U.K. Publicity Still #… uh…

Posted on 29th March 2023 in "Times Square"
1. Nicky Marotta (ROBIN JOHNSON) is arrested. A scene from "TIMES SQUARE" distributed by COLUMBIA/EMI/WARNER Film Distributors. 1. Nicky Marotta (ROBIN JOHNSON) is arrested. A scene from "TIMES SQUARE" distributed by COLUMBIA/EMI/WARNER Film Distributors. (Number is given as "1" in caption on reverse; there is already a "1" in the series; the number also appears possibly to be a "7" which also is already present in the series.)

1. Nicky Marotta (ROBIN JOHNSON) is arrested.
A scene from “TIMES SQUARE” distributed by COLUMBIA/EMI/WARNER Film Distributors.

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.
1. Nicky Marotta (ROBIN JOHNSON) is arrested. A scene from "TIMES SQUARE" distributed by COLUMBIA/EMI/WARNER Film Distributors. Reverse of a black and white 8x10 publicity shot from TIMES SQUARE (1980), distributed in the U.K., with pasted slip of paper bearing the photo caption. (Number is given as "1" in caption on reverse; there is already a "1" in the series; the number also appears possibly to be a "7" which also is already present in the series.) 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…]

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+

 

A face of the 80’s

Posted on 16th August 2020 in "Times Square"

UK poster advertising Robin Johnson as the star of TIMES SQUARE, using the artwork from the UK poster. Most of the Times Square posters have some identifying information on them — a copyright notice, the film’s local distributor, a code number — but not this one, so we have to go on what’s on it.

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

 

 

Robin Johnson – a face of the 80’s
poster, AAT ID: 300027221
30″ (H) x 40″ (W)
Inscription:
ROBIN JOHNSON
a face of the 80’s
starring in
TIMES SQUARE
AA
(work)

Robin_Johnson_UK_promo_poster_1981_1080px.jpg
1442 px (W) x 1080 px (H), 96 dpi, 359 kb (image)

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+

 

Robin Johnson, signing autographs, late 1980

Posted on 17th October 2019 in "Times Square"

Robin Johnson signing autographs, approximately late 1980

 

 

“I’m convinced that if I do this long enough, I’ll have to start laying low in public, to endure the intrusion of strangers asking for autographs. I deeply admire Bette Midler, but I would never dare to ask her for an autograph; I wouldn’t bother her with nonsense like that.”
     — Robin Johnson, August 1981

 

 

 

Okay, this is the last item I’ve yet found dating from Times Square’s theatrical run, which started 39 years ago today.

I’ve been unable to find out anything about the photographer David Loar.

 

 

 

 


[Robin Johnson signing autographs], [approximately October-December 1980] : color slide, AAT ID: 300128366 : 35mm
inscription: [on mount] [printed on screen side:] COLOR TRANSPARENCY
[stamped on view side:] © DAVID LOAR
HOLLYWOOD PHOTO
[handwritten in pen:] Robin Johnson
[3?] (work)
1980_35mm_slide_David_Loar_01_1080px_a.jpg
1080 px (H) x 749 px (W), 96 dpi, 216 kb (image)
 
© David Loar
Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+

 

Times Square movie poster, Thailand, 1981

Posted on 21st November 2018 in "Times Square"

TIMES SQUARE movie poster from Thailand, 1981. Possibly unauthorized.  Text (translated from Thai):  ONE GIRL GROWS TOUGH, ANOTHER BECOMES COURAGEOUS THESE TWO JOIN TOGETHER TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF THEIR REBELLIOUS LIVES         Presented by  Oriental Artist Treasury of Entertainment  ROBIN JOHNSON TRINI ALVARADO TIM CURRY  TIMES SQUARE ‘TWO’  NOW BEING SHOWN AT                                      ON  (Flyer inserts in the newspaper today) Printed in Thailand by The Siam Offset Co., Ltd. Tel 2860359 By Surat Pukkavesh, Printer/Advertiser               2864074

 

 

 

Movie posters in Thailand are an art form unto themselves. Google “Thai movie posters” and you will go down a rabbit hole you may take days to emerge from. Thai film distributors discard the authorized promotional materials and commission original painted montages in glorious colors. Some of the pages I looked at seemed to say that this practice ended in the 1990s… if so, we are all the poorer for it. But luckily for us, Times Square got the Thai treatment in 1981. The artist went a little heavy on Nicky’s eye shadow, but I can forgive this since the overall poster is so spectacular.

 

 

Unlike the Japanese materials I posted earlier, I hired a translator for the Thai items: Joy Busai at Thai English Headquarters — I can’t recommend her highly enough. (Although, her website seems to be down now, and my attempts to contact her to translate the article in my previous post went unanswered.) Here’s what the poster says in English:

 

ONE GIRL GROWS TOUGH, ANOTHER BECOMES COURAGEOUS
THESE TWO JOIN TOGETHER TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF THEIR REBELLIOUS LIVES

Presented by
Oriental Artist
Treasury of Entertainment

ROBIN JOHNSON
TRINI ALVARADO
TIM CURRY

TIMES SQUARE
‘TWO’

NOW SHOWING AT _____ ON _____

(Flyer inserts in the newspaper today)
Printed in Thailand by The Siam Offset Co., Ltd. Tel 2860359
By Surat Pukkavesh, Printer/Advertiser 2864074

The only thing missing is the artist’s name. I think that’s a signature there in the lower right, but I’m not sure.

As in Mexico, Robin again gets top billing, and Tim Curry third. The Thai promoters may have been the first to have the insight that led them to give Times Square the secondary title, “Two”.

 

 

Times Square : “Two”
Thailand : poster : AAT ID: 300027221 : 77.9 x 55.7 cm : 1981 (work);
Times_Square_movie_poster_Thailand_1981_1080px.jpg
773 x 1080 px, 96 dpi, 555 kb (image)

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+

 

Guerreras de Nueva York (Times Square movie poster, Mexico, 1981)

Posted on 5th August 2018 in "Times Square"

1981 Mexican movie poster for TIMES SQUARE (1980)  Text:  NO SOMOS CRIMINALES... Y SI NOS TRATAN COMO TAL USAREMOS ANTIFAZ  NO NECESITAMOS ANTIDEPRESIVOS QUEREMOS AMOR  NO SOMOS INOCENTES... NO SOMOS CULPABLES... SOMOS JOVENES  NO SOMOS GOLFAS... AYUDENOS A VIVIR  ORGANIZACION APOLO, S.A. Presenta a ROBIN JOHNSON • TRINI ALVARADO • TIM CURRY en Guerreras de Nueva York Director ALAN MOYLE  Un Film de Robert Stigwood   [WE ARE NOT CRIMINALS ... AND IF WE'RE TREATED THAT WAY WE'LL WEAR MASKS  WE DO NOT NEED ANTIDEPRESSANTS WE WANT LOVE  WE ARE NOT INNOCENT ... WE ARE NOT GUILTY ... WE ARE YOUNG  WE ARE NOT WHORES ... HELP US TO LIVE  APOLO ORGANIZATION, S.A. Presents ROBIN JOHNSON • TRINI ALVARADO • TIM CURRY in Warriors of New York Director ALAN MOYLE  A Film by Robert Stigwood]

Warriors of New York came out in Mexico in 1981, and its poster was a collage of publicity stills and the European poster painting. To my mind, though, the most interesting thing about it, even more than the new title, is that Robin Johnson has top billing, and Tim Curry is reduced to third. I can only assume that, even more than in the rest of the world, she was the film’s major selling point in Mexico.

