What Happened To 42nd Street?

Tony Hunter's New York

This post is about the first eighteen minutes of The Bandwagon. Fred Astaire, as washed-up musical star “Tony Hunter,” entrains for New York, and finds it a changed place. So, no doubt, did others of MGM staff who mourned a Broadway which gold was now brass, if that. These first reels sum up a point of view shared by most behind, and in front of, 1952 cameras (The Bandwagon released seven months after completion). This opener plays like old folks’ lament for show biz way of life that won’t be coming back, thanks to kids of base appetite (hot dogs w/o even mustard), and more inclination for peep shows than what used to be a Gayest White Way. Director Vincente Minnelli and writers of The Bad and The Beautiful earlier parodied a low-end of Hollywood with its Cat Men and Son of the Cat Man, but that was gentle beside this. To taste so rarefied as Minnelli’s, New York of The Bandwagon was sullied past rescue, so what comeback could a Tony Hunter hope for? Singin’ In The Rain dealt with changed times, but in reverse, outmoded silent movies given way to greater glory of talkies, a rough transition but worth it. Playing from the bottom up made Singin’ In The Rain a cheerful ride, as in good riddance to the old, and aren’t we happier with movies that talk and sing. Rain also had youth, at least appearance to that effect (Debbie Reynolds a closest thing to a newcomer among veterans --- even Donald O’Connor had been around longer than most people realized). The Bandwagon was maturity and their effort to cope, Tony Hunter eased aside and struggling to hang on, as perhaps were stars on board. Astaire romance with Cyd Charisse (b.1922) is occasion for us to feel his age (b.1899), an issue to 50's linger. Deserving as it was to be a hit, The Bandwagon instead lost a million to Singin’ gain of $1.6 million. We can treasure The Bandwagon in hindsight more than a 1953 audience to whom it spoke less agreeably. Who liked being told their popular culture was so debased?

The Bandwagon opens with an auction of “Tony Hunter’s Personal Effects.” Like Bette Davis in The Star of a previous year, we assume that Tony is broke and reduced to selling his possessions, but it turns out later that he has an art collection to underwrite revision of a Broadway play in trouble. The auction, like Tony’s career at present, is a flop. They can’t even get an offer for the top hat and stick he used in "Swinging Down To Panama," a title to humorously evoke Astaire’s own Flying Down to Rio, largely unseen since playing new in 1933. Star artifacts were sold to the public, often bid for as part of estate disposal, and I’ve heard much of what now would be valuable going for low dollars. That can happen when so much is dumped onto a market at once. We’re led to think no one wants Tony Hunter’s “popori” at any price. How many celebrity auctions came to such impasse? I’ve seen star mementos float from dealer to store and back again without generating interest. John Barrymore’s last wife used to sell his ties, handkerchiefs, cuff links, to whoever might care, and for surprisingly little, this a sort of 80’s annuity based on bric-a-brac she was astute enough to keep.

An aspect of gracious living still had in 1953 was club cars on trains. It was like crossing land on a cruise ship. Drinks served, conversation with strangers, these congenial because if they can afford the ticket and beverage, they must be congenial. Again we’re reminded of Tony Hunter’s downfall by a magazine ad he has done for cigarettes, but stars at a peak did such ads, had for decades, and would do so until the Surgeon General cracked down. Passengers discussing Tony don’t realize he is with them, a book in front of his face. “He used to be good twelve, fifteen years ago,” one of them says, at which point Tony reveals himself to their shocked embarrassment. Did (or do) celebrities have moments like this, as in civilians unknowingly (or worse, knowingly) insulting them in a public setting where there aren’t protective buffers? I’d commend good sport Astaire for playing a character many might mistake for the actor’s own circumstance. Like Barrymore in Dinner At Eight, or Bing Crosby in The Country Girl, the part of Tony Hunter goes close to Fred Astaire not as he was, but what he might become if his kind of musical should fall out of a public’s favor. Astaire would speak to such concern in his later memoir (Steps In Time), a point at which he was moving from dance to dramatic roles.

