The Queen of WB in NYC, 1963
March 1963. Natalie Wood arrives in New York City to begin rehearsals for her next film, “Love with the Proper Stranger,” and to shoot exteriors on location in the City. She is the hottest property in Hollywood, the most valuable commodity in the business of motion pictures. And she is in demand — everyone wants her for their next film project. She is working under a long-term, multi-picture contract with Warner Brothers and she is the undisputed queen of the WB lot. But this is an era in which the film studios of Hollywood’s golden era and their signature product, the theatrical “feature film,” are more than ten years into a losing war with television for the entertainment dollars of American audiences. This meant one thing for certain: the film studios’ money centers in New York would require that the Risk/Reward ratio of their business model be calculated with “R” (for Risk) = 0.
Despite the phenomenal success critically and financially of her two recent films — one an adaptation of a huge Broadway hit musical (“West Side Story”) and the other (“Splendor in the Grass”) directed by Oscar-winning, film and theater legend Elia Kazan, for which she earned a Best Actress Oscar Nomination, their next film assignment for Natalie Wood was a conservative, safe bet. A “can’t miss” project: a film adaptation of yet another hit Broadway musical, “Gypsy.” It didn’t “miss,” either. “Gypsy” proved very successful at the box office and was generally well-received by the media. However, as a mile-marker in her quest to grow into greatness as an actor, it did little but mark time.
But “Gypsy” was her third straight mega-hit movie. Natalie Wood now had considerable leverage in the choice of her next project. But she wasn’t going to sit back and wait for Warner Brothers to dangle their idea for her next film. Her contract with the WB allowed her an option to make one film per year outside of their domain. After making three safe, mainstream films for them the time seemed right to opt for something out of the ordinary, something audacious. And in 1962, the audacious, forward-thinking element of Hollywood was buzzing over the “French New Wave” and the outlandishly eccentric (by American standards) films Federico Fellini made in the Cinecitta studios of Italy. Films that were challenging and intellectually stimulating, yet gritty, urban, real and relevant in a world with the ever-present threat of nuclear apocalypse (Fall, 1962: “Bay of Pigs”).
It would have to be a small film — the antithesis of what Hollywood had been churning out year after year after television took “small” away from Hollywood theatrical films. Not necessarily a small-budget, or independent production. Being under contract for a specified period with a minimum number of films required within that time frame (and having as your representative a talent agency with close business ties to your employer, the film studio) made it difficult if not impossible for a performer to work within or set up their own production company. Not that Natalie Wood hadn’t tried. She had; and the result was that her agent received the “you’ll never work in this town again” threat from his employer, the talent agency. But that wasn’t an insurmountable problem.
Through her representatives and her friends and acquaintances in the business, she had been deluged with scripts and scenarios. Projects in the early stages of planning, some partially cast, and others with European directors seeking rising American stars to attract financing for their next films. Tony Richardson, Robert Rossen and Rene Clement were among them. In addition were projects from veteran filmmakers: Alfred Hitchcock (for “Marnie”), George Stevens (“Greatest Story Ever Told”), Otto Preminger (“Bunny Lake is Missing”) and yet another musical, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” for MGM (to be directed by one of the few remaining holdovers from MGM’s era of great screen musicals, Charles Walters).
In the end, she decided upon a “small” film, about a character with whom she felt instant empathy — a young woman smothered by family, who wants desperately to be independent yet fears life alone and unloved, and in trying to find love out of loneliness instead finds life-altering complications and near-tragedy. Already cast opposite her is Steve McQueen (only a couple of steps behind her on the Hottest in Hollywood scale). The film is to be directed by Robert Mulligan, fresh from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a huge critical and box-office success of 1962, for which he received a Best Director Nomination by the Academy (whose Awards ceremony was only weeks away in April). The original script is by Arnold Schulman, who told Natalie Wood biographer Gavin Lambert that director Mulligan and producer Alan J. Pakula became involved, and Paramount studios agreed to finance the project, only after Ms. Wood agreed to participate. Schulman, according to Wood biographer Suzanne Finstad, tailored his script after meeting with her, using “aspects of her in Angie,” which Ms. Wood described as being “the healthier parts” of herself, and Angie as her “least neurotic role.”
Finstad also relates that, years later, at an American Film Institute Seminar, Natalie Wood remembered “Love with the Proper Stranger” as “the most rewarding experience I had in films, all the way around . . . my personal life was quite meager then, and the picture was ‘it.’ We were like a family.” What follows are my descriptions and still frames from key scenes of “Love with the Proper Stranger.” I’ll reserve my remarks on the film as a whole until the end of the illustrations . . .
