I used to watch it with my 2 year old grandson when I was looking after him. We rarely got to the end of it but once or twice he saw the ‘ife fight’ as he called it until his mother thought that was unsuitable. Today he still listens to the music. My other grandkids often ask to listen to the cd in my car.

The themes of immigration, youth violence, poverty and illicit love are as timeless as ever. Music written by Leonard Bernstein whose Ukrainian Jewish parents immigrated to America from Rivne (a city I visited in one of my trips to Ukraine – see “Jews Milk Goats”, Amazon). Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim – a grandson of Jewish immigrant grandparents.

I first saw the film at the cinema with my maternal grandparents and I loved it (and them) always.

They don’t make them like that anymore !

They began to work out how to open the milking parlour (where we keep their hay)

And called out “Happy Chanukah!” Wonder who it was? Came indoors to find a thief had been at the butter dish

“The Colony was a plush place, controlled by Lansky and his frequent associate in casino operations, Dino Cellini. It quickly became the ‘in’ place to go for English and visiting society. Raft was always in the limelight, appearing each evening in a tuxedo, meeting people, signing autographs, and dancing with awed women.
Later Raft would confide to friends that his days at the Colony were the happiest of his life. As he put it to informer Vinnie Teresa, ‘Vinnie, those were the best days I’ve had in years. I had a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, beautiful women with me every night, a beautiful penthouse apartment in the Mayfair area, and five hundred dollars a week”.

From what I know mum and dad were sometimes chauffeured to film premieres in that Rolls-Royce. But that’s a story for another day or another book (it wasn’t in my book Jews Milk Goats – Amazon!).

A ludicrous plot but fun to watch. They don’t make them like that anymore (the films – but I don’t know about the gangsters).