The television show ‘Harbor Command’, starring Wendell Cory as Captain Ralph Baxter, ran from the fall of 1957 until the summer of 1958. Most of the episodes were filmed around the Embarcadero, but in the episode ‘Lovers’ Lane Bandits’ the Harbor Command takes a trip to the Richmond District. A teenage girl, who attends George Washington High School in the Richmond District, sneaks out of the house after she’s been grounded to meet her boyfriend at a “lovers’ lane’ near the Pesidio. She witnesses a murder there, and, unfortunately for her, one of the killers has seen her, although she doesn’t know that. Captain Baxter learns about the girl through detective work and is desperately trying to find her before the killers do.
Baxter goes to the old Playland-at-the-Beach amusement park to talk to her father who works there. Baxter and his partner park at the Cabrillo streetcar turnaround near the Funhouse. The bottom picture is where they entered Playland from the Great Highway today.
Baxter questions a fellow who works at the Funhouse to find out where the girl’s father is. This scene has an extremely rare shot of Laffing Sal in action at the Playland Funhouse. Behind them is the Playland Merry-go-round. The merry-go-round is still in operation today at the Yerba Buena Center.
This is about the spot where the Funhouse once was.
Baxter learns from her father that she’s meeting a friend at a drug store at Balboa Street and 42nd Avenue. Here, the two girls leave the drugstore heading west toward the beach. This is the northeast corner where the girls were walking today. I couldn’t get the same line up on the corner because of parked cars.
The killers stalk behind them in a truck.
When we next see the two girls they’re at the corner of Balboa and 37th, five blocks east in the opposite direction from where they were heading the last time we saw them. The girl with the light hair has a real problem; she’s witnessed a murder and she knows she should tell someone, but her dad had grounded her and when he finds out she sneaked out she’s sure he’ll just kill her! Hey, honey, turn around! Your dad probably won’t kill you, but the two guys in the truck behind you will!
When her friend goes into the market on the corner one of the killers grabs her. Oh, oh, this doesn’t look good! Somebody had better learn to obey her dad in the future.
Her friend comes out of the store to find that she’s disappeared. This was at the northwest corner of Balboa Street and 37th Avenue.
But this teenager has a guardian angel, Ralph Baxter, approaching the corner where she was taken north from 37th Avenue.
Her worried friend tells Baxter the direction they went.
The bad guys turn north off Balboa onto 40th Avenue.
Harbor Command misses the turn at 40th and in a action reminiscent to the chase scene in ‘Bullitt’ burn up rubber backing up to 40th Avenue.
They head up 40th to Geary Blvd.
On Point Lobos Road the Harbor Command police cut the truck off right about here, just down from the Cliff House.
As Baxter and his partner approach the truck, they threaten to shoot the girl if the officers don’t back away.
When the teenager faints, (well, I probably would have too) Baxter gets a clear line of fire and shoots the man with the gun. That’s Sutro Heights behind him. He pulls the driver out of the truck, and case closed. The two videos below are the Funhouse scene from the show, and Laffing Sal today in Pier 45 at Fisherman’s Wharf. They say it’s the same one; judge for yourself.
We’ll start at the foot of Market Street looking west. The crowned Call Bulletin Newspaper Building, the tallest building in San Francisco at the time, can be seen in the far background on the left in the vintage picture. That was the ruins of an interesting looking building where the Hyatt Regency is today on the right.
We’re further up Market Street now at Montgomery Street. There are three survivors today from the vintage picture; the Call Building on the left, remodeled now and called the Central Tower, the gothic looking Mutual Savings Bank Building directly across from the Call Building, and the reddish-brown Chronicle Building, taller now that it was back then. (blogspot.com)
New Montgomery and Mission Streets, looking north toward Market Street showing the ruins of the Palace Hotel and the rebuilt Palace Hotel there today. The building in the background is the one on the right in the previous vintage picture taken at Market and Montgomery Streets.
Army soldiers brought down from the Presidio marching past the Call Building on fire: Woe betides to any looters they may have come across; they shot them on the spot back then! (blogspot.com)
We’ve moved north to Pine Street looking east past Kearny Street. That’s the Bank of America Building on the left center in the current picture.
We’re up on the top of Nob Hill now. That’s the gutted James Flood mansion, the only mansion on Nob Hill to survive the earthquake and fire. I don’t mind a cable car photo bombing one of my pictures any time. The Flood mansion is now the exclusive Pacific Union Club.
Looking toward the south western corner of California and Powell Streets where Leland Stanford’s mansion stood. Farther up California Street are the ruins of Mark Hopkins home, now the Mark Hopkins Hotel.
Refugees heading east and west along Market Street near 3rd: The Ferry Building is in the background. It’s interesting how most of them are following traffic rules and staying on the right in both directions.
