Brooklyn’s rich cinematic history detailed in new book | Features

Movies take us to different worlds and they have found plenty in Kings County, NY

Bedford-Stuyvesant was featured in “Do the Right Thing,” Brooklyn Heights in “Moonstruck,” and Park Slope in “Marriage Story.” Given the diversity of Brooklyn and how each film transports the audience into a time and place, filmmakers have long explored the borough. Margo Donohue takes readers on a journey through dozens of neighborhoods in “Shooted in Brooklyn.”

It’s an exhaustive well-packaged guide, but as Donohue points out, Brooklyn has always contained the masses. Plenty of history, too, serving as the “birthplace of Mack Trucks, Brillo cleaning pads, Bazooka gum, Twizzlers, and possibly the most important contribution to twentieth-century convenience – air conditioning.”

It also gave America one of its first movie studios.

Built in 1905, the Vitagraph complex in Midwood “had room for shootouts, train wrecks, bank robberies and romantic situations,” Donohue writes. “Helen Hayes, Norma Talmadge and the first ‘Vitagraph girl,’ Florence Turner, graced the screens and won fans around the world. A young Rudolph Valentino applied to be a set designer and quickly rose to stardom on his way to international superstardom.

However, the company’s stardom was short-lived. Gritty Brooklyn backlots couldn’t compete with sunny Hollywood. Vitagraph sold its soundstage in 1925.

Of course, Brooklyn appeared in movies. But now, usually, it was reduced to footage of the Brooklyn Bridge and nameless city streets. The 1945 classic “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” may have depicted poor Irish-Americans in turn-of-the-century Williamsburg, but it was filmed in a California backwater.

After World War II, however, the studios went into overdrive and a new generation of indie filmmakers started shooting wherever they could. The MGM musical “On the Town” docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1949. “The Little Fugitive” (1953) was set in Coney Island. Stanley Kubrick starred in “Killer’s Kiss” (1955) in DUMBO.

The ensemble had a co-starring role in 1971’s “The French Connection,” in which Gene Hackman’s “Popeye” Doyle — based on a real-life NYPD detective — begins “chasing a killer through Brooklyn on an elevated train bound for Manhattan,” Donohue writes. Roughly piloting a civilian car, Popeye “follows the train from Stillwell Avenue/86th Street to just north of the 62nd Street Station,” driving at breakneck speed.

That scene has fascinated fans for years. However, as its reputation has grown, Donohue says, so have several of director William Friedkin’s stories. Although he often claimed he shot without permission or planning, allowing his stunt drivers to race through Bay Ridge, the shots had been heavily choreographed, Donohue says. Officers on duty were always there to keep people safe, away from the anxious 1971 Pontiac LeMans.

The Oscar-winning film was followed by a slew of other cop-and-robber movies, many depicting Brooklyn as full of mobsters.

Corleone’s soldiers in “The Godfather” were particularly staunch residents of Kings County. When he wasn’t dutifully running errands — buying cannoli, killing goblins — Peter Clemenza lived in a modest house at 1999 E. Fifth St. in Gravesend. And the reason Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes is because he went to that fatal meeting at Hotel St. George in Brooklyn Heights.

In “Goodfellas”, Henry Hill could only dream of becoming a made man like them, as he was not 100% Italian. His friend Tommy DeVito appeared to have been tapped to join the group but things went wrong; the last thing Tommy saw was inside a house on 80th St. in Bay Ridge. Hill probably had happier memories of Bensonhurst, where he married at the now-defunct Oriental Manor at 1818 86th St.

While both are great movies, they hardly give a complete picture of Italian-American life in the neighborhood. “Saturday Night Fever,” which featured a young Tony Manero torn between loyalty to the neighborhood and dreams of Manhattan, was probably closer to most kids’ bridge-and-tunnel experiences. Although tinged with tragedy, the film is filled with modest joy starting with the opening scene of John Travolta strutting through Bensonhurst as the king of disco.

Sadly, Tony’s beloved 2001 Odyssey Disco, once at 802 64th St., is long gone, writes Donohue. But “Lenny’s Pizza is at 1909 86th St., and you can try to eat it Tony Manero’s way (skinny disco pants that break two slices at once),” she says, “Bay Ridge is home to the Manero family.” still standing at 221 79th St.

Fewer locations remain for “Moonstruck”, which was mostly shot on sound stages. However, the house where Cher fought relatives and navigated a complicated romantic life remains at 19 Cranberry St. in Brooklyn Heights. And if you pause to snap a picture of yourself recreating her dreamy walk home, you won’t be the first.

Few places in Brooklyn, however, are as film-ready as Coney Island, “as big a symbol of New York City as it is of America itself,” writes Donohue.

“It’s a place where the best and worst of our culture is celebrated with our love of the beach, theme parks, thrilling roller coasters and hot dogs mixed with dirty, barely beneath the surface evil,” she writes. “It’s a place to relax and yet be alert … To feel comfortable and yet slightly on edge.”

Is it any wonder that movies shot there range from the romantic comedy ‘Annie Hall’ to the surreal thriller ‘The Warriors’? Movies arrived almost as soon as the amusement park did, which was depicted in the 1917 Fatty Arbuckle slapstick film, “Coney Island.” Since Coney Island’s landmarks have appeared in so many films, Donohue breaks the chapter down into distinct sections. It is part of Cyclone (“The Wiz,” “Annie Hall”), Wonder Wheel (“Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins,” “Spider-Man: Homecoming”) and Nathan’s (“He Got Game,” “The Other Boys” ).

If Coney Island is for everyone, other directors define Brooklyn’s diversity and division.

Spike Lee’s neighborhood is one of the most established black neighborhoods, secure in its traditions but facing pressure and prejudice. His debut, “She’s Gotta Have It,” followed the sexual adventures of a young woman in Fort Greene, where Lee grew up. In the classic “Do the Right Thing,” he moves to Bedford-Stuyvesant, where black and Italian Americans work together under a fragile truce. In many of Lee’s other films — “Crooklyn” and “Red Hook Summer” — Brooklyn is so present that it becomes another character.

Town part Noah Baumbach is one of the white professionals, often new to the area. They’re comfortable in their Park Slope brownstones as they deal with upper-middle-class hardships. “The Squid and the Whale,” starring Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, is set primarily on Sixth Ave., “a street I walked as a kid,” says Baumbach. “Marriage Story” is set nearby on Seventh Ave., where Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson watch their marriage fall apart between trips to actual neighborhood stores.

So who is the real Brooklyn? Is it the Irish immigrant haven of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” or the proud Italian countryside of “Saturday Night Fever”? The working-class Brooklyn of Lee’s films, or the more privileged one of Baumbach? Or the hipster hub of Williamsburg explored by new indie filmmakers like Radha Blank’s “The Forty-Year Old Version”?

Yes, that’s all. And since I’m Brooklyn, probably something else too, very soon.