Clockwise from top left: an edit of the photo that ran in Film Review Vol 31 No 1, on an Italian lobby poster, and on the back of the Japanese promo flyer and in the Japanese souvenir program book (in the movie, Nicky holds the microphone in her other hand); a shot of the final concert that I think is making its first appearance here; a larger crop of a shot that appeared in the Japanese program book, and which appeared in an even larger crop on a lobby card whose provenance I’m unsure of (part of the collection of Karen Dean (DefeatedandGifted); I’ve assumed they’re Australian, but I don’t know — they use the American logo but identify the distributor as EMI, not AFD); a shot whose last appearance was in the Japanese program book, and you know what, you can find its previous appearances listed in that post; the painting by Cummins that first appeared on the UK movie poster and on most of the European posters after; and a shot that previously appeared in the “Press Folder,” as a UK lobby card, and in Joepie No. 365.

Here’s the text, along with my feeble attempt at a translation. As always, I welcome any corrections.

NO SOMOS CRIMINALES… Y SI NOS TRATAN COMO TAL USAREMOS ANTIFAZ

NO NECESITAMOS ANTIDEPRESIVOS
QUEREMOS AMOR

NO SOMOS INOCENTES… NO SOMOS CULPABLES… SOMOS JOVENES

NO SOMOS GOLFAS… AYUDENOS A VIVIR

ORGANIZACION APOLO, S.A. Presenta a
ROBIN JOHNSON • TRINI ALVARADO • TIM CURRY en
Guerreras de Nueva York
Director ALAN MOYLE

Un Film de
Robert Stigwood

WE ARE NOT CRIMINALS … AND IF WE’RE TREATED THAT WAY WE’LL WEAR MASKS

WE DO NOT NEED ANTIDEPRESSANTS
WE WANT LOVE

WE ARE NOT INNOCENT … WE ARE NOT GUILTY … WE ARE YOUNG

WE ARE NOT WHORES … HELP US TO LIVE

APOLO ORGANIZATION, S.A. Presents
ROBIN JOHNSON • TRINI ALVARADO • TIM CURRY in
Warriors of New York
Director ALAN MOYLE

A Film by
Robert Stigwood

Further reading:

Film Review Vol 31 No 1
Italian lobby poster 2 of 2
Japanese promo flyer
Japanese souvenir program book, pp. 1-7
Japanese souvenir program book, pp. 12-13
Japanese souvenir program book, pp. 20-24
Movie poster, UK
Movie poster, Belgium
Movie poster, Italy
Movie poster, Spain
Movie poster, Yugoslavia

 

 

Guerreras de Nueva York
Mexico : poster : AAT ID: 300027221 : 42.2 x 55.9 cm : 1981 (work);
Times_Square_Movie_Poster_Mexico_1981_1080px.jpg
829 x 1080 px, 96 dpi, 553 kb (image)

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+

 

Robin and Trini “Bandphotos”, UK 1981

Posted on 18th June 2018 in "Times Square"

More recently-turned-up Times Square publicity from England. Exactly how these fit in with the rest of it, I’m not sure. I’m guessing they were relatively early UK publicity, since the photos still have the American numbers on them. Perhaps before their own publicity machine got going, EMI contracted with Alan Band to send out photos of the stars. So, maybe there’s a Tim Curry Bandphoto out there somewhere as well.

The photo of Robin is her out-of-costume headshot, the only one she or any of the cast got. We’ve previously seen the American version and another UK version distributed by ITC, one of the movie’s co-producing companies. Looking at them now, the US version has been shrunk to fit with the AFD caption at the bottom, while the ITC version looks like its caption stripe has been placed over top of this Bandphoto version. The Bandphoto caption has been severely edited from the one accompanying the other two, which read “Robin Johnson makes her motion picture acting and singing debut after being discovered by chance at her high school in Brooklyn for the co-starring role with Tim Curry and Trini Alvarado in ‘Times Square.'”

The photo of Trini in costume as Pammy is the one used on the US movie poster and the soundtrack album cover. It was included in the US Press Material folder and appeared in the AFD Campaign Pressbook. The Bandphoto caption, judging by the initials, was edited by Alan Band himself to be far more breathlessly exciting than the US caption had been (“Trini Alvarado, who made an impressive screen debut in Robert Altman’s “Rich Kids,” now is co-starred with Robin Johnson and portrays Pamela Pearl, troubled daughter of an ambitious politician, who becomes a runaway and a rebel against authority in “Times Square.”)

The blue Bandphoto stamps read:

MUST
RETURN

CREDIT
BANDPHOTO
ALAN BAND ASSOCIATES
25 LONGDOWN ROAD
FARNHAM, SURREY, ENGLAND

I’m surprised that this particular photo of Trini — this specific print — is maybe the only item I’ve found that’s showing any age-related image problems (the discoloration along her left cheek). Considering their age, all the Times Square items I’ve come across have held up remarkably well.

The previous posts mentioned above:

Robin Johnson’s Times Square Headshot, “TS-Spec.3”
Headshot, ITC version
Times Square Press Material folder (post 2 of 5)
AFD Campaign Pressbook (pages 1-4)

 

 

TS-Special/3
black-and-white photograph, AAT ID: 300128347
UK ; 22.9 x 20.1 cm. (work)
TS-Special 3 auto_1080px.jpg
1080 px (H) x 951 px (W), 96 dpi, 235 kb (image)

TS-Special 3 back_layers_1080px.jpg
1080 px (H) x 953 px (W), 96 dpi, 211 kb (image)

TS-11-25/5
black-and-white photograph, AAT ID: 300128347
UK ; 23.2 x 20.2 cm. (work)
TS-11-24-5 Trini headshot UK_auto_layers_1080px.jpg
1080 px (H) x 940 px (W), 96 dpi, 329 kb (image)

TS-11-24-5 Trini headshot UK_back_manual_layers_1080px.jpg
1080 px (H) x 940 px (W), 96 dpi, 257 kb (image)

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+

 

Times Square Program Book, Japan, June 1981, pages 12-13 (post 5 of 5)

Posted on 7th April 2018 in "Times Square"

1981 Japanese program book for TIMES SQUARE (1980), center spread (pp. 12-13)

The center two pages of the Japanese souvenir book feature, alongside a somewhat out of place Yankees logo, three beautifully reproduced photos.

