Carousel in "The Sting"
By Rocci Cirone
In response to Steve Matta's question about the carousel in "The Sting." Though the movie is supposed to take place at Coney Island, much of it was in fact filmed at the Santa Cruz (California) Beach Boardwalk. Now I'm not positive the carousel scene was filmed in Santa Cruz, but if it was, the carousel band organ would be a rather large (and recently totally restored) Ruth & Sons band organ.
The Ruth organ and the carousel at Santa Cruz were also featured in another movie: Clint Eastwood's "Sudden Impact" (the 4th in Dirty Harry series). The music from the Ruth is featured in several scenes; unfor- tunately most scenes might be a bit "rough" for some viewers. The happy carousel music works quite well as a severe contrast in scenes where the visuals are a bit disturbing.
(Oh, here's a bit of movie trivia -- a unicorn in the carousel plays a significant role in the movie, esp. in the climactic scene. Funny thing -- there is no unicorn among the horses and such on the Santa Cruz carousel. Probably for liability reasons that become, er, painfully obvious in the aforementioned climactic scene.)
Rocci Cirone
PS: The Boardwalk sells cassette tapes of the Ruth organ performing a large bunch of tunes; unfortunately it was recorded prior to restoration. Many of the wood pipes are almost painfully out of tune. I guess spending almost 100 years extremely near the ocean wasn't exactly good for its woodwork! ;-)
[ But see the note from Gordy Forcier. Could it be that the sound-track
[ music was provided by a "stand-in" because the Ruth's sound wasn't
[ suitable? -- Robbie
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(Message sent Wed 12 Mar 1997, 20:32:12 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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