And, of course, most San Franciscans favorite survivor, the Ferry Building; roughed up, but she took it well. In spite of these monstrosities they’re putting up nowadays, like the Sales Force Tower, the Ferry Building is still the “Grande Dame” of San Francisco.
A hoodlum kidnaps Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart) and drives him to a spot below the southern entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1947 film ‘Dark Passage’. Since September 11th 2001, this area has been off limits to the public.
Fisherman’s Wharf near the end of Taylor Street at twilight in the 1950’s:
Orson Welles exits the Funhouse at Playland-at-the-Beach leaving a dying Rita Hayworth inside in another 1947 movie ‘The Lady from Shanghai’. Welles is walking toward the Great Highway. Playland was demolished in 1972.
After being shot twice and left in an empty prison cell on Alcatraz by John Vernon and Angie Dickinson, Lee Marvin recovers consciousness and swims back to San Francisco from Alcatraz with two bullets in him to seek revenge. That’s quite a feat! The movie was ‘Point Blank’ from 1967. The modern picture is the current San Francisco skyline from Alcatraz Island.
Lana Turner enters the old I Magnin Department Store on Geary Blvd. across the street from Union Square in “Portrait in Black’ from 1960. This is an effort to establish her alibi while she plots with Anthony Quinn to kill her husband. In the background is the St. Francis Hotel on Powell Street.
“Look out!” Almost a head on crash with a cable car and an automobile at Hyde and Greenwich on Russian Hill: The vintage picture is a Fred Lyon photo from the 1950’s. This picture is sometimes labeled as looking toward Telegraph Hill from Lombard Street at Hyde, but it’s not.
“Come all ye young sailormen listen to me, and I’ll sing you a song of the fish in the sea.”
‘Harbor Command’ was a thirty minute television show that ran from October of 1957 until July of 1958. The show starred Wendell Corey as police captain Ralph Baxter. You may recognize Wendell Corey as the fall guy in a 1949 movie shown regularly at Christmastime called ‘Holiday Affair’ with Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh. The TV show has some terrific San Francisco locations, mostly along the San Francisco waterfront.
Harbor Command was a fictional law enforcement agency that worked along with the Coast Guard. Their headquarters was located in the Ferry Building.
The Embarcadero Freeway was being built during filming of the show and construction of the highway can be seen on the left.
Baxter and another officer in pursuit of a mob leader are shown at the entrance to the old Pier 39. In 1978 the pier was demolished and the tourist attraction that’s there today was built on the old foundation of the pier. The bottom photo is the entrance to pier 39 today.
The same episode with the previous picture ends with a shoot-out that resulted in Baxter killing the mob boss on the eastern side of Pier 39. Below is the eastern side of Pier 39 today.
A shoot-out with Ralph Baxter is a poor prospect, as another bad guy taking cover in the background learns on the old Van Ness Pier in the episode titled ‘Contraband Diamonds’.
In ‘The Final Score’ a fugitive falsely identified as a murderer climbs the old public announcement tower on the west side of the Maritime Museum and shoots back at pursuing Harbor Command police.
The Harbor Command police return fire, and the bottom photo is the tower today. Don’t worry, this one ends happily and the innocent man is cleared.
In the same episode as the previous picture, as the police pursue the fugitive a sinking ferryboat is shown in Aquatic Park near the Maritime Museum. I’ll have to research what that was all about. The old and now closed snack bar and restroom building can be seen on the right in both photos.
In ‘Smallpox’ a man with a vendetta and out to kill the man who framed him, approaches Beach Street from Hyde. He is unaware that he has smallpox and may be infecting many people in San Francisco.
The camera moves up to show the location is where the Buena Vista Café is. The Buena Vista is still there but with a different sign now.
Later in the ‘Smallpox’ episode, the carrier is shown at the corner of Jefferson and Powell Streets going in to the old Eagle Café.
A parking garage for Pier 39 was built on the corner where the Eagle Café was located in the top photo. The Eagle Café was rescued from demolishment and moved across the street and relocated at the top level of Pier 39, shown in the bottom photo.
In one clever episode entitled ‘Gold Smugglers’ two dental assistants have been forging the doctor’s signature to order gold shipments delivered to his office. They have used the dentist’s molding plates to shape the gold into hubcaps in an attempt to smuggle the gold out of San Francisco on a car ferry. When the doctor discovers their plan they kill him. Here they are seen parking in from of Pier 17 on the Embarcadero where the Exploratorium is now located.
