Across 110th Street is a 1972 American crime drama film starring Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, and Anthony Franciosa, and directed by Barry Shear. Commonly associated with the blaxploitation genre at the time, it has received considerable critical praise from writer Greil Marcus and others for surpassing the limitations of that genre.
Plot
This film is set in Harlem, of which 110th Street is an informal boundary line. By-the-book African-American Lieutenant William Pope (Kotto) has to work with crude, racist but streetwise Italian-American Captain Frank Mattelli (Quinn) in the NYPD's 27th precinct. They are looking for three black men who slaughtered seven men—three black gangsters and two Italian gangsters, as well as two patrol officers—in the robbery of $300,000 from a Mafia-owned Harlem policy bank. Mafia lieutenant Nick D'Salvio (Franciosa) and his two henchmen are also after the hoods. In one of many violent scenes, D'Salvio finds getaway driver Henry J. Jackson (Antonio Fargas) and brutalizes him in a Harlem whorehouse.
Original Cast Records is a record label based in Georgetown, Connecticut, that specialises in obscure theatre recordings, primarily cast albums from little-known Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway and other stage productions, but also theatre-related film scores, cabaret, concert and solo artist recordings. It traces its origins back to 1975, when husband-and-wife theatre enthusiasts Bruce and Doris Yeko embarked on a venture "dedicated to the preserving of musicals that would not otherwise be recorded".
Bruce and Doris Yeko
Born in Milwaukee, Bruce Yeko was fascinated by theatre from an early age. As he once told a journalist: “I had a friend who was an usher at the only theater in Milwaukee – he would let me in to see all the plays and musicals”. Later, he travelled to theaters in Chicago to see shows before they came to Milwaukee, and then, inevitably, moved on to New York. Yeko made his first pilgrimage to the city in 1962, when, after asking a policeman directions to Broadway, he saw a matinee of I Can Get It for You Wholesale and then an evening performance of Subways Are For Sleeping. After their marriage, Bruce and his wife Doris would travel from their home in Connecticut to New York (and beyond) to see four or five new musicals each week; by 1977, the couple could modestly claim that, over the previous twelve years, they had seen more musicals that anyone else in the world.
Podcasts:
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by Jackie Brown Soundtrack
Across 110th Street
by: Jackie Brown SoundtrackI was the third brother of five,
Doing whatever I had to do to survive.
I'm not saying what I did was alright,
Trying to break out of the ghetto was a day to day fight.
Been down so long, getting up didn't cross my mind,
I knew there was a better way of life that I was just trying to find.
You don't know what you'll do until you're put under pressure,
Across 110th Street is a hell of a tester.
Across 110th Street,
Pimps trying to catch a woman that's weak
Across 110th Street,
Pushers won't let the junkie go free.
Across 110th Street,
Woman trying to catch a trick on the street.
Across 110th Street,
You can find it all in the street.
I got one more thing I'd like to y'all about right now.
Hey brother, there's a better way out.
Snorting that coke, shooting that dope man you're copping out.
Take my advice, it's either live or die.
You've got to be strong, if you want to survive.
The family on the other side of town,
Would catch hell without a ghetto around.
In every city you find the same thing going down,
Harlem is the capital of every ghetto town.
Across 110th Street,
Pimps trying to catch a woman that's weak
Across 110th Street,
Pushers won't let the junkie go free.
Across 110th Street,
A woman trying to catch a trick on the street, ouh baby
Across 110th Street,
You can find it all in the street.
Yes he can, oh
Look around you, just look around you,
Look around you, look around you, uh yeah.