James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor camera under the direction of James H. Smith, with Paul Rogalli to run them, to New York. It's a portrait of a city seventy years ago, with the Third Avenue El still running, the tall buildings begrimed with the smuts of hundreds of years.. Even the New York Foundling Hospital, not far from where I write this, is filthy, as is the Flatiron Building, which I walk past three or four times a week.
It's a portrait of the city that captures it at a moment when, with the United Nations Building about to rise, it seemed as if New York would become the capital of the World. New York is a living city, always growing something new, always a hallowed institution about to vanish.
The copy of this Traveltalk that plays on TCM sparkles with chips of the film's emulsion. Still, it's a pleasure to look at this and see the city as it was a few years before I was born.... and which still can be spotted among the newer construction.
It's a portrait of the city that captures it at a moment when, with the United Nations Building about to rise, it seemed as if New York would become the capital of the World. New York is a living city, always growing something new, always a hallowed institution about to vanish.
The copy of this Traveltalk that plays on TCM sparkles with chips of the film's emulsion. Still, it's a pleasure to look at this and see the city as it was a few years before I was born.... and which still can be spotted among the newer construction.