Trivia / New York, New York

• Acting for Two: The blonde woman observed by Jimmy dancing with the sailor under the subway tracks at night is Liza Minnelli in a wig.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $14 million. Box office: $16.4 million. Sure, it turned a profit, but only barely.
  • Also true of the musical adaptation, which opened on Broadway in April 2023, got scathing reviews and closed in July the same year.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: Frank Sinatra's 1980 version of the title song was his last big hit and became a late career Signature Song for him and an anthem for the city. Many people are shocked to learn that it only came out in 1980 and it originated in this film.
• Cast the Expert: Casey Kasem as a DJ.
  • Sydney Guilaroff, a long-time hairdresser at MGM, plays a hairdresser in the movie.
• Creator Breakdown: Martin Scorsese's drug addiction and lack of control over the dialogue was a contributor to the film's failure (though being released at the same time as a little movie called Star Wars certainly didn't help).
• Follow-Up Failure: Martin Scorsese was coming off the success of Taxi Driver.
• Hostility on the Set: Steven Prince directed a scene himself when Martin Scorsese walked off the set after a dispute with Robert De Niro.
• Method Acting: Robert De Niro learned to play the saxophone for this film to make his performance look more authentic.
• Recycled Set: The nightclub that exits at the end of the film is the facade of The Harmonia Gardens that was built for Hello, Dolly!. In addition, much of the movie was shot on the same sound stages as the great musicals of the 1940s. As a result, Liza Minnelli was haunted by memories of her mother, Judy Garland, throughout the shoot.
• Romance on the Set: According to Steven Prince, Liza Minnelli became romantically involved with both Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese during filming.
• Throw It In!: Both Liza Minnelli and Martin Scorsese have said that virtually all of the dialogue in the film was improvised. This created later difficulty during the editing phase, as Scorsese and the editors struggled to create a streamlined narrative.
• Wag the Director: The original lyrics to "Theme from New York, New York" were scrapped at De Niro's insistence. Grudgingly, John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote new lyrics, which led to one of the most famous and often recorded songs in history. Kander and Ebb have often expressed extreme gratitude to De Niro for his influence.

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