“Lights! Action! Camera!” The best way to enjoy this set is to look at the four pictures before reading the synopsis. There’s action going on, although, not always fast moving, in each of these scenes. At the left, I like this scene! It’s so…… old time motorcycle-woody-art deco! Lauren Bacall smuggles San Quentin escapee, Humphrey Bogart, past a police dragnet in the 1947 film ‘Dark Passage’. Because of inept police work, they don’t search the back of her woody, thoroughly, for fear of getting the oil from her recent paintings that Bogie’s hiding under on their uniforms! “You’ll be walking the beat again for this, O’Hara!” The toll booths are automatubeulated now, (Is that the word I’m looking for?) but I hope they don’t remove them. Second from the left, one look at these guys in the boat, and it’s apparent that they’re not fighting over a splash hit home run ball in McCovey Cove! They’re members of ‘People’s Revolutionary Strike Force, (Oh, that one) who have just kidnapped the Mayor of San Francisco in the 1976 film ‘The Enforcer’, and are spiriting him away to their hideout on Alcatraz. This little cove was called China Basin back then, and it’s not the first movie to feature a boat kidnapping in McCovey Cove! Second from the right: This scene may look placid, but there’s some serious stalking action going on here. Jimmy Stewart is stalking Kim Novak in the green Jaguar across the intersection at 16th and Dolores in the 1958 film ‘Vertigo’. He’s following her to find out why she’s crazy; I mean, assuming that thinking that you’re visiting your own grave at Mission Dolores, and that you died a hundred years earlier is crazy! At right, long before ‘Bullitt’, filmmakers staged a wild car chase scene on Russian Hill, and other locations. Margaret Lindsay is chased by her fiancé as she follows a tip lead to a location in hope of finding her missing sister, Bette Davis, in the 1934 movie ‘Fog Over Frisco’. This chase scene ends in a boat kidnapping at China Basin / McCovey Cove, as well! (Thumbnail image)
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 