 Mel Brooks documentary, Automat. The Automat, the horn and heart, how to pronounce, Automat. And it's a wonderful movie by Mel Brooks. Why Mel Brooks did this is because he grew up in the Automat, and a lot of people did. And George did, and to some extent I did. And we want to talk about the movie and we want to talk about the Automat. George, so nice we're on the show together, talking about something so near and dear to our own life experience. Yeah, this is a documentary, but it kept me at the edge of my seat because every new scene talked about the history of the Automat and how everybody was welcomed there and there was no racial discrimination, sex discrimination or age discrimination. Everybody was welcome. And I love the Automat. I mean, as I've mentioned, my uncles would come from Montclair and Fair Lawn in New Jersey, and they would meet us in Manhattan at the, I think it was at the 42nd street one, right? Yeah. And they would meet us and we would come from opposite ends of Manhattan. And we'd spend a few hours there in Manhattan, when we go to Automat and then we go to some of the museums and do things in Manhattan. So this was part of my childhood. I mean, we do this like maybe every other month, you know, and I'll get into my own personal thing. I love the apple pie, the baked beans. And at that time I was not a vegan. I would corned beef sandwiches and you just go and you get your nickels and that lady was amazing. She would just give you all the nickels and then you put the kids. This is so much fun. You know, you're putting your nickel in there and you're turning this thing and you're getting your food. And as we've said, it's always in this, the apple pie was always in the same place. So I always knew where that was, where the baked beans and the corned beef sandwich. And it really, really macaroni and cheese. I loved that. So you can get into your thing too. But this movie explains from the earliest days, when I think Mr. Horn put an ad, he was from Philadelphia, he put an ad in the New York paper to get a partner and then he got hard art. They started off as a bakery kind of place, you know, then moved to a restaurant and eventually, I think 1902, if I got the date correct, they started this, it had started in Germany, you know, where you have these knobs that you turn. And they were able to get the hardware here and open their first Horn and Hard Art Auto Max. And then it just grew. I think they were like 45, 50 Auto Max, you know, from Horn and Hard Art. So I'll pass it off to you, Jay, and you can fill in a little more than I did. Okay. The remarkable thing was the technology. You mentioned briefly the knobs you turn. So there would be a cylinder with, say, half a dozen shelves on it. And each shelf could accommodate a plate of food. And you would go, you would walk in, and you would either you had a whole stack of nickels in your pocket, or you would go to the cashier and hand her a dollar. And she had this extraordinary talent of knowing how many nickels were in her hand by the weight of them. So you give her a dollar, she gave you 20 nickels, and she didn't count them. She knew what 20 nickels felt like. Okay. And for a dollar, you know, you could have a pretty nice meal. And you go to the same food that you went to. Last time you want, you want a sandwich of a certain kind. You go to that cylinder over there, you put the nickels in, maybe it's 20 cents or something. You turn the knob, and the little window opens, and now you can stick your hand into the cylinder, a little glass window, and you stick your hand into the cylinder and pull out the food, and go to a table, any table. There was no reserved seating. You just found a table, you know, you put your stuff down, and now you could walk along this large wall. In fact, the whole room was surrounded with these walls of windows with these cylinders, you know, hundreds of them. And you could have as much as you wanted, you could have it over and over again, and you could have your favorite dishes, and some of their dishes were actually very good. Cream spinach comes to mind, their baked beans were famous, and as you said, they were originally a bakery, so their baked goods and pies and cakes were really very good, all for, you know, cheap, a few nickels, a few nickels is all it took. And if you walked in there, you know, you could, you could stay all day, and you could schmooze with your friends, you could meet your friends, you could, you know, have a social experience, you could bring your family, it was safe, and it was clean, and it was cheap. And in the meantime, once you got past the engineering and these cylinders, and the guys in the back that filled them, you know, booked and filled them, think about it, there was somebody to bust the tables. Well, I cannot remember whether you were expected to bust the tables yourself. I think you were, but I'm not sure. But there had to be somebody to clean the tables anyway. And then the lady with the nickels. And that's it. Oh, and all the people who you never saw, you never, you never saw anything of them, you didn't know who they were, behind the wall, who were constantly refilling those cylinders and shelves with all this food and probably a big kitchen, but you didn't know who they were, you never saw their face, you couldn't see their faces. So what you had was this kind of democratization. You had all these people in