And here’s another shot of Allan Moyle giving the girls direction, this time for the “Your Daughter Is One” sequence. I can only imagine what Trini and Robin are thinking, based on their expressions. I wonder what Moyle was telling them.

Behind Moyle, on the left and out of focus, is the assistant director, Alan “Hoppy” Hopkins. We can’t see the headstock on Nicky’s guitar, so we can’t tell if this was taken before or after the “Rickenbacker” nameplate was removed (it doesn’t appear in the film).

And again, surprisingly for what should be one of the most interesting Times Square finds ever, that’s all I have to say about this. Here are the stars and director hard at work months before things started to go bad.

I still wonder occasionally whether the WJAD interiors were shot at the top floor of the Candler Building, where the exteriors were shot, or if they were on a set built somewhere, and if so, where. I’ve checked with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting, and they’ve long since disposed of all the records of location permits for productions that long ago.

The back of this photo has the handwritten notation, “116-16A.” I don’t know when that was written, who wrote it, or what it might mean.

On the left is the same photo as this one, cropped differently and of course without the autograph.

On the right is the photo that may be the one used the most to promote the film. We’ll have a better idea about that once I’m done with all this stuff. Until just now, I always thought it was a cropped version of this photo (that version of which I’ve only seen on the Web and believe to have been cut from a UK lobby card), but now I realize they were taken a second or two apart. Look at their arms.

As always, there is no shot in the film that matches up either of these two photos. Mr. Pearl does throw Johnny into the table as at left, but the shot cuts from a close-up of Pearl grabbing Johnny and pushing him to a close-up of Johnny landing; there is no shot of the two of them. Also, Johnny’s hand never touches the mic stand as it does in the photograph. There is nothing even close enough to bother with a frame grab.

We see Pammy looking in the mirror fairly clearly in the film, but just like these photos, in the film we see it from her father’s perspective, and she’s not quite in the same pose as in the photo. Here’s the closest frame from the film:

This photo will appear again at least once, in the American press kit folder. That version is smaller, to allow for a border, and is cropped at the top and bottom, but shows a tiny bit more along the left edge. It has the same number, but it’s rewritten in a slightly different format, because the one that appears here is cropped out. I don’t know for sure that this one predates that one, but I have to make some kind of decision of what order to put these in. This series are all photos that don’t have “Times Square” printed on them.

Not on the front, anyway. This object has handwritten on the back in black ink, “Robin Johnson / ‘TIMES SQUARE'” at the top, and “Times Square” in yellow ink at the bottom. Those were probably added by memorabilia dealers or previous owners. You’ve probably noticed that it’s also signed on the front by Robin… yes, that’s really her signature. No, I’ve never met her. That’s an autograph from back in the day. This item came from England, so it was probably signed during her publicity tour for Times Square in January 1981. Should I have waited to post this until I get to the stuff from her trip to England? Too late, here it is.

We do have his “Radio and Records announcement of the production of the movie,” and it’s the earliest piece of advance promotion I know of. And the destiny of the film’s production is right there plain as day. As you might remember from a few episodes ago, Jacob Brackman’s screenplay from Allan Moyle’s story had a soundtrack of early 70’s FM soft rock and a little disco. This article makes it firmly “Stigwood’s flick,” and defines it as “A New Wave ‘Saturday Night Fever.'” Not one frame had yet been shot, and the focus had already shifted to the soundtrack, to be made up entirely of songs that had no place in the original concept.

(Yes, this publication was for radio professionals who of course would be more interested in the music than the film itself. And yes, the New Wave focus of the soundtrack is one of the best things about the finished movie. That’s not the point. The moment Robert Stigwood agreed to produce the film, it became a tool for him to sell records and its fate was set.)

Mr. Rowe described this photograph “Picture of Station Call Letters WJAD sign of steel and neon construction on a downtown building, in the Big Apple.” Actually, it’s not downtown at all; it’s the Candler Building, 220 West 42nd St., in the heart of Times Square right where Johnny LaGuardia says it is. Directly across the street from the Times Square Theater. The neon sign is facing east, as far as I can tell. The right side of the building in the picture is facing north and 42nd Street.

I don’t know where the interiors of WJAD were shot, but all the exteriors were shot there at the top of the Candler Building. The early shots in the film showing the Carter Hotel, the Times Square Building, and the Milford Plaza (which I think hadn’t yet been reopened under that name) were taken from there. That much was accurate; if the station was supposed to be located there, that’s exactly what Johnny was seeing when he went outside.

In this screencap from the film, you can just make out Johnny’s telescope.