The first, of Pammy and Nicky atop the Times Square Theater marquee, isn’t a frame from the film, and I haven’t yet found it as a publicity still, so it would seem to be making its first and possibly only appearance here.

The inset of Nicky singing in the Cleo Club looks like it was taken just before or after this publicity still (discussed here). This will turn up again later on the Mexican movie poster.

And the last shot: in the film we don’t see see Nicky’s face and the knife on her wrist in the same shot. This photo would seem to have been taken between AFD publicity still TS-109-16/12, which appeared in the US Press Material pack in 1980, and TS-81/34 from 1981, which I don’t have, but Karen Dean (DefeatedandGifted) does, along with several other Items I haven’t got. (Actually I’m fairly certain I do have a version of TS-81/34, but not as an AFD print, but consarn it I can’t seem to find it.)

This last shot would also seem to be making its first and only appearance, and isn’t it beautiful? I don’t know if it comes across in my digitization, but something about the lighting and quality of the printing make it look almost like a painting.

Incidentally, I just noticed that TS-C-34/29 in Karen’s collection is the same photo as the one that accompanied the film review in Playboy Vol. 28 No. 1 from January 1981, which until this moment I thought had only ever appeared there. Now I suspect that the “C” that appears in some of the AFD press photo code numbers means that there’s also a color version somewhere.

I also came across a photo I’d gotten several years ago and totally overlooked while preparing items for this blog. I think it’s a rejected publicity photo, the only one of three shots taken within seconds of each other not to see the light of day… until next time.

 

Times Square program book, pp. 12-13
Japan : souvenir program : AAT ID: 300253341 : 29.4 x 20.5 cm. : 1981 (work);

Press Book Japan 1981_12-13_1080px.jpg
1080 x 1486 px, 96 dpi, 762 kb (image)

©1980 Butterfly Valley N. V.
 
Times Square©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+

 

Time Out No. 567, February 25, 1981

Posted on 14th August 2017 in "Times Square"

Time Out No. 567, February 25, 1981 -  Cover illustration of Robin Johnson by Su Huntley Time Out No. 567, February 25, 1981, p. 3 (contents)

“Of course Robert [Stigwood] wants to make money. Money is the bottom line. But I don’t think he is using me for that prime reason … I hope not, God.”

 

Robin made the cover of London’s Time Out, sort of, to illustrate their cover story, an in-depth analysis of the exploitation of young actors and actresses in Hollywood, and the rough lives of young runaways in the heart of London, the two parts being tied together with an interview with Robin herself. The cover and interior illustrations were by Su Huntley.

