It seemed like magic: A restaurant without waiters. Instead, walls of shiny glass and chrome doors, which opened to reveal comfort foods to match Mom's cooking. "Pies, pies, pies. Yes, the pies were ...

As a woman of a certain age, I have the great fortune of actually remembering the Automat restaurants, the marvelously entertaining subject of what Mel Brooks has deemed a “meshugganah documentary.” ...

The author works for Temple University Library, which is also the employer of John Pettit, an archivist in a separate department mentioned in the article. Hurwitz’s film shows that the Automat’s ...

AUTOMAT_film_Mel Brooks drinking coffee photographed by Carl Reiner while the two were writers for Your Show of Shows, c. 1950-1954 in The Automat. Photo courtesy of A Slice of Pie Productions Mel ...

It isn’t difficult to explain the premise of The Automat, but it’s a little challenging to describe how it makes you feel. On the surface, it’s a case study about an early-20th-century restaurant ...

The director Lisa Hurwitz discusses the history of the Horn & Hardart chain of restaurants, which offered comfort food in coin-operated glass boxes. By Nicolas Rapold What do Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

Jewish comedy legends Mel Brooks and the late Carl Reiner, as well as other well-known personalities, reminisce about a slice of American history in the documentary “The Automat,” opening in South ...

I didn’t grow up in the frenzy and fascination of New York, but it seems written in stone that I didn’t really start to live until after I got there. It was the winter of 1960 and from the dirt and ...

The high style of movies such as “The French Dispatch,” “Zola,” and “Strawberry Mansion” is more than a matter of décor; their performances are stylized because style is as much a way of life as it is ...

Whatever nostalgia is — homesickness, fantasy, delusion — it’s flooding “The Automat.” There’s something about people’s memories of these automated cafeterias that flourished in the United States for ...