“Maybe, I’ll live long enough to forget her.” So laments Orson Welles as he leaves a dying Rita Hayworth in the Playland-at-the-Beach Funhouse, and heads toward Ocean Beach in ‘The Lady From Shanghai’ (1948)
Author: SF Film Locations
Hello friends! My name is Tim Welsh. I’m the owner and operator of Welsh Income Tax Service in Hayward, California. When I was fifteen, I fell in love with San Francisco. It wasn’t a first in the family; my mother at seventeen had traveled by train from North Dakota, where I was later born, to see the Treasure Island World’s Fair, and fell in love with “The City” long before I did. You can see pictures from her trip in the November 19th, 2014 ‘Summer of 1939’ postings. It’s been a love affair that’s never broken my heart. Here, with pictures from books, movies, the internet, and personal collections, I’ve had a chance to share my affection for San Francisco with comparison and location pictures that I’ve taken. I’ve had help from family and friends, and even my dog ‘Danny’ who sniffed out the trail of Buffalo Bill at Ocean Beach on a November 15, 2014 post. My blog is for non commercial and non profit purposes only, and it’s always a lot of fun to work on. Many of the pictures from November, 2014 to November 2015 are thumbnail images. Pictures from posts after that can be enlarged by viewing the image. I hope you enjoy the posts, and please feel free to follow my blog, or make suggestions, comments or corrections if you like.
‘Thieves Highway’ overlap
Barbara Lawrence gazes back at the Ferry Building with the Southern Pacific Building behind her in ‘Thieves Highway’ (1949).
‘The Organization’ overlap
That’s the Montgomery St. BART Station entrance under construction from the 1971 film ‘The Organization’ with Sidney Poitier. The Crown Zellerbach Building can be seen in the background of both shots.
‘House on Telegraph Hill’ overlap
Valentina Cortese lovingly greets her pretend son across her back yard in ‘House on Telegraph Hill’ (1951). As with ‘After the Thin Man’, the filmmakers have used Coit Tower’s Pioneer Park for the setting.
‘Harold and Maude’ overlap
Here, Harold chases Maude down steps left behind from the ruins of Sutro’s Baths in ‘Harold & Maude’ (1972). Although the steps are still there, they are closed off to the public for safety reasons.
‘After the Thin Man’ overlap
Then, there’s the technique of overlapping the film image to the current shot making it more a part of the current location.
‘Pal Joey’
Exactly twenty five years later, something about the San Francisco skyline makes even Sinatra pay attention as the ferry boat he’s on approaches the Embarcadero in ‘Pal Joey’ from 1957. As Kay Francis reflects in the previous post, Lovely, isn’t it?
‘One Way Passage’
Two doomed lovers look at the San Francisco skyline from a wonderful 1932 movie ‘One Way Passage’. Terminally ill Kay Francis recites a hymn, “Keep those golden gates wide open, keep those gates ajar.” along with William Powell, whose return to San Francisco means execution in the San Quentin prison. The camera captures the sadness on their faces as Kay Francis says, simply, “Lovely, isn’t it?”
‘The Lineup’
Before director Don Siegel gave us one of the two greatest San Francisco police films with ‘Dirty Harry’, (the other being ‘Bullitt’) there was his 1958 copper caper ‘The Lineup’. The Cliff House and Sutro Bath scenes are as good as it gets for San Francisco locations, and the scene inside Sutro’s is mandatory viewing to any enthusiast of that wonderful structure lost to a fire in 1966.
‘The Laughing Policman’
First off, Walter Matthau does not laugh very often, if
at all, in the 1974 film ‘The Laughing Policeman’. The
title refers to an old song from the 1920’s. The opening
scenes are a precursor to real tragedies of the future as
passengers on the number 14 Mission bus leaving the
Transbay Terminal are all massacred by a maniac using
a machine gun. The modern photograph was taken in 2010
on the day that the Transbay Bus Terminal closed forever.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 