Time Out No. 567, February 25, 1981, p. 14  text:  Part I Suffer The Little Children Can adolescent innocence cure adult anxiety? Ian Birch and Fiona Ferguson watch Hollywood line up the pretty maids (and pubescent boys) all in a row. ILLUSTRATIONS BY SU HUNTLEY Since the late ’70s Hollywood has spawned a new type of baby boom. Between 1978 and 1980 over a dozen titles appeared which dealt specifically with early adolescence and its traditional problems. Pre-pubescent stars (you’re an OAP at 16) variously wrestled with pre-teen traumas. Youth, it seemed, was back, and younger than ever. Not that it ever went all that far away. The child star has been an integral part of cinema iconography since the start. Remember ‘The Girl’ in early Chaplin? Shirley Temple as the perennial orphan during the ’30s? Leslie Caron in ‘Gigi’ and Hayley Mills twinned in ‘The Parent Trap’? But why is there such a profusion of such youthful pictures now? In part, they relate to a general resurgence of interest in teenybop. The recession has forced the high street to look for new markets and they’ve chosen the new pocket money generation as a prime target. Sometimes the campaign works. Smash Hits, the rock fortnightly for ‘younger teens’ started in the autumn of ’78 by Nick Logan, rocketed from zero to an immediate circulation of 123,000. It’s now the market leader, ironically beating Logan’s former paper, New Musical Express. It is successful because it identifies exactly with its audience, giving them what they want in a witty and intelligent way. The same tactic has meant similar acclaim for TV’s ‘Grange Hill’—a look at acned life in a suburban comprehensive— and ‘Twentieth Century Box’—a documentary series with a prescient awareness of today’s teens. The fashion industry presents a more complicated picture. It, too, has discovered the commerciality of ‘pretty babies’. New names like Kristine Oulman (12), Cathleen Ess (13), Lena Reid (15) and Phoebe Cates (16) can earn anything from $750 to $1,500 per session, but the undisputed star is Brooke Shields who can command a $1 million contract for modelling Calvin Klein jeans. The difference here is that these child-women cater for their elders rather than their contemporaries. They sell clothes that their mums want to wear and there is an unnerving logic to the device. The gamine look has always been crucial to both fashion and movieland, but traditionally it has been evoked by more mature models. Instead of getting older people to synthesise the look, why not use the genuine article? More importantly, the appeal of these child-women resembles that of soft pom. Shields is always tastefully presented in her photos and films (and with extraordinary propriety, a 35-year-old stand-in played the nude sequences in ‘The Blue Lagoon’). But the knowledge that she is so young makes the fantasy she projects so much more intense and risque. The American TV ad for the Klein jeans exploits just this hybrid illicit tease and upmarket sophistication. Shields purrs: ‘Wanna know what comes between me and my jeans? Nothing.’ Shields personifies the style of this new, would-be adult. Sex is underscored by a lot of innocence and a lack of experience. Shaky talent is partially camouflaged by the publicity of controversy. The cool distance of an icon is offset by the cosy warmth of youth. Malcolm McLaren, rock music’s supreme manipulator, has taken this to its logical conclusion with his latest proteges, Bow Wow Wow, fronted by 14-year-old Annabella. By making the band’s image outrageously explicit, he keeps all his options open. On the one hand, he mocks hidden sex and disguised lechery and, on the other, makes a lot of money out of it. But the key to the current baby bonanza in the movies lies in the mid-’70s. Louis Malle’s ‘Pretty Baby’ and Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ made i overt use of two recognised child stars as 12-year-old prostitutes—Shields and Jodie Foster respectively. The furore created by showing children in unmistakably ‘corrupted’ roles contributed to the UK ‘Protection of Children Act’ becoming law in 1978. Designed to protect minors against exploitative labour, it also applies to finished work imported into this country. Under its auspices, ‘Taxi Driver’ was withdrawn after two years’ distribution and re-cut. The cumulative effect on movies was complex. Because the Act focussed attention on the commercial potential of micro-boppers, there was a spate of pre- teen pics. Because it reflected a growing conservatism within the media, it instigated a middle-aged backlash which frantically shied away from the previous ‘realism*. The themes of the new movies underline this again and again. Innocence and romance become the order of the day. In ‘A Little Romance’ a pair of 13-year-olds run away from Paris to Venice so that they can ‘kiss beneath the Bridge of Sighs at sunset as the bells of the Campanile toll’, and thus guarantee their eternal love. When two 12-year-olds get mildly drunk in ‘Rich Kids’, the extent of their transgression is an ingenuous romp in a bubble bath. This fairytale quality appears in home 14 TIME OUT 27 FEBRUARY 1981-5 MARCH 1981 Suffer the little children, part I (page 2), Time Out No. 567, February 25, 1981, p. 15  Text:  Cover Story   life. Siblings are unknown and parents are generally one-dimensional figures in the background. The rich kids are misunderstood because their parents are too busy and the poor kids are victims of social deprivation. Here worldly adults may kowtow to class distinctions, but children are as yet immune and choose their chums on an unaffected basis. Social opposites  attract rather than repel. In ‘Times Square’ Robin Johnson is the orphaned street punk while Trini Alvardo (also in ‘A Little Romance’) is the sheltered daughter of an ambitious politician. ‘My Bodyguard’ pairs wealthy hotelier’s son Chris Makepeace with Adam Baldwin, an alleged psychopath from the seedy end of town. Where sex does emerge, it’s embarrassed, confused and unreliable. When Kristy McNichol beats Tatum O’Neal in the race ‘to become a woman’ (‘Little Darlings’), we are treated to a shot of a lighted boathouse window where she and Matt Dillon (the male star most likely to) are dallying. ‘Womanhood’ only makes Kristy morose. She goes off Matt and can only regain her teenage appeal when she decides that sex is for adults and that Tatum is really her best ally. ‘The Blue Lagoon’ goes a few steps further with idiotic expositions of puberty (‘why are all these funny hairs growing on my face?’), masturbation (back view of boy on a rock, right arm jerking), copulation (legs intertwine, camera veers away) and birth (one small groan and a gleaming baby appears from somewhere off the bottom of the screen). The result of this idealising process is to push kids out of the picture altogether. By turning them into emblems—scapegoats, even, in some cases—the movies become vehicles for grown-ups to explore grown-up anxieties. Youth, they argue, has the candour and simplicity to cure adult cynicism and ambiguity. For instance, when faced with opposition, kids simply run away. The perils of New York’s 42nd Street in the early hours of the morning do not present a problem. The heroines of ‘Times Square’ simply dash about the sex shops and boogaloo with local pimps like it was an English country fair. The ‘realistic’ trappings are only present to set the scene which, in intention, is closer to Arcadia than Brooklyn. The extent of such fantasy also shows just how desperately parents need reassurance at the moment. As the period of childhood innocence seems to grow shorter with each successive generation, parents want to be convinced that, no matter what the outside temptations or opportunities, their little Adam or Eve is not going to bite the apple. And yet these parents are creating the situation just as much as they are trying to resolve it. As Sylvere Lotringer, a philosophy lecturer at Columbia University, told New York magazine recently: ‘The pretty babies are forbidden but they have already become cover girls. That’s what counts. The fact that they’re posing means they’re for sale. With the promotion of pretty babies as cover girls—which cannot occur without the active support of their parents—a new step is taken in the destruction of Western values, which are already shaky and obsolete in regard to the actual laws of the marketplace.’ The pre-teen pics are, effectively, a scream for help. They have to believe that innocence will shine through, that moral integrity must bring salvation. They’re pleading: ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’  'Nobody likes to think they’re being used’ One such child is Robin Johnson (age: 16, daily cigarette consumption: 70) whose fiery performance went some way to salvaging ‘Times Square’. Did you want to be an actress? I never seriously thought about acting. It never really crossed my mind. I was just going to school. I was a regular teenager. I would just hang out with my friends at Brooklyn Tech High School. I wanted to be a lawyer—my father is a compensation lawyer and that’s probably where I got the idea. My mother didn’t drag me around to auditions and I didn’t take drama at school. That’s why it’s a bit weird that it has all happened. I was in my sophomore year of high school (roughly equivalent to the fifth form) when this guy found me. He asked me ‘Are you 16?’ I looked at him—‘What the hell are you asking me this for? What do you want to know how old I am for?’ And that’s when he started telling me about the movie. Was the role that was offered to you very different from the one that actually turned up on the screen? No. I knew that Nicky was an incorrigible delinquent—a kind of outlandish character who doesn’t really have roots, someone who is always getting into trouble. Her character wasn’t changed. Was the final product very different from what had been originally intended? Were there many cuts? Didn’t you notice how quickly we changed our hair colour? The continuity is very jumpy. There’s one scene in particular: we are driving in the ambulance, and they play ‘I Need Love’, and the scene just cuts, and we are on a train and we have both got short red hair. They cut out scenes where they show us running out of a pharmacy in Manhattan. You obviously notice that Nicky has stolen something, and what she stole was henna. Pamela and Nicky then have this kind of ceremony. We are on the Jersey side of the Hudson river and we mix up this goo, put it in a hubcap and pour the gloppy stuff over our hair. It was very ceremonial you know. The lighting is very low, it’s very slow motion, very symbolic and over my head, but actually we were hysterical. Did you think that these symbolic devices were rather obscure? Like the TV- smashing campaign? The whole reason for us dropping TV sets off roofs is that Nicky wants what’s real. Nicky thinks that ‘real’ is the most exciting. That’s why she loves Times Square. It’s real seedy—it’s graunch you know—but it’s real, and Nicky thinks TV is plastic. But then that is never explained in the movie. It is cut rather badly. We refer to things later on in the movie that are cut out earlier. It is very confusing. When I first saw it I said people are definitely going to have to see this twice.  I had to see it twice and I made the damn thing.  Did the scenes that they cut have anything in common? Yeah. I think they mostly had weird kinda offbeat things in them. So they had to find a kind of medium: we can’t let it be too weird or it’s going to get too small an audience and maybe end up a cult like ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’. And we can’t be too commercial because then it’s going to be trash. Were you consulted at all about that? Oh no. Whatever goes on in the editing room we have nothing to do with. Were you pissed off about that? I was . . . When I first saw the movie it was with my immediate family and we were all a bit disjointed, a bit disoriented. I didn’t particularly like the film as a whole. I like the individual performances very much. I’m pleased with what I did. Trini is absolutely adorable and she’s gotten better with age.  Do you think the film works principally on a fairytale level or a realistic level, or both? I think all the kids watching the movie are going to realise that first of all the film skips over the practicalities of life. How do we eat? Who the hell wants to live in a pier anyway? I can’t worry about every single kid that is going to watch this film. I think that most are smart enough to realise that. . . look ... if they are going to try and run away, they are going to be back home in time for dinner. Where am I going to sleep? How am I gonna eat? I haven’t got my soft warm bed, I don’t have dinner which my mummy cooks for me.  Don’t you think that the film is absurdly romantic? To set it in Times Square and never mention drugs! About the drugs: Nicky, you figure, is definitely the type that’ll at least light up a joint. But see, a scene is cut when we are driving in the ambulance. Nicky steals some carroteen pills from the hospital and she says ‘Here, take some of these.’ And Pamela is thinking ‘What the fuck is she giving me?’ But she takes them and Nicky takes them. Then Nicky says ‘Oh don’t worry, they’re not drugs, not speed, especially not speed. I hate speed, my mother ODed.. It’s interesting that the film is bookended with a couple of black guys who’ve obviously ODed on something. We are just trying to show some of the life on the street around there. There were a lot of junkies, a lot of hookers, life is so crime-ridden. Like the subways, it’s the easiest place to get mugged. Over the last couple of years there has been an upsurge of pre-teen stars like Brooke Shields . . . God I hate her. She’s so boring. Do you feel you are being manipulated on account of your youth? Of course nobody likes to think they are being used by anybody. See, Robert (Stigwood) seems to be very interested in the kind of image I give off, but it’s not that kind of teenage image. He’s given me a great contract and flattering offers that aren’t heard of much now. I’m going to do two more films. The first is a sequel to ‘Grease’ with Andy Gibb. Of course Robert wants to make money. Money is the bottom line. But I don’t think he is using me for that prime reason ... I hope not, God.  Filmography   ‘Taxi Driver’ (X) directed by Martin Scorsese with Jodie Foster, 1976. ‘Pretty Baby’ (X) directed by Louis Malle with Brooke Shields, 1977. ‘Ice Castles’ (A) directed by Donald Wrye with Lynn-Holly Johnson and Robby Benson, 1978. ‘Tilt’ (A) directed by Rudy Durand with Brooke Shields, 1978. ‘Rich Kids’ (AA) directed by Robert M Young with Trini Alvarado and Jeremy Levy, 1979. ‘A Little Romance’ (A) directed by George Roy Hill with Diane Lane and Thelonious Bernard, 1979. ‘Cattle Annie and Little Britches’ (A) directed by Lamont Johnson with Diane Lane and Amanda Plummer, 1980. ‘Little Darlings’ (AA) directed by Ronald F Maxwell with Tatum O’Neal, Kristy McNichol and Matt Dillon, 1980. ‘The Blue Lagoon’ (AA) directed by Randal Kleiser with Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins, 1980. ‘Times Square. (AA) directed by Alan Moyle with Robin Johnson and Trini Alvarado, 1980. ‘My Bodyguard’ (A) directed by Tony Bill with Matt Dillon, Chris Makepeace and Adam Baldwin, 1980.  TIMEOUT 15

