No, these ladies at the entrance to Frontierland aren’t part of the show, that’s how people dressed in the 1950’s. Boy, people sure were funny looking in THOSE days, huh? (You can see where this is going)
President Jimmy Carter jogging through Frontierland: This picture was taken in 1982, after his tenure as Commander in Chief.
The old Skyway to Fantasyland through the Matterhorn, and the People Mover: It’s hard to believe that two people died from falling off the People Mover; It was always the slowest ride in the park! You can still see the People Mover track today.
A parade advertising the different lands to visit on Disneyland’s opening day, July 17th 1955: (Vintage photo from Omg Cute Things)
Those aren’t characters from the Pirates of the Caribbean in the top photo. That’s my mom and dad, my brother Pat, my sister Julie’s kids, Beverly, Carrie Ann, Stacy, and me on Main Street in 1981.
“Don’t try this at home!” Anybody who has driven into Yosemite National Park by way of Route 120 knows about the long tunnel you pass through shortly after entering the park. If you stop your car after exiting the tunnel and walk back about half way, there’s a side tunnel running off of the main tunnel that you can walk through to get a great view of Yosemite Valley. The bottom picture is the view from the side tunnel. Cars passing by you when you’re walking in the tunnel sound like airplanes taking off!
The Yosemite Lodge swimming pool in the 1940’s with Yosemite Falls in the background: I couldn’t get a good line up with the falls from the pool area now so I took my picture from the parking lot of the lodge. When we showed the old photo to a nice guy who works near the swimming pool area, he informed us that the old pool used to be where the parking lot is now. So there! The bottom photo is the pool today. (Period photo from Vintage Everyday)
Taking a break near some rapids along the Merced River with my brother, Kevin:
Inspiration Point from the tunnel; looks like the early 1960’s. (Vintage Everyday)
It wasn’t as busy at the Route 140 entrance to Yosemite last week as it was on this Memorial Day in the 1940’s. (L.A. Times)
The rock tunnel along Highway 140 in 1949:
“Denial is a river in Egypt.” Face it, guys, she drowned! On July 7th 1901, Sadie Schaeffer, Sadie Young, and Johnnie Van Campen went rafting down the Merced River in a small boat built by Van Campen. When they got near where El Capitan is, Sadie Young left the boat because she was nervous about the water. Shortly after, the boat overturned. Van Campen made it to shore but Sadie Schaeffer drowned in the river and her body was never found. Since she was never located, her friends put an epitaph on her grave marker in the Yosemite Cemetery that sounds a little optimistic, if not morbid! It reads, AH, THAT BEAUTEOUS HEAD, IF IT DID GO DOWN, IT CARRIED SUNSHINE INTO THE RAPIDS.
I didn’t make it up to Glacier Point this year; this was a picture from last summer. I was wondering about the girl on the ledge; might even be Sadie Schaeffer! Below, is the link to a post I did on Yosemite National Park last summer.
We requested permission to come aboard, and logged in at 6 bells. (I think that’s 11:00 AM)
Our little astrological tugboats, ‘Taurus’ and ‘Sagittarian’ pulled us away from Pier 45.
We headed out to sea and the passengers began to mingle about. That’s my brother Kevin mingling with his telephone.
I headed down into the engine room for a steam bath.
A painting on board shows what the hold of the ship where war supplies were loaded would have looked like during World War Two, and what the hold looks like today.
Our original charted course was to take us around Alcatraz, and then out past the Golden Gate Bridge for a wreath laying ceremony in honor of veterans lost. Many friends and relatives of veterans gone had brought flowers, wreaths, and ashes to place in the ocean during the ceremony. However, when we rounded Alcatraz Island and headed toward the Golden Gate Bridge the captain announced that the fog was too heavy for safe navigation, and we changed our course for China Basin, just below the Bay Bridge for the ceremony.
Things got a little tricky as we headed back toward China Basin. I was standing on deck next to one of the crew members when I heard an announcement on his communication radio, “We have an emergency!” and the Jeremiah O’Brien came to a stop in the water. That’s never a good sign! The captain announced that our engines had stalled. Don’t get too far ahead of us, tugboats!
I want to point out, though, that there was never any emergency. Our little tugboat companions on the port and starboard side of the ship kept us from drifting to or away from San Francisco. Nobody on the ship got nervous and the band playing music on deck did not start playing ‘Nearer, My God to Thee’. If you’re going to be stranded on the sea, try to have it be on an historic ship serving free and unlimited coffee, doughnuts, hot dogs, and beer!
It was decided to hold the memorial service where we were stopped. In a touching ceremony, people remembered or said goodbye to the friends and loved ones they have lost.
Afterwards, our little sidekicks stayed with us us back to port.
The Jeremiah O’Brien was at Normandy Beach during the D-Day Landings delivering supplies. In 1994, she sailed on her own steam through the Panama Canal to Europe to be part of the 50th Anniversary ceremonies. Of the thousands of ships that were part of the D-Day landings, the Jeremiah O’Brien was the only one to make it back! That’s quite a feat! In this photo aboard the ship, the crew tips their hats to a passing ship carrying the Queen of England during the anniversary ceremonies.
