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Throwback Thursday: The Roosevelt Island Tramway in the early 1980’s!

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I found a couple of videos online the depict The Roosevelt Island Tramway around 1980.  (The picture below of the tram arriving in Manhattan dates from 2006, as I couldn’t find any vintage public domain photos.)

The first video I am linking to here was posted by Richard Cortell; he completed it as a long ago student project for The New York Institute of Technology.  Parts of the video are quite dark, but it’s still a terrific glimpse in New York City’s past.

The second video is also Cortell’s; this one is dated 1980.  It focuses more on life on Roosevelt Island — the tram is seen only at the beginning and end.

I’ve never been on the tram — or to Roosevelt Island.  But just seeing it brings back memories of my early childhood.  My Dad used to occasionally take me on trips to New York City, and I remember seeing it depart from 60th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.  I was pretty damned awed by it.

But I didn’t ask to ride on it.  My Dad took me to all sorts of places in NYC that were fun for a kid, but the sight of that hanging tram car made me pretty apprehensive.  Hell, I’m not sure I’d want to ride it as an adult.  (There was a malfunction in 2006 that left 80 people trapped up there for around 90 minutes.)

I didn’t know it at the time, but the tram would have actually been relatively new at the time that I saw it (and at about the same time Cortell filmed his videos).  It opened in July of 1976.

Postscript — there is actually a shot of the tram in that old “Million Dollar Movie” intro that everyone loves.  It’s right at the start, five seconds in.

Roosevelt_Island_Tramway_foggy

Photo credit: Kris Arnold from New York, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

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Throwback Thursday: WOR-TV Channel 9’s “Million Dollar Movie” intro!

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This will probably be a pretty obscure Throwback Thursday post, but the segment below should be recognized by people who grew up in the New York metropolitan area in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.  It’s none other than the intro for WOR-TV Channel 9’s “Million Dollar Movie.”  (That music you hear is a particularly brassy rendition of Max Steiner’s “Tara’s Theme” from 1939’s “Gone With the Wind.”)

If you were in the New York area at that time, it ought to bring back memories of the old days of broadcast television.  (It’s actually surprising how much nostalgia people online report at seeing this 44-second clip.  And it’s amazing what you can find on the Internet.)  A few commenters note sardonically that the clip makes Manhattan look like a nighttime paradise — while The Big Apple in the 1970’s was not always an easy place to be.  (The city if far cleaner and safer today.)

Some of the comments I read were befuddling.  There is one blogger who wrote that he remembers this intro from as far back as the 1950’s.  (Had they really used it for more than two decades?)  And a populous minority of commenters remember being unsettled by the clip.  (They describe it as ominous, and the music as creepy, which mystifies the rest of us who remember “Million Dollar Movie.”)

This intro had an indelible effect on me.  While it recalls monster movies like “King Kong” (1939) and “Godzilla” (1954) for a lot of others, it will always remind me of my father watching war films and cowboy movies on his days off — along with the occasional Charles Bronson flick.   “The Great Escape” (1963), “A Bridge Too Far” (1977) and “Shane” (1953) all spring to mind.

When I was in the first or second grade, I habitually enhanced my Dad’s enjoyment of the “Million Dollar Movie” by peppering him endlessly with questions about whatever was playing — even if I had only wandered into the room for a few minutes.  “Why did they call it ‘a bridge too far?'” “Why did they fight World War II?” “The British and French were good guys in the war, right?” “Why did the cowboy drop his gun on purpose?”  “Why did the guy fake his death?”  (Bear in mind, folks, this was broadcast television — long before the days of Netflix and DVD’s.)

If any kid did that to me when I was watching my favorite movies, I’d go nuts — even if I had a pause button.  My father was a saint.