Some Rejects

I’ve had a cold from outer space or somewhere that’s been knocking me around all week so I haven’t been able to go over to San Francisco to take any pictures. I thought I’d post some pictures I wasn’t particularly happy with just to keep busy. They’re from interesting locations, but for various reasons I wasn’t pleased with them; the lighting was bad, the capture wasn’t good, or they just weren’t interesting pictures. We’ll start with this fascinating image from Buster Keaton’s 1922 short film ‘Daydreams’. Buster, being chased by San Francisco police, runs down Lombard Street and turns north onto Taylor. Construction began the same year on the “Crookedest Street in the World” at the top of both images, but it’s difficult to see how far along the work was from the movie scene. I don’t know if this film is available on DVD, I got the image from a fine San Francisco movie locations site on the internet, but when I went back to find the name of the site and give credit, I wasn’t able to locate it anymore.

I’d like to redo this one of Barbara Lawrence in front of the Ferry Building from the 1949 movie ‘Thieves Highway’. I took my picture late in the day and it’s not a good shot.

Actually, I’m enjoying this one more now that I’ve posted it; it’s an interesting capture from a 1972 version of ‘The Streets of San Francisco’. A Winnebago, “We’re giving ‘em away!” full of bad guys drives along the Embarcadero south of the Ferry Building. There’s a lot of interesting things to see in the film shot, such as the old YMCA Building in the center, the Embarcadero Freeway, but mostly, to me, the building with the scotch advertisement on the side. This was the Daniels Hotel where the witness Steve McQueen was guarding was rubbed out by hit men early in the 1968 film, ‘Bullitt’.

Not bad, not good, but it is Clint Eastwood. “Dirty Harry” Callahan crosses 2^nd Street from Minna Alley to do justice, (his kind) to three holdup men in the 1976 film ‘The Enforcer’.

The only thing good about this silly one is the location. Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal roll under the dragon during the Chinatown New Year parade on a stolen messenger bicycle causing it to race out of control down Jackson Street in the 1972 movie ‘What’s up, Doc?”. The parade route normally follows Grant Avenue when celebrating the Chinese New Year, but Grant isn’t as steep as Jackson so the scene wouldn’t have worked there.

Tyne Daly and Clint Eastwood on the neglected Municipal Pier at the foot of Van Ness Avenue when it was in a little better shape in the 1976 movie ‘The Enforcer’ It’s an interesting location, but I took the picture at sunset rather than during the day when it would have been a better comparison.

This comparison of the Telegraph Hill portion of Montgomery Street from the 1947 film ‘Dark Passage’ speaks for itself as to why it’s so forgettable.