Robin Johnson

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Typically, shortly before my last post was published (but weeks after I’d initially written it), five more stills from the UK series turned up. Two were duplicates of numbers 20 and 29, but the others were new to me. They follow the series’ general conventions of being black and white 8×10″s with no border, a handwritten number on a tiny square inset along the bottom edge, and a paper strip taped to the back with a typed caption.

This first one I’d been passing up for maybe nearly a year, since Robin isn’t in it and it’s essentially a duplicate of TS-117-13/15, although less cropped, but I picked it up along with these others when I realized it was might be part of this series.

I have some doubts over whether it truly belongs in this series, though, first because the caption sheet taped to the back seems to belong to a different photo, and doesn’t have the photo number on it:

Robin Johnson is a runaway teenage product of the streets who dreams of becoming a rock music star and lets nothing get in her way to make it to the top in “TIMES SQUARE”.
“TIMES SQUARE” a contemporary drama with music starring Tim Curry, Robin Johnson and Trini Alverado, is a Robert Stigwood Presentation, produced by Stigwood and Jacob Brackman and directed by Alan Moyle from Brackman’s screenplay, based on the story by Moyle and Leanne Unger, with Kevin McCormick and John Nicollela the executive producers and Bill Oakes the associate producer. “TIMES SQUARE” is distributed by Columbia-EMI-Warner.

Robin’s not in the photo, Trini’s name is spelled wrong, and the film distributors’ names are separated by dashes instead of slashes. In fact, the caption is identical to the one on the caption sheet attached to this photo of Robin from the US Press Material folder, except for the typos and the addition of the UK film distributors. The strangest thing is, though, I already have a photo #4 from this series, and it’s of Tim Curry. Both these photos are unmistakably labeled “4”. I’m keeping them both until I find out if one or the other doesn’t belong. I suspect this is the one that should be categorized somewhere else.

The other two are definitely part of this series:

#13 appeared in Photoplay Vol 32 No 1, January 1981, and in the Japanese souvenir program book. A copy of this photo is probably the source of those images.

#29 looks to have been taken within seconds of a shot that appeared cropped in the center of Japanese program book and on a lobby card I don’t have (but Karen Dean [DefeatedandGifted] does), and this color shot. Like that last one, this photo as far as I know was never published and may be making its first public appearance here. It’s probably safe to say that any shot of the performance of “Damn Dog” in the Cleo Club, like the 35mm slide, was taken at the same run-through as this one. None of these shots are of the performance given for the take in the film, even allowing for a different placement of the still and movie cameras.

I promised in the last post, which went up twelve days before this one but was written two months before, that I’d post a collection of all the photos I have from this series once I had fifteen of them, and I now have sixteen, counting both number 4s. So, that will be the next post.

Previous posts referenced above:

Times Square Press Material folder (post 3 of 5)
Times Square Press Material folder (post 4 of 5)
Times Square UK Press Kit (post 2 of 4)
Photoplay Vol 32 No 1, January 1981
Times Square Program Book, Japan, June 1981 (post 1 of 5)
Times Square Program Book, Japan, June 1981, pages 12-13 (post 5 of 5)
“Damn Dog”
Aggie Doon