New York, New York (1977) on Netflix
On V-J Day in 1945, saxophonist Jimmy Doyle pesters singer Francine Evans for her phone number at a New York nightclub. She turns him down.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.6/1024,099 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes57%
Trailer
Plot summary
The end of the war brings a celebration to a New York nightclub, where the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra plays and Jimmy Doyle, a saxophone player, tries to get a phone number out of Francine Evans, a singer. She has no interest in him. The next morning the two share a cab, and Francine goes with him, unwillingly, to an audition where he quarrels with the club owner. She starts singing an old standard, Jimmy comes in on saxophone, and the owner, impressed, hires them as a boy-and-girl act. Francine then sends word that she has joined a touring orchestra, and Jimmy follows and joins it too.
Cast
- Georgie Auldas Frankie Harte
- Kathi McGinnisas Ellen Flannery
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about New York, New York (1977)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Martin Scorsese was struggling with cocaine addiction during the shoot and also took lithium to control his temper. He later admitted he was too impaired to fix the film's structure and even cut his own press interviews short because he had run out of cocaine.
- Certain that New York, New York would be a hit, United Artists structured the film's box office as a bulwark against the flop they had expected in Rocky. The two productions pooled their profits, but Rocky ended up covering the losses of Scorsese's movie.
- To play a saxophonist, Robert De Niro trained under veteran musician Georgie Auld, who had played with Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. Auld found the actor so demanding of his time that he felt like a slave, and Auld actually recorded the film's sax parts while De Niro mimed along on camera.
- Scorsese had an affair with his star Liza Minnelli during production, while his second wife, Julia Cameron, would visit the set trying to catch the two together.
- Scorsese spent $350,000 of the budget filming a twelve-minute musical-within-a-musical called "Happy Endings", choreographed by Ron Field, which depicts Francine Evans as a movie star. The scene was restored in the 1981 version, and the expanded film earned praise for its ironic look at Hollywood musicals.
- Frank Sinatra recorded a cover of the title song two years after the film's release for his album Trilogy: Past Present Future, and in 1980 it reached number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming his final Top 40 hit.
- George Lucas predicted that the film's gross would improve by $10 million if Scorsese would change the ending to a happy one.
