WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES OCTOBER 21, 2021 25
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
One of the billboards installed for
the picture was kept up for years aft er
the fi lming. It was a huge 1930s-style
advertisement for Planters Peanuts,
painted on the brickface side of 682
Seneca Ave. Graffi ti and other, more
modern ads eventually covered most
of the Planters painting in the 33 years
since fi lming occurred, but you can
still see remnants of it the next time
you pass through the Seneca Avenue
M train station from the Manhattanbound
side.
A distinct feature in the Planters ad,
along with the Mr. Peanut logo, is a man
dressed similar to a delivery courier or
a conductor of the time. Some observers
believed the man’s face was intentionally
drawn to resemble Ronald Reagan, who
was president at the time “Brighton
Beach Memoirs” was fi lmed — a clever
inside joke by the set designers.
We should also mention that interior
scenes for “Brighton Beach Memoirs”
were shot at Kaufman Astoria Studios
in Astoria. As the Ridgewood Times
noted, “an exact replica of the Brighton
Beach house was constructed on two
soundstages, one for each fl oor.”
“The studio replica was built slightly
larger than the original, adding overall
just four feet to the length and four feet
to the width of the house — to more easily
accommodate the fi lm crew without upending
the vital sense of family members
living on top of one another,” the Times
noted.
While the fi lming gave Ridgewood
plenty of buzz, the reception from the
public for “Brighton Beach Memoirs” at
the box offi ce was not so memorable. A
box offi ce bomb, “Brighton Beach Memoirs”
grossed just under $12 million at
theaters; it was made with a budget of
$18 million.
The famous fi lm critic, the late Roger
Ebert, wrote that the fi lm “feels so plotted,
so constructed, so written, that I
found myself thinking maybe they
shouldn’t have fi lmed the fi nal draft of
the screenplay.”
That’s a far cry from the reception for
the Broadway play from which the fi lm
was adapted. “Brighton Beach Memoirs”
debuted on Broadway on Dec. 10, 1982,
and was a hit, earning two Tony Awards
for best direction of a play and best performance
by a featured actor in a play
— Matthew Broderick, who played the
main character, Eugene Morris Jerome.
The role helped launch Broderick
into stardom, and while he would star in
many popular fi lms during the 1980s, he
would later return to Broadway to star
in another hit, “The Producers,” in 2001.
* * *
If you have any remembrances or old
photographs of “Our Neighborhood: The
Way It Was” that you would like to share
with our readers, please write to the Old
Timer, c/o Ridgewood Times, 38-15 Bell
Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361, or send an email
to editorial@ridgewoodtimes.com. Any
print photographs mailed to us will be
carefully returned to you upon request. The cover of the Nov. 28, 1985, Ridgewood Times supplement on the fi lming of “Brighton Beach Memoirs”
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