the melting pot, the Lower East Side, all these people from, you know, all parts of the city, all parts of the social spectrum and the economic spectrum, they were all there in Horn and Hardin, from the rich to the poor. And they were all treated exactly the same way. They could all sit all day, lose with their friends and paid 20 cents for a piece of pie, whatever it was. And so this was an amazing contribution to the way the city worked. But also Philadelphia. There were lots of them in New York and there was some in Philadelphia. As I recall, one of the two, Horn, I think was focusing on Philadelphia and Hardin was focusing on New York, but they were partners in this very successful venture. And it made money because it was high-tech at the time in 1902. It was high-tech and it lasted, see, through the 50s, it lasted through the 50s. 1991 was the last one. 1991, yeah, right. 42nd Street, right. That was their flagship store, 42nd Street. And so Mel Brooks decides he wants to give you a documentary about this company. And he finds all these people in the Horn family and the Hardin family. He finds these customers. He finds the workers. And he gives you kind of a definition of who they were and what was going on here. He gives you the identity of the company and the places and the people. For example, they were, Horn and Hardin were very kind to their employees. They treated them very well. They gave them every benefit they could possibly give them. And their employees stayed with them for decades. And that was really something. And the end of the way they cooked, the quality of the cooking, the people who engineered those cylinders were really expert. And they could fix them in a minute. These were not electric. It was manual, you remember? You put the coins in, you turned the knob, the whole thing swung around. No electricity, all, you know, automatic, automated, automatic without any electricity at all. It was brilliant. And it was something. My father took me. I used to come and help him when I was a kid. And he would compensate me by taking me across the street. I think it was 23rd of Broadway, across the Flatiron building, extraordinary piece of work. And we would have lunch at the Automat. It was a treat. And I liked going downtown. And I liked going there. And I liked having lunch at the Automat. And Mel Brooks did too. He spent his childhood in the Automat just as well. In fact, I would say millions of people spent their time in the Automat. Rich and poor. Big and little. Every single diverse group was there. Speaking every language. It was an expression of the melting pot in New York City, which we want to know more about how that worked. Because there were, you know, there are people who, you know, they like to hang out with the Irish or hang out with the Italians. But the fact is they knew the next block was something else. And so they were, they were not particularly biased and prejudiced and racist. They were all in it together, all in the melting pot. And this was an expression of the melting pot. Experience. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, what, what made it so successful was it was easy. It was cheap. It was comfortable. And there were not a whole lot of restaurants that did all that for you. It'd be easy and cheap and comfortable. And I think the great tragedy of Horn and Harden, they worked so hard to make a product that appealed to everyone. And all these things I'm telling you about how, you know, it supported the melting pot, that was conscious. It wasn't an accident or a coincidence. They were trying to do that and they did it. The problem was, and this is worth some discussion, the problem was that the city was changing. The melting pot was changing. The people who came around, you know, with 20 cents in their pocket, now they had $20 in their pocket. They didn't want to hang around in an automatic. You know, it got the reputation of being good, but not if you had money. And so, they would go to the restaurants and there were a lot of restaurants then, you know, talking about those 30s to 40s to 50s, that were, you know, more luxurious and, and Horn and Harden was, you know, was still Horn and Harden. And then of course, you have the, this is really worth discussing. And then you have people who would, who had no money at all and who came in and, and they got a glass of water, which was free, and they poured ketchup in little, in little packages. They poured the ketchup into the water and then a little package of salt and pepper for that in free. And then they would have a meal for free and they would sit there all day long with the ketchup and the salt and the pepper and the glass of water. And they would, you know, they would, they would take advantage. And this made it less attractive to the middle class or the lower middle class, whatever, who wanted to have their regular Horn and Harden meal. And it became less attractive for them. It became offensive to have these people. And there were stories in the movie. I don't know if you caught this, there were stories in the movie about how people, not, not, not case people who managed to spend all day and, and disrobe and walk around half naked. And this was, this was really a downer for anybody with a family who wanted to go there. I never had that experience, but I'm sure it happened. And, and, you know, if it had happened when I was there, when my