Bruce Williamson didn’t not like Times Square, but he couldn’t ignore its flaws… still, his review in the January Playboy was generally positive, appreciating the film’s visual evocation of Times Square and, like most other reviewers, Robin’s performance.
The two bunny-heads meant the movie was “worth a look.”
A gravel-voiced hoyden named Robin Johnson takes over Times Square (EMI/ AFD) and makes it all her own. Teamed up with Robin is Trini Alvarado (who made her big splash in last year’s Rich Kids), while England’s Tim Curry (star of The Rocky Horror Show on stage and screen) adds a garnish of colorful idiosyncrasy as an all-night deejay who transforms a couple of runaway kids into punk-rock stars. Directed by Canadian- born Alan Moyle from a screenplay by Jacob Brackman (former Esquire film critic and sometime PLAYBOY contributor), Times Square takes chances, caroms from hits to misses, yet captures the seedy, funky atmosphere of mid- Manhattan fleshpots as few other movies have done since Midnight Cowboy. Filmed on location, Moyle’s grungy fable depicts a nighttime New York full of music, drugs, muscle, hustle, youthful exuberance and teenaged rebels without a cause. The raggle-taggle queen of the night is Robin, herself in real life a Brooklyn high school girl and nonpro until someone discovered she could curse, swagger and belt songs like a junior-miss Bette Midler—though compared with this kid, Bette is a cream puff. Here, Robin’s the street-wise gamine who takes up with a New York City commissioner’s runaway daughter (Trini) to form a duo called The Sleaze Sisters. The movie as a whole may be a triumph of sleaze over substance, but Robin Johnson plays it like a seasoned trouper.
Update, 4 February 2018: The photo accompanying the Playboy review of Times Square is TS-C-34/29, one of a series of black and white press photos issued by AFD, and carrying a copyright date of 1981. I have one of those photos, but not this one; luckily they’re all in the collection of Karen Dean (Defeatedandgifted), and it’s on display on her blog.
Playboy, Vol. 28 No. 1, January 1981
8.25 in (W) x 10.85 in (H)
(Bruce Williamson, “Movies,” pp. 44-50
“Times Square,” p. 46) (work)
Here, in the December issue of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, is Robin getting her fifteen minutes. A gorgeous glamor photo by photographer Peter Strongwater, and a stunningly non-realistic description of Times Square's success... Robin was truly the toast of New York, for at least as long as it took to…
Another four "lobby cards", printed together on one poster, having been cut together and reprinted from an earlier series of lobby cards that I didn't have when I found these. Unlike the first one, I think we've seen all these images previously, but, I'll have more to…
Despite recent appearances, this is a Robin Johnson site, not a Times Square site. But, for better or worse, there's far more Times Square material out there than for the rest of her career combined. Plus, the vast majority of her fans (though not all) found her through Times Square.…
Teamed up with Robin is Trini Alvarado (who made her big splash in last year’s Rich Kids), while England’s Tim Curry (star of The Rocky Horror Show on stage and screen) adds a garnish of colorful idiosyncrasy as an all-night deejay who transforms a couple of runaway kids into punk-rock stars. Directed by Canadian- born Alan Moyle from a screenplay by Jacob Brackman (former Esquire film critic and sometime PLAYBOY contributor), Times Square takes chances, caroms from hits to misses, yet captures the seedy, funky atmosphere of mid- Manhattan fleshpots as few other movies have done since Midnight Cowboy. Filmed on location, Moyle’s grungy fable depicts a nighttime New York full of music, drugs, muscle, hustle, youthful exuberance and teenaged rebels without a cause. The raggle-taggle queen of the night is Robin, herself in real life a Brooklyn high school girl and nonpro until someone discovered she could curse, swagger and belt songs like a junior-miss Bette Midler—though compared with this kid, Bette is a cream puff. Here, Robin’s the street-wise gamine who takes up with a New York City commissioner’s runaway daughter (Trini) to form a duo called The Sleaze Sisters. The movie as a whole may be a triumph of sleaze over substance, but Robin Johnson plays it like a seasoned trouper.
