The New York of stickball, seedy movie theaters showing triple bills, serials and cartoons, the rickety Third Avenue El, and the Automat is long gone. But I vividly can recall all of these New York iconic institutions. Growing up in the immigrant Bronx in the late ’40s and early ’50s, I almost never went to restaurants, except the rare occasions when my father took me to the Automat in midtown Manhattan. (There were also Automats in Philadelphia, where it originated.)
The Automat is now the subject of a sweet, nostalgic documentary directed by Lisa Hurwitz.
A New York staple and tourist attraction for much of the 20th century, the last Automat closed in 1991. Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart founded it in 1902, and it became a success. The Automat was a mechanized cafeteria where you put nickels in a slot and out of a glass window magically came food like “piping hot” baked beans, macaroni and cheese, and apple pie. One never saw the workers who filled the slots with food. The film provides interviews with some of the surviving family members and Automat workers, and they all praise every aspect of the cafeteria.
But it’s the undesignated narrator, Mel Brooks, the irrepressible tummler he is, who takes over the film, offering a few too many anecdotes and even composing and singing a song about the Automat at its conclusion. The still bouncy nonagenarian remembers what a treat it was traveling there from Brooklyn as a boy and later, when writing for Sid Caesar, having that “perfect cup” of coffee that flowed out of a dolphin-headed spout. He also recalls the marble tables and the stained glass, and how beautifully it was all laid out.
Other celebrities like the late Bronx-born Colin Powell and Brooklyn’s late Ruth Bader Ginsburg expand on Brooks’ memories. Powell remembered the automat never discriminated racially, and served everybody from downtown business people to bums, and Ginsburg recalled that single working women found it a reasonable place to eat and safe place to be alone. The Automat was the great equalizer, a democratic restaurant that provided good food for everybody, and a warm place where somebody could sit a whole day over a nickel cup of coffee.
According to the documentary, the Automat’s workers were treated well and were very loyal. Though I was troubled that the owners were opposed to allowing a union to be organized, with the film merely passing over the Automat’s anti-union stance.
The Automat began to go downhill when the suburbs — aided by the building of the Interstate highway system — began to drain population from the cities. The Automats that survived in the city became home for more vagrants, and its atmosphere turned squalid. Fast food chains like Burger King and Arby’s, restaurants devoid of atmosphere and style, replaced the Automat.
As a documentary, “The Automat” can be repetitive and excessive in its praise of the restaurant chain. But it’s filled with warmth, and resurrects memories of an institution that helped define the city for more than a half a century.
“The Automat” opens February 18 at the Film Forum in New York City.
