North by Northwest

If anyone knows where the best martini in The Berkshires is, they will have to write in. One thing’s for certain, if you’re feeling inspired by Cary Grant and his group at the start of 1959’s “North by Northwest,” with their ornate glasses of gin, vermouth, and lashings of olives floating in the brine, you can’t head to the city this winter to reenact the scene. The Plaza Hotel’s Oak Bar, which Alfred Hitchcock recreated for the film, signaled "last call" and closed its doors in 2011, after what The New York Times reported as trouble with “noise levels, money, and alleged lease violations.”

2011 was a year of stagnant economic growth and high unemployment in New York — and the country at large — and the vacancy of the prestige landmark drinking hole seemed to trumpet another blow to the memory of opulence and “Old New York.” But then, something is always threatening the city’s fabled opulence — now Four Seasons is closed, Eleven Madison Park has gone vegan, and since the pandemic, Eater New York has chronicled establishment closings on a monthly basis. This past September the now closed Gramercy Park Hotel briefly reopened its doors for an everything-must-go liquidation garage sale.

The Oak Bar opened in 1907 as the men’s only drinking establishment, paneled in dark varnished wood walls with a plaster ceiling, carved oak bas reliefs, foliate pattern motifs and city scenic frescos so large they felt like wallpaper.

The all-male club atmosphere eventually gave way to women permitted at certain times of the day — in the background of Hitchcock’s 1959 film you’ll see men and women having cocktails together — but the Oak Bar didn’t go fully co-ed until the intervention of Betty Friedan. In the winter of 1969 the author of “The Feminine Mystique” led a group of members of the National Organization for Women to, as Time Magazine put it, “brush by a Plaza assistant manager and the maitre d’ to capture a center table.” Following the protest, the Oak Bar officially overturned its long-held policy.

While the opening of Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” features the recognizable Manhattan city scape — the interior shot of Grand Central Terminal’s statement staircase and the exterior street shot of Tiffany on Fifth Avenue — The Oak Bar is actually a set. Hitchcock found the architectural columns in the room too distracting, so an almost-faithful set was crafted, complete with the art by Everett Shinn hung in The Plaza.

Shinn, who had died just a few years before production on the film, was an American painter and member of The Ashcan School, an early 20th century urban realist movement dedicated to the depiction of New York’s common street life. Edward Hopper is often associated with the movement due to visual similarity, but Hopper is inherently more poetic than realist.

Just a decade before the Oak Bar’s closing, in 2001, Shinn’s paintings in The Plaza Hotel received a $100,00 restoration, removing, as The New York Times vividly described, “a dark and yellowing layer of varnish, nicotine stains and occasional splatters of beer.” The original Shinn paintings, blue moonlight views of the Pulitzer Fountain and Grand Army Plaza, may not appear in “North by Northwest” but look close at the Oak Bar scene and you’ll see a reproduction of Shinn’s large scale depiction of the Vanderbilt House under snow and darkness.

Playing for one night, Dec. 30, at The Warner Theatre in Torrington, Conn.

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest, Photo courtesy of MovieStillsDB

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest, Photo courtesy of MovieStillsDB

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest, Photo courtesy of MovieStillsDB

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest, Photo courtesy of MovieStillsDB