BEFORE: I did tell you there would be a couple more documentaries to follow, I wasn't done with them (or maybe they weren't done with ME) after a full month of docs on various topics in July & August. This one was something of a straggler, it connected to a couple different films that were on the slate for the official Documentary Month, like to "Trespassing Bergman" via Wes Anderson, or to "Gilbert" via Regis Philbin. But I couldn't get it to connect to two docs in a way that made sense - then I realized I could use it, and one other documentary, as crucial links in September, to keep the flow going. This year I've allowed myself to mix it up a bit, I've loosened the rules so that all of the docs don't NEED to be together, I can switch back and forth between fiction and non-fiction if it suits my needs. And if I get my perfect year, that decision (along with the choice to allow horror films outside of October) just might pay off.
I caught the last third of this on cable back in, I don't know, March or April, and I was intrigued enough to record it the next time it was on, and then try to figure out a way to work it in. It's got a large, varied cast of interviewed celebrities so I figured that should be no problem. For a lot of docs, I find that the IMDB listings are incomplete and I end up supplementing them by spotting some celebs that others didn't, or listing people who somehow weren't officially listed in the credits, but even given what I had to work with, this became fairly easy to link to, once I separated it from the herd of other docs.
Naomi Campbell carries over from "I Feel Pretty".
THE PLOT: The iconic Carlyle hotel has been an international destination for a particular jet-set as well as the favorite haunt of the most discernible New Yorkers.
AFTER: New York City is always changing and evolving - and many so-called institutions come and go. Depending on who you talk to, the city's been going to hell ever since THIS joint closed down or THAT restaurant got replaced, whether that's CBGB's, or the Carnegie Deli, or the old Yankee Stadium or Shea Stadium. Some people would even say that the city's been going to hell ever since they tore down the old Pennsylvania Station, a beautiful roman-columned building that you can see by watching Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train". It took up a whole city block, and was the companion building to the still-standing James Farley post office on 8th Ave. and 33rd St. So many people complained about the demolition of the old Penn Station in 1963 that the Landmarks Preservation Act was passed, which ended up saving Grand Central Terminal and a host of other city architectural wonders.
But still there's a long list of NYC landmarks that have gone the way of the dinosaur, like the old Madison Square Garden, Gimbel's department store, Tammany Hall, and the Vanderbilt mansions. Part of this process is natural, of course - buildings just weren't built to last forever. Then of course, there's the World Trade Center, but we all know what happened there. And sometimes the changes are the results of changing trends - I've noticed in the past few months that several of my favorite local BBQ restaurants have closed up shop (Daisy May's, Hill Country in Brooklyn, and Brother Jimmy's on the west side, right near that Farley post office).
For hotels, gone are the Hotel Astor, the Ritz-Carlton, the original Waldorf-Astoria, and the Biltmore. The really classic ones that are left include the Plaza Hotel, the St. Regis, and the Carlyle. And thank God you can still step back in time by eating at places like Delmonico's downtown, or Keen's Steakhouse, or Peter Luger's, or the Russian Tea Room. And if they ever try to close Katz's Deli there's going to be a citywide riot. New Yorkers might argue over where to get the best bagels, thin-crust pizza or matzoh ball soup, but that's great news, because it means there are multiple places serving stellar versions of those iconic dishes.
So at first glance it's perhaps easy to believe that the Carlyle is somehow stuck in the past, since their dining room has one of the last few "seating captains" left in the city (Jackie O. always wanted Table 10, while her son JFK Jr. preferred Table 29, there's apparently just no way to keep track of that without a human mind running things, god forbid they use a computer) and they still spring for elevator operators, even though the 100-year-old elevators have push-buttons, not the levers and manual doors) and so the whole thing seems in a way a throwback to the 1930's, or maybe the 40's. But the truth is that the hotel has done what the entire city has done, which is to keep the things and the systems that WORK, while still inching forward into the modern world in other ways.
Certainly the prices aren't stuck in the Prohibition era - room rates of $4,000 and $10,000 AND UP are bandied about in this documentary, and somehow that's PER NIGHT and not for a month's stay. Welcome to the Upper East Side, bitches - so right off the bat, the clientele is limited to a certain class of people, like film stars who live in L.A. but need to come through town on a press junket, or live in NYC for a month while they shoot a film or do a run on Broadway. And then there are athletes, like Roger Federer who plays annually in the U.S. Open (just about this time of year, too, I think) so the cagey hotel managers created the "Roger Federer Suite" so he wouldn't DREAM of staying anywhere else in town (except now that his cover's blown, he may want to consider something out in Queens, closer to the matches, just sayin'). I mean, come on, if you knew there was a hotel suite named after you somewhere in the world, you sort of HAVE to stay there, right? It's not like they can rent that suite out to other guests the other 49 weeks of the year and charge top dollar for it - oh, wait, yes they can.
So any time a celebrity of a certain level stays there for a month or more, they get a suite named after them - though somehow it took Elaine Stritch over 12 years of living there to get one, then I think she died shortly after that so she didn't have long to enjoy it. But the film captures the moment where she's told that the Carlyle is naming a suite for her, and she was genuinely ecstatic. (Good get!). One employee reveals that after a double-shift working in room service, and with only a few hours left before she needed to report for work again, management allowed her to stay in the Princess Diana suite (probably a liability issue, if she left work exhausted and had an accident on the way home, that could be regarded as the fault of the hotel) so I wonder if they hotel execs treated that as some kind of bonus or in-kind contribution, and she had to report the "gift" of one night's stay on her W-2. That would be some kind of scam.
