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About Richard Lombardo
I was born in February of
1944, in Long Island City, which is just across the Fifty-Ninth Street
Bridge from the north end of mid-town Manhattan. The real name of the
bridge is the 1Queensboro Bridge; the 2Roosevelt
Island Tramway runs right next to it, 3Roosevelt Island sits
in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, and has become quite a
bedroom community.
You’ve seen both the
bridge and the Tram in many films, but the Tram was prominently featured
in
Nighthawks, the 1981 Sylvester Stalone terrorist film with Billie
Dee Williams, Lindsay Wagner and Rutger Hauer.
My Dad died in the War in
Europe; I was two-months old, he was twenty-two; he’d only been there
three weeks, when he got killed. Mom had been from The Bronx, so by the
time I was one, we’d said good-bye to Queens and moved up to the
‘country,’ in the North-east Bronx. It was a good place to grow up. By
the time I was nine or ten, me and my friends where already walking the
half-mile from Wilson Avenue and Gun Hill Road to the theaters on Boston
Post Road. I spent a lot of time in both the Melba and the Lowes
theater. Mom spoiled me, I was at the movies at least once a week. I
loved movies. I loved the walk too. I think is was the expectation that
made the walk so exciting. I could have gone a hundred different ways,
but I always took the same streets.
In those days you saw a
feature film and a B movie with at least one cartoon and a newsreel in
between them. I think it was the Melba that had this hot dog
rotisserie, you know, like they cook chickens in? The hot dog
rotisserie was smaller than the chicken one. It had a bunch of skewers
coming out of a vertical rod at right angles that the slid hot dogs on,
and they turned around and around, slowly cooking and giving off that
great hot dog smell. As if the smell wasn’t enough to get you, the
rotisserie was brightly lit up inside, and you could see those delicious
hot dogs slowly turning through the glass door.
The other kids used to
hate me because I always had money for a hot dog and a soda, and they
mostly never did. Just going to the movies every week was something
they couldn’t afford, but Mom spoiled me.
I still go to the movies
every week; I have for most of my life. Movies are a big part of my
life. I’ve even written a couple of screenplays. It’s a good thing I
enjoyed writing them, because no one has been interested in making a
film out of any of them.
I have a great Movie
collection, and I keep it in it’s own room. The room looks more like a
library, than a video store; it’s a big, comfortable well lit room. My
library is filled with VHS tapes, DVDs and actual films, too. I even
have a collection of those RCA lazar discs. I also have a great deal of
written material, books, and scripts, some original manuscripts and a
few storyboards. I’ll include anything that catches my fancy that is
related to the film industry.
As well lit as the library
is, my movie watching room, which I call it my theater, is dark as a
tomb, and seats six in very comfortable chairs. I’ve gone through four
chairs until I found the right ones for movie viewing.
I work a job that is
suited to my personality, I’m an analyst, and I spend most of my
workday alone going over complicated information and thinking. Fact is,
I spend most of my time alone. My wife has a similar personality, and,
while she’s not as crazy about film as I am, she to loves to watch good
movies and read great novels. We spend a lot of time together in
different places: I could be on an adventure in North Africa, and she in
Victorian England.
We both love food, and
have fun tying our menu into a particular theme we one or both of us has
gotten involved with.
I see my writing reviews
for HugeReviews.com as another fun outlet for my passions.
Special Thanks
My thanks to Joe De Matteo
whose memories of The Bronx, the movie theaters, the sights and smells
of the old neighborhoods we both grew up in and around were very helpful
in stirring some forgotten images.
We didn't know each other
back in The Bronx of the fifties and sixties;
we
don't have any knowledge of ever having passed each other in the street.
We're not the same age and that is probably why. But it's
remarkable to me the bond one can make with a stranger because of shared
experiences. We may not have anything else in common, but having
walked the same streets, eaten the same hot dogs, sat in the same
theaters, been frightened by the same monsters, horsed around in the
same classrooms, all that in retrospect has created a bond between us.
Heck, we even both drank at the same watering holes, and been mentored
by the same bartenders.
Joe also added the
informational links below.
Thanks Joe, old friend I
never knew.
Information:
1.
Queensboro Bridge
2.
Roosevelt Island Tram
3.
Roosevelt Island, New York City
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