Tony steps off the train and imagines a gaggle of reporters are there to meet him (“Thanks for the red-carpet bit, I didn’t expect it”). Ava Gardner, in a cameo, is who they want, her greeting to Tony a glimpse of how stars might interact when they unexpectedly meet. Do celebrities pretend to know each other even where they don’t know each other? The public assumes stars are all intimately acquainted. Ava’s conversation with Tony is interrupted by reporters wanting just one more shot. “Honestly, isn’t all this stuff an awful bore?” she asks him, a tactless question on one hand because Tony hoped these photographers were there for him. She “confides” to Tony because he too is (or was) a star and will understand. I’m guessing celebrities walk a tight conversational wire, even when talk is casual. It calls up memory of chat shows where a guest would go off promoting message and engage his/her neighbor on the couch instead of focusing on the host … next thing you know, there’d be a testy exchange and Carson or whoever had to cut fast to a sponsor.

Tony walks the platform “By Myself,” Astaire performing his first song in The Bandwagon. He’s holding a cigarette. Tony smokes a lot, more so than I’d think would be healthy for a dancer who needs every ounce of wind. How much did Astaire smoke off-screen, or did he smoke at all? For all of reduced circumstance, Tony is not morose. The Bandwagon would be a downer if he were. The bittersweet coda was twenty more years coming, when MGM did That’s Entertainment and had Fred Astaire duplicate his stride past a now dilapidated mock train, presumably one used in The Bandwagon. A first and only glimpse of real-life New York is an establishing one, a marquee featuring Disney’s The Story of Robin Hood, billed with The Half-Breed, both mid-1952 RKO releases. From this actuality, we cut to Minnelli’s soundstage depiction of what “used to be the great theatre street of the town,” says Tony, “What’s happened to 42^nd Street?” He refers to “Noel Coward and Gertie” at the Selwyn, and his own success at the New Amsterdam, both venues having swapped legit for movies by 1953 when The Bandwagon came out.

Setting for The Bandwagon is contemporary, but beyond the establishing Robin Hood marquee, all other “movies” on Minnelli’s 42^nd Street are fictitious. There is "Tears For Tomorrow" plus "Jungle Tigress," along with others posted on backdrop standees ("Money Talks" looks at least twenty-five years old). The biggest screen noise in New York when The Bandwagon filmed was undoubtedly This Is Cinerama, which did historical business, but was not representative of most attractions that were not attracting, thanks to continued inroads made by television. 42^nd Street was in any case a haven for moviegoers in 1952, more “shooting galleries” than ten determined fans could cover in a day. Here was height for old and new, a brand new release as likely to be paired with what today would be called a 30’s classic (many of those still in circulation at the time). Who needed "Jungle Tigress" when King Kong was back in theatres for summer ’52 and stomping records?

Tony visits a Penny Arcade where there are kinetoscopes. I don’t know how many of these survive, but there were a fair number at arcades in Myrtle Beach when I was there in the late 60’s. One I remember showed the electrocution of an elephant. Wouldn’t these things have been collector items even then? I skipped school to go and see an old theatre man in a neighboring town during 1971. He had posters, trade mags piled high, but what I didn’t expect was the out building where he kept arcade games … not cheesy pinball, but gorgeous units that looked to date way before me, and I suspect him too. A lot of these had to be unique, or at the least rare and hotly sought-after by whoever gathers this sort of Americana. I’ve wondered since what became of that storehouse. No matter how, or when, you depict Broadway-42^nd Street, it will be paradise to someone. There are even those who wish it were seedy and dangerous again as in a 70’s Taxi Driver epoch. Each to his own taste. You Tube driving up Broadway in 1929, with sound, is a time I’d most like to have experienced. The New York street life Tony Hunter explores may have been Minnelli and 1953’s idea of civilization in decline, but to me it is Shangri-La, a Gotham we could all wish still thrived.