The Plaza Goes to the Movies

Very few celluloid legends can boast a filmography as impressive as the Plaza Hotel's. With more than fifty films and counting to its credit, the world-renowned Plaza has been holding court at the corner of Fifty-Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, dominating the entrance to New York City's Central Park since 1907. While other movie divas suffer a mid-life crisis during their forties and indulge in cosmetic surgery, at ninety-nine years young, the landmark hotel will go under the scalpel for a facelift this year for the first time.

Purchased by Manhattan developer Elad Properties for $675 million, the luxury lodging closed its doors for the first time in 98 years on April 30, 2005, and is slated to have 152 private residences added to 282 pre-existing hotel suites. The renovations, with a price tag of $350 million, will push Elad's total cost to more than one billion dollars by the time it re-opens sometime next year.

The Plaza possesses the three most sought-after attributes in the real estate business: "location, location, location." And it further boasted the sleight-of-hand of architect Henry Hardenbergh, whose previous works included the Waldorf-Astoria (a silver-screen presence in The Out-of-Towners and Alfie, among other films) and the Dakota Apartments (outside which John Lennon was fatally shot in 1980). Attracting royalty, celebrities and tourists alike, the Plaza has captured the imagination of filmmakers [Alfred Hitchcock...], playwrights [Neil Simon], and even children's book authors [Kay Thompson, who set her title character, Eloise, living at the hotel].

Through the visual or semiotic language of film, a scene's setting or location can become as vital to the narrative as the dialogue or the actors. By lending historical perspective, defining mood and establishing the audience's bearings, locations themselves become anchors and characters in a film. Filmmakers have often cast The Plaza as their symbol of prestige, wealth, status and, on occasion, hedonistic overindulgence.

The Plaza landed its first major movie role in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest. Although it had been onscreen for fleeting cameos as far back as 1919, this was the first time an entire film's cast and crew assembled at the fabled lodge - and it would not be the last. Hitchcock was notorious for using historic landmarks to punctuate a climactic or suspenseful scene. The Plaza's major debut came in the opening sequence of the thriller, when Cary Grant is kidnapped out of the Oak Room, the Plaza's main eatery.

In Hollywood's tried-and-true "fish out of water" scenario, the Plaza has played the role of foil, or unfamiliar situate, to a "T." In Universal International's Ma and Pa Kettle series in the 1950's, helmer Charles Lamont utilized the hotel's elegance as contrast to the Kettles' own hillbilly lack of refinement.

In a similar vein, 1986's Crocodile Dundee used the Plaza to underscore the character of rough-and-tumble Mick Dundee (Paul Hogan) as the bush-savvy Australian attempts to bond with the suave and sophisticated staff and clientele of the hotel. Dundee's many faux pas included shaking the bellhop's hand when the latter clearly expected a tip, washing his socks while in the tub, and wondering why there are two "dunnies" in the bathroom (one clearly is a bidet).

In movies like 1981's Arthur and 1974's The Great Gatsby, the perceived affluence of the hotel offers the filmmakers the ultimate backdrop to showcase the characters' profligate excesses.

While the Plaza has provided an effective canvas for moviemakers to showcase a character's hubris and self-indulgence, it has also served movies as the proverbial brass ring for which to strive. In the 1994 romantic comedy It Could Happen to You, hard-luck cop Nic Cage and minimum-wage waitress Bridget Fonda find happiness, love and The Plaza Hotel - but only after hitting the lottery.

In contrast, John Schlesinger's bleak urban drama, Midnight Cowboy (1969), has Jon Voight's street-hustling cowboy arriving in the Big Apple with aspirations of living the easy life but, in his reception as nothing more than a country bumpkin, sees the opulent world he seeks shut out to him. In an extremely poignant scene, Voight's Joe Buck wanders Manhattan's 5th Avenue, passing the glamorous Tiffany's, Bergdorf Goodman's and Plaza Hotel, and is met only by indifference from the doorman and the workers he encounters.

Protagonists in 1990's Joe Versus the Volcano and 1992's Scent of a Woman, aware of their own mortality, seek out the finer things in life to fill their final days. In the lighthearted Joe, "everyman" Tom Hanks asks his driver what accommodations he would choose if he had only weeks to live. The scene then cuts to a jubilant Hanks running up the 59th Street entrance of the Plaza.

