Thanks to Mort Bryer, we are able to offer you all this charming bit of Memorabilia which he caught on his TV set in Connecticut, and which his son, Peter, was able to transmit to us. In it all the ex-muggs can catch a heretofore unknown (to us, at least) glimpse of what the old office on 46th Street looked like back in 1943.
The clip was aired on the Turner Classic Movies channel in the States two days ago in a program dedicated to the newsreels “March of Time”, which was started by Henry Luce, owner of Time Magazine, in 1937 and was a standard weekly feature in movie houses of the time, usually shown along with a double feature, a cartoon, and sometimes even a serial.
The clip here offered was released on May 21, 1943. Some of the curiosities included in it are the narrator referring to Sime Silverman as “the osteopath of the English language”, the reference of “an inconspicuous building on Broadway” as the headquarters of Variety, and the background music of “Broadway Melody” accompanying the sequence. The clip also includes a sequence showing Times Square, with “The Human Comedy” on the marquee of a theatre (a patriotic film about life in a small time during the war, with Mickey Rooney, Donna Reed and Van Johnson) and another showing copies of Variety coming off the presses.
Perhaps the most curious part is a sequence with Abel Green and a group of other men around him in a room of the building. Mort thinks one of those could be Sid Silverman (Syd’s father). If anyone out there recognizes any of the men, please let Peter know.