MMMM # 208 -- A Hotel Imposter

     A movie titled 42 is being filmed about Jackie Robinson, and The Birmingham News reports the scenes showing the arrival of the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers at a hotel that refuses them let them stay because of Robinson's race are being shot in Birmingham.
     But it's not telling about the teams' arrival in Birmingham. As far as I know that never happened. 

Ben Franklin Hotel
postcard.

     The "Tutwiler Hotel" in Birmingham is filling for The Ben Franklin Hotel in the very Northern city of Philadelphia. There an irony for you, racism up North in the years leading up to the Montgomery Bus Boycott being portrayed in Birmingham.
     Another irony is the fact that the Ben Franklin is no longer a hotel. It has been converted into an apartment building.

The Actual Original Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham 

     And The Historic Tutwiler Hotel is not The Historic Tutwiler Hotel. 

Zelda Fitzgerald

     It is an apartment building converted into a hotel in 1986 and named after the original hotel, which was imploded in 1974. 
     The new hotel's website says as much, but I don't think you can adopt an actual history as easily as you can adopt a name. 
     My Montgomery home is a century old, but that doesn't mean I can start referring to it as Zelda Fitzgerald's residence and giving tours because it was around when she and F. Scott were living in Montgomery.

Historic Rickwood Field

[PLUS: For the scenes at Rickwood Field, instead of hiring thousands of extras to sweat (and be paid) in the stands, the movie producers rented cloth dummies! Thousands of them. And sure enough, there are companies that do just that.

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this website.]