RKO Madison Theatre
54-30 Myrtle Avenue,
Ridgewood,
NY
11385
54-30 Myrtle Avenue,
Ridgewood,
NY
11385
21 people
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Yes, That photo was from an ERA fan trip. Since the tracks under the “El” are not electrified the subway cars were coupled to a diesel locomotive that towed the cars along McDonald Ave and via the now abandoned South Brooklyn Railroad as far as 2nd Ave and 39st in Sunset Park. Those are the “Museum” D type cars that were used in the Malcolm X film. Those 3 units (Each having 3 cars) are the only cars that exist from this type. All the others were scrapped in 1967.
YankeeMike, the ones we walked through were had those expandable diaphragms and the trucks were articulated. Here’s a neat “D” photo taken below the el on MacDonald Ave. in 1975:
http://www.subwaywebnews.com/Images2/bmtd-macd.jpg
BTW, the above site is worth exploring when you have some free time. :)
Great photos but all of them were AB’s. I rode both the ABs and D types back in the 1960s and they were amoung the best subway cars made. The Ds were actually 3 car units linked together. You could walk through the 3 cars without going outside. The Ds had great acceleration. 3 D units are still owned by the MTA but sadly out of over 900 AB’s made only one non-powered car (in the TA museum) still exists in NY. 2 working models are owned by a trolley museum in Conn.
The last link should be:
http://www.subwaywebnews.com/abnost207.jpg
The third one above (museum shot) really looks like the one Spike used for “X.”
Rode those BMT “D” Standards many times in the ‘50s to mid-'60s, YankeeMike. They were true workhorses, even as track cleaners in heavy blizzards (see link below). What I found amazing was the grime with which they dressed up the cars in Spike Lee’s “X” – Brown Beantown Soot! (Served up with Baked Boston Scrod – I’ve got a great joke about scrod, but only Warren would get it. LOL!)
View link
View link
http://www.subwaywebnews.com/images/museumab.jpg
View link
http://www.subwaywebnews.com/images/r27ab.jpg
http://www.subwaywebnews.com/images/abnost207.jpg
From original issue in ‘27, through years of daily transit commutes, hampered by rain and snow, later retired as museum pieces, used as movie props and most eventually succumbing to old age and the wreckers’ torch, the BMT “D” and “AB” Standards were truly something else. “FWs,” as my dear departed dad used to say…
Bway, how sad !
I was on the M train yesterday, and noticed there is just about NO remnant of this sign left ont he side of the building anymore. It’s bare bricks. You can slightly make out an even older painting (Madison is in a different text), but it is ever so slight. Unless you really really look, it says nothing on the side anymore.
The subway cars seen in the Malcolm X movie were known as BMT “D” Type cars. They ran in the BMT subway from 1927 until 1965.
“compared to the condition of the writing today after almost 80 years of being exposed to the elements.”
Not to mention graffiti vandalism. I know I’m repeating myself, but I think this bears repeating : as the years have gone by, the painted block letters have faded, while the graffiti below them has become bolder, sharper, even itself graffitied over.
It would be interesting to make a short film of this. It would be like the opening of the film, “Batteries Not Included”, in which you see how the old neighborhood the elderly people live in has deteriorated over the years.
You’re welcome, Bway, re : Used People.
Jalapeno Restaurant at 91 Wyckoff Avenue, Hart Lanes : For Hart Street, yes, that makes sense. Going towards Flushing Avenue :
DeKalb, Hart, Suydam ….
In ten years, with increasing Arab Muslim influx :
DeKalib, Harat, Saddam … ?
Mmmmm, it sounds like a Mexican Restaurant, and I LOVE mexican food!
Anyway, Jim, believe it or not, those el cars in that opening scene Malcolm X was a train from the NY Transit Museum, it’s an old BMT train. They painted them up (at movie company expense) to look like an old Boston Train. That short scene took a weeks worth of site preparation (and who knows how much planning), and a long weekend to film! It’s amazing how much time goes in to each minute of a movie….
PKoch, thanks! Yes, Used People, that’s the name of the movie I was thinking of!
Lost Memory, Hart Lanes -YES! Right by the Canarsie subway station at DeKalb. And Peter is correct about the Wyckoff location of Sal Boca’s luncheonette. (Today it’s Jalapeno Restaurant? LOL! Order extra Tapatio Sauce and Pepcid!) Thx to both of you.
LM, I’m still trying to narrow down the date of Bway’s photo above, posted on 7/23. This morning I reviewed the Sunday River video in which Frank Pfuhler, Jr.’s superb movies of the Myrtle El were featured. He photographed a set of the old wooden gate cars turning left (toward Seneca Ave.) at Wyckoff and Palmetto in January, 1958, and the HFC sign, looking very new and not weatherbeaten in the slightest, is up there on the shoemaker’s building. It does not appear on the same shoe-rebuilding store in Bway’s pic (dead center, far right, top of second story by window).
