I don’t know when Allen Swift and his wife Lenore painted the apartment. These photos are from 2010. That’s a long time after the play is set.
Those walls look like standard rental white. Warmer because of the quality of the film and photo, but probably close to that stark white that is responsible for the toothpaste layer of paint obscuring all of the molding in all 5 boroughs. Most folks like white, or will tolerate it happily in a sunny room like this one. It is definitely an easy choice, and a good one.
I will be making a rough model in white cardstock, and then the 1/8” model in white gesso. It would be easy and pretty and fail safe to imagine it pale as I’m assembling it; and then choose a tasteful shade of ecru that would offend no one.
Screw ecru! I’m painting it pink!
I know Nat King Cole had pink interiors in his Hollywood home in the late 1950’s, though they are not as bright as I remember.
Maybe the 1950’s pink paint color was in this powder pink world. Like this ice cream parlor in England, maintained from its original renovation in 1957.
The peachy pink of those benches looks pretty close to the pink of the Swift’s walls. That color would do two things:
Pink would make it look like a period set. Pink is such a late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s color. The period is not precisely right for au courant 1975, but to most audience members it would just look ‘retro’.
How often do you paint your place? This man is not rich and never has been. I can’t imagine he would repaint every decade to keep up with the times. Furthermore, his wife has been gone for 8 years. Maybe not in the mood to redecorate in her last 2 years. So, let’s say that apartment was last painted sometime before 1965.
Pink would also make the apartment particular to its owner. We are not allowed to paint apartments so the owners can get us out and the next folks in as fast as possible. Painting means you are staying.
Morris’s children describe the adversarial relationship with the landlord - West 57th Street is now called Billionaires Row - Morris went to court to protect his right to stay 5 times. I like imagining that the scene that precedes the opening of the play, the realtor showing the apartment to a prospective tenant, has that awkwardness of entering a very private space. It looks like an apartment that is set up to have other folks there - but, really it is not. It is his lair. Morris doesn’t really want his kids to spend the night.
The pink makes his wife even more present. And it also maybe would make us feel okay about moving on - like that time has passed.
My parents are going to read this story and chuckle. They said “Screw Ecru!” in 2000, after 20 years of tasteful walls - and let me choose the color. What made me think pink? My house-painter dad came out of retirement to do a fancy decorative finish I concocted to make them look like the below walls that Rene Burri captured in 1960’s Mexico. Not ever my favorite color. But there they are, 20 years on. Pink walls.