42nd St Movie

Doob’s first longer film begins with a shot of the sun setting over the Hudson River in New York City, and goes on to examine the nighttime street life found in the block of 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. As Doob describes it, “That block was fairly notorious at that time, with pornographic bookstores and theaters, peep-shows, and prostitution. It was also a kind of magnet for exotic personalities, and a visually interesting location.” The film showed at many film festivals, won a prize at the West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, and was well reviewed in the New York Times. After making this film, and after the experience of taking Murray Lerner’s filmmaking class at Yale, Doob worked as Lerner’s cinematographer on a number of films, including his 1979 Academy Award-winning documentary FROM MAO TO MOZART. (Yale Film Archive)