A capsule personality portrait of Rocky Pappasano (Steve McQueen, in “Jean-Paul Belmondo mode”), an irresponsible, womanizing musician looking for work at the musicians’ union hiring hall. Rocky takes full advantage of women — all of whom seem unable to resist his charms. He encounters an old acquaintance, Marge (played by adorable character actress Arlene Golonka, uncredited here, but a familiar face in film and television in the 1960’s and 70’s), who allows him to use her back literally, to jot down info on a gig, and a quick peck on the cheek as thanks.
[The opening sequence of Love with the Proper Stranger, including the credits, the interior scene in the musicians’ union hiring hall and the exterior street scene with Rocky and Angie, was shot on the Upper West Side at a former Masonic temple on West 73rd Street near Broadway. For more information about this fantastic structure and recent photos of the location, see the Addenda at the end of this essay.]
Rocky is sought by Angie Rossini, a single girl whose drunken one night stand with Rocky has resulted in pregnancy. She quickly realizes that it was a mistake to even see Rocky again much less expect him to take any responsibility for her situation. But later, Rocky at “home” is busy creating more problems for himself . . .
Rocky lives with his current girlfriend, Barb, a stripper (“Barbara of Seville,” a female matador routine, we suppose, played by the delectable, underrated and underutilized Edie Adams). Barb: “You know me in the cold weather. I love to be in love.” Rocky: “Yeah. You with yourself, me with myself.”
“Hey, Barb? A friend of mine asked me if I’d ask you if you knew the name of maybe a kind of a doctor or something . . . he’s got himself in a little trouble with a girl . . . hey, Barb?”
“You . . . want . . . ME . . . to find . . . YOU . . .
. . . a DOCTOR?!!” “Now wait a minute, I didn’t . . . ”
After Rocky regains consciousness, he finds himself out of her bed and on the outside of her West 4th Street, Greenwich Village apartment with not much more than the clothes on his back. Positively 4th Street indeed. [For pictures of this intersection nearly a half century later, see the end of this essay.]
A slice of Angie’s life — as she leaves work as sales clerk in the sporting goods department at Macy’s, her three overly protective brothers pull up to give her a lift in their produce truck, much to her embarrassment.
Angie has a blow-out with her family (who are unaware of her “situation”) . . .
and the fight results in her half-hearted (and probably not her first) attempt to leave (“Don’t love me so much, I can’t breathe!”) the apartment she shares with her widowed mother and her three brothers, the eldest (Herschel Bernardi) of whom acts as surrogate father. But later (Below), she quietly returns home.
The next day, to Angie’s surprise — to her shock — Rocky shows up at Macy’s with a proposition . . .
. . . He will help her find “a doctor.” (The word “abortion” or “abortionist” is never used in the film — this is 1963, and it is still Hollywood filmmaking under the Production Code. Two years later the word would be acceptable, though still controversial, in a mainstream American film.)
“Look, all I came to tell you was, I made you an appointment Sunday afternoon and I got you a doctor, OK? I’ll write down the address and, if you want, it’s $400 . . .” (Rocky pauses, apparently waiting to see if she can pay for it, when he sees her hesitation, he knows she can’t.) “How much can you raise?” “Maybe two — at the most.” “Alright, you raise half . . . and I’ll try to raise half, OK? I don’t know anything about this guy, so I’ll meet you there at 3 o’clock, Sunday afternoon. You got a piece of paper?”
Wordlessly, Angie agrees. Below, her protective eldest brother watches, unseen.
Rocky meets Angie at a nearly deserted section of a Downtown produce district (it appears to be part of the old Washington Marketplace area that would disappear prior to the construction nearby of the World Trade Center complex beginning several years later).
[NOTE (September 2018): This sequence of Rocky and Angie waiting for the abortionist’s “fixer,” was shot at the former Washington Market on the west side of lower Manhattan in an area of Washington Street that, along with these structures, was demolished in the mid-Sixties. For more information about this location, and a comparison of historic photos of the site with still frames from the film, see the Addenda at the end of this essay.]
Waiting for the man. In what seems to modern eyes a depiction of the anticipation of a drug deal, Rocky and Angie await the arrival of an abortionist — or in this case, the go-between for the abortionist.
A false alert as a mysterious vehicle pulls up toward them, then drives past without stopping . . .
. . . but the mystery car returns. He pulls up short, then gets out and opens his hood in an apparent signal to his would-be customers.
Rocky cautiously approaches with the $400, but is told that it is not enough: the man needs an extra $50 “for me.” He gives Rocky an address and instructs him to be there with the rest of the money in an hour, and “If you’re five minutes late don’t bother coming.”
“I got $13 . . . how much you got?” “… about $11 . . . some change.”
“We got about 45 minutes, you got any ideas?” (Silently, Angie shakes her head.)
“Come on.” “Where?” (Rocky now has a plan:) “To get the money.”
From the lower west side of Downtown near the Hudson, across town and up forty-five blocks to mid-town and an asphalt park next to FDR Drive, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and the East River, Rocky and Angie alight a crosstown bus to meet . . .
