Miracle on 42nd Street”, a seventy minute documentary, tells the story of Manhattan Plaza, the renowned experiment in subsidized housing for people in the performing arts. Starring Alicia Keys, Larry David, Terrence Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Lansbury, Donald Faison.
Now completed, appearing in film festivals and aired on WNET in 2018.
Built in the early 1970s in the blighted Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in NYC, Manhattan Plaza was initially a commercial failure. In a moment of bold inspiration – or desperation – the buildings were “re-purposed” as a subsidized housing complex for performing artists, one of the first of it’s kind in the country. This social experiment was a resounding success in the lives of the tenants, for the neighborhood economy and for the survival of the Broadway Theatre district. The film features on-camera interviews with people whose lives were positively impacted by the complex including Alicia Keys, Terrence Howard, Donald Faison, Larry David, Samuel L Jackson, Angela Lansbury and many others.
