This 2023, can we PLEASE bring back the automats?! Courtesy of HBO Max.Happy 2023! I’m starting the first blog post of the year with THE AUTOMAT. THIS. MOVIE. Wow. Let me first say that PJFM has some history with this film. It all started a few years ago. Everything was going very well….and then a stupid pandemic had to jump in and interlope with the organization’s programming. I won’t reminisce about how everything had to turn virtual back in 2020 and we thought theaters would be closed forever. (Let’s not go there…) We wanted so badly to show THE AUTOMAT, not on a computer screen but in the BIG theater, the traditional place we’ve been going to for years to experience films like this. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out. THE AUTOMAT did, however, make its premiere at the Philadelphia Film Festival (in-person) in 2021. It was also shown at Telluride, as well as a whole bunch of other Jewish film festivals like San Francisco and Miami, two of the biggest ones in the country. It premiered on television last November and is now available to stream on HBO Max. It’s even available to purchase on DVD.
Now, I understand I sound hypocritical because while I’m praising how good this movie would be on the big screen, it’s now streaming. I get it, but you know what? If you have a big TV, blast this movie on the big screen and just pretend you’re in a theater. You can eat this movie up, it’s that good.
I have to admit that when I first heard about THE AUTOMAT, I was a little dubious. Don’t get me wrong, I love documentaries, and any film containing Mel Brooks I will enjoy, but a movie about “automats”? Those old-school restaurant/vending machines? No offense, but were they really that interesting? Thanks to Lisa Hurwitz’s excellent direction and plethora of facts, juxtaposed with her nostalgic, upbeat sense of humor throughout the film, THE AUTOMAT moved me beyond words. This isn’t just a sweet, nostalgic film about the past that’s mutually exclusive for older generations. It’s more than that. It’s about the simpler times that we wish we could get back, the period before everything in America became so commercialized and messy. Automats weren’t just a restaurant chain. These places were like a haven for customers, a location to relax at, mingle with all kinds of folks – regardless of their worth, nationality, ethnicity, etc. – and just have a nice time away from the chaos we call “life.”
What is an automat exactly? Think of it as a restaurant with no service, a hub where you enter the establishment and make your way to a type of vending machine with food behind it. There are a whole bunch of options; sandwiches, pastries, snacks, etc. You put a nickel in the machine, and then the little cubicle with the food opens. Voilà! You’re served. And yes, you read that right: this only cost a NICKEL.
Coffee was also a novelty to automats. Imagine living in America before Starbucks and coffee shops were the norm. I remember, a few weeks ago, telling a colleague about how I would probably go into cardiac arrest if I didn’t have my cup of coffee every afternoon during work. I don’t think anyone can undermine how essential caffeine is. In the early-mid 20th century, automats were the original coffee shops, those cozy little buildings where you take a break from a stressful day and let the caffeine do its job. We owe everything to these joints.
THE AUTOMAT is also the perfect Philly movie. In fact, the very first automat was established here in the city on 39 S 13th St. (It’s no longer there, but I’ll get to that later.) It all started when Joe Horn, a restaurateur from Philadelphia, traveled across the country to figure out the best kind of restaurant he could make. One day, while eating lunch at a restaurant in Boston, he saw the most bizarre sight: customers being served coffee. Say what?!
“The choreography just enchanted him,” says Lorraine Diehl, co-author of The Automat. “The bulb clicked in his head.”
Inspired, Horn returned to Philly where he placed an ad in the paper looking for a co-partner. In came Frank Hardart, a restaurateur from New Orleans, the only city in the country making French press coffee at the time. Now automats, I should add, were already popular in other countries. Hardart had visited one in Germany and suggested Horn and he start one in the US. The two clicked, and Horn & Hardart was officially formed. At the first restaurant in Philly, Hardart worked the kitchen and Horn tended to the customers. This compatible duo was unaware of how huge their business would blossom.
Eventually, automats expanded across Philly and New York City. Horn, who disliked the Big Apple, mainly managed the Philly automats, while Hardart was in charge of the other city. Customers flocked to these establishments.
“It was one of the greatest inventions,” says Mel Brooks, who, as a child, used to travel to the automat in Manhattan from Brooklyn all the time with his brothers.
Even former Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode agrees the impact of automats was more than substantial.
“It was what Philadelphia was all about,” he says. “When you said Philadelphia, you said Horn & Hardart.”
The thing about automats was that they came out at just the right time. In New York, for example, as more women became stenographers during the time period, automats became popular hangouts for coffee or lunch breaks. As more immigrants entered the docks, they flocked to automats, the “cool place” to eat in America, to better assimilate with American customs. Even when the Great Depression hit, the automats were the lucky ones that stayed in business because they were so cheap. Displaced citizens out of work and the homeless could come to the automats with just a nickel. Also, since there were no waiters, you didn’t have to tip.
In my opinion, the greatest thing about automats was that they were a melting pot for the cities’ poor, wealthy, and wildly diverse customers. Everyone went there, and there were never exceptions to what kinds of customers were allowed entry. Imagine entering a restaurant and seeing the wealthiest person sitting next to a middle-class person or a Caucasian man sitting next to an Italian immigrant new to the city or a rabbi sitting next to a priest… There is no animosity. No prejudice. Just a group of humans chatting it up over some coffee and food. It couldn’t have been more perfect.
The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg agrees. While automats were just fun hangout spots, their blending of ALL kinds of people was the most memorable thing.
“It was the fact that there were all kinds of people,” Ginsburg says, that made automats so special.
As you probably know, automats aren’t around anymore, and learning of their demise in the movie is very tragic. These places changed people’s lives. Hurwitz interviews a lot more people, including the Executive Chairman (now Interim CEO) of Starbucks himself, Howard Schultz, and she wonderfully captures the nostalgia in their eyes as they recount their memories of dining at these joints.
I mentioned a little bit how commercialism was one reason for the downfall of automats. It’s no surprise that the last automat was made into – you guessed it – a Burger King. [Insert eye roll emoji.] Surprise, surprise. Indeed, like many businesses across the globe, life got in the way for Horn & Hodart, but we shouldn’t mourn their “extinction,” for lack of a better word. This isn’t a sad movie at all, and Mel Brooks, not surprisingly so, steals every interview he gives with his usual panache. Hurwitz invites us to glimpse into the past and be grateful for the things that might seem superfluous or dull in today’s world. The country is bigger and crazier in the 21st century. Together, let’s wish for more automats, not just for their convenience and food, but for their power at uniting people.
THE AUTOMAT is now available to stream on HBO Max. It is also available to purchase on DVD. For more info, visit AutomatMovie.com.