Museum of the Moving Image

The best film location in Queens is a building that shows you how film locations are made. The Museum of the Moving Image sits inside one of the original 1920 buildings of the Kaufman Astoria Studios complex — Paramount’s old eastern studio, where the Marx Brothers shot their first talkies — and it’s the rare museum where the building is as much the exhibit as what’s inside it. You walk through a National Register-listed studio to reach Kermit the Frog.

The Scene

The museum’s permanent home is the story: this is studio ground. The 1920 Famous Players–Lasky building (Paramount’s forerunner) that houses part of the museum once rang with early sound filmmaking — the Marx Brothers’ first two films were shot on this lot.

Inside, the headliner is The Jim Henson Exhibition, a permanent gallery that opened July 22, 2017, with nearly 300 objects and 47 original puppets: Kermit, Miss Piggy, Rowlf, the Swedish Chef, Statler and Waldorf, Elmo, Big Bird, even a Skeksis from The Dark Crystal. Sketches, storyboards, and 27 monitors of clips round it out, plus interactive stations where you can try puppeteering yourself. The other pilgrimage site is the “Behind the Screen” core exhibition, with some 1,400 artifacts and a playable arcade lineup — Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Defender, Battlezone — plus landmarks like the 1971 Computer Space cabinet (the first arcade video game) and Pong.

The Backstory

The museum was founded in 1981 and opened in September 1988 — the first museum in the country devoted to film, television, and digital media. The studio around it had nearly been lost: after Paramount moved west in the early 1930s, the lot drifted through the Army years and near-abandonment until Kaufman’s 1982 rescue.

The building you visit today is mostly the product of a $67 million expansion that broke ground in 2008 and reopened in January 2011, designed by architect Thomas Leeser of Leeser Architecture — a sharp, angular white facade wrapped around the historic bones, with a light-filled lobby, a main theater, and a screening room. The complex’s history is officially recognized: the Paramount Studios Complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 14, 1978, and the main studio building was designated a New York City Landmark on March 14, 1978.

What to Look For

Start with the Henson gallery, then hit the arcade — the games are genuinely playable, and there’s something perfect about playing Donkey Kong inside a 1920 movie studio. Check the theater schedule before you go: the museum runs screenings of classics, retrospectives, and restorations. The lobby, cafe, and courtyard are free during open hours, so you can scout before you commit.

And when you leave, look at the building from the street: you’re standing on the lot where The Cocoanuts was filmed in 1929. The white gate and the “Kaufman Astoria Studios” sign on 35th Avenue are a one-block walk away.

Getting There

Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Avenue, Astoria, NY 11106 (at 37th Street).

Subway: take the R or M train to Steinway Street (about three blocks) or the N/W to 36 Ave. Hours (check movingimage.org before visiting, since museum hours shift seasonally): generally Thursday 2–6 PM, Friday 2–8 PM, Saturday–Sunday 11 AM–6 PM, closed Monday through Wednesday. General admission is free on Thursday afternoons from 2–6 PM.

Trivia

• The first two Marx Brothers films, The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930), were shot at the Astoria studio — the brothers were Broadway stars, and Paramount filmed them minutes from Times Square.
• The U.S. Army Signal Corps ran the studio as the Army Pictorial Center from 1942 to 1971, producing training and propaganda films.
• The complex is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1978) and is a designated NYC Landmark — but it is not a National Historic Landmark, a common mix-up the old version of this very post made.

The Hunt Clue

Where the Marx Brothers first found their voice,

And Kermit still reigns as the people’s choice —

Thirty-six-oh-one, on Thirty-fifth’s track,

Where Paramount’s dream never looked back.

Play the arcade, catch a show —

Dear hunter, that’s the way to go.

Photo by Dansnguyen via Wikimedia Commons CC0 1.0