HAMLET – Billy Bathgate is a novel written in 1989 by author E. L. Doctorow. The novel won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle award for fiction in 1990, 1990 Faulkner Award for Fiction, and the 1990 William Dean Howells Medal.
The story is set in 1935 and told in the first person by Billy “Bathgate” Behan. Billy is a fifteen year-old boy who first becomes the gofer and then surrogate son/protégé of fledgling gangster Dutch Schultz.
In late 1990, the Walt Disney Production Studio came to Hamlet, and transformed our Main Street to look like a 1930’s Bronx town in order to film Billy Bathgate.
The movie brought many famous actors and actresses to our little Hamlet. Loren Dean as Billy; Dustin Hoffman as Schultz; Steven Hill as Otto Berman; Nicole Kidman as Drew; Steve Buscemi as Irving; Stanley Tucci as Lucky Luciano; and Bruce Willis as Bo all came to town. The celebrities were regularly seen around town during this time.
The Terminal Hotel was an important focal location during filming; it sat where Main Street Park is today. Rooms in the hotel and the lobby were fixed up remarkably and multiple scenes for Billy Bathgate were shot in the rooms. The movie company also added a permanent balcony that was built around the exterior at the front of the hotel, complete with signs that were added for a “restaurant” and a “barbershop.” New carpet was laid throughout the hotel and wallpaper was added upstairs and in the hallways. The Terminal essentially received a complete face-lift to take it back in time to the 1930’s.
The Terminal Hotel was owned by Jake Covington. The hotel is believed to have been built around 1912 and its 52 rooms were used to house railroaders and mail clerks when the railroad was in its heyday. Having burned in 1993, it was actually being used as a boarding house that housed approximately 30 boarders.
