CREDITS ROSEMARY'S BABY , 1968 dir: Roman Polanski Mia Farrow Ruth Gordon John Cassavetes Maurice Evans Ralph Bellamy

“It's called Black Bramford.”
“Awful things happen in every apartment house.”
“This house has a lot of unpleasant happenings. ”

For a while, it looked like the master of schlock, William Castle, was going to direct the film of Ira Levin's novel, but, in the end, Castle stood aside to become producer.

Roman Polanski perfectly captures the paranoia growing beneath the seemingly ordinary domestic surface, while veteran Ruth Gordon steals the show as the Woodhouse's busybody neighbour. Castle is rewarded with a cameo as the cigar-smoking man waiting outside the phone booth as a distraught Rosemary Woodhouse calls Dr Hill for help.

The ‘Bramford’, the brooding Gothic building where newlyweds Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse (Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes) set up home is, of course, the Dakota Apartments, 1 West 72nd Street at Central Park West.

Other occupants of the Dakota, who seem to have had a happier time in the building, include Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall, Boris Karloff and Leonard Bernstein.

Most famously, of course, the block was the last home of John Lennon, who was gunned down at the building's entrance in December 1980. Over the road, in Central Park, is Lennon’s memorial, Strawberry Fields.

Ira Levin’s original story was reputedly inspired by the Alwyn Court Apartments, a Renaissance-style block, decorated with terracotta dragons, at 180 West 58th Street.

The only other movie to be filmed at the Dakota was Joseph L Mankiewicz's 1949 House of Strangers with Edward G Robinson and Susan Hayward. Filming is no longer permitted in the block, though the Dakota's exterior was used as the home of Tom Cruise in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky.

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