24 OCTOBER 21, 2021 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Ridgewood’s starring role in a 1980s coming-of-age film
BY THE OLD TIMER
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
EDITORIAL@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
These days, it’s not uncommon to
see a fi lm shoot on the streets of
Queens, and in particular, Greater
Ridgewood. Many great directors
and television producers have come
to the neighborhood to shoot scenes on
location, from present-day dramas to
period pieces.
We imagine that many directors fi nd
Ridgewood attractive because of its oldfashioned
housing stock, which makes
the area suitable setting depicting urban
life from the 20th century and beyond.
As a result, Ridgewood has served as a
fi lming location for productions from
“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”
in modern-day America; to Martin
Scorsese’s latest fi lm about the alleged
assassin of Jimmy Hoff a, set in the 1970s;
to “Boardwalk Empire,” the HBO drama
set in the Roaring Twenties; and more.
But long before the entertainment
boom that hit New York City this century,
Ridgewood had a starring role in the 1985
fi lm “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” standing
in for the titled Brooklyn neighborhood
in a period piece set in the 1930s.
The movie was adapted from a semiautobiographical
play written by the
famous playwright, Neil Simon, who
created many classic plays including
“The Odd Couple,” “Lost in Yonkers” and
“The Sunshine Boys.” The fi lm starred
Jonathan Silverman as Eugene Morris
Jerome, a 15-year-old teenager growing
up in Depression-era Brighton Beach experiencing
the typical angst and confl ict
that any youngster at that age would face.
The cast also included Blythe Danner,
Bob Dishy, Brian Drillinger, Stacey Glick,
Judith Ivey and Lisa Waltz.
But Ridgewood was front and center
in the movie. Many scenes were shot
primarily along Seneca Avenue, in
the shadow of the elevated M line near
Palmetto Street; the Ridgewood Times,
as it happened, had their offi ce located
on the same block at the time.
The producers went to great lengths
to transform the Seneca Avenue
streetscape into a main shopping strip
that could have been seen in Brighton
Beach during the 1930s. In a special
section about the fi lm, published in the
Nov. 28, 1985, Ridgewood Times, the
paper went into great detail to explain
the eff ort both in Ridgewood and in
the actual Brighton Beach, where other
scenes were fi lmed:
Ridgewood Times archives
The Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn
where the action takes place features a very
specifi c architectural style: Residential
streets consist mainly of uniform single
family, two-story wood frame stucco and
brick houses, while rows of small storefronts
were the order of the day on business
streets.
In the Brighton 4th Street area, almost
all the homes had been modernized with
new siding, storm fences and brightly
colored paints. Therefore, house colors
from the 30s — beige, grey, green — were
used in repainting the facades. Aluminum
storm windows were covered to look like
wood-frame windows and period gates
and fences were brought in.
In addition, wooden telephone poles
were substituted for metal ones while high
crime street lighting gave way to incandescent
lamps…
The neighborhood business street and
elevated station that appear in the fi lm
were found at Seneca Avenue in Ridgewood.
About half of the storefronts on the
street still looked like they did 50 years ago,
including some with leaded glass windows
and ceramic tile walls and fl oors. The other
shops’ appearances were altered to refl ect
the period.
Additional alterations included a fresh
coat of paint for the graffi ti-covered subway
station, the installation of billboards from
the era and the fi tting of old-fashioned
wood panels on the token booth.
A classic 1930s vehicle on the set of “Brighton Beach Memoirs” in
Ridgewood. Ridgewood Times archives
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