Long Day’s Journey Into Night
In the winter of 1976 I took the 4-hour subway ride out to City Island from my apartment in Brooklyn. I was a Photography Major at Pratt Institute at the time and I went to City Island with my good friend and fellow-student, photographer Peter Bellamy (peterbellamyphoto.com). I was shooting with my 35mm Leica and Peter had his customary 4x5. While we were there making photographs, Peter pointed out an old house that he told me had been the set for the 1962 movie, Long Day’s Journey Into Night starring Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell. I got the crazy notion to return with a 2-1/4 Bronica (a loaner from Pratt) to photograph the house and, if possible, the interiors. To gain access to the interior of the house, I was able to open the very window that Jason Robards opens in the film. While exploring the eerily quiet house with my camera on a sunny but cold, New York winter’s day, I realized that the house was actually inhabited by individuals I was fortunate not to meet. I still wake up at night with a jolt when I think of how lucky I was to have hours all to myself in there, working alone — excited beyond belief. I’ve included some stills from the movie for comparison. One of the frames, showing Dean Stockwell leaping from the stone wall to the beach, uncannily mimics one of the many shots I took of some kids playing there — leaping to the exact same beach from the same wall, shadow and all. I didn’t actually discover this until I saw the movie years later, on VHS in the mid-80s, at which time my surprise was substantial! (You can see my other City Island shots, including a few shots of Peter Bellamy, at 2 other pages on this website: “Photographs - NYC Streets”). Please note that the title of each image appears or disappears in the lower left corner as you “hover” over the image with your cursor.