I just voted to ratify the new Writers Guild contract. So when the final vote is announced, if it's (let's say) 9,261 votes, you'll know that "1" is me.
Earlier today, I linked to a video of New York in the forties. In trying to pin down what year, I took notice of a movie marquee for the 1942 movie, Valley of Hunted Men…and one of another theater marquee showing the 1948 film, The Loves of Carmen. Might it be footage from '48 and the 1942 film was in re-release then? Or might it be that the video shows footage from different years?
Well, one of the many smart, industrious readers of this blog, Eric Costello, dug into some online newspaper archives and found that Valley of the Hunted Men was indeed in re-release in 1948 though he didn't find it playing at any theater in or near New York. He also spotted another marquee in the video. It's the Loew's Criterion and it marquee shows the film Tap Roots which the newspaper archive says was running there in late August and September of 1948, plus he found a review from September 3, 1948 showing The Loves of Carmen at the Loews State in New York. From all this, he concludes the video is from September of '48.
That sounds like pretty solid proof — but then I got this e-mail from another of the many smart, industrious readers of this blog, Peter Cunningham…
As to the question of the year of that New York film, the answer has to be multiple. At 6:45, The Empire State Building doesn't have its giant broadcasting antenna. At 7:20, it does.
So you make the call for yourself. I'm going with footage from different years.