Judy Holliday headshot from 1960
Loopholes have been the name of the billboard game from the 1940s when government policy was enacted to limit this form of advertising within the city and along highways. But, although many billboards were not taken down in Columbus Circle, as one example, continued to be offered for rent, by the early 50s many advertisers were putting their money elsewhere.
In 1953, a huge billboard constructed at 7 Columbus Circle had not been leased in three years. A stroke of good luck briefly reversed that situation
when the billboard was rented for use as a key part of the movie “It Should Happen to You”. The romantic comedy was written by Garson Kanin. It starred Judy Holliday, Jack Lemmon and Peter Lawford. The film is a cinematic celebration of New York with numerous on-location Central Park and UWS settings. It’s also all about billboards and the wish to have one’s name boldly announced “above the crowds” to the world.
This dream, a number of contemporary commentators have noted, resonates with today’s reality show ethic – being famous for being famous. So, in this film, Judy Holliday plays Gladys Glover, a young, naive model who has lost her job. She dreams of having her name up on a billboard. It turns out that one in Columbus Circle is available. She leases it but runs into opposition from the advertisers of a soap company that assumed it had ongoing rights to the advertising space. Gladys is offered and agrees to swap her billboard spot for six other NYC billboards on which to have her name posted. She becomes famous though the source of her fame is an open question. “Who or what is Gladys Glover?” a TV anchor asks during a newscast viewed by patrons in a bar in one scene of the movie.
Along the way Gladys becomes romantically involved with a soap company adman, who is negotiating the billboard deal, but ultimately goes off with a documentary-maker who has more grounded values that she comes to realize she shares.
From the early 1900s, through the 1930s numerous billboards were constructed on buildings surrounding Columbus Circle. As new buildings were far taller and streamlined than the ones they replaced, billboards in Columbus Circle became a thing of the past. One of the last to go was the large, illuminated Coca Cola sign, famously photographed in 1936 through another billboard by Berenice Abbott.
That Coca Cola sign stood on top of the American Circle Building on the north side of Columbus Circle until 1966 when the building was demolished. Initially the billboard included a large panel with a daily weather report in the form of a dial temperature thermometer. That element was changed during WWII amid anxiety that this information might be of possible use to the Nazis. The sign was taken down to make way for the Gulf Western building constructed at that site. Later taken over by Gulf and Western, it is currently the address of the Trump International Hotel.
Photographs of Columbus Circle in the 1940s show billboards advertising whisky, cigars, cigarettes, theater performances and cars. A bit more unusual are billboards promoting Uneeda Biscuits, a bowling alley and another advertising Dr. Savage’s Gym.
Fast forward to the 21st Century, the last of the Columbus Circle billboards is at 3 Columbus Circle. It displayed the CNN logo in red neon beginning in 2005 until it was removed in 2015. The sign was then replaced with the display board that remains today, characterized by lightweight LED technology.
While the numerous billboards that both cluttered and contributed pizazz to Columbus Circle are gone, they were part of the Upper West Side landscape and cultural history. Traces remain. Google the Coca Cola sign at Columbus Circle and you find scores of vintage photos of the iconic site. Curious about the huge 80’ x40’ billboard at 7 Columbus Circle where Judy Holliday’s Gladys Glover wanted her name displayed? A June 15,1954 New York Times article about 7 Columbus Circle when it was razed, quoted a former building manager. “The building went up in 1904,” he began. “An odd-triangular shaped office building with odd-shaped offices. Tenancy was irregular. So about twenty-five years ago, the upper three stories were torn out and replaced with terra cotta brick and cement. That became the billboard.” He added that producers of “It Should Happen to You” paid $400 to use the billboard for a week. “It was a good movie. It was the billboard’s epitaph, I guess.”