“There are eight million stories in the Naked City,” the announcer always said at the end of each episode, but was Roosevelt Island exposed? Well, no, but sorta, yes, and a 1963 view of then-Welfare Island has great local views along with a clumsy plot. Finally, we see the legendary elevator from the Queensboro Bridge in action.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
Yesterday, I posted Let’s Get Naked on the Roosevelt Island Tram, using a catchy title while getting down to basics. Then, the narrative took an ironic twist.
I bumped into Roosevelt Island Community Board 8 rep Paul Krikler at the Good Shepherd Red Bus stop. With just a short ride ahead, we – of course – talked about the Tram. Not only is it often in the news lately, but it’s interesting, even without making news.
“I’d love to see a video of that elevator that used to go down from the bridge,” Paul said.
The pre-Tram Roosevelt Island elevator – Welfare Island, then – is a local legend, but I’d never seen a clip. There are some stills around, and last year, Judith Berdy nabbed the elevator storehouse sign (see above) for the Historical Society.
But a video clip? No. The elevator and its surrounding building were demolished in the Sixties, long before the days of ubiquitous cellphone cameras.
But Then Came the Naked City
Paul Krikler donates a lot of hours to his work at helping Roosevelt Island stake a place in the political tangle of New York City. I felt I owed him something; so, off I gamboled in search.
And I got lucky.
Scrolling long enough I stumbled into a 1963 clip from Season Four of The Naked City, a police drama, that featured Welfare Island. And guess what the episode – Carrier – used as a trailer…
Posted thoughtfully on Instagram by theghostofqueenspast was the trailer. A car makes a sharp left turn on the Queensborough Bridge – I’m not kidding – and races into the legendary elevator. Next, you see the car speeding out and making a right turn on what we now call Main Street.
It’s technically incorrect, but who would notice? The driver’s destination, Goldwater Hospital, is the other way.
More About the Carrier Episode and Historic Local Scenes
This is a quick review, but if you stream, you can watch Carrier, start to finish, on Freevee. Look for it in Season Four, the last for The Naked City. Here’s what it’s all about.
First, as you might’ve gathered from the clip, Roosevelt Island – all of New York City, actually – was a black-and-white place then. And the TV series converted Goldwater Hospital into a sort of nameless general hospital.
The actors refer ominously to “The Island,” not the hospital by name.
In that hospital resides Sandy Dennis playing the part of a bad luck patient. She’s an asymptomatic carrier of a strange disease usually only found in some out-of-the-way Pacific paradise. After she infected her parents, both of whom died, she found a home at The Island.
The disease, by the way, is not caused by a virus but something like it, according to the medical professionals. And about 2% of the people she contacts can get it. It’s 70% fatal.
Gasp!
The plot thickens when she tosses her suitcase – where’d she get that? – out her second-floor window and heads for the bridge to Manhattan. For Roosevelt Islanders today, this is where it gets interesting because we see her climbing the stairs that parallel the cars-only elevator.
On the bridge, she runs into a familiar face from The Island. That provides panoramic views of Goldwater with its wide-V-shaped buildings and other structures to the north. You can pick up the shape of Roosevelt Island to come.
After she climbs down onto 2nd Avenue, Dennis traipses around town, including Central Park, before the story descends into a predictable soap opera. You can skip about 40 minutes of the 51-minute drama until the carrier returns to The Island.
There, you see nice views of Goldwater Hospital. Compare it with Cornell Tech’s shiny campus which occupies the space now – in color – and see how far we’ve come in just sixty years.
When Representation Was the Promise
There was a time when representation felt like the answer.
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