for anyone who might actually want to watch the movie based on this thread. In any case, I get the feeling that no one was inspired to. Maybe most who responded had already seen it.

[Oatka]

They were preparing a shot to be filmed on the street. Cameras were setup near a “pimpmobile”. This took maybe an hour, but I stood there to watch what was going to happen. Widmark stood at a distance waiting and smoking. Finally, they filmed the scene with him talking to someone in the car.
Later I made certain to watch the episode on TV. The scene which took an hour to setup and film lasted maybe 10 seconds on screen. Just damn.

Wife and I had a similar experience in the '80s in Sierra Madre, CA (LA suburb). My brother-in-law was a stand-in for James Karen in one of the "Living Dead" sequels. My sister called and said they were shooting a scene nearby. We hotfooted over there about 10 pm.

Dozens of crew and group-scene actors milling about. At 1 pm they were STILL farting around, so we gave up and went home. The scene turned out be a 15-second shot of a zombie stopping by an electronics store and watching female aerobics on a demo TV.