In Popular Culture
In its heyday, The Rainbow Room was a place to see and be seen. Actress Joan Crawford made her last public appearance at the Rainbow Room at a party honoring Rosalind Russell.
The Rainbow Room is often mentioned in the popular sitcom Friends, often used as a term for when one of the characters was going somewhere fancy. One example is the episode "The One Where Ross and Rachel Take A Break". Phoebe is dating a diplomat, and Monica begins dating his translator, who says "Would you like me to escort you to the Rainbow Room? I have diplomatic coupons."
During the series Will & Grace, the characters frequently attend family meals or birthday events at the Rainbow Room. For example, during "Cheating Trouble Blues", Will, Jack, Grace, and Karen meet to celebrate Mr. and Mrs. Truman's wedding anniversary. The episode contains an ongoing joke that references the restaurant's location on a high floor; Karen is frightened of elevators, so she and Jack begin to climb the stairs, only to realize later that they have left the cake on a lower floor.
In a particularly memorable Howard Stern broadcast, it was revealed that Fred Norris had a fight with his wife Allison at the Rainbow Room.
In his memoir, Kitchen Confidential, chef Anthony Bourdain wrote an entire chapter ("I Make My Bones") about his year and a half in the kitchen staff of the Rainbow Room, describing in detail - both good and bad - the working conditions in an extremely famous and busy restaurant and the numerous dealings normally kept invisible behind the kitchen doors.
J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, mentions the Rainbow Room in his short story, A Girl I Knew.
Hall and Oates refer to the Rainbow Room in their song Bad Habits and Infections: "Maybe you'll find a friend up in the Rainbow Room, If you can dodge the drinks, That they've been throwing at you."
The Rainbow Room was mentioned and shown briefly in a King of the Hill episode discussing why character Hank Hill was born in New York City.
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Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The local is a shabby thing. There’s nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)