Glens Falls, and a resort “near there” on Warren County’s northern border, gained national attention when the movie “Marjorie Morningstar,” starring Gene Kelly and Natalie Wood, was filmed at Schroon Lake in 1957.
“Movie folks will always draw larger crowds than Veeps,” Walter Winchell wrote in a September 1957 syndicated column. “When Richard Nixon visited Glens Falls, NY, about 1,500 people turned out. When actress Natalie Wood arrived there to film ‘Marjorie Morningstar,’ near there, over 8,000 greeted her.”
(Nixon flew into Warren County in 1954 to speak at a National Association of Governors conference at The Sagamore in Bolton Landing. But that’s another story for another time.)
Winchell’s math may have been a little bit off.
The Lake George Mirror estimated about 4,000 people, still a big crowd, turned out at Warren County airport the evening of Aug. 19 to watch planes land.
Arthur P. Irving, publisher of The Post-Star and Glens Falls Times, was there to greet the celebrities on behalf of Joseph Freiber, owner of Scaroon Manor, a resort hotel on the border of Warren and Essex counties, where about two-thirds of the movie would be filmed.
The land where the hotel once stood is now a state Department of Environmental Conservation campground.
Most of the cast and crew – about 50 people -- arrived on a chartered United Airlines DC7B flight with space for up to 104 passengers, the largest plane to land at Warren County airport, up to that point.
The plane flew in from Hollywood.
Wood arrived on a separate flight from New York City, for about three weeks of filming.
Cast and crew were transported from the airport, in Queensbury, to the resort via bus.
There also was a large crowd, “almost like a circus day,” at the Glens Falls rail yard for the arrival on Aug. 16 of a freight train loaded with cameras, motion picture equipment, costumes and props.
Entertainment writers frequently interviewed actors and actresses during the three-week filming over dinner at The Queensbury Hotel.
It would be nice to say that the publicity coup for the Adirondacks was the result of some well-thought-out Chamber of Commerce recruitment strategy.
The truth is that a site selection consultant remembered his honeymoon at Scaroon Manor 22 years earlier, and suggested it would be the ideal location for scenes set at “Southwinds Hotel” in the Catskills.
“They went, they saw, and decided this was the place that had the beauty, joyousness and excitement of an eastern mountain playground,” wrote Post-Star reporter Alice C. Armstrong.
Warner Brothers hired many regular resort guests and area residents as extras.
Trumpet player John Marine of Hudson Falls, a member of Glens Falls City Band, performed background music in several outdoor scenes.
Steve Gitto and The Blue Jacks, a Glens Falls area four-piece band, performed in several scenes.
The band would be the first to separately record “A Very Precious Love,” which Kelly sang in the movie.
The movie version of the song was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Song category.
The movie, based on the novel of the same name by Herman Wouk, revolved around Hunter College student Marjorie Morgenstern, who while working at a summer camp, fell in love with a 32-year-old aspiring playwright working at a nearby summer theater.
The movie was noted for including scenes depicting Jewish religious life, including a Passover Seder.
It won a Hollywood Foreign Press award for best film promoting international understanding.
The French Theatre Association selected it as best film of the year.
Carolyn Jones, who portrayed Marsha Zelenko, won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Female.
The 19-year-old Wood, who abandoned her previous trademark pixie haircut, viewed the role as her evolution from child star to adult actress.
“It shows the transition of a naïve, wide-eyed girl into a mature woman with a real understanding of life,” Wood told Glens Falls Times reporter Hal Boyle.
There was off-camera intrigue with actor Robert Wagner, Wood’s boyfriend and later husband, on location much of the time.
“Wagner, who isn’t in the film, haunts the set all day and is definitely in the picture as soon as cameras cease grinding,” Boyle wrote. “After work, he and Natalie, who is chaperoned by her mother and young sister, Lana, are as close as two holes in Swiss cheese.”
Lana, 11 years old, had a small part in the movie.
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Sources: The Post-Star Aug. 15, 19, Sept. 6, 7,251957; April 25, July 18, 1958; Aug. 7, 1965; Glens Falls Times Aug. 14, 29, 30, Sept. 10, 19, 1957; Lake George Mirror, Aug. 23, 1957; imbd.com
MAURY THOMPSON
Maury Thompson was a reporter for The Post-Star for 21 years before he retired in 2017. He now is a freelance writer and documentary film producer specializing in regional history. Thompson is collaborating with Snarky Aardvark Films to produce a documentary about Charles Evans Hughes and the Adirondacks, which is expected to release in September 2020. See the trailer here. Read his full bio here.