Part I of “Suffer the Little Children,” by Ian Birch and Fiona Ferguson, deals with the sexualization and exploitation of a then-new generation of young actors, with a brief passage regarding Times Square that doesn’t really seem to fit the theme. This is followed by an interview with Robin, in which she details many things she finds problematic with the film, the future of her three-picture deal with Robert Stigwood, and the offhand concern, astounding in hindsight, that produced the quote I’ve put at the top of this post.

Hilary Shore, "Suffer the little children part II", Time Out No. 567, February 25, 1981, p. 16  Text:  Part II Suffer The Little Children  Film fantasies draw the young to the bright lights of the capital, where they find . . . nothing much . No work, no housing, and precious little official aid. Hilary Shore investigates survival at street level for the kids who go sleaze in London. Go where there is work, said Mrs T brightly Flopped on a bed in a Clerkenwell hostel was a girl of five foot nothing with a cough that filled the room. She said she was 16 and she liked to be called Nipper. In May 1980 she left her Stockport school with an average absence of qualifications and the dream of a career. By which she meant a job in an office. Filing. By December, she had held three jobs, for a few weeks each. The final one paid £35 for a 37 hour week. Her Dad said get a job or get out. Anxious that staying on might mean another parental separation, Nipper, always close to her Mum, saw no choice but to leave. And visiting home was her sister, 18, call her Alison. Alison left home two years ago in similar circumstances, Nipper would stay in her London flat. There are seven children in the family. But you expected that. Alison and Nipper would hitch to London, they would have a great time, Nipper would sign on, find a job. After all, there are lots of offices in London—in between the pubs and shops, the clubs and Georgian terraces. Arriving in the late afternoon, her sister took her straight to meet her friends, to the West End. They stayed on and on, and actually there was no flat; there was nowhere to stay. Alison was on the circuit. Roaming the streets Of Piccadilly, sheltering in the fast-food cafes around Leicester Square, drinking with the others who roam, drifting on nameless drugs which are freely shared. Just mixing in an image for the moviemakers, a sob story for the newspapers, a platform for the politicians, inspiration for the songwriters, cases for the police.Part II of “Suffer the Little Children” by Hilary Shore uses the album cover from the Times Square soundtrack in its Su Huntley illustration, but it really has nothing to do with the movie. It initially asserts “Film fantasies draw the young to the bright lights of the capital, where they find . . . nothing much . No work, no housing, and precious little official aid. Hilary Shore investigates survival at street level for the kids who go sleaze in London,” and has as a section header “Go sleaze in Times Square, said the poster in Piccadilly,” but it does very little to support the idea that kids got the idea to run to London from the movies in general and Times Square in particular. It is a sad look at the real lives of homeless runaway teens in 1980s London, but the Times Square connection is a bit of editorial sleight-of-hand.

Therefore, I am presenting here first the Robin Johnson interview, whose first line follows directly from the last line of “Suffer the Little Children Part I,” which I will reproduce immediately below it. I’m not going to post the text of “Part II” unless there’s a huge outcry for it, which there won’t be.

Photo illustrating Suffer the little children, part I (page 2), Time Out No. 567, February 25, 1981, p. 15  ‘Times Square. (AA) directed by Alan Moyle with Robin Johnson and Trini Alvarado, 1980.

‘Nobody likes to think they’re being used’

One such child is Robin Johnson (age: 16, daily cigarette consumption: 70) whose fiery performance went some way to salvaging ‘Times Square’.

Did you want to be an actress?

I never seriously thought about acting. It never really crossed my mind. I was just going to school. I was a regular teenager. I would just hang out with my friends at Brooklyn Tech High School.

I wanted to be a lawyer—my father is a compensation lawyer and that’s probably where I got the idea. My mother didn’t drag me around to auditions and I didn’t take drama at school. That’s why it’s a bit weird that it has all happened. I was in my sophomore year of high school (roughly equivalent to the fifth form) when this guy found me. He asked me ‘Are you 16?’ I looked at him—‘What the hell are you asking me this for? What do you want to know how old I am for?’ And that’s when he started telling me about the movie.

Was the role that was offered to you very different from the one that actually turned up on the screen?

