(objects from the collection of Gregory M. Pflugfelder) [As of 10 September 2004, these objects have been moved to Display Case 1 in the Rare Book Reading Room.] GODZILLA IN NEW YORK Godzilla, King of the Monsters opened at Loew's State Theater in Times Square on 4 April 1956, and ran for three weeks (see photograph at right). "Several episodes are banzai-worthy," reported columnist and New York institution Walter Winchell (U.S. pressbook, 1956). Although in the previous year at least one Japanese-language theater in Los Angeles had screened the original version of the film, Gojira (1954), the movie about which Winchell and others raved was an adapted version tailored for U.S. and international audiences by Jewell Enterprises, whose only previous hit was the 1952 Untamed Women ("SAVAGE BEAUTIES WHO FEARED NO ANIMAL... YET FELL BEFORE THE TOUCH OF MEN!"). U.S. director Terry Morse shot a day's worth of new footage, creating a role for Raymond Burr—fresh from a "fine performance as the killer in 'Rear Window' [1954]"—as an American news reporter who happens to be in Tokyo at the time of Godzilla's assault (U.S. lobby card, 1956). New York's first view of Godzilla would not be its last. Kaijû sôshingeki (1968; Destroy All Monsters, 1969) had Godzilla attacking midtown Manhattan from the East River (West German lobby card, 1971). In 1976, the American distributors of Gojira tai Megaro (1973; Godzilla vs. Megalon, 1976) poised the title monsters atop the recently built World Trade Center—even though no such scene appeared in the movie itself (U.S. pressbook, 1976). And in 1998, TriStar Pictures would produce a thoroughly Americanized Godzilla, starring Matthew Broderick, in which the giant lizard makes her (sic) nest in Madison Square Garden.
full movie Gli eredi di King Kong movies
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