When in New York, go to Holly Golightly’s brownstone, King Kong’s Empire State Building, and 60 other film locations on Turner Classic Movies’ TCM Classic Film Tour.
Watch film clips of the featured attractions during the three-hour, $41 adventure operated on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, by On Location Tours.
On the bus tour, with several stops:
- Shop at Zabar’s gourmet market showcased in “Manhattan” and “You’ve Got Mail”. Don’t confuse Zabar’s, on the Upper West Side, with the Lower East Side’s Katz’s Delicatessen, scene of the famed faux orgasm in “When Harry Met Sally…”
- Although you can’t eat breakfast at Tiffany’s, you can see Holly Golightly’s brownstone on the Upper East Side, setting of the film based on Truman Capote’s novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. FYI, TCM says “Truman Capote was very vocal about his disdain for the film, and especially the casting of Audrey Hepburn as Holly, a role that he hoped would go to his friend, Marilyn Monroe.”
- Star in your own video as Monroe, on the subway grate where her white skirt flew up in “The Seven Year Itch”. Women will want to wear, no doubt, a skirt that can fly high above that spot at Lexington Avenue and 52nd Street.
- See the Empire State Building, “the closest thing to heaven in this city,” as Deborah Kerr tells Cary Grant, when setting their reunion in “An Affair to Remember”, remade as “Sleepless in Seattle” with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. The building is most famous for the many versions of “King Kong”. In the original (1933), an alternate shot of the big ape “falling off the Empire State building was filmed but discarded due to less than perfect special effects,” notes TCM.
- Go on location to Grand Central Terminal, that celebrated its centennial last year. GCT was seen in “North by Northwest”, “Superman”, and perhaps the only reekeroo that either Meryl Streep or Robert De Niro ever made, “Falling in Love”. But don’t expect to see the phone booths where Meryl and Robert happened to meet, or where Cary called home. And no, Superman did not change in a GCT phone booth. Lex Luthor’s lair was there, supposedly, but was actually at England’s Pinewood Studios.
- See The Dakota majestic apartment building, featured in “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Rosemary’s Baby” — selected for the 2014 National Film Registry. Rosemary lived in the Gothic apartment building on Central Park West and 72nd Street. In a true horror at The Dakota, resident John Lennon was fatally shot at the entrance in December 1980. His memorial, Strawberry Fields, is just across the street in Central Park. (Other legends who had lived at The Dakota include Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Leonard Bernstein, and Boris Karloff.)
- Match Central Park locales to movie clips from “Ghostbusters”, and all the way back to shorts by Thomas Edison, whose inventions started it all.
As Woody Allen says in his film “Manhattan” — “New York is really a great city. I don’t care what anyone says.”
And what a really great way to see it.
For more info and tickets: TCM Classic Film Tour, by On Location Tours. Buy online or by phone, 888-210-8012. And beginning Jan. 31-March 3 Saturdays and Sundays, try the new “Romantic Movie Moments Tour”, also by On Location Tours. Happy Valentine’s Day to all.
