Documentarian Kristi Jacobson’s “Toots: The Rise and Fall of the World’s Greatest Saloonkeeper” is a lovingly nostalgic and quick paced recollection of her grandfather Toots Shor, Manhattan’s most popular saloonkeeper.
In an essay about Manhattan, the great E.B. White wrote, “No one should come to New York to live unless you’re willing to be lucky.”
Those words proved beautifully true for Toots until he lost everything in a bad boxing bet in 1939 before building an overnight empire at 51 West 51st Street.
Unfortunately, failure would befall Toots again many years later. Toots’s friends and regulars such as Mike Wallace, Maury Allen, Walter Cronkite, Gay Talese and Yogi Berra recall the lifestyle, atmosphere and relationships that Toots helped forge.
Toots’s bar was a landmark watering hole where cops, politicians, sports stars, artists, journalists, actors, mobsters, politicians, and tourists came to dwell.
Archival footage and photos of Toots’s epic era of Manhattan overflow amid segments from early television shows like “This is Your Life,” Edward R. Murrow’s “Person to Person,” and clips taken from an 8-hour audio interview with Toots himself.
“Toots” is a great window into the great communal party bar atmosphere that made New York City tick like a perfect clock back in the good old days.
Not Rated. 85 mins.