No. I knew that Nicky was an incorrigible delinquent—a kind of outlandish character who doesn’t really have roots, someone who is always getting into trouble. Her character wasn’t changed.

Was the final product very different from what had been originally intended? Were there many cuts?

Didn’t you notice how quickly we changed our hair colour? The continuity is very jumpy. There’s one scene in particular: we are driving in the ambulance, and they play ‘I Need Love’, and the scene just cuts, and we are on a train and we have both got short red hair. They cut out scenes where they show us running out of a pharmacy in Manhattan. You obviously notice that Nicky has stolen something, and what she stole was henna.

Pamela and Nicky then have this kind of ceremony. We are on the Jersey side of the Hudson river and we mix up this goo, put it in a hubcap and pour the gloppy stuff over our hair. It was very ceremonial you know. The lighting is very low, it’s very slow motion, very symbolic and over my head, but actually we were hysterical.

Did you think that these symbolic devices were rather obscure? Like the TV- smashing campaign?

The whole reason for us dropping TV sets off roofs is that Nicky wants what’s real. Nicky thinks that ‘real’ is the most exciting. That’s why she loves Times Square. It’s real seedy—it’s graunch you know—but it’s real, and Nicky thinks TV is plastic. But then that is never explained in the movie.

It is cut rather badly. We refer to things later on in the movie that are cut out earlier. It is very confusing. When I first saw it I said people are definitely going to have to see this twice. I had to see it twice and I made the damn thing.

Did the scenes that they cut have anything in common?

Yeah. I think they mostly had weird kinda offbeat things in them. So they had to find a kind of medium: we can’t let it be too weird or it’s going to get too small an audience and maybe end up a cult like ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’. And we can’t be too commercial because then it’s going to be trash.

Were you consulted at all about that?

Oh no. Whatever goes on in the editing room we have nothing to do with.

Were you pissed off about that?

I was . . . When I first saw the movie it was with my immediate family and we were all a bit disjointed, a bit disoriented. I didn’t particularly like the film as a whole. I like the individual performances very much. I’m pleased with what I did. Trini is absolutely adorable and she’s gotten better with age.

Do you think the film works principally on a fairytale level or a realistic level, or both?

I think all the kids watching the movie are going to realise that first of all the film skips over the practicalities of life. How do we eat? Who the hell wants to live in a pier anyway? I can’t worry about every single kid that is going to watch this film. I think that most are smart enough to realise that. . . look … if they are going to try and run away, they are going to be back home in time for dinner. Where am I going to sleep? How am I gonna eat? I haven’t got my soft warm bed, I don’t have dinner which my mummy cooks for me.

Don’t you think that the film is absurdly romantic? To set it in Times Square and never mention drugs!

About the drugs: Nicky, you figure, is definitely the type that’ll at least light up a joint. But see, a scene is cut when we are driving in the ambulance. Nicky steals some carroteen pills from the hospital and she says ‘Here, take some of these.’ And Pamela is thinking ‘What the fuck is she giving me?’ But she takes them and Nicky takes them. Then Nicky says ‘Oh don’t worry, they’re not drugs, not speed, especially not speed. I hate speed, my mother ODed..

It’s interesting that the film is bookended with a couple of black guys who’ve obviously ODed on something.

We are just trying to show some of the life on the street around there. There were a lot of junkies, a lot of hookers, life is so crime-ridden. Like the subways, it’s the easiest place to get mugged.

Over the last couple of years there has been an upsurge of pre-teen stars like Brooke Shields . . .

God I hate her. She’s so boring.

Do you feel you are being manipulated on account of your youth?

Of course nobody likes to think they are being used by anybody. See, Robert (Stigwood) seems to be very interested in the kind of image I give off, but it’s not that kind of teenage image. He’s given me a great contract and flattering offers that aren’t heard of much now. I’m going to do two more films. The first is a sequel to ‘Grease’ with Andy Gibb. Of course Robert wants to make money. Money is the bottom line. But I don’t think he is using me for that prime reason … I hope not, God.

Part I

Suffer The Little Children

Can adolescent innocence cure adult anxiety? Ian Birch and Fiona Ferguson watch Hollywood line up the pretty maids (and pubescent boys) all in a row.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SU HUNTLEY

Since the late ’70s Hollywood has spawned a new type of baby boom.

Between 1978 and 1980 over a dozen titles appeared which dealt specifically with early adolescence and its traditional problems. Pre-pubescent stars (you’re an OAP at 16) variously wrestled with pre-teen traumas. Youth, it seemed, was back, and younger than ever.

Not that it ever went all that far away. The child star has been an integral part of cinema iconography since the start. Remember ‘The Girl’ in early Chaplin? Shirley Temple as the perennial orphan during the ’30s? Leslie Caron in ‘Gigi’ and Hayley Mills twinned in ‘The Parent Trap’? But why is there such a profusion of such youthful pictures now?

In part, they relate to a general resurgence of interest in teenybop. The recession has forced the high street to look for new markets and they’ve chosen the new pocket money generation as a prime target.

Sometimes the campaign works. Smash Hits, the rock fortnightly for ‘younger teens’ started in the autumn of ’78 by Nick Logan, rocketed from zero to an immediate circulation of 123,000. It’s now the market leader, ironically beating Logan’s former paper, New Musical Express. It is successful because it identifies exactly with its audience, giving them what they want in a witty and intelligent way.

The same tactic has meant similar acclaim for TV’s ‘Grange Hill’—a look at acned life in a suburban comprehensive— and ‘Twentieth Century Box’—a documentary series with a prescient awareness of today’s teens.

The fashion industry presents a more complicated picture. It, too, has discovered the commerciality of ‘pretty babies’. New names like Kristine Oulman (12), Cathleen Ess (13), Lena Reid (15) and Phoebe Cates (16) can earn anything from $750 to $1,500 per session, but the undisputed star is Brooke Shields who can command a $1 million contract for modelling Calvin Klein jeans.

The difference here is that these child-women cater for their elders rather than their contemporaries. They sell clothes that their mums want to wear and there is an unnerving logic to the device. The gamine look has always been crucial to both fashion and movieland, but traditionally it has been evoked by more mature models. Instead of getting older people to synthesise the look, why not use the genuine article?

More importantly, the appeal of these child-women resembles that of soft pom. Shields is always tastefully presented in her photos and films (and with extraordinary propriety, a 35-year-old stand-in played the nude sequences in ‘The Blue Lagoon’). But the knowledge that she is so young makes the fantasy she projects so much more intense and risque.

The American TV ad for the Klein jeans exploits just this hybrid illicit tease and upmarket sophistication. Shields purrs: ‘Wanna know what comes between me and my jeans? Nothing.’

Shields personifies the style of this new, would-be adult. Sex is underscored by a lot of innocence and a lack of experience. Shaky talent is partially camouflaged by the publicity of controversy. The cool distance of an icon is offset by the cosy warmth of youth.

