The Warriors 1979 Theatrical Release

In January of 1979, just weeks before the theatrical release of The Warriors, the 30-year-old star of the  movie, Michael Beck, experienced a profound moment of religious awakening, and became a Born Again  Christian. According to this 1979 feature story in The Village Voice, Beck knelt down, prayed and was  overcome by a feeling about God. And, “Like Saul, the scales fell from my eyes,” he said. “I could see and  hear the truth.” 

On February 9th, The Warriors was released in over 670 U.S. theaters and pulled in $3.5 million in its  opening weekend alone, quite a feat for a street film shot on $4 million. Paramount was thrilled.  Michael Beck became a star. Swooning headlines appeared in media outlets across the nation. Here’s one I found from February 23rd of that year, from The Herrald-News in Passaic, NJ:

Within two weeks, it would all come crashing down as violence erupted at Warriors screenings across  the nation. In Oxnard, CA, according to press reports, 4 teens were stabbed — and 18-year-old Timothy  Gitchell died — when white and black teens battled in the lobby of a theater. That same night in Palm  Springs, 19-year-old Marvin Kenneth Eller was shot in the head at a drive-in showing The Warriors, and  would later die. Here’s a story from LA writer Marilyn Beck, and a subsequent item from the LA Times: 

L.A. TIMES

Paramount’s problems were not limited to the West Coast. In Boston, there was yet another incident  involving teens who, according to press reports, were inspired to beat and murder 16-year-old Martin  Yakubowicz after seeing a screening of The Warriors:

And in Times Square, 12 Warriors-inspired teens would exit The Lowes State 1 Theater to rampage at  the nearby subway stop on 42nd Street, harassing and terrorizing passengers on the platform. The Daily  News was quick to run this story just 9 days after the movie’s premiere: 

And things were about to get even stranger in New York. A teen vigilante youth gang from the Bronx — called The Magnificent 13 — actually led area protests against The Warriors. I was totally stunned when  I learned about this gang! They actually patrolled the NYC subways in 1979, and were rumored to break  up muggings. Here’s a 02/20 Daily News story about them, which even notes their leadership of the  NYC anti-Warriors protests (next to it, I’ve pasted a photo of their Times Square protest):

When I discussed The Magnificent 13 with my wife, she said, “That sounds like a Curtis Sliwa thing” —  and she was right! With just a little more digging, I managed to unearth this incredible 1979 news story from WABC-TV in NYC, which highlights the NYC Warriors protests, and a super young Curtis Sliwa  talking about his new vigilante gang, which would go on to become The Guardian Angels. 

I’ve spent a huge amount of time combing through all of the press, and lawsuits, about the 1979 movie  theater incidents, and I can tell you that many of the ‘incitement’ connections were later debunked.  Here’s a terrific 02/23 New York Times feature that pops the veil of hype, including the NYC incidents: 

One of the most fascinating stories I found in recent weeks was this item I found in the April 11 edition  of the Herald & Review, offering this powerful coda on Michael Beck’s reaction to stardom:

Orphans

Last week, I ran out to 45th Road in Long Island City, site of the Orphans’ shoot during the Summer of 1978, when Director Walter Hill was shooting the iconic cult film on the streets of NYC.  For any fan of the film, the scenes with The Orphans stand out as one of the highpoints of the entire movie. There’s just so much going down… Having escaped the madness of the Conclave, The Warriors, now running for their lives, find themselves in the Tremont section of the Bronx, where a subway fire has forced them onto the home turf of The Orphans, a gang “so far down, they’re not even on the map.” 

I’ve watched these scenes at least 100 times. Paul Greco plays low-rent gang leader Sully masterfully. I love how this sequence begins with a new twist on a classic Hollywood battlefield motif – where the generals or their emissaries meet on the battlefield to negotiate terms, or to set the rules for a fight. In this case, it’s Swan and Fox from The Warriors versus Sully & his first lieutenant, played by super cool Apache Ramos.

As the scene unwinds, Greco puts on the airs of a powerful, gracious leader, who grants a rival gang safe passage through his turf.  Everything is going perfectly, when Mercy suddenly appears at the top of the stairs, clucking like a chicken, taunting Sully while she eyes a new Warriors vest.  I found those stairs at 21-57 45th Road… 

Like many teenage boys growing up from NYC, I had a thing for Mercy. I was too naïve about city life to fully grasp that she was a former prostitute, now under protection of Sully and his gang, a girl in search of, “some real action.” This was Deborah Van Valkenburgh’s big screen debut, and her performance here is one for the ages.  She channels so much grit and grime in every scene, but there’s something so wistful beneath it all… the way she seems to dream of a life beyond gangs, beyond crime, beyond the subways and fires and garbage littering the streets.

