Saturday, November 7, 2009

BUTTERFIELD 8, NEW YORK IN 1960

in BUTTERFIELD8 Eddie Fisher lives on Horatio St in what was still thought of as the bohemian part of NY, Greenwich Village. It's a very small studio. But he's a composer so he's managed an upright piano in somehow. He's also Elizabeth Taylor's best friend. She plays a call girl who just got up that morning to find Laurence Harvey left her money in an envelope with a note "Gloria - $250. Enough?" She's so pissed she grabs a lush mink coat out of his wife's closet and throws it over her silk slip. She comes out the 5th Ave building facing Central Park, hails a cab, and makes for Horatio St. All the exteriors are real location shots.

It's 1959 and Eddie Fisher pays less than $100 for that studio. I know because in 1965 I checked out a much nicer 1 brm apt on Christopher and Sheridan Square for $150. I spent a couple of days debating wether to take it or take a small studio with a large deck overlooking the Manhattan skyline in Brooklyn Heights for $100. I took the latter, finally, because that's the view everybody seemed to have in the American movies I grew up watching in Cuba. And now it would be mine.

Decadence and all, watching BUTTERFIELD 8 made me miss those innocent days when New York was affordable, even if you just got out of school and were only making $75 a week. It also made miss the days when, like Gloria, I would often wake up in strange men's apartments to find they had already left for work and I would have a cigarette and walk around naked, exploring The Other's foreign turf. Sigh. I don't think I'll have that experience again. And I know New York will never be affordable again. Nobody ever left any money behind, let alone $250. But I get a sweet pang when I think of that time and how easy everything seemed.

3 comments:

  1. What a great post. Makes me wistful for a time I didn't get to experience...for the affordable rent alone. And nobody would even think of leaving a near stranger in their apartment these days...as they'd most likely steal something. It was indeed a more innocent time.

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  2. Oh, and Carrie Fisher makes a great comment about Eddie consoling Elizabeth "with his penis" after her husband's death in her new book/show.

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  3. It seem sthat way too with Tiffany's. NYC was portrayed as very organized and accessable, if you will.

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