father was there, we would not have come back. It was, that was hard. So what you had is a deterioration of the place because, you know, they let everyone in. Nobody was born. They never asked you to leave. There was nobody there who could ask you to leave. It was, you know, completely open society. It was a remarkable thing. It was a statement of Americana. It could make you patriotic just thinking about it. But over time, that eroded as things do, because in some ways the society eroded. And the other thing was, you know, is that it got old and they had a problem. I don't know if you caught this in the movie. They had a problem with the nickel. Everything was outfitted for nickels. And, you know, at some point, nickels were really a chore when the piece of pie now costs 75 cents or a dollar. You had to put an awful lot of nickels in there to get your pie out. But they could not re-engineer these cylinders and the slot machines to open the shelf in the cylinder. So now instead of, you know, putting in three or four nickels, you had to put in three or four times that many nickels. And it was a pain. But they couldn't fix it because there were so many machines that only took nickels. It would have cost them a fortune. And so the inflation had a lot to do. And there was a lot of inflation over the life of Horn and Harden. It had a lot to do with the end of it. It was so sad, so tragic to see it go away. And I'm sure a lot of people, you know, would have continued to go to Horn and Harden. It's just that they couldn't make money with the competition, you know, and those things that were dragging on their bottom line. And so even though there were a lot of people who would have come back, they closed. And we had testimonials from various members of the family who were pretty, you know, elderly now who saw this all happening. And then of course, you have, you know, the original Horn, the original Harden, who were, you know, managers, founders. And the next generation was then going to take over. They kept it in the family. It was not a public corporation. It was the private company. And the next generation was, you know, as this happens, as it always happens, the next generation was not as skilled or motivated as the founders. So they made mistakes in the way they, you know, selected their locations and all that. But by, as you say, by the, you know, by the 90s, it was over, but it started, it started to go down hill in the 50s and 60s. But the corporation still started some Burger Kings and things like that. I mean, they were still in business, but they gave up the whole automatic automatic concept that they started doing. I think they just sold the locations to Burger King. I don't think they owned Burger King. There was a whole discussion of how Burger King displaced Horn and Harden. Whenever there was a Horn and Harden location, Burger King would take over. And, and, you know, they had a lot, they had some really interesting footage going back to, you know, the turn of the century. Excellent, excellent. And all these people. Excellent historical footage. And then they showed how all New Yorkers, it was basically an immigrant experience and African American experience. And they showed all these people today who were famous, some of the past on, right? Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Colin Powell, Wilson Good in Philadelphia, who became the mayor, I'm trying to think who else. Oh, the guy who started Starbucks. Don't remember his name. And he, he has a picture of the automatic on his office wall in his car. Well, he said the automatic inspired him to do Starbucks. The automatic, he was a kid. And it, it taught him about automation, taught him about the restaurant business. And lo and behold, he had the picture on his wall because that was where he got the idea. They showed all the different players, you know, this guy had written a book about Horn and Hard Art. They showed him that he was an academic and he, you know, wrote a book and all the different stuff. And a lot of the things that you had mentioned, how things went sour, you know, for Horn and Hard Art over time. But it was one of the things, a lot of people moved to the suburbs, you know, I mean, my, Yeah, that was the point there. That was in the movie. Yeah. I mean, we went, I mean, if my relative, my mother's family wasn't in Jersey, you know, I don't know if we would got into, we would got into Manhattan, you know, to meet, to meet them, you know, would have stayed Howard, used to go to Howard Johnson's in Beth Page. You know, that was the big thing for us to go to Howard Johnson's, not Horn and Hard Art. Because it was close, you know, like two miles away. So everything changed. Well, if you wanted to take your family out for a fancy dinner, you would not go to Horn and Hard Art. And this was even before fast food. Howard Johnson's was not fast food. But my parents, that was their, our favorite place was Howard Johnson. That was a sit down restaurant, family, family type restaurant. So things changed. I think late 40s and 50s started this whole trend, you know, so and people moving out of the city. There was another factor too, it just occurred to me. And they did mention it in the film. There was, I can't remember the name, but there was this coffee shop affair that it was all the employees were black, everybody, talk full of nuts. Talk full of nuts did not begin as