The Automat

This is like a master's course in film, music and general culture:



First of all, there's the automat. Horn and Hardart closed the last one, on the corner of 3rd and 42nd right down from the Daily News Building, in 1991. As a kid going into Manhattan with my parents, the need to eat at the automat bordered on the obsessive. What kid wouldn't want to put coins into a slot to open a little window to pull out lunch? On the flip side, it was cheap, so my parents got to save a few bucks, so I never heard them complain about it. Gourmet tip: the chicken pot pie, regardless of what Ray Milland has to say in the clip.

The clip is accurate, by the way (except, I guess, for the Day of the Locusts ending). That is exactly what the automats were like (for further details, you could also read this Times article: apparently the NY Public Library is rebuilding the automat for a "lunch" exhibit). If you go onto YouTube, you'll find a series of automat videos, but if you ask me this is the most interesting. Here's the rundown:

The movie overall is one of the great albeit lesser sung classics of screwball comedy.

It's got Jean Arthur, one of the most astonishing voices in the history of film. I could listen to her all day.

The script is by comedy god Preston Sturges. If you haven't seen all his films, drop everything and do so, then wonder why Adam Sandler ever got a job in the same town.

The song in the background is also called "Easy Living," by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, and it became a jazz classic.

Ray Milland was the first Welsh actor to win the Academy Award (for The Lost Weekend), but honestly, who cares?
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