If you’ve read about John Cassevetes‘ Shadows (’59) you know he shot it twice — once in ’57 and again in ’59. The Wiki page says that “the second version is the one Cassavetes favored,” and it’s clearly stated that the new Criterion Bluray is offering the ’59 version. And yet a DVD Beaver screen capture shows a Times Square cityscape that was probably shot in April or May of ’57. How do we know this? Pic shows the 1957 Dean Martin dud Ten Thousand Bedrooms (which opened on April 3, 1957) on the marquee of what I presume to be the marquee of Leow’s State (B’way and 45th). Movies had longer runs back in the day but Bedrooms was generally regarded as a mediocre film and was “not a success” and therefore almost certainly was gone within three or four weeks. Notice also that The Ten Commandments wqs still playing at the Criterion after opening there on 10.5.56, or a good six months earlier.
