In celebration of its inclusion in the recently published 女の子が死にたくなる前に見ておくべきサバイバルのためのガールズ洋画100選 (100 Western Movies for Survival That Every Girl Should Watch Before Wanting to Die – as always, I welcome a better translation if you have one) by Kitamura Sae, a 2K projection of the 4K restoration of Times Square played at Stranger in Kikugawa from July 11, and Cinem@rt Shinjuku in Tokyo ending August 7, and those are just the theaters I know about thanks to the links provided by Alissa in her July comment. This re-release was accompanied by a new chirashi! I actually found this item before I knew about the 2025 screenings and thought it was a third one from 1981… but eventually I noticed the prominent “4K” on it, and I realized something was up…

The 1981 versions are here and here.

This post was made half-possible through the generosity of you Ko-Fi supporters. Thank you so much! Go Team RJ!!

That show was broadcast in November 1980 as I recall, well before my family could afford a VCR. I recorded her appearance on audiocassette — I vividly recall her making a joke about the stage manager’s headphone-mic looking like night braces, and trying to make a joke she must have had prepared ahead of time about her flight to LA… I don’t recall the joke but I remember Merv stepped on her setup which was the word “Turbulence!” so she had to say it twice, in exactly the same way. Unfortunately, in the many decades since, I’ve mislaid that tape — that’s why it’s not already posted here.

This picture now gives us a better date for the color photo by David Loar, which was obviously taken at the same place and time.

Robin Johnson, signing autographs, late 1980

I’m starting to think that there are two separate sets of UK black-and-white publicity stills, one with borders, one without. You know, just to make things more confusing. Thankfully, so far at least there isn’t another one labeled “24” but not full-bleed.

On the Times Square commentary track recorded around 1999-2000, Robin says:

“Peter had so much trouble with this… It was hard for him to be rough and violent with me, actually. I remember him having some trouble with that… He’s such a doll… I didn’t want to do that fake, camera-angle stuff so I let him really smack me around. [laughs] It’s my S&M streak. ‘Smack me!'”

Although it’s hard to tell if he’s really hitting her in the film – for instance she’s definitely turning her head several frames before his hand starts traveling – as far as I can tell this still is unique in that it’s actually from the shot used in the film, just from a different, closer angle. I’d assume from that that there was no run-through or rehearsal, or even a second take, in order to reduce the wear and tear on both actors.

It’s impossible to tell from the film angle, but this photo definitely makes it look like a solid face-smashing slap that took something out of both performers. It seems something of a shame that it was never used for anything, as far as I know, and perhaps hasn’t been seen by anybody until now.

The black and white 8 x 10 stills released in England tend to have a lot of things in common, but the attributes are not absolute… Most of them, but not all, are full-bleed, with no borders. Many of them, but not all, have a caption pasted to their backs. Most, but not all, have a tiny number inset near the bottom. In at least one case, two nearly-identical photos with the same number are cropped slightly differently, and the number inset is visibly different and in a different spot, implying that they came from two different print runs.

For this shot of Nicky being hassled by the man, the caption pasted to the back clearly numbers it as 1.

The only problem with that is, there’s already a #1, that came in the UK press kit. There’s a number inset on this picture, but I’m damned if I can make head or tail of it. It could be a 1… it could be an upside-down 7 (but there already is a 7)… I’ve decided it’s a screwy-looking 2. (The problem with that is, there was a 2 in the press kit, just not in the copy I have, and its description is not this photo.)

On the other hand, I do have two different photos both very clearly numbered 4. I’ll leave this one as 2 for the time being, and if a different 2 turns up I’ll make it a second 1. But, as the only person I know of trying to keep track of this stuff, I reserve the right to change my mind about this at any moment on a whim.

For what it’s worth, I have 22 numbered photos from this British publicity blitz. The highest number I have is 41. So, hard as it is to believe, there are still at least nearly 20 Times Square publicity stills that apparently no one in this century has seen…
 

Would you like to know more?
15 or 16 UK Promo Photos
UK Promo Photos 4, 13, and 21, 1980-81
UK publicity still #22
UK Promo Photos 20 and 26, 1980-81
UK Promo Photo #29
More stills from the UK series
 

[Maybe I just do another roundup post of these… someday…]

The logo and the artwork are from the UK movie poster, which was also (the artwork at least) used across Europe. The text is in English, and the AA is a now-replaced British Board of Film Censors rating. (Also, I got this item from a seller in England. Back in April. Current events kept me from doing anything with it until recently.) So I think I’m safe saying that what we have here is a piece of British Times Square promotion, probably produced by EMI Films, almost certainly in early 1981, basically pushing Robin Johnson’s status as Robert Stigwood’s “female Travolta.” As we’ve seen, starting from almost the second the film was released, the promotion tactics became focused ever more closely on its third-billed star, a situation that would continue around the world for the next two years. And in my opinion, an unfortunate victim of this strategy was Robin herself, as the unflichingly honest criticisms she gave of the movie in her interviews caused RSO to reappraise her value, ultimately deciding that her willingness to trash their product in public outweighed her talents as an actress in that product, causing RSO never to cast her in anything again, while simultaneously keeping her under contract so she couldn’t use her obvious abilities in the service of some other film company to compete against Robin-less RSO projects. Again, in my opinion.

So much for a face of the 80s. But even more to the point… that’s an illustration. It isn’t really her face. Obviously the illustration by poster artist Cummins was used so people would make the connection between this poster and the movie poster, but still… Maybe if I find the time I’ll doctor up a version of what I think this poster should have looked like.

If anyone cares, the image here isn’t really an accurate representation of what the actual physical object looks like, because I’ve cleaned it up so much. It is a good representation of what you’d see if you were looking at the poster, though.

Would you like to know more?

Times Square U.K. Movie Poster
Times Square Movie Poster, Belgium
Locandina Times Square (Movie Poster, Italy)
“Toda la Basca!” … a Times Square – Times Square movie poster, Spain