So This Is New York

New York Premiere

USA | 79 MINUTES | English |

SO THIS IS NEW YORK

Ironically, one of the first efforts by both Richard Fleischer (Dr. Dolittle, Soylent Green) and Stanley Kramer (High Noon, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) has never made it to the screen in the city for which it was named. But that hasn't stopped So This Is New York, based on a novel by Ring Lardner, from becoming a cult classic among filmmakers and cinema buffs who've caught it on late-night movie programs and classic film cable networks. This lighthearted take on the "country-come-to-town" theme is narrated by Ernie Finch (radio star Henry Morgan), whose wife's inheritance leaves her suddenly wealthy and demanding of more than their small-town Indiana life offers. She also wants to find a rich suitor for her sister, who is happily attached to a hard-working butcher before it's decided that a wealthy woman such as herself deserves a wealthy man. The travails this bumpkin trio encounter in the big city are made hilarious by the wordplay and innuendo of screenwriters Herbert Baker and Carl Foreman, the kind of verbal stylings that decades later would grace the work of such quintessential New York storytellers as Woody Allen, Nora Ephron, and Ed Burns. And the depictions of New York in the Roaring '20s -- with its crazy cab rides, colorful characters and unrelenting pace -- were as familiar to post-war audiences as they are today. Now those antics finally return home for the special big-screen New York premiere of a comedy that could only be about one city.