Clockwise from top left: Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in Barefoot in the Park, Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee, and Tom Hanks in Joe Versus the Volcano.

 

The Movies and The Plaza

As public fascination with the world of moviemaking and moviemakers grew over the century, filming at The Plaza kept pace. The hotel’s popularity as a location is easily understood, for it served as shorthand for a certain kind of upscale urbanity; placing fictional characters in its environs made audiences immediately aware that the characters had style, sophistication, and money—or at least aspired to having those things.

Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were.

Indeed, so many films were made on-site that The Plaza has inspired its own set of movie trivia. Some examples: Most appearances by an actor: Robert Redford (Barefoot in the Park, The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby). Most appearances by an actress: Whoopi Goldberg (Soapdish, Eddie, The Associate). Most appearances by a director: Sidney Lumet (Network, Just Tell Me What You Want, Prince of the City). Most appearances by a studio: Paramount (with eight films to date). Most common Plaza location shot: the Fifth Avenue entrance (with twenty-two appearances to date). Movies in which the hotel serves as the central setting: Plaza Suite, Brewster’s Millions, Big Business, Home Alone 2. Movie that opens with scenes at the hotel: Soapdish. Movies that close at the hotel: Plaza Suite, The Way We Were.

George Hamilton in Love at First Bite.

Ironically enough, The Plaza doesn’t appear at all in 1978’s I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a dramatization of the Beatles’ notorious first visit to the United States. The hotel refused the production company permission to shoot on-site (perhaps remembering all too well the tumult that the real event had caused), and the movie was shot instead with Boston’s Copley Plaza standing in for The Plaza, an apt enough choice, as both buildings were designed by Henry Hardenbergh.

For a detailed filmography, see here.

Dudley Moore and Anne De Salvo in Arthur.