Looking north along the Embarcadero and the old Belt Line Railroad tracks from Pier 17:
A Harbor Command squad car races down Bryant Street next to the Bay Bridge entrance heading toward the Embarcadero:
The episode ‘Clay Pigeon’ ends in a shoot-out in the southern wing of the Ferry Building with Baxter and his partner chasing a parolee who has been trying to kill Baxter for sending him to prison. Maybe not as loud as gunfire, but it’s a lot noisier in this section of the Ferry Building today.
Morton Alley on St. Patrick’s Day 1948, and all dressed up at Christmastime nowadays: Morton Alley was the original name for Maiden Lane, just off Union Square. The name of the street was changed to Maiden Lane after the 1906 Earthquake. No offense to Lombard Street, but I don’t see why more tourists don’t flock to Maiden Lane as well as Lombard Street; it has a more interesting history. Somebody had a sense of humor when they renamed Maiden Lane. The “maidens” of Morton Alley were, well, let’s just say far from maidenly!
Also, a green carnation for all of the lovely lasses who come in to the office over St. Patrick’s Day weekend and lots of Irish jokes. I’m part Irish so I can take that license.
Elisha Cook Jr., “Wilmer” in ‘The Maltese Falcon’, arrives at the Ferry Building on a mission to kill in the 1947 film ‘Born to Kill’.
Ray Harryhaussen’s giant octopus devours the Ferry Building in the 1955 science fiction film ‘It Came From Beneath the Sea’.
Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern approaching the intersection of Broadway and Kearny Street in the 1974 movie ‘The Laughing Policeman’.
Steve McQueen chasing the hit men in the black Dodge Charger down the north side of Larkin Street on Russian Hill in the 1968 film ‘Bullitt’. That’s McQueen’s reflection in the rear view mirror.
Charlie Chaplin, being chased along an unpaved Great Highway at Ocean Beach, backs into Count Chloride de Lime in his 1915 short film ‘Jitney Elopement’, produced in Niles, California. The building behind Charlie is still there.
Lee Remick chases after Jack Lemmon along Market Street after hurting his feelings in ‘The Days of Wine and Roses’ from 1962: That’s the old PG&E Building they’re coming out of. You can see the old Embarcadero Freeway in the background of the movie image.
Ah, the Cliff House that I loved the best from a scene near the end of one of my favorite San Francisco movies, 1958’s ‘The Lineup’.
Glenn Ford, being chased by the police, exits Varennes Alley onto Union Street in North Beach in the 1949 crime thriller, ‘Mr. Soft Touch’.
Barbara Lawrence walks down the stairs that so many millions of commuters arriving at the Ferry Building have walked down in the 1949 movie ‘Thieves Highway’. In its day, the Ferry Building was second in the world only the Charing Cross Station in London for passenger travel, and the stairs are still there.
Valentina Cortese crashes her car at Montgomery Street and Montague Place on Telegraph Hill in ‘House on Telegraph Hill’ from 1951, although she survives. Her husband, Richard Basehart, has tampered with her brakes in an attempt to kill her. Valentina’s having a bad day!
Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak wander off into the sunset behind the St. Francis Yacht Harbor in the Marina in ‘Pal Joey’ from 1957. That’s quite a sunset!
A picture taken during World War Two looking down Mason Street from California Street next to the Mark Hopkins Hotel: That looks like a World War Two spy from and old movie on the far right if I ever saw one. (Phil Davies)
Looking north on the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1950s: I took my picture a couple of years ago on a drive to Muir Woods and I thought it makes a decent match up to the old photo, although I’m not in the same lane. (Carl Yorke)
That’s the old east entrance to the Union Square Garage on Stockton Street during the early 1940s, now long gone. Most of the street is fenced today now due to construction of the underground Muni Metro Railway extension to Chinatown. Someday, I’d like to redo this one. (Randall De Rijk)
The crosswalk at Powell and Market Streets looking toward the old Emporium Department in 1974: It looks like a rainy and miserable day in the vintage picture, which, surprisingly, it wasn’t when I took my photo last Sunday. (Lily Costello)
Turk, Mason, and Market Streets: Based on the movie showing at the Esquire Theater, it was taken in 1940. Comrade X is a silly and delightful look at Russia from the United States viewpoint of the country at the time, and one of my favorite Clark Gable films. I actually enjoy it more than some of his better made movies like ‘San Francisco’ or ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’. Also, Hedy Lamarr is absolutely ravishing in this movie! The columns of the old Bank of America Building where the Fun Center was are gone now. (Gianni Corso)
That silver Toyota behind the tree is parked just about where Steve McQueen’s famous green Mustang in ‘Bullitt’ was parked. The store on the left at the southeast corner of Taylor and Clay Streets where McQueen buys an armful of TV Dinners at the beginning of the film is still open. (Pete Georgas)
I worked at Bank of America on 12th and Broadway, in a building seen on the right from an early 1900s postcard. A tower was added to the building in the 1920s, and when I worked there it was owned by the San Francisco Giants owner at the time, Bob Lurie. The area, which was in decline when I worked there, had become even more uncomfortable by the 1990’s, but they’ve done a nice job of rejuvenating things around this part of town since then.