My favorite Mercy scene, and one of my favorite from the entire movie, is the scene where Swan and Mercy cross paths with the white Disco dancers on the subway… there’s so much going down in Mercy’s glances, whether her own embarrassment for the dirt all over her legs and feet, or the way the Disco dancers are terrified to make eye contact with the gang members while riding the subway, and bail from the car at the first chance they get…

I’ll close this post with a cool then and now sequence from 21-57 45th Road, where The Orphan’s peered down from the site of a former Greeting Card store, now the Yand Y Barber Shop in Long Island City.  And what I really love about this photo is that some hardcore Warriors fan actually got up onto the roof – and tagged the wall with a ‘W’, the Warriors tag. Rembrandt would be proud…

More Than Just A Run - The Birth of the Warriors UltraRun

On July 3rd, 2018 I trudged through the woods of Van Cortlandt Park in the middle of the night until I found my way to ‘Vault Hill’, the apex of Van Cortland’s famed Cross Country running course and the former resting grounds of the Van Cortlandt family. It was 1 AM, and my plan was to spend the entire night running alone through the streets of NYC until I reached the shores of Coney Island, a 28-mile run that would recreate the escape route from The Warriors, the iconic 1979 cult film by Walter Hill and one of the greatest running movies of all time. That night would change my life…

In the 1980’s, my brother and I became obsessed with The Warriors. Like many white teens growing up in the suburbs, the movie was intoxicating and in regular rotation in our basement, offering the two of us a view of the mysterious, gritty world of NYC gang life. I was fascinated with this gang, which was racially mixed and super tough. 

(link to Photo:  https://vocal.media/geeks/the-brilliance-of-the-opening-sequence-from-the-warriors)

Hill’s view, of course, was a comic book version of the real-life gangs that patrolled the streets of NYC in the 1970s. When the economy collapsed in 1975, the City laid off over 5000 police officers and 14,000 city workers, creating the perfect conditions for gang rule as neighborhoods across the City were carved up and patrolled by youth gangs. What you see in the Warriors in the Orphan’s scene is no joke – gangs who wore colors on another’s turf would be attacked, killed or chased away… By 1979, the year The Warriors was released, NYC had 1,700 murders – compare that to 2021, when we had 485 murders. 

To give you an idea of how pervasive street gangs were in 1970s, see this map I pulled from a NY Times feature story, examining the surge in murders and robberies across NYC as policing eroded and gangs proliferated in 1974:

Here’s a link to the map: https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2014/12/screaming-phantoms-tomahawks-phantoms.html

I arrived at Coney Island on the 4th of July 2018, at dawn, just as I had planned. I asked a young girl on the beach to take my picture, and recorded this memorable snap…

I posted about the run the next morning – and then the madness began.  I started receiving an endless stream of calls and outreach from other runners who were also obsessed with this film, and would join me if I ever chose to run it again… and the rest, as they say, is history.

Meet Todd Aydelotte - Founder of HeadTrip Running

Photo Credit: Armando "OUTthere" Diaz (@outtherenj)

Todd Aydelotte is an ultrarunner, race director and public relations executive living in New York City. Todd’s unique approach to running long distances, historical ultrarunning, has been covered by media outlets all over the world.  Todd has completed numerous 40, 50 and 80 mile runs to trace unique historical events and personalities -- whether Edgar Allan Poe, Teddy Roosevelt, Walt Whitman and others. To honor the victims of David Berkowitz, Todd completed the Run of Sam on two separate occasions, running over 60 miles to visit 8 crime scenes in a single night; as well as The Bowery Mission UltraRun, a solo 75-mile run where Todd worked within The Bowery Mission’s men’s shelter and visited the organization’s facilities throughout New York and New jersey, while running for nearly 24 hours.  In 2019, Todd staged his first underground group run, the first-ever The Warriors UltraRun, which has now grown into one of the world’s largest events for fans of the iconic cult film by Walter Hill. In 2021, he founded the NYC Black History 50, a 50 mile run that takes runners across all five boroughs in a single day, where they can participate in live historical experiences.

More great info to come. Stay Tuned!