Last week, Gossips published a clip from the new documentary Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan that included footage from Sullivan's visit to Hudson in October 1959 to tour the "set" of the film Odds Against Tomorrow with Harry Belafonte. The post inspired Michael Price, who grew up in Hudson but now lives in Palm Beach, Florida, to send me an article he had written ten or so years ago for a weekly column he did for the Palm Beach Daily News and to give me permission republish it on Gossips. The following is an excerpt from Price's article:
What Were the "Odds Against Tomorrow"?
Back in August of 1957, long before air-conditioned multiplex cinemas and satellite television, entertainment in small town America was hard to come by. Except, that was, if you lived in a particular small town in upstate New York. My parents, along with a few hundred others, crammed the brightly lit main drag each night, hoping to catch a glimpse of a real movie star. That was known as "The Summer Hollywood Came to Hudson."
Reviewed as a "Crackling crime caper with an undercurrent of racial tension, combining the desperation of three men, two of whom hate each other, and the culmination of that desperation being a bank robbery," Odds Against Tomorrow is considered by many film critics to be a film noir gem. The film stars Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Ed Begley, and Shelly Winters as small time New York City criminals trying to make a big score at a rural bank "up in the sticks." As fate would have it, my father's modest accounting business was located adjacent to the bank, and he was asked if Harry Belafonte could use the office for a dressing room. As most of the filming was done at night, my father would still be able to work uninterrupted during the day. As for compensation from the production company, I think the personally signed album Belafonte Sings the Caribbean was it.
After the film had wrapped, Belafonte had become so enamored with the area he decided to buy a small estate in Chatham, New York, just a few miles up the road from the movie location. At the end of his driveway hung a sign, Day-O Farm. As another point of trivia, the Three Stooges (brothers Moe, Shemp, and Curly Howard) had previously lived and worked on a nearby family farm, albeit forty-five years before Belafonte's arrival. This staid, bucolic community two hours north of Manhattan is primarily known for Sunday morning fox hunts and its Shaker Museum. It was a well known fact that newcomers, locally referred to as carpetbaggers, weren't always welcomed with open arms.
During the late 1960's I remember seeing our local newspaper with a front page headline: "Harry Belafonte Arrested for Shoplifting." My recollection was that Mr. Belafonte had been apprehended leaving the local A&P grocery store without paying for a loaf of bread. His explanation was his elderly mother had taken ill and he was rushing with her to seek medical attention. The story played out for months, and I assumed charges were eventually dropped. . . .
The idea of Belafonte being arrested for attempting to make off with a loaf of bread from the A&P brought this image to mind--Belafonte greeting Sullivan in Seventh Street Park on October 18, 1959, with the A&P, standing where Proprietors Hall is now, clearly visible in the background.
Curious why I had never heard of this scandalous incident (even though it happened more than twenty years before I'd ever heard of Hudson), I asked people I knew had been growing up in Hudson around that time if they had any recollection of it. A couple of them did, and one of them, John Cody, directed me to this item in the New York Times archive.
According to Wikipedia, the movie Odds Against Tomorrow is based on a novel with the same name written by William P. McGivern and published in 1957. Principal photography for the movie began in March 1959, and the movie was released on October 15, 1959, three days before Sullivan paid his visit to Hudson.
COPYRIGHT 2025 CAROLE OSTERINK
My man Michael Price, the living legend. Mike's father Irving was the the pioneer of Columbia County real estate potential 50 plus years ago. We were both HHS freshman when this arrest was made public. It most definitely occurred in the Village of Chatham.
ReplyDelete