Youngstown Metropolitan Area - References in Popular Culture

References in Popular Culture

A large segment of the American public associates Youngstown with the economic malaise that befell much of the industrial northeast after the collapse of its manufacturing sector, and the decline of Youngstown's steel industry and its adverse effects on local workers were the subjects of Bruce Springsteen's ballad, "Youngstown", featured on his The Ghost of Tom Joad album. In the lyric, Springsteen addresses "my sweet Jenny," a reference to the Jeanette Blast Furnace, owned by Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, which sat along the Mahoning River in the Brier Hill area of the city and was dynamited in 1977. Springsteen made Youngstown the first stop on his solo Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, playing to a sold-out audience at Stambaugh Auditorium on January 12, 1996.

Another pop culture reference to Youngstown came via the HBO television show The Sopranos in 2002. In the show's fourth season premiere episode, entitled "For All Debts Public and Private", the character Paulie Gualtieri is imprisoned in Youngstown for possessing a weapon that was used in an unsolved Youngstown murder. This episode's use of Youngstown as a setting seems to reference the city's association with crime and mob-related violence.

The 1990 motion picture Goodfellas by director Martin Scorsese included a homage to Youngstown in the final scene, where the character Henry Hill picked up a copy of The Vindicator from the stoop of the Midwestern home he was in under witness protection.

During the opening scene of the 1993 Friday the 13th horror film Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Jason Voorhees is killed and his remains taken to the Federal Morgue in Youngstown, Ohio for autopsy.

The hit show Dance Moms has filmed and made several references to dance competitions being held in Youngstown. The most recent being aired on episode 24 of season 3.