The Lemon Sistersm a textured film portrait of three friends nad would-be singers, is set against the rapidly changing landscape of Atlantic City. Eloise (Diane Keaton) is oriented toward a glamorous future, and Nola (Kathryn Grody) to the practicalities of the day to day. However, when they a ll come together to sing- or even not to sing, but to deal with the trials of unheaval- they are some odd harmonious whole. The name "Lemon Sisters" (pace the Lennon Sisters) charmingly alludes to this interpendendency; one alone is just a "lemon," but three lemons in casino parlance make a jackpot.
This film has special resonance for its three actresses, because of their real-life friendship and their shared fascination with the old sea-side resort they used to visit together during the seventies. "Atlantic City, before gambling, was full of discoveries," recalls Keaton. "The fabulous, slightly run0down architecture of the old hoterls along the boardwalk held a sense of history that reminded me of grand resorts like Brighton in England, or the old Miami Beach." And Keaton also found a haunting allure where many saw only decay and kitsch. "It was a calm, retired place where teh lost, the old, and the displaced gathered. But at the same time, there was a weird and wonderful 'showbiz-y' current in Atlantic City life."
For years, Keaton had wanted to collect the jumble of Atlantic City images on film, a notion that dove-tailed with the idea of a movie about her frienship with Kane and Grody. keaton would become the driving force behind The Lemon Sisters and the movie's co-producer (with Joe Kelly, who produced her directorial debut, Heaven). For both Kane and Grody, the realization of The Lemon Sisters had a dream-come-true aspect apropos the Atlantic City backdrop.
"Tit's a film for us," says Kane. "It's like a gift from Diane." Grody concurs, "if Di hadn't been a part of this, it would have been just another case of actresses sitting around saying, 'Wouldn't it be great to make a film together.'" The three women met 15 years ago in New York. At the time, Keaton was starring in Woody Allen films, Kane had just created her Oscar-nominated performance in Hester Street, and Grody was establishing a stage career. While their professional paths croths on several occasions, only in the film Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976) did all three work together.
The Lemon Sisters began to take shape in the summer of 1984 when Keaton and screenwriter Jeremy Pikser drove up to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where Kane and Grody were appearing in the Berkshire Theatre Festival. After the performance, they chatted late into the night about their memories of Atlantic City and the characters they might play. Pikser listened to the rhythms of their natural dialogue and made the first notes for a script.
Soon after, at the time of the 1984 Miss America Pageant, the four, plus Kelly, followed the dream to Atlantic City. Keaton had reamained a faithful visitor to the resort over the years and was relatively stoic about the changes there. The others were shocked. Seven glittering casinos towered over the boardwalk. The endearing honky-tonk of penny arcades, mom-and-pop diners, and curio stands were giving ground to what Kane calls "generic America"- chain food and Muzak-ridden gift shops of little distinction. The remaining real estate swarmed with demolition and construction crews. Gone was the aimlessness of the seventies. Denizens had new jobs, and visitors had a focal purpose. Everybody was making or losing or just throwing around-money.
While they hardly admired this transformation, Keaton, Kane, and Grody were impressed by its dramatic import. They decieded to pin the story to 1980 to catch the crest of change. And they determined that the Lemon Sisters would be Atlantic City natives, friends since childhood, and singers since having won a children's talent contest on the boardwalk. "We wanted to deal with the transition and those who lived through it," explains Keaton. "The change in Atlantic City is the catalyst for change in the friendship of the Lemon Sisters- and there's a sense of inevitability in both evolutions."
As the story opens, the neighborhood club where the Lemon Sisters sing on Monday nights is about to close, a victim of the casino culture that has emerged since gambling was legalized in 1978. Resolved to stay together, the friends dream of buying their own club, the Lemon Tree Lounge. Money seems to be the obstacle...but is it? After all, a booming Atlantic City offers plenty of enticements to make money, if one is willing to risk what one already possesses. In this garden of all temptations, each Lemon Sister will have caue to take stock of what she has, what she wants, and what she needs of her friends. Keaton's Eloise Hamer is an eccentric soul fixated on the past. She drifts forlornly amid memories of her father, the memorabilia of the television museum he bequeather her, a collection of pseudoclassical hotel statuary, and a rambling houseful o fcats (to which she develops an allergy, paralleling Keaton's own experience). With the support of her friends, the attentiveness of her admirer (Ruben Blades), and ultimatley the compelling need to act on behalf of a friend, Eloise will rise above the clutter of the past to find a more purposeful direction. Kane's Franki Di Angelo is a winsome sophisticate with starry eyes fixed on the idea of making it as a big-time entertainer. As photo girl at a casino, and companion to a hustler (Aiden Quinn), she is the Lemon Sister who is most keenly aware of the glamour that beckons. Franki is deeply hurt to discover that her friends do not heed to this call with the same fervor. But, although her friends don't share Franki's ambitions, they will provide the emotional grounding she desperately needs to pursue her dream. Nola Frank, Grody's character, is a warm, practical, earth mother and anchor to her friends, her incompetent husband (Eliot Gould), and her children. She regards the change in Atlantic City as a threat to the fragile stability of the status quo. She will disappoint her friends in her effort to preserve the well-being of her family. But for all her care and conservatism, it is Nola who must finally rely on Eloise and Franki for rescue.