Earlier, I mentioned that many streetcar/trolley lines were abandoned in stages during 1951. (Utica Ave. line, where the Rugby Theater shows up clearly: 3-18-51; Ocean Ave. line: spring, 1951; Vanderbilt Ave. line: summer, ‘51). Catenary wires were removed immediately after abandonment, but trolley tracks were either torn up or paved over up to a full year or more later, and older streetlight poles replaced with more modern ones.
So, can we safely surmise that Bway’s pic can be dated between the summer of ‘52 (no visible tracks on Myrtle) and the summer of '57 (no HFC sign)?
Sal and Angie’s luncheonette in “The French Connection” was on the northeast side of Wyckoff Avenue between DeKalb and Flushing Avenues. Before Doyle and partner arrive there, you can see the B-38 DeKalb Avenue bus crossing Wyckoff Avenue behind them, heading northeast on DeKalb. They then spy on Sal and Angie Boca from the warehouse, or factory, across Wyckoff Avenue from them.
Bway, that film was “Used People”, 1992 or 93, with the footage of the elevated M train, as seen from roofs of six-family houses on Palmetto St. between Cypress and Seneca Avenues.
The guy at Nagengast’s had given me the exact preview location to the Spranos episode and explosion last March. It was fairly close to the el on Fresh Pond Rd., and the immediate area was to be sealed off to traffic by the 104 PCT. between 7:00 P.M. and 2:00 A.M. Call the shop for more info.
As for “The French Connection,” Sal & Angie’s luncheonette, with its name on the green and red Coca Cola sign above, was shot over on Onderdonk.
IMDB omitted one location: the corner of DeKalb & Wyckoff. A portion of the old bowling alley is at the left. I’d bowled there in several leagues from ‘62-'65, so for me it was instant deja vu.
As promised, I scanned the opening Boston scene of Spike Lee’s “X” last night. Man, oh man, between the strange-looking el cars and the suggestion of a street in Boston, they had me royally “Bamboozled!” But it was definitely “the magic of Hollywood,” as Bway wrote, at the intersection of Palmetto, Wyckoff and Myrtle!
“You ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?” – “Popeye” Doyle as the late NYPD Det. Eddie Egan to black suspect
“There was NO democracy in the cotton fields of Georgia!” – Malcolm X voiceover by Denzel Washington during credits
PErhaps the corner of Linden and Fresh Pond Rd? There are a few bars if not in that intersection, very close to it.
Haha! I forgot about the Jerky Boys! That was filmed by that bar on Fresh Pond Rd, I think it’s called the Everglades Bar. it’s an old “German Looking” bar.
I heard about the Sopranos episone in Ridgewood. I heard it was on Fresh Pond Rd…. But that could be another scene or episode.
I off hand, cant think of any remaining bars on Linden St. There’s a lot on Fresh Pond Rd. There are a few scattered corner bars all around Ridgewood, and not just the main roads, so there could be one on Linden. I don’t know of any from Forest to Fresh Pond, but there could be some going towards Woodward or Brooklyn.
Oh! I forgot one (and I am sure many more). There was a movie that PKoch told me to rent once, but I forgot the name of it. I did rent and see it, but for the life of me can’t remember the name, he will have to fill us in….but anyway, that movie was filmed in and on the roofs of the 6 family houses on Palmetto St right at the Seneca Ave station in Ridgewood also. Peter, what was the name of that movie again, I can’t remember, but it was a pretty good movie.
I am sure there are many more movies.
Yes, I do know what scene. In French Connection, there is a car chase scene in which a car is chasing the guy on the elevated train. Most of those train scenes on the elevated were on the New Utrecht Ave El in Boro Park, although a few are under the Myrtle line at Onderdonk between Woodbine and Palmetto, under the el. The scene (again through the magic of Hollywood) has the guy chasing under the New Utrect El, and then all of a sudden crashes into a bunch of garages under the el…..the crash scene under the el is iin Ridgewood instead, on Onderdonk Ave under the M Line el…. In the scene you can just make out the double steeples of St Alyoisious Church off in the distance.
There are some other movies that I don’t know the name of filmed in Ridgewood too. There was a movie with Henry Winkler in it filmed on Fresh Pond Rd (or it could have been a TV show). This was in the 80’s. There was also a movie I don’t know the name of filmed across from the Madison theater, in the little park they made out of Woodbine St next to the Diner.
“A Stranger Among Us” (I recommend that movie for any Ridgewood fan) in addition to being filmed mostly on Forest Ave by the el between about Woodbine to Cornelia also had one scene filmed in Bushwick at the Knickerbocker station in front of the 83rd Police precint.
A movie called “The Believers” from the 80’s I believe, was filmed in front and inside the RKO Bushwick Theater in the human sacrafice on the stage of the abandoned theater scene.
“COming to America” had a few scenes filmed near the Marcy Ave station on the el (a block or two away). I forgot what street exactly (Hombolt St maybe??), but that’s where Eddie Murphy’s character’s hovel of an apartment was really located (not Queens) as Hollywood would have us believe.
The nickname of the neighborhood, as told to me by a few Jewish colleagues at JHS 93 in the ‘60s, was “Der Bund.”
