From The Villager, April 3, 1969
A front-page story in The Villager, “Ingrid Takes 8th St. Ramble,” told of movie star Ingrid Bergman’s filming around the Village: “She peeks discreetly into Stereo Heaven looking for Walter Matthau, who plays the dentist in the movie ‘Cactus Flower.’ Goldie Hawn, who plays his receptionist, won’t be on the scene, which elicits some ‘aw’s’ from the gathering crowd. The long-haired types are having a field day, even though it’s 9 a.m. on a cold Tuesday.” More filming was planned later in front of Trude Heller’s, at Sixth Ave. and Ninth St.
“Village Has Memories of Ike” was the headline of an article on the paper’s last page, Page 16. Eisenhower had died the previous week at age 78: “In June 1945, throngs hailed the returning Supreme Allied Commander as he drove under the Washington Square Arch,” the article recalled. “On a stand in front of Our Lady of Mercy School stood 15-year-old Carmella Balzano dressed as the Goddess of Liberty; beside her, in full uniform and constantly saluting, was tiny Billy Cioffero of W. 3rd St., aged six, a miniature of ‘General Ike.’ The Supreme Commander halted his car briefly and turning full face toward the little general, he gave him a snappy, dignified salute. The youngster returned it with several in rapid fire succession.”
The paper also gave an update on the battle against the Lower Manhattan Expressway in “Father LaMountain: After Nine Years, It’s Still War on the LME.” Father Gerard LaMountain of the Church of the Most Holy Crucifix, at 378 Broome St. — in the “Little Italy-Delancey Street section of the South Village,” as The Villager described it — had been leading the fight against the hated roadway project that would have decimated the neighborhood to create a speedway connecting the Williamsburg Bridge and Holland Tunnel: “‘The expressway syndrome has the nation enthralled,’ he explains, ‘so it has a bevy of supporters who think that expressways solve everything. But the unhappy fact is that the roads solve nothing. They introduce decay, blight and in the end don’t solve the traffic problem.’”
On the same page, another article, “Koch Asks for Refusal of Funds for Lower Manhattan Xway,” reported how Congressmember Ed Koch had asked the federal government to refuse a $750,000 grant sought by the Lindsay administration to study the expressway project. Koch, The Villager reported, “charged that the Lindsay Administration ‘intentionally or otherwise, sold the Federal Government a bill of goods on the need for the Lower Manhattan Expressway.’” Koch called on Transportation Secretary John A. Volpe “to concentrate on the need for better urban mass transit rather than inner-city highways.”
Compiled by Lincoln Anderson
