A Snowy Day In The 70's

Times Square
New York, NY (1978)
This photo was taken after a snowstorm in 1978.  Howard Johnson's restaurant is on the far left hand side.  It was an iconic location at 46th and Broadway that originally opened in the 1940's before becoming Howard Johnson's in 1959.  I had dinner at this Howard Johnson's once in the early 2000's and it was truly a living time capsule.  It remained in business nearly unchanged for decades until it finally closed in 2005.

To the right of the restaurant, you can see a billboard for The Smother's Brothers in I Love My Wife on Broadway.  Also, The Wiz is showing at the Forum Theater on the other side of Burger King.  Assuming that this is the film and not the musical, that would mean that this photo was likely taken after October 24th, 1978.

Update (1/09/2022): Yesterday, I came across a movie blog called Apollo Twin which had a cover photo that was taken of Broadway from 46th Street in New York City.  It looked very familiar to me, so I looked back and found that I had posted a picture of this exact section of Times Square.  There's no snow in this photo, but many of the billboards are the same, which led me to believe that it was taken in the Spring or Summer of 1978.

New York Daily News - May 15, 1978

The movie marquees are visible in these photos, so I did a little research and found that both Jennifer and F.I.S.T. premiered in April, 1978.  That helped me to narrow down my search until I found a date when Jennifer was being screened at Forum on 47th & Broadway, and F.I.S.T. was being shown at the RKO Cinerama at the same location.  That date was May 15th, 1978.  It's possible that this photo might have been taken at some other point during that week on a day when both movies were still being shown by these theaters, but it's as close of a date that we're likely to get without something more concrete from the photographer.