Toots (2008)

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• Project Phase: 
• Release Date: 2008-11-21 - NY and/or LA
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• Film Genre(s): Documentary
• Country: United States
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SYNOPSIS

“Toots Shor is many things to many people,” said newsman Edward R. Murrow of the legendary Manhattan saloon keeper in 1955. He was a friend to the famous, a crook to the feds, a father, a brother and a gambler, but, most of all, Toots Shor was the owner of America’s greatest bar. TOOTS is a refreshingly fun, provocative, and unmistakably authentic portrait of a self-made, unapologetic American man who became the unlikely den-mother to the heroes and larger-than-life personalities of America’s golden age. Politicians and gangsters, sports heroes and movie stars -- for 30 years, they all found their way to Toots’ eponymous saloon on New York’s West 51st Street for food and drink, served up with a heaping side of put downs. On any given night, on one side of the crowded dining roon of Toots Shor's could be the Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, on the other side, the notorious mob boss Frank Costell. The most coveted tables were reserved for Toots' closest friends - Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Gifford, Jackie Gleason. These giants of American culture and sports found in Toots a unique sense of comfort, somewhere between his trademark bear hug and relentless insults. As The New York Times put it in 1977: “In a very unique manner, Toots Shor for several decades was the mirror of a special excitement and quality that set New York apart from all other cities. He was a magnet around which flowed many of the special streams of New York’s greatness”.

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