Malcolm McLaren, rock music’s supreme manipulator, has taken this to its logical conclusion with his latest proteges, Bow Wow Wow, fronted by 14-year-old Annabella. By making the band’s image outrageously explicit, he keeps all his options open. On the one hand, he mocks hidden sex and disguised lechery and, on the other, makes a lot of money out of it.

But the key to the current baby bonanza in the movies lies in the mid-’70s. Louis Malle’s ‘Pretty Baby’ and Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ made i overt use of two recognised child stars as 12-year-old prostitutes—Shields and Jodie Foster respectively.

The furore created by showing children in unmistakably ‘corrupted’ roles contributed to the UK ‘Protection of Children Act’ becoming law in 1978. Designed to protect minors against exploitative labour, it also applies to finished work imported into this country. Under its auspices, ‘Taxi Driver’ was withdrawn after two years’ distribution and re-cut.

The cumulative effect on movies was complex. Because the Act focussed attention on the commercial potential of micro-boppers, there was a spate of pre- teen pics. Because it reflected a growing conservatism within the media, it instigated a middle-aged backlash which frantically shied away from the previous ‘realism’.

The themes of the new movies underline this again and again. Innocence and romance become the order of the day. In ‘A Little Romance’ a pair of 13-year-olds run away from Paris to Venice so that they can ‘kiss beneath the Bridge of Sighs at sunset as the bells of the Campanile toll’, and thus guarantee their eternal love. When two 12-year-olds get mildly drunk in ‘Rich Kids’, the extent of their transgression is an ingenuous romp in a bubble bath.

This fairytale quality appears in home life. Siblings are unknown and parents are generally one-dimensional figures in the background. The rich kids are misunderstood because their parents are too busy and the poor kids are victims of social deprivation.

Here worldly adults may kowtow to class distinctions, but children are as yet immune and choose their chums on an unaffected basis. Social opposites attract rather than repel. In ‘Times Square’ Robin Johnson is the orphaned street punk while Trini Alvardo (also in ‘A Little Romance’) is the sheltered daughter of an ambitious politician. ‘My Bodyguard’ pairs wealthy hotelier’s son Chris Makepeace with Adam Baldwin, an alleged psychopath from the seedy end of town.

Where sex does emerge, it’s embarrassed, confused and unreliable. When Kristy McNichol beats Tatum O’Neal in the race ‘to become a woman’ (‘Little Darlings’), we are treated to a shot of a lighted boathouse window where she and Matt Dillon (the male star most likely to) are dallying.

‘Womanhood’ only makes Kristy morose. She goes off Matt and can only regain her teenage appeal when she decides that sex is for adults and that Tatum is really her best ally.

‘The Blue Lagoon’ goes a few steps further with idiotic expositions of puberty (‘why are all these funny hairs growing on my face?’), masturbation (back view of boy on a rock, right arm jerking), copulation (legs intertwine, camera veers away) and birth (one small groan and a gleaming baby appears from somewhere off the bottom of the screen).

The result of this idealising process is to push kids out of the picture altogether. By turning them into emblems—scapegoats, even, in some cases—the movies become vehicles for grown-ups to explore grown-up anxieties. Youth, they argue, has the candour and simplicity to cure adult cynicism and ambiguity.

For instance, when faced with opposition, kids simply run away. The perils of New York’s 42nd Street in the early hours of the morning do not present a problem. The heroines of ‘Times Square’ simply dash about the sex shops and boogaloo with local pimps like it was an English country fair. The ‘realistic’ trappings are only present to set the scene which, in intention, is closer to Arcadia than Brooklyn.

The extent of such fantasy also shows just how desperately parents need reassurance at the moment. As the period of childhood innocence seems to grow shorter with each successive generation, parents want to be convinced that, no matter what the outside temptations or opportunities, their little Adam or Eve is not going to bite the apple.

And yet these parents are creating the situation just as much as they are trying to resolve it. As Sylvere Lotringer, a philosophy lecturer at Columbia University, told New York magazine recently: ‘The pretty babies are forbidden but they have already become cover girls. That’s what counts. The fact that they’re posing means they’re for sale. With the promotion of pretty babies as cover girls—which cannot occur without the active support of their parents—a new step is taken in the destruction of Western values, which are already shaky and obsolete in regard to the actual laws of the marketplace.’

The pre-teen pics are, effectively, a scream for help. They have to believe that innocence will shine through, that moral integrity must bring salvation. They’re pleading: ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’

For all of Robin’s offhanded concern that she was being exploited by Stigwood… she was the one cast member who was sent around the world to promote the film. In hindsight it certainly seems that she was actually there to promote herself as a bankable star property and to push her next two Stigwood-backed movies, Times Square already being a lost cause at that point. However, she was so consistently brutally honest in giving her opinions of how bad Times Square turned out and exactly what was wrong with it… I wonder, is it possible that Stigwood decided she was too much of a liability, since she was just as likely as not to trash the product she was supposed to be selling, and that was why those next two projects never happened?

 

 


Time Out No. 567, February 25, 1981 (magazine (periodical), AAT ID: 300215389) ; 28 x 21.25 cm; (contains:)
Birch, Ian and Ferguson, Fiona, Suffer the little children part I (article, AAT ID: 300048715), pp. 14-15
‘Nobody likes to think they’re being used’ [interview with Robin Johnson] (interview, AAT ID: 300026392), p. 15
Shore, Hilary, Suffer the little children part II (article, AAT ID: 300048715), pp. 16-17 (work)
Time Out No 567 Feb 25 1981 p1_1080px.jpg
1080 x 815 px, 96 dpi, 754 kb
Time Out No 567 Feb 25 1981 p3_layers_1080px.jpg
1080 x 814 px, 96 dpi, 563 kb
Time Out No 567 Feb 25 1981 p3_detail_800px.jpg
596 x 800 px, 96 dpi, 273 kb
Time Out No 567 Feb 25 1981 p14_1080px.jpg
1080 x 814 px, 96 dpi, 534 kb
Time Out No 567 Feb 25 1981 p15_1080px.jpg
1080 x 810 px, 96 dpi, 619 kb
Time Out No 567 Feb 25 1981 p16_1080px.jpg
1080 x 802 px, 96 dpi, 558 kb
Time Out No 567 Feb 25 1981 p15_image_800px.jpg
719 x 800 px, 96 dpi, 406 kb (images)

©1981 Time Out Limited


 

Headshot, ITC version

Posted on 8th September 2016 in "Times Square"

Inscription:  TIMES SQUARE  4  Robin Johnson makes her motion picture acting and singing debut after being discovered by chance at her high school in Brooklyn for the co-starring role with Tim Curry and Trini Alvarado in "Times Square."  ITC ENTERTAINMENT  AN acc COMPANY  Permission is hereby granted to newspapers and other periodicals to reproduce this photograph for publicity or advertising except for the endorsement of products. This must not be sold leased or given away  Printed in USA

Associated Film Distribution, which released Times Square in the US, was a partnership between Thorn-EMI (which released Times Square in the UK and most of the rest of the world), and ITC, which was primarily a producer of television in the UK. By the time Times Square came out, AFD was already struggling from the failures of Can’t Stop the Music and Raise the Titanic! earlier that summer, and even as Times Square hit theaters and Robin was traveling the world promoting it, EMI and ITC were already working to dissolve AFD and sell its films to Universal. As far as I know, Universal still owns the theatrical performance rights, as well as the only pristine print and the negative to Times Square (which was not destroyed in the 2008 Universal Studios fire as had been reported), although through the vagaries of multiple rights and companies rising and falling, all other rights in the property (not counting the soundtrack album) are held by StudioCanal.