But for the most part, the hotel employees are not willing to break the code of discretion about what they've seen - and you know with Nicholson and Beatty staying there over the years, they've probably seen a lot. We do learn that Princess Di, Michael Jackson and Steve Jobs shared an elevator once, but that gem only comes out because all of those parties are now deceased. The story sort of sounds like the start of a joke, only there's no punchline, and no payoff either. Wes Anderson used the design of the Carlyle as partial inspiration for "The Grand Budapest Hotel"), the artist who illustrated the "Madeline" books painted the murals in the Bemelmans bar (subsequently named for him), and another French muralist decorated the Café Carlyle. The most salacious thing that anyone is willing to reveal comes from Alan Cumming, who secretly posed nude at 2 am with two dancers outside the Café Carlyle entrance in order to get a shocking photo for an album cover.
The Café is probably best known for the musical artists who have played there over the years - Bobby Short had a seasonal residence there from 1968 to 2004 (as seen in the Woody Allen movie "Hannah and Her Sisters", when Woody's character goes on a date with his ex-wife's sister, who gets coked up there) and then Woody himself started playing there weekly with his jazz band, beginning in 1996. That's why he could almost never attend the Oscars, which were held on Mondays for many years, because his band played on Mondays at the Carlyle. Since Bobby Short died, it seems like they've opened up the field for other musicians and wanna-bes, like Jeff Goldblum and Rita Wilson as they've dabbled as recording artists. Billy Joel supposedly drops by from time to time, but there's no footage of it, instead we have to watch his daughter perform one of his songs. That's part of the discretion that rules the roost at the Carlyle - there's no footage of McCartney or David Bowie visiting, just still photos, and the annual Met Gala after-party seems to be held here, too, but you didn't hear it from me - what happens at the Carlyle apparently stays there, and the paparazzi are kept out by a phalanx of doormen.
This was also where JFK maintained an apartment for 10 years, even while President, so for a time the Carlyle was thought of as the "New York White House". The famous birthday gala where Marilyn Monroe cooed "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" took place at Madison Square Garden, and there are half-stories about Marilyn being smuggled into the Carlyle after through a tunnel, but when pressed no employee seems to be able to remember where the tunnel is. So, did it happen, then? And every President from Truman to Clinton seems to have visited, the latest being Trump, who supposedly was impressed by the place at first, but ended up calling the Carlyle a "joke". Well, if it's a joke then somebody's laughing all the way to the bank.
Also starring Woody Allen (last seen in "Trespassing Bergman"), Wes Anderson (ditto), Herb Alpert (last seen in "The Wrecking Crew!"), Anthony Bourdain (last seen in "The Big Short"), Marie Brenner, Mika Brzezinski, Graydon Carter (last seen in "Alfie" (2004)), George Clooney (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), David Patrick Columbia, Sofia Coppola, Alan Cumming (last seen in "The Battle of the Sexes"), Yves Durif, Roger Federer, Harrison Ford (last seen in "Leaving Neverland"), Nina Garcia, Chris Gillespie, Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Lani Hall, Lena Hall, Jon Hamm (last seen in "Baby Driver"), Loston Harris, Anjelica Huston (last seen in "The Grifters"), Alexa Ray Joel, David Johansen, Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Criminal"), Piers Morgan (ditto), Jill Kargman, Lenny Kravitz (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"), Fran Lebowitz (last seen in "It's Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise"), Isaac Mizrahi (last seen in "Hollywood Ending"), Bill Murray (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Paul Shaffer (ditto), Kelli O'Hara, Joy Philbin, Regis Philbin (last seen in "Gilbert"), John Pizzarelli, Condoleeza Rice (last seen in "Fair Game"), Whitney Robinson, Elaine Stritch (last seen in "Cadillac Man"), Steve Tyrell, Vera Wang, Matthew Weiner, Rita Wilson (last seen in "Filmworker"), Alexandra Wolfe,
with archive footage of Desi Arnaz, Louis Armstrong (last seen in "Quincy"), Tony Bennett (ditto), Alec Baldwin (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Lucille Ball (also last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Warren Beatty (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), David Bowie (last seen in "We Are Twisted Fucking Sister"), Marlon Brando (last seen in "Life Itself"), Bill Clinton (last seen in "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley"), Amal Clooney, Francis Ford Coppola (also last seen in "Trespassing Bergman"), Bette Davis (last seen in "P.S. I Love You"), Jimmy Fallon (also last seen in "Gilbert") Willie Geist (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Seth Meyers (ditto) Jacqueline Kennedy (ditto), Richard Gere (last seen in "Norman"), Marvin Hamlisch (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"), Earl "Fatha" Hines, Katie Holmes (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Iman (last seen in "Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World"), Michael Jackson (also last seen in "Leaving Neverland"), Prince Charles (ditto), Princess Diana (ditto), Steve Jobs (last seen in "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine"), Billy Joel (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Elton John (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "The Fog of War"), John F. Kennedy Jr., Eartha Kitt (last seen in "Holes"), Ed Koch (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), Ralph Lauren, Jack Lemmon (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Paul McCartney (also last seen in "Filmworker"), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Kate Middleton, Liza Minnelli (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Marilyn Monroe (last seen in "Keith Richards: Under the Influence"), Paul Newman (last heard in "Cars 3"), Scott Pelley (last seen in "Icarus"), Princess Anne, Prince William, Queen Elizabeth II (last seen in "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne"), Lee Radziwill, Nancy Reagan (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Robert Redford (last seen in "The Old Man & The Gun"), Kelly Ripa (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Al Roker, Roxie Roker, Babe Ruth, Bobby Short, Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "Anne of the Thousand Days"), Hunter S. Thompson, Harry S. Truman, Fats Waller, Dianne Wiest (last seen in "The Mule"), Michelle Williams (also carrying over from "I Feel Pretty"), Bruce Willis (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Joanne Woodward (last heard in "The Age of Innocence").
RATING: 6 out of 10 embroidered pillows
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