It obviously dates me to say this but I immediately said to myself “Peter Max” as I stepped on this IRT northbound train this morning.
Taken on the set of From Here to Eternity, sometime in late ’52 or early ’53. All three were either peaking or close to peaking and didn’t know it. Marlon Brando’s last great film of his youth (Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront) would begin shooting later that year and then downhill for nearly 20 years before The Godfather. Fred Zinneman had just directed High Noon and would enjoy a fruitful career into the early ’80s, but he never again crested as highly as this moment. Montgomery Clift was already beginning to sink into alcoholic self-destruction and would never again land as good a role as Robert E. Lee Prewitt.
What’s wrong with sitting on steps? Isn’t that what they’re partly for?