Anyway, a few publicity stills were released in the UK with ITC credited as the producer, and this is one. It’s TS-Spec.3, cropped a little closer, and with the caption printed directly on it rather than included as a separate slip of paper. Interestingly, it was “Printed in USA.” Even more interestingly, there’s a little number “4” before the caption, implying there are at least three more ITC-variant photos. I know of at least one other that I don’t have. Less interestingly, it, like this one, is a duplicate of an American publicity photo we’ve already seen.

 

 

[Robin Johnson head shot, ITC variant]
black-and-white photograph, AAT ID: 300128347, 7.75 in (W) x 10 in (H) (work);
1080 px (H) x 852 px (W), 96 dpi, 364 kb (image)

1981
inscription:
(on border)
TIMES SQUARE
4
Robin Johnson makes her motion picture acting and singing debut after being discovered by
chance at her high school in Brooklyn for the co-starring role with Tim Curry and Trini
Alvarado in “Times Square.”
ITC ENTERTAINMENT
AN acc COMPANY
Permission is hereby granted to newspapers and other periodicals to reproduce this photograph
for publicity or advertising except for the endorsement of products. This must not be sold
leased or given away
Printed in USA

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+

 

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AFD Campaign Pressbook (pages 1-4)

Posted on 25th July 2015 in "Times Square"
“Newcomer Robin Johnson is a revelation as Nicky…”

 

The Campaign Pressbook from Associated Film Distribution was a promotional tool for theater owners. The first part repeated almost verbatim the biographical articles from the Press Materials folder, but supplied them in a format with illustrations that could be sent directly to a newspaper and printed. For instance, the article on Robin is the same as the one in the press kit, but the paragraphs dealing with her birthday, her home life, and her “whatever” attitude toward an acting career have been removed, and a line added for the theater owner to insert the theater name and the date Times Square opens. All of the photos in the Pressbook are ones included with the press kit.

The cover is a variation of the poster, with the elements moved to fill a 600-line newspaper ad space (four columns by 150 lines). (Most of the Pressbook, in fact, consists of pages of variously-sized ads based on the poster, all ready to be cut out and sent to your local paper with your theater’s name added in the blank space provided.)

The “Synopsis” on pages 1 and 2 is an edited version of what was given in the press kit. The accompanying photo is cropped from TS-82-30.

“‘Times Square Opens _____ at the _____ Theatre” is an edited version of the “Photo Captions – General Information” sheet from the press kit, accompanied by press photo TS-72-8A/14.

Trini’s bio is word-for-word from the press kit, illustrated with her headshot TS-11-24/5. Robin’s bio starts on page 3, and concludes on page 4 with her headshot TS-57-26/1. The Tim Curry bio has a cropped version of TS-66-28/8, and the Alan Moyle article is accompanied by TS-78-2/16, the action shot of Peter Coffield and Tim Curry.

The article at the end of page 4 is a new, punched-up synopsis intended to get you, the theater owner, excited about the fantastic promotional gimmicks on the pages to follow:

TIMES SQUARE INTRODUCTION

Nicky Marotta is tough…funny…funky… talented. At sixteen, she’s been put away and put down often enough to last a lifetime. She roams Times Square with a hot-wired guitar and a portable amp, making music and trouble.

But Nicky may be off the street for awhile. She bashed the car of an arrogant club owner with a crowbar — and now she’s in the hospital, under observation.

Pamela Pearl is the daughter of a civic do-gooder who has sworn to clean up Times Square. She is scared…shy…delicately pretty. In a recent letter to an all-night deejay, she described herself as a “zombie.”

She is in the same hospital — taking the same tests — as Nicky.

That’s the start of a beautiful friendship that leads to a wild escape in a stolen ambulance…a crumbling Hudson River pier…and back to the neon night world of Times Square where Pammy and Nicky take on a new identity.

As the incredible Sleaze Sisters.

With half the city searching for them, and the other half cheering for them to stay lost, only one person knows where the teenagers will turn up next — or what they’ll do. He is dee jay Johnny LaGuardia, the Diogenes of the all-night broadcasting.

And he isn’t telling…

Set to the beat of today’s most popular music, TIMES SQUARE is bold…colorful…exciting…imaginative entertainment from Robert Stigwood, whose hold on the youth market is now established with hits like “Grease,” “Saturday Night Fever” and “Tommy.”

Tim Curry (Dr. Frankenfurter in the cult classic, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show) is Johnny LaGuardia, perched in a soundproof skyscraper studio above Times Square, turning urban sprawl into poetry.

Newcomer Robin Johnson is a revelation as Nicky, teaching her new-found friend the ropes of roughing it and toughing it on 42nd Street. She’s also a dynamite singer, whose rendition of “Damn Dog” becomes a rallying cry for a million kids — in the movie — and is poised to zoom to the top of the charts in reality.

Trini Alvarado brings a cameo beauty and disarming appeal to the role of “Pammy,” who finds the courage to defy her uptight father — and his upright principles — by dancing in a Times Square nightery. She does it for friendship..for Sleaze Sister Nicky… and that’s all that matters.

Whether they’re creating a road hazard as windshield washing vagrants …developing a new teen-age fad, the rag-tag “look”… coming down on television…or coming up with kooky ideas to enlighten a city…the teamwork is terrific.

And the finale, atop a 42nd Street theatre marquee — where a swarm of chanting kids have gathered to hear the Sleaze Sisters play their spectacular swan song — is the best thing of its kind since “Meet John Doe.”

Kids will soon start picking up the Sleaze Sisters’ slogans (like “No sense makes sense”), their outrageous fashions and their music. But you can help that excitement get rolling by taking advantage of some sensational promotional opportunities.

Here’s what we mean….

 

 

AFD. “Times Square” Campaign Pressbook. Los Angeles: Associated Film Distribution, 1980, pp. 1-4;
black and white, 14.75 in (H) x 10.5 in (W), 20 pp (work)

 

Times Square ©1980 StudioCanal/Canal+