Rock Hudson helps to turn the cable car around at the Market and Powell turnaround in 1959. I’m old enough to remember when you could climb on the cable cars while they were turning around. If you even touch one on the turntable today, you’ll get yelled at. (opensfhistory.org)
Lana Turner, wearing a coat she’d probably be arrested for nowadays, going into the I Magnin Department Store, now Louis Vuitton, in the 1960 film ‘Portrait in Black’. The last thing Lana would want to see is the police car in my picture; she’s going into Magnin’s to establish an alibi while Anthony Quinn kills her husband. Poor Lana, you’d think she would know that these things don’t work after ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’.
Anthony Quinn on Stockton Street near Geary, looking down toward O’Farrell Street in what looks like a news promotion for the movie ‘Portrait in Black’. (Hollywoodpaper2)
Cary Grant moves through what was supposed to be a war time crowded Fairmont Hotel Lobby in the 1957 film ‘Kiss Them for Me’. It wasn’t that crowded when I was there.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Post Street, west of Powell, in 1958: (opensfhistory.org)
‘Mr. San Francisco’ Herb Caen on a cable car at Powell and Market in a Fred Lyon photo from 1953:
Speaking of a police presence in Union Square, Lt. Mike Stone (Karl Malden) and Inspector Steve Keller (Mike Douglas) looking for the bad guys in a 1972 episode of ‘The Streets of San Francisco’. Smash and grabbers beware! You can see the old City of Paris Department Store where the Neiman Marcus is today behind Mike Douglas.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 
The precision with which these pairs of pictures match is very impressive, particularly the first pair with the cable car in the exact same position as the original.
Thanks, Tony! I got lucky on that one; the guy to the right of me just got out of the way in time.