California Street looking toward Chinatown and Old St. Mary’s in the early 1950’s: You have to get a little farther out in the street to see the Bay Bridge from this spot now. (opensfhistory.org)
The International Settlement in North Beach in 1955: This was where all of the bawdy nightclubs and their “fallen angels” use to be located. (opensfhistory.org)
North Beach in the early 1970’s: They’re always protesting something in San Francisco. What do they have against Fresno? Pause for laughter…….. Still waiting. (Bolditalic)
Grant Avenue and Green Street in North Beach in the early 1970’s: I used to hang out a lot at Grant & Green in the 80’s and 90’s; they had some great bands playing here. (Bolditalic)
Writer Richard Brautigan and his ten year old daughter, Ianthe, on Telegraph Hill at Filbert Street in 1970: Brautigan killed himself in 1984; Ianthe is now a writer and poet, as well. (Vernon Merritt)
“Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away.” This was the spot where Joe DiMaggio’s Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant, seen here in 1954, was located. Joe opened the restaurant in 1937. (bcx.news)
DiMaggio’s Restaurant from the Fisherman’s Wharf Boat Lagoon in a snapshot my teenage mom took in the summer of 1939: You can still see four of the buildings that were in my mom’s photo.
In 1922 Buster Keaton filmed what was probably the first chase scene to use San Francisco locations, if you don’t count Charlie Chaplin’s drive along the Great Highway in his 1915 short film ‘Jitney Elopement’. Chase scenes would later be a highlight in many movies set in San Francisco such as ‘Impact’ from 1949, ‘What’s Up, Doc?’ in 1972, and, of course, ‘Bullitt’ from 1968. In ‘Daydreams’, Buster goes to San Francisco to find a job so that he can marry the girl he loves and because of his clumsiness gets into trouble with San Francisco police who chase him from North Beach to Fisherman’s Wharf to the south of Market Street. The movie is available on DVD, but the clearest images that I’ve seen of the film are on the website Film in America. To be fair, filminamerica.com also identifies the locations from John Bengston’s book ‘Silent Echoes’ which saved me a lot of detective work.
The chase starts out with Buster running east on Lombard Street and turning north onto Taylor Street. The “Crookedest Street in the World”, seen in the far back of my picture opened the same year as ‘Daydreams’ but had not been completed yet when this scene was filmed.
With the same film continuity as ‘Bullitt’, the next scene has Buster turning onto Lombard from Mason Street, running west to Columbus Avenue and hopping onto a north bound cable car.
Now, that’s how you catch a cable car!
This scene is of particular interest to me; it’s at the cable car turn around at Bay and Taylor Streets looking east on Bay. The cable car turntable, in the middle of the intersection then, was eventually moved farther south on Taylor to avoid traffic. You can see a cable car turning around at the far right in my photo.
Buster is unaware that the cable car has turned around and is heading back south toward the pursuing police.
The cable car turns south onto Powell Street from Washington Street putting Buster right back among the police who are about eleven blocks further south now from where we last saw them! Notice how many buildings in the background remain today. The Rex Apartments building is at the far left, and the green building was put in next to it where the billboard was in the film scene. The building with the fire escape, the one with the double row of arched windows next to it, and the small building are behind the northbound cable car. The building with three rows of arched windows on the northeast corner of Washington and Powell is the brown one with the Chinese lettering.
Buster jumps off onto Columbus Ave. at Lombard Street and heads south on Columbus followed by the police.
The chase scene moves to the south of Market Street at the intersection of 2nd Street and Minna Alley. As Keaton approaches the corner from the south, a streetcar filled with policemen pulls up and the cops chase him west along Minna Street.
Fifty four years later, this intersection can be viewed from the opposite angle in the liquor store hold up scene in the 1976 film ‘The Enforcer’ starring Clint Eastwood.
The last San Francisco location scene in the movie has Buster running west on Minna Street and turning south onto New Montgomery followed by the police.
So, I’m driving through Golden Gate Park on Tuesday, and while I’m waiting for some kids to cross, I thought to myself, “Well, what do you know? Dustin Hoffman, ‘The Graduate’, made it back to San Francisco!”
No seals on Seal Rocks anymore: Actually, they weren’t seals anyway, they were sea lions. They moved to Pier 39 during the 1990’s, (the sea lions not the rocks) but I’m not sure they are still hanging around there anymore, either.
Up close to Alcatraz in 1940 when it was still a federal prison: My picture is from the other side but it’s still “The Rock”.
Up close to the G. G. B.: It wasn’t as sunny of a day when I took my picture and I’m not sure that the 1950’s phonychrome color in the older picture was all that accurate.
Up close on Powell Street to the Sir Francis Drake Hotel: It always amazes me that they allowed that building to go up across the street from the hotel which blocks the northern view from the Starlight Lounge at the top of the Sir Francis Drake.
Up close to Chinatown: Actually, most pictures of Chinatown are up close. Nestled among the steel and glass jungle of Downtown San Francisco, about the only way for the public to get a distant view of Chinatown is from Coit Tower or the Top of the Mark.
Up close to the Flood Building in 1908: Somebody is writing to “Mamma” saying that he or she missed seeing this building during their San Francisco trip. It’s too bad because it’s one of San Francisco most historic buildings.
What Mile Rocks Lighthouse used to look like: They’ve chopped the lighthouse up now, and put a helicopter landing port on top. They made a terrible but thoroughly enjoyable movie in 1942 called ‘Seven Miles from Alcatraz’ about two convicts who escape from the prison and wind up on a light house that was supposed to be Mile Rocks Lighthouse. The cons turn patriotic and end up fighting Nazi spies who have captured the lighthouse and are using it for espionage purposes. Sounds good, huh? The lighthouse in the film was about twice as big as Mile Rocks Lighthouse ever was, and they never actually called it “Mile Rocks Lighthouse” but that’s obviously what it was supposed to be. At the lower left is the Mile Rocks Lighthouse, on the left center of the picture, seen from Lands End. On the lower right is the best close-up I could get with my little digital day-tripper. (Vintage picture from SF Gate)
The top photo is a scene at Pier 45 in Fisherman’s Wharf from the 1950 film noir movie ‘Woman on the Run’ with Ann Sheridan. The bottom photo is more like something from Hammer Horror Films.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 