Nola, Eloise, and Franki will conclude that the Lemon Tree Loune is but an insignificant shell for the enduring core strength and dependency of their friendship. Change has dashed some dreams. But change has revealed constants, and constants provide the secure reconciliation of past, present and future. By 1988, when Joyce Chopra directed The Lemon Sisters, Atlantic City could claim it was the most visited place in America. Some 33 million visitors came to toy with 19,000 slot machines and 1,300 gambling tables in 12 highrise casinos. Atlantic City's epithet, the "Mecca for Millions," was reaffirmed in spades. It was already difficult to find suitable locations to shoot. Gone were the elegant old hotels, including the Marlborough-Blenheim, where Keaton, Kane and Grody used to stay (though its architechural ornamentation was incorporated into the modern pink and mauve, brass and mirror decor of Bally's Park Place). Going fast were the Victorian neighborhoods. The film crew temporarily stayed the demolition of a porched house (built by William Randolph Hearst) for Eloise...The derelict Clifton's Harlem Club, which in its day hosted top black entertainment, served as the Lemon Tree Lounge. For the casino scenes, Caesars was ideal; it existed in 1980, and its "classical" statues, columns, and Appian Way shopping mall nicely mirror Eloise's collection. But for the exterior shots, the crew had to relocate to Asbury Park. There was no unadulterated sea-front property left in Atlantic City.
Keaton, Kane, and Grody are troubled by the transformation of Atlantic City. Grody frets, as Nola might, about the social value of change for city residents. By law, casinos pay an 8 percent tax for senior-citizen programs and 1.25 percent of revenues for community development. Yet, 11 years after gambling was legalized, extensive blocks of blight and desperation remain. Behind the boardwalk, grumbles Grody, "it's like Dresden." Kane regrets the passing of "whimsy" she remembers from the seventies, but she understands Franki's passion. "You can't pass a slot machine without having some kind of dream," she says. "With one coin your life can change dramatically. This realization is at teh same time beautiful and ugly- and that's Atlantic City." Keaton, like an enlightened Eloise, can bridge teh past to the present: "Atlantic City is still about fantasy- it's just that now it's more about money."
But then money is today's vehicle for fantasy, and not for the first time- it's a short hop from Hearst to Trump. Arguably, money is no baser an obsession than others Atlantic City has witnessed; 100 years ago, the city catered to America's longing for the exotic, a pretty notion with a decidedly sordid underside of freak shows, turbaned hucksters, and dimly lit stalls where thrillseekers paid to view abnormalities preserved in jars. Atlantic City is unimaginable without its past. True, Victorians have been bulldozed (after all, Atlantic City has no business being elegant and graceful, euphemisms for demode), but the screwiest keepsakes are cherished. Lucy, the Margate elelphant, has national landmark status. James's "Original Cut-to-Fit-the-Mouth" saltwater taffy stores have survived a century. Miss America pageants, "the biggest Cinderella story in America," have survived 50 years of feminist disdain. The wide,wood-planked boardwalk is still "the promenade of America."
In 1973, the Atlantic City counci had considered changing two street names that were among those made famous in the board game Monopoly. The motion sparked a controversy that reflected a wider clash between Atlantic City's glorious past and its glitzy future as a gambling center. The streets kept their names, but not before Commissioner Joseph Lazarow had embraced the analogy of Atlantic City to Monopoly, of life to the continual circling of the board, piced up funny money, buying property, building hotels, and drawing cards of chance. With a crude but insightful ditty fit for the Lemon Sisters, he voted to preserve the past in order to progress.
"Baltic and Mediterranean are the streets we know/Without them we would never pass "Go.'"
Janine King is a frequent contributor to ELLE.

The article is accompanied by a small color photo of Kathryn Grody, Diane Keaton and Carol Kane: Gambling three: (left to right) Kathryn Grody, Diane Keaton and Carol Kane; a small color photo of Joyce Chopra- Framing the gaming: The Lemon Sisters' director, Joyce Chopra, who previously made Smooth Talk.