coffee on the shelf of your handy safeway. Talk full of nuts began as a coffee shop with this snake like counter that went all the way through it. Okay, all the staff was black. Every single one, you know, was really interesting. And it was a great place. They had donuts there to die for and coffee and you would order everything at once. I'll have a coffee, I'll have a donut, I'll have a little tuna sandwich, whatever it was. They would bring it to you in seconds. And then when you said, I'd like another coffee, they would say, no, you have to go now. You could not order again. You only had one shot because there were so many people waiting outside to sit in your little stool along the snake like counter that they got rid of you. Anyway, this was so popular when I went to law school, there was one around the corner for me and I spent untold hours in there just feeding up on their food, which was very good. Talk full of nuts. And the coffee was good enough to go commercially, you know, I don't know if it's still available in the food stores, but talk full of nuts coffee was really top of the line. And you know, you could buy it everywhere. I mean, in the food store. So point to point there, though, is that they were eating literally eating chocolate nuts as lunch. The system was cheap. The staffing was cheap. It was instantaneous service. People could not hang around and waste the counter space, right? That was a big difference between, you know, talk full of nuts and horn and heart. They displaced horn and heart. And they were everywhere in Manhattan, everywhere. So I think that probably was a big factor in the failure of horn and heart. And since you mentioned coffee, what horn or heart, I think it was hard art. He had been down in Louisiana, New Orleans, and they put chicory in the coffee so that his coffee had chicory in there, which made it unique. And that was one of the things that horn and heart are really their coffee was through people because they people love their coffee, right? And then the little tiger spouts or whatever. So a nickel, a nickel that was really famous, a nickel cup of coffee. A cup of coffee with the chicory in it. And it was so tasty. So that's what made horn and heart. One of the things that made horn and heart expand so quickly, but then all the different factors, 40s, 50s, and how it went downhill from there. Yeah. The spouts with the coffee were taken off statuary in Germany or something. And they were really beautiful. And they were imported. And you can say, well, who cares about the spout for a coffee machine? But the reality is, it lent a little class. And so you felt you had a little class going on in horn and heart. And it was for a nickel. But let me ask you, this is an interesting situation. Because as we said, everything changes. And there's so many things change, going to the suburbs and the average income going up and people not being in the Lower East Side, melting pot anymore, and shock for the nuts coming to town. Strikes me though. And it struck me during the movie, George, that had those guys been shoppers, had they been a little more visionary, they would be in business today. They would be in business with the same automated devices, maybe not a nickel, but maybe a quarter or something. And if they're all, we know a lot about slot machines in 2022. And they could have sold their special food products, their baked beans there, their cream spinach, and a number of other things that were so popular. It was a staple for people. So what are you doing? I'm going to horn and heart it for the cream spinach. I love the cream spinach. They could have sold that. They could have frozen it. They could have been part of the whole frozen food initiative in the 50s. Didn't do any of that. Zero. They just tried to continue the old model without really changing it. And that killed it. And they never changed their architecture, by the way. Those tables and chairs had been there for 30, 40 years. Although the ceilings were high, remember that? That's part of the movie. And it was spacious, as opposed to a lot of restaurants. They never really changed the architecture. They said, well, that was good enough for 1902. It's good enough for 1950. No, it isn't. So they didn't want to spend the money. But also people were used to that. That was part of their brand, the way the architecture was their brand. But I think, as you said, they made some corporate mistakes and the whole thing went down. But there were other commercial institutions that have gone down and were proactive and still went down because the trends were changing so quickly. They were more savvy. Akamai, they would have had it. It was really too bad. We wouldn't be having this conversation and Mel Brooks wouldn't have made his movie. But on Mel Brooks, I think it's worth noting that Mel Brooks didn't have to make this movie. His product over the years has been comedy and satire, what have you, not this. But he did this purely for nostalgic purposes only. And it was because he grew up in this and this was his generation. I was struck by how old he is. He has to be in his late 90s now. And yet he didn't mind taking the time to make this quote documentary. And probably the most fun part of the documentary, if you recall, was the very end of it, where he wrote a song. Exactly. That's what I was going to say. Exactly. Yeah, that's it Jay. He's a good singer too. And at the end, he said that was the way to move the documentary ended. But he's singing. Pretty good singing. It was close to his heart. You and me, we're going to sing that song now, right? I don't remember the song now, whatever it was. But this movie was close to my heart. I know it was close to your heart. It was close to Mel Brooks's heart. