Johnny Showtime: THE AUTOMAT

 by JB

This documentary is both charming and sad.

It’s like a dream. You enter a public space that is one third Russian tea room, one third Art Deco cafeteria, and one third mechanical machine playground. Hundreds of tiny brass-framed windows beckon you to the back walls. Behind each window, a fresh food item sits invitingly: sandwiches, side dishes, and a parade of pies and pastries. Most of the items cost a nickel. Placing a nickel in the slot opens the window; take your slice of pie. Coffee, which is dispensed hot from brass dolphin-head spigots, is always a nickel.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: At the turn of the last century, two American entrepreneurs, Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart, go into business together to revolutionize the restaurant industry. Horn had witnessed an automated cafeteria in Berlin run by Max Sielaf, which he sought to copy in America. He arranged to import Sielaf’s patented vending machines that dispensed both hot and cold foods. Hardart, meanwhile, falls in love with French-press coffee in New Orleans, and vows to bring the beverage to New York. Delicious food and French-press coffee dispensed via coin-op machines instead of a wait staff. This was the recipe for a Horn and Hardart Automat, and at the height of their popularity in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore in 1941, their 120 restaurants served more than 500,000 meals a day.
The documentary has assembled an impressive array of talking heads to sing the praises of this esoteric piece of restaurant nostalgia: Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Colin Powell, Elliot Gould, and seemingly every surviving child and grandchild of the original founders. Each one waxes nostalgic about a simpler time and just how great the food was at the Automat. Founders Horn and Hardart were sticklers for customer service and quality.

At the height of their empire, they opened a central commissary in each big city that contained their automats. The commissary would make all the food fresh in huge batches, and then the foods would be trucked to the restaurant locations hourly. It was quite a system. Later, the company would open “Less Work for Mother” retail shops that sold restaurant favorites like creamed spinach, Salisbury steak, assorted baked goods, and their famous coffee. The retail stores were also an unqualified success. One didn’t need a lot of money. One didn’t need a reservation. One really didn’t need to speak English. The documentary makes the point that at their zenith, the Automat represented the American ideal writ plain: everyone was welcome and everyone was fed. The former mayor of Philadelphia remembers eating at the Automat as a child and that even at a very young age, he appreciated the fact that Horn and Hardart “allowed people their basic dignity.” The restaurants weren’t a metaphor for the great melting pot, they were the melting pot. Customs developed as the restaurant chain grew dictated that any open seat at any of the communal tables was open to anyone.

This is one of the best documentaries I have seen in quite a while. Hats off to filmmaker Lisa Hurwitz for turning what could have been an esoteric and forgotten subject into a thoughtful meditation on what we as a country have lost, what we as a country value, and what we as a country have become. Like all great documentaries, The Automat becomes an excuse to meditate for a period of time on a specific set of ideas.

Why did all the automats eventually close? One effect of the film is to really make viewers wish they could step back in time and visit an automat. Everyone agrees that the food was great and a great bargain. Why did we lose these little treasures to time? The documentary provides several answers-- not one of them is particularly comforting.


“What time is it? No time to look back.”
--David Byrne, True Stories