With current signs such as “Delski Polski” on Forest, I think the area has been reclaimed in part. WWII is finally over. (Now if only we could bring the boys back from Iraq, but NOT one per body bag!)
Stymie Beard, of The Little Rascals ? What about Farina and Buckwheat ?
Bway, glad you liked my entrance to hell comment. Yes, the years run together after awhile, just like “Star Trek” or Woody Allen films …
“I found it extremely ironic about turning some Forest Ave. storefronts ("A Stranger Among Us”) into Jewish businesses, considering the long-time ethnic make-up of Ridgewood."
Yes, but most of the Myrtle Avenue storeowners in Ridgewood were German Jews, when you and I grew up there. Messrs. Gelobter and Schacne were members of Congregation Agudas Israel, 1616 Cornelia Street, on my old block.
On the other hand, I have heard stories about signs in Ridgewood atore windows, “No dogs or Jews allowed”. I saw American Nazi Party members at Myrtle and Cypress in fall 1965 or spring 1966.
LM, the bright red & white HFC signs started appearing in the early part of the 1960s. They opened an office on the floor I worked in the Williamburgh Savings Bank Building (now the Condo Paradise of Magic Johnson), 1 Hanson Place, Brooklyn. Even dated a cute Swedish gal from Bay Ridge who worked for HFC in ‘65.
Am loving the stories about the various filmings! Have seen Malcolm X, but never suspected that some of it was shot where you said. Will scan it tonight. And even Hans Jr. (or Phil or Bob) from Nagengast’s Hardware related a few stories to me last March. I found it extremely ironic about turning some Forest Ave. storefronts (“A Stranger Among Us”) into Jewish businesses, considering the long-time ethnic make-up of Ridgewood.
Oh, and Peter, I think it was Stymie…:)
Peter, you are probably right. The dates blend together, I just know is twas sometime in the early 90’s (or more accurately, around 1989).
Hahaha, I love your “entrance to hell” comment!! Especially back then, that spot definitely was the perfect setting for that movie.
Great old picture, Bway. Thanks. Forever the Optimo Cigars sign !
I remember the “Brighton Beach Memoirs” filming at Seneca and Palmetto as being late November 1986. Yes, lots of fun !
RIDE THE OPEN AIR ELEVATED !
Planter’s Peanuts, always fresh in the little glassine bag !
“Eugene, I hear the train, go meet your father !”
“Ghost” was released in summer 1990, so I would guess filming took place in 1988 or 89.
“Willie, the villain in the movie, gets killed and taken by demons under the Myrtle-Broadway platforms on the street…and in the early 90’s the gloominess of that neighborhood was the perfect setting for that movie.”
It sure was. A friend joked with me about it at my bachelor party in Sept. 1991 : “So the entrance to hell is three el train stops from your house ?”
Thanks for mentioning the “Malcolm X” filming at Myrtle and Wyckoff, not far from where the real Malcolm X lived and did his thing. Or was it Stokely Carmichael or H. Rap Brown ?
Yes, I watched the filming of Brighton Beach Memoirs in 1985 at the Seneca Avenue station on the el. They had the whole neighborhood along Seneca Ave and Palmetto turned into 1939 Brighton Beach. It was so cool.
In 1992, or 1993, they filmed “A Stranger Among Us” at the Forest Ave station at Forest and Putnam. Melanie Grifith plays a cop that goes undercover in the Hasidic Community of Williamsburg, so they turned Forest Ave into Hasidic Williamsburg….another sight to see through the magic of Hollywood.
In 1992, Ghost was filmed at the Myrtle-Broadway station, both under the el on top of the station platforms. There’s a scene when Patrick Swayze is on a J train pulling into the station (with the old Loew’s Broadway Theater still standing there). Willie, the villian in the movie, gets killed and taken by demons under the Myrtle-Broadway platforms on the street…and in the early 90’s the gloominess of that neighborhood was the perfect setting for that movie.
SOme trivia…. If you watch the beginning of the movie Malcolm X, which was filmed at the intersection of Myrtle and Wyckoff in the early 90’s, Spike Lee and Denzel Washington were both there. I watched a lot of the filming. Through the magic of Hollywood, this intersection was converted to Dudley St in Boston in the 1930’s or 40’s, complete with old trains on the el.
Anyway, the barber shop scene was filmed inside that shoe store building, which was made to look like a 1930’s barber shop. There are also some scenes outside…..so rent Malcolm X, and it’s the opening scene.
Great find, Bway! I’d date the photo as late ‘50s: the R.K.O. Madison ad on the side of the theater is a bit faded in comparison to the color shots c. 1957 taken by Frank Pfuhler, Jr.
Many trolley lines were abandoned in Brooklyn and Queens in the early 1950s. Track was either torn up or paved over. My guess is that these are electrical wires used in conjunction with the Myrtle El itself or for the el’s switch tower.
Lost Memory, that shoemaker’s shop on the Myrtle-Wyckoff corner showed up quite brightly and clearly in the DVD I referenced recently over on the Ridgewood page. Time frame fits, too.