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Colin Powell and all the other Wilson, all the people, the famous people and all the other people that they didn't show. It was very close to him because that was part of our reality, our existence when we were young. And it's sort of gone now. It's part of reminiscent. And that's what Mel Brooks was doing. It was nostalgic. When you get, I get on Facebook and I look into the community, the little blue collar community where I grew up where we grew up in the little better section near the Gulf Coast. And it's like, it's what I grew up. I mean, I was four years old when we left Forest Hills and that town is nostalgic for me. And just like horn and hard art, restaurant outings is nostalgic. But that's what Mel Brooks was doing. And you get old, you start looking back over your life. What were the pluses? And for him, for you, for me, horn and hard art was a real plus. It was an experience that you don't forget even when you're in your 70s or 90s, like Mel Brooks. Believe it or not. Well, I think you raise a very good point. I'm not sure where you could say what years you could define the greatest generation at. But it was arguably at the end of the war in the 40s, maybe the 50s. And there were celebrities, there were heroes from the war. There was Hollywood presenting us with extraordinary talent and extraordinary movies. And for the lack of television, that defined our entertainment in those days. And radio, stars and radio. And to me, it was all part of that generation. And Mel Brooks was part of that generation. And this whole movie talks about the generational shift. Because that generation is over. It was over a long time ago. But it teaches us that you could hold on to the greatest generation for a while, but they're coming for you. And the new kids are on the block, new ideas, new trends, new dots to connect. And that's what he's really saying. I'm remembering this because this was a really good time, not only for food in Horn and Hearted, but in life in general. It's proust, George. It's proust. It's the remembrance of things past. It's the team at a land through the keyhole. And food takes you back. Food makes you remember. And food makes you remember Horn and Hearted. And I can taste the raspberry pie right now as we speak. And my point, though, is that he did this for nostalgia. The food is linked with the nostalgia, and all of it is linked with the passing of that generation. It was the end of a time, the end, if you will, of the melting pot, the end of the middle class struggling in Manhattan and the boroughs of New York. It was getting out, getting out to the suburbs, getting out to a better, more luxurious life, I guess, having more disposable income. And you want to turn your back on that. You don't want to speak your family's native language anymore. You want to assimilate really quick. You want to get into school and enjoy the fruits of the post-war America. And Horn and Hearted was a casualty of all that, but so was the whole generation, a casualty of all of that. And by the time you get to the 60s, and activism, and protest, and Vietnam, and the failure of the federal government to respond to the will of the people, that's where it started in the 60s, after Kennedy was gone. You know, that was a different generation. And sure, Mel Brooks, the people here with us today, he would agree. And it was the end of whatever Horn and Hearted represented. That's why the movie has so much to carry. The movie has so much value. It goes way beyond just the study of this one business corporation. It's definitely a bigger, bigger picture, contextually bigger picture. It's a very good movie. I liked it. Yeah. But what did you give it? Would you give it a 10? Yeah, I ideally liked it. I'll give it a 10. Personally, I liked it. It was, for a documentary, it was a 10. I can't see anything. You know, I mean, a little cutesy sometimes, you know, what was it? It was funny stuff. But I mean, all in all, it was a 10. I agree. It was a 10. It was a documentary. It was an accurate documentary. It had witnesses, many of whom are probably gone because they were so elderly. Now, how long is Mel Brooks going to be around? And it was a study of love. It was a study of love, George, as opposed to some documentaries which are cold and uncaring somehow. It's just a fact, man, just a fact. But in this movie, it's a study of family. It's a study of nostalgia. It's a study of love. And that's why I give it a 10 also. Okay, there's much more to go on this. We have miles to go, and there are so many movies on the deck, George. I'll talk to you after the show. We'll select another spate of them, and we'll talk about them and learn from them. That's because this is the show is entitled Movies You Can Learn From. Thank you, George. Are we having fun yet? Yes. Thank you, Jay. This is a lot of fun to do these yet, and learn as well. A lot of learning. Broaden our perspectives and nostalgia. Get back to the way things were, those of us in our age group. Thank you, George. Aloha.