He and Cross wrote more than 200 songs together but
only 30 were ever published, and “I Left My Heart in San
Francisco” was their only commercial success. They left
Brooklyn for California, never to return, in 1956, just a
few years after the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway opened right outside 10
Montague Terrace’s back windows.
The building was at that time owned by the brother of
Democratic party councilman George Swetnick, who
maintained an apartment there. According to Joseph
Wolfson, a tenant of more than 50 years, Swetnick had
a plan to knock down both 10 Montague and the house
next door at No. 8 to construct an apartment house.
Refusal on the part of his neighbors to sell put paid to that
idea, and the house subsequently passed into the hands of
a man whom George Cory might have kicked himself a
few times for not sticking around to meet, the celebrated
arranger Milt Okun, whose work included collaborations
with Peter, Paul & Mary, John Denver, Placido Domingo,
and Jim Henson’s Muppets. Both Okun and his parents
lived at 10 Montague, where, said Wolfson, Okun was a
benevolent landlord.
Certainly the same could not be said of the fictional
owners of 10 Montague Terrace in “The Sentinel.” (Oddly
enough, in the movie, the building is identified by its
actual address.) The film implies the building is owned by
the Catholic Diocese and represented by the obsequious
Miss Logan (Ava Gardner), who immediately lowers the
rent on a suite of fantastic high-ceilinged rooms when
Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) balks at the $500 monthly
price tag. Alison is seeking a refuge from her Manhattan
life with her possessive boyfriend (Chris Sarandon).
But nothing is what it seems: Strange sounds and grisly
dreams trouble her nights. Could the sightless priest on
the top floor be holding back some terrible secret —
perhaps even the forces of capital-D Darkness?
Well, duh. Alison finds herself besieged by ghosts and
pestered by annoying neighbors, who then turn out to
be more ghosts. Warhol fixture Sylvia Miles makes an
appearance as a phantom ballerina while a party-hat-
wearing cat pops up to devour Satan’s canary. Brains are
munched, cymbals clashed, and the gateway to hell yawns
open, pouring forth shambling ghouls. In a touch that
many found offensive, Wolfson among them, some of
these were played by people with chronic deformities; in
his biography British director Michael Winner claimed he
was giving them the spotlight while also pointing out that
he saved a bundle on makeup effects.
But for all its wrought-iron hokum and politically
incorrect ickiness, the film is an unexpected trove of
A portrait said to be
of Colonel William
Cary Sanger by an
unknown artist hangs
in the hallway of 10
Montague Terrace.
44