. . . Rocky’s mother . . .
. . . and father . . .
. . . and a little money . . .
. . . and a little more . . . and then a little homemade ‘vino’ . . .
Then Angie sees that her brothers have followed her . . . they’ve stopped their truck in the middle of the highway pretending to be broken down . . .
A quick ‘goodbye’ and Rocky and Angie are on the run . . .
. . . in the shadow of the United Nations Building, past a churchyard . . . [Note: the churchyard in this shot (at right) is that of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery located at 131 East 10th St., about thirty blocks from the asphalt park off FDR Drive where the “chase” with Angie’s brothers in hot pursuit began. No wonder Rocky is out of breath when they reach sanctuary — and he blames it on cigarettes!] (Credit to Marie Fotini for identifying the St. Mark’s location).
. . . over rooftops, and down into the cellar of a building occupied by the upholstery business of Rocky’s father, where he finds the key . . . [Note: the rooftops over which Rocky and Angie scramble to eventual safety are overlooking the Con-Edison Building on East Fourteenth St., apparently another leg of this Manhattan “marathon” for the star-crossed couple!] (Credit to Marie Fotini for identifying the Con-Ed, E 14th St. location.)
A brief respite, a few musings, a little more vino . . . and back to find . .
. . . the Man.
who pimps for the back-alley abortionist, an elderly “midwife” with a suitcase containing the tools of her trade . . a blanket, towels . . . and . . . a large FLASHLIGHT . . . “Come on, hurry-up, get undressed . . . ”
As the tension builds, so do Rocky’s suspicions about the “doctor.”
He bursts into the room and sees the abortionist with her “surgical equipment” laid out on the filthy floor . . .
. . . and Angie half-naked, quivering by the window . . .
“You a DOCTOR? . . . YOU SAID A DOCTOR !” (the woman:) “Take it or leave it . . .”
“C’mon — get your clothes on, were gonna get outta here . . . c’mon get your clothes on . . . come on . . I’m gonna get you outta here . . . come on! I want ya to get outta here! Get your clothes on! (Rocky literally tries to slap some sense into her) . . .”
. . . at which point she sees the abortionist’s equipment laid out on the floor (being hurriedly scooped back up by the spooked abortionist and the Man), and she really begins to get hysterical. It’s all Rocky can do now to hold on to her and hold her together.
The scene of terror slowly dissolves into a relatively placid cab ride through Times Square, 1963 . . .
. . . with neon signs advertising “WARNER . . . CINERAMA” . . . curious for a Paramount picture. [Directly above their taxicab, we see the sign for the old ASTOR Hotel (then owned by Sheraton but demolished a few years later), the coolest building ever to occupy the Square, and recall Bob Dylan’s description of his first night in New York City, in January two years earlier, in a room with its window overlooking Times Square and surrounded by the neon “O” of the “ASTOR” sign. He took it as a good omen . . . and it surely was.]
And now, Rocky, being somewhat “homeless” at this point, takes Angie to the West Village apartment of his understanding girlfriend, Barbara of Seville, so that Angie may recover from her ordeal and Rocky may begin his.
I’ve limited this post to what I consider the core of the film, “Love with the Proper Stranger.” At this point, for me the film descends into 60s sitcom — above average sitcom to be sure — but still sitcom. No spoilers necessary for this one. Watch the film, and you may feel differently, but for me the abrupt change in tone and feel is like watching two different films or having someone changing the channel abruptly in the middle of a good drama. But it still has Natalie Wood . . . and Steve McQueen . . . at their absolute physical, if not professional, peaks. No other film can boast that combination.
“Love with the Proper Stranger” premiered in New York on Christmas Day, 1963. Later that winter, Natalie Wood was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance as Angie. Also nominated for Oscars for their work on the film were Arnold Schulman, Best Screenplay (Written Directly for the Screen); Milton Krasner, Best Cinematography (Black and White); Edith Head, Best Costume Design (Black and White), and the film’s team of Art Directors for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration (Black and White).
For Further Reading:
Finstad, Suzanne, “Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood” Harmony Books, 2001.
Lambert, Gavin, “Natalie Wood: a Life” Knopf, 2004.
Finstad’s book, the first published of the two, was the first major biography of Natalie Wood, and is the more detailed of the two in terms of family background, childhood and early career, and most notably, on her death and the circumstances surrounding it. Lambert was a personal friend of Ms. Wood from the time of Inside Daisy Clover (1965, he authored the book on which the film was based) to her death. He also had access to her personal correspondence and “day book” in which she jotted down notes on film activities and those film projects in which she had an interest. Neither book contains interviews with Robert Wagner and the Wagner family after her death in 1981, although Wagner published an autobiography in 2006 which I have not read, nor have I read memoirs of her sister Lana, published several years before either of the above two biographies. With respect to the Finstad and Lambert bios, I can’t honestly recommend one over the other. I can only say that together they would make a great biography. If you have more than a casual interest in the subject, you will want to read both.
