New York, New York - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[jessie]

The film begins and ends with a close-up of Jimmy's shoes. On the director's commentary, Martin Scorsese said: "The shoes were important to me. I knew with those brown and white shoes in the first image that the picture had to have an arc that went back to the beginning. But the shoes at the end are more - not necessarily conservative, but they're less flashy. He's matured and he's reached a peace with himself and his work. That ties into the song Francine sings, "But the World Goes 'Round", and pulls everything together."

[ethel]

Martin Scorsese called this picture a "film noir musical" and he encouraged his lead cast members to improvise in many scenes.

[frances]

The moment when Jimmy attempts to stop the train from moving was improvised by Robert De Niro.

[edgar]

Liza Minnelli used her mother's (Judy Garland's) old dressing room, her mother's old hairdresser (Sydney Guilaroff), and worked on Garland's old MGM soundstages during the filming of this movie. Additionally, during interviews, she did her mother's famous "oh-uh, ah, ohs" with hand gestures.

[bernard]

Although Robert De Niro did learn the basic technique of how to play the saxophone, the sax music on the soundtrack was dubbed in by cast member Georgie Auld. This movie introduces the song "New York, New York" that later became a pop music standard.

[kenzi]

In the penultimate sequence, Jimmy and Francine are in the same room where they met.

[miriam]

The added "Happy Endings" musical fantasy cost an extra $350,000 to make.

[maureen]

A fight scene in a taxi between Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro got so out of hand, that not only the two stars, but Martin Scorsese ended up in an emergency room as well.

[willard]

Martin Scorsese was inspired by such films as The Man I Love (1946) and My Dream Is Yours (1949).

[lena]

Liza Minnelli's "And The World Goes Round", which takes place in a recording studio, is the only song in the movie performed live as filmed, as opposed to lip-synched to a pre-recorded soundtrack.