|
Location: The Bars
Three of Hoboken's more than 200 establishments that sold adult beverages appear in the film. Johnny Friendly's Tavern was actually Vandenberg's Tavern at 314 River Street. The building was torn down in 1968, and Garage G now occupies the site. In an exterior shot immediately after Joey's death, one of Friday's mugs says, "I think somebody fell off da roof." Reminded that the victim was a canary, he cracks, "Maybe he could sing, but he couldn't fly." In contrast to this grim humor, Terry betrays how unsettled he is by his role in the murder.
In a longer interior shot, Friendly is upset with Terry over the latter's troubled conscience. Charlie defends his brother by insisting that the ex-fighter suffers from "too much Marquis of Queensbury. It softens him up." Friendly reveals a bit of personal history: that his throat was slashed by rivals for control of the union, and that he hunted down his antagonists and killed them. He summarizes his philosophy: "We got the fattest piers in the fattest harbor in the world. Everything that goes in and out, we take our cut." We witness examples of his business ethics: The 2,000 dues-paying members of the local account for "$72,000 a year legitimate;" each of the 391 men who worked that day kicked back three dollars each; told that the next day's ship contains bananas and that they "go bad real quick," he offhandedly orders the dock boss to ask the shipping company for $2,000 to avoid a work stoppage. And we see a paradigm of how he deals with personnel problems: Learning that one of the gang has held back $50, Friendly slaps him around, takes the money from the culprit, and abruptly dismisses him, "You come from Greenpoint, you go back to Greenpoint. You don't work here anymore." That bit of business out of the way, he gives the $50 to Terry and tells him to tie one on.
In the third scene at the tavern, Terry comes looking for Friendly to avenge Charlie's death. Holding a pistol in his bleeding hand, the result of his escape from the truck on Court Street, Terry takes several customers hostage and settles in to wait for Friendly - until Father Barry arrives. The distraction allows the hostages to get away. The scene culminates in Terry's startling double "Go to hell," followed by Barry's convincing Terry to go to the Crime Commission.
Earlier in the story, Terry buys Edie her first shot and a beer -- and tries to dissuade her from dwelling on her brother's death -- in what is now "Frankie and Johnny's On the Waterfront," on the southeast corner of Fourteenth and Garden. The stained glass windows behind Terry are still in place. (There is historical basis for Terry's argument, back in the park, that it would be appropriate for her to accompany him to a bar, because it has a "special entrance for ladies an' all that." By ordinance, Hoboken, at the time, barred women from establishments that sold alcoholic beverages unless the woman could enter without going through the bar.)
The subsequent wedding scene also begins at Frankie and Johnny's, but, in another of those turnabout segues recognizable only to those familiar with Hoboken's lost landmarks, it switches mid-scene to Meyer's Hotel, on the southeast corner of Third and Hudson (now Hudson Square North). There, in several thickenings of the plot, Terry and Edie dance, Terry gets called to the meeting at the Long Dock by one of Friendly's goons, and a Crime Commissioner investigator hands Terry a subpoena. (A production footnote: Meyer's Hotel also served as the shoot's production office and wardrobe storage facility.)
|
|
|