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Addenda:
Upper West Side, West 73rd Street near Broadway
The opening credits and the initial sequence of Love with the Proper Stranger were filmed on the Upper West Side at 253 West 73rd Street, in and around a structure originally built in the late 1920s by Freemasons as The Level Club, an apartment-hotel/masonic lodge, with appropriately fantastic, “solomonic” architectural detail. (See the fascinating article in scoutingny.com for a history and many photos of this structure.)
Although it may seem an odd choice to serve in the film as a hiring hall for the local musicians’ union, the cavernous interior ballroom provided more than adequate space for a film crew, actors and numerous extras. Unfortunately, the ballroom did not survive the many alterations/renovations that the building underwent from the 1930s to 1990s. (It is now an upscale condominium, returned to its original name, if not exactly its original function, The Level Club.) However, we do have photos to document the original and current appearance of the structure at 253 W 73rd Street and of buildings in the immediate vicinity, so that we may compare those to what we are shown in the film.
Above and Below: At left, historic photos (text and photos via scoutingny.com) of the proscenium in the original auditorium of 253 W 73rd St., built in 1927 by the Freemasons; at right, the auditorium with proscenium as it appears in Love with the Proper Stranger, with matching details identified in red (via Marie Fotini). The auditorium was dismantled during the conversion of the interior for condominiums.
Exterior of 253 West 73rd Street
Above: Steve McQueen preps for the exterior shots at the “musicians’ union hiring hall” as a crew member lays down his marks. The actual location is 253 West 73rd St., site of a former masonic temple that, at the time of filming Love with the Proper Stranger in early 1963, was home to Al Roon’s Health Club, complete with “banquet facilities” and a large auditorium to serve as the hiring hall in the film.
Below: West 73rd St. in 2018, looking west from the exterior of number 253, with a comparison of details on the exterior of the apartment building on the south side of the street to those in the photo (inset) from 1963.
Above: The exterior of number 253 looking west on W. 73rd St., in 2018, now The Level Club condominiums. Inset: A still frame from the film — Rocky and Angie quarrel outside the musicians’union hiring hall — with coinciding architectural details highlighted in red.
Below: W. 73rd St., looking east toward Broadway from number 253; Inset: a still frame from the film — Angie runs away from Rocky, across the street from the hiring hall — with matching details on adjacent and nearby buildings on 73rd St.
Many thanks to Marie Fotini for alerting me to the true location of this sequence in Love with the Proper Stranger, and for providing the forensic work as shown in the photos (and photos via scoutingny, where noted).
Lower Manhattan, Lower West Side, area of the former Washington Market
Above: At left, 304 Washington Street, in a period photo (circa 1963-66). At right, in a still from the film, Rocky walks back toward Angie after his failed meeting with the abortionist’s “fixer.”
Below: At left, 301-303 Washington Street, opposite 304, in a period photo. At right, a still frame from the film; with corresponding architectural details noted in red.
(Once again, many thanks to Marie Fotini for her research and for providing the photos and architectural comparisons that enabled us to pinpoint the location of this key sequence of Love with the Proper Stranger.)
Washington Market was the name given to an area on the west side of lower Manhattan containing wholesale and retail food markets beginning in the second decade of the nineteenth century. These markets were located in succession in several areas, centered around what was then a contiguous, uninterrupted Washington Street ranging north from Vesey Street to North Moore Street. Washington Market survived fires, was rebuilt, renovated and re-purposed from the late nineteenth century until the abandonment and demolition of the remaining warehouse structures, beginning in the late 1950s into the early 1960s, followed shortly by.the demolition of entire blocks below Vesey Street to make way for the construction of the first World Trade Center complex.
In 2018, the only building recognizable to me in this sequence of the film is a brief shot of the north facade of the gargantuan 1927 Verizon Building, a survivor (though not unscathed) of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The monumental structure looms over the low warehouse buildings and narrow cobblestone streets, dwarfing in scale, but not in emotional impact, the story of the troubled couple of Love with the Proper Stranger.
Greenwich Village, West 4th and West 11th Streets
Also fascinating, if not as poignant as the ghostly Washington Market site, are recent images of the Greenwich Village neighborhood where Rocky’s stripper girlfriend lived in the the film, contrasted with still frames from the film. This area of the West Village, around the intersection of West 4th Street and West 11th Street has lost whatever grittiness it may have had in 1963, and gained quite a few tree-lined sidewalks as well. Today, the greenery almost obscures the corner townhouse, and the cigar shop on the opposite corner of 4th St is now a cafe. (Recent photos from GoogleMaps Streetview.)
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11 East 14th Street 