The more somber Scent of a Woman features Al Pacino as the cantankerous Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade. Bitter at the hand life has dealt him, the fiery Slade decides to end his own life, but chooses to first spend a week in New York with his chaperone, consuming the best life has to offer. This includes a ride through town in a red convertible Ferrari, smoking a Monte Cristo cigar, and for his last meal, dining in that Oak Room Hitchcock discovered those many years prior.

In 1968, New York-born playwright Neil Simon set his new play entirely at the iconic landmark. Plaza Suite presents three vignettes that take place in the same hotel suite. Screen legend George C. Scott played the lead in all three stories; in the 1971 film version, Walter Matthau stood in for Scott. The Simon-penned Barefoot in the Park (1967) also had scenes shot on Plaza premises.

Abel Ferrara's 1990 violent crime drama King of New York begins with ruthless drug kingpin Frank White (Christopher Walken) being released from prison. With his newly found freedom and the entire city at his fingertips, Frank, "The King," of course chooses the Plaza as his new residence. In a visually stunning scene, Walken's character stands at the window of his luxury suite, with the city reflected in the glass; Walken's face is superimposed over his domain, surveying the city he once again owns.

If little girls everywhere love the Plaza for Eloise, it was a little boy who rekindled the public's adoration of the hotel and introduced a whole new generation to the cherished icon. In 1992's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Macaulay Culkin reprised his role as the loveable, misplaced but wily Kevin McCallister. The sequel was a runaway hit and sent children everywhere begging their parents for a night at the Plaza.

In one of the film's more memorable scenes, Kevin must elude the hotel staff by sliding through the Plaza's lobby into a waiting elevator. To make the scene logistically possible, the film crew had to remove the wall-to-wall carpeting, exposing the original tiles. When then-owner Donald Trump saw the beautiful mosaics, he instantly fell in love with the look and insisted it remain that way after filming, which it did until last year's renovations began.

As much as the Plaza has enjoyed being part of the moviemaking process, the relationship has always been a symbiotic one, and the movie stars themselves have taken pleasure in all the hotel's amenities. From weddings and black tie receptions to press conferences and even just the plain old vacation, celebrities have always been drawn to the Plaza as their preferred stomping ground. Luminaries such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich have briefly lived at the hotel. After North by Northwest, Grant and Hitchcock became frequent lodgers at the inn. Soon after filming It Should Happen to You (1954) in the shadow of the hotel, Rat-Packer Peter Lawford married Patricia Kennedy in the Plaza's ballroom, and, of course, the Kennedy brothers Jack, Bobby and Teddy were all in attendance, serving as ushers.

Other notable nuptials: the short-lived Donald Trump and Marla Maples union, matrimonial celebrations of Eddie Murphy and Milton Berle, respectively, and the two-million-dollar Catherine Zeta-Jones/Michael Douglas wedding.

In one of the strangest press conferences on record, New Yorker Woody Allen used the Plaza's Terrace Room to declare his love to former adopted daughter and soon-to-be wife Soon Yi. The Plaza, however, is no stranger to the bizarre press gathering. In 1964, the Beatles gave their first American press conference, albeit a rowdy one, at the hotel's Baroque Room shortly after their riotous performance at the Ed Sullivan Theater. In 1968, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor promoted their latest film, Doctor Faustus, in a particularly peculiar press symposium: Although neither had left their suite for three days, they arrived at the junket - only an elevator ride away - clad in winter coats and hats.

It was Marilyn Monroe's 1956 press conference that goes down as the most memorable. Monroe, having recently been on hiatus from film to study acting in New York, invited the press to announce her "comeback" in The Prince and the Showgirl. Wrapped in a tight black velvet dress with thin straps, Monroe's ample cleavage was clearly the main attraction. As the night wore on, one of Monroe's tiny dress straps broke, and the bombshell's bosom nearly bounced out. Even after several repairs, the strap continued snapping, creating, forty years before its time, the first "wardrobe malfunction."

One of the Plaza's defining moments came in 1966, a year before the release of In Cold Blood: In true Truman Capote fashion, the eccentric scribe threw a now-legendary Black and White gala, inviting only the hippest and hottest, the coolest cliques and all of Hollywood's A-list. The party is still regarded as one of the best the hotel has ever witnessed.

Draped in scaffolding, the Plaza is charging its cinematic batteries, eagerly awaiting its next close-up.

The Plaza's Notable Film Appearances Include:

Prince of the City (1981

and many more