A half a block or so from the building we worked in was and is DeLauer’s. This was a great store for buying snacks, cigarettes, or any of the culturally significant photography magazines like Playboy that we guys bought for their interesting articles. The vintage picture is dated 1935. I didn’t think Kay Jewelers went back that far, but I looked it up and it goes back to 1916! (The Trip Beautiful website)
14th Street and Jefferson, down from the City Hall Building in 1915: Back when I worked in the area, if you wandered too far off Broadway you could end up being listed as “overdue and presumed lost”, but this part of town’s a lot quieter today. (Worthpoint.com)
San Pablo Avenue and 17th, looking toward the Oakland Tribune Building. The vintage picture would have to be in 1943, that’s when ‘Sahara’ was released. It’s one of my favorite Humphrey Bogart movies, a tough war movie that holds up well today, and has a refreshing role for a black actor, Rex Ingram, whose character is portrayed as both brave and intelligent. That wasn’t the norm for the usual stereotyping of blacks in 1943. The Esquire Theater, opened in 1916, was demolished in 1953. It was where the New Parish and the Curry Up Now restaurant are today. You can still see the Oakland Tribune Building peeking out in the center of my picture. (University of California Archives)
Telegraph at 19th Avenue in 1941: This is another area where they’re taking steps in the right direction. If you wandered around this area after dark when I worked here, you were probably a masochist! That part of the building on the left is the now reopened Fox Theater which was closed and abandoned when I worked in Oakland. (The Oakland Tribune)
The old fountain where Telegraph Avenue comes into Broadway:
Smith’s Men’s Department Store on the corner of 14th Street and Broadway in the late 1960s: When I was twenty two I bought an overcoat at Smith’s; it cost me 75 bucks! That was a lot of money when I was twenty two. (It’s a lot of money now) I still have that coat and I wore it to Downtown Oakland yesterday when I took these pictures. Smith’s is long gone now, and the part of the building the store was in is empty.
Charlie Chaplin was just starting to make his name in the movies when he came to Downtown Oakland to make a short comedy with Ben Turpin called ‘A Night Out in 1915. Some of the scenes were filmed here in what was once ritzy apartment neighborhood near Lake Merritt.
When Chaplin made his movie in Oakland he stayed at the old Oakland Hotel on 13th. The mammoth building had become a hospital by World War Two, but was closed and abandoned by the time I worked in Oakland. We liked to go down there and make-out on the old benches in front of the building. Yeah, I used to do that too! It’s back open again and is thriving as a retirement center, and I didn’t see anybody making out there yesterday!
We’ll start out waaaaay back in January, the weekend before last. I’m driving into San Francisco across the Bay Bridge. All things considered, I’m not too unhappy with this one. The vintage picture is traffic heading west along the eastern cantilever portion of the bridge during the 1940’s. That’s a lot of traffic, looks like something was going on. Maybe it was a 49ers game out at Kezar Stadium with Frankie Albert quarterbacking. My picture was heading west on the new East Bay Bridge Span completed in 2013. (SF Chronicle)
This is looking east on Market Street toward Stockton Street in 1952. (SF Chronicle)
From Market Street I headed up Nob Hill for a comparison of this 1950’s photo looking north along Powell Street as a cable car climbs Nob Hill. The Fairmont Hotel on the left can’t be seen from here today due to the portion of the Fairmont Hotel and Garage completed after the vintage picture was taken. (Gene Wright)
I headed down Powell toward Union Square. These are the kind of then and nows I love to try taking. This is looking down Powell toward Sutter Street in during the 1960’s. The Sir Francis Drake and Chancellor Hotels are still there, and cable cars still “climb halfway to the stars”. (Jimo Perini)
I stopped at Union Square on the way home. This San Francisco Chronicle World War Two photo of ladies of the American Women’s Volunteer Services selling war bonds was taken in September of 1942. That’s the Dewey Monument behind them. They’re looking out from above the Union Square Garage entrance on Geary Blvd.
When I got back down to Market Street, there was a pro life anti-abortion demonstration proceeding along Market Street that closed the street down from Civic Center all the way to the Ferry building. The vintage photo is a 1967 anti-Vietnam War demonstration in 1967 heading in the opposite direction of last weekend’s turnout away from Civic Center along Fulton Street.
The following weekend, yesterday, I headed back to San Francisco to close out the set, and get back in time to watch the Super Bowl. Back in my youth we used to go to a lot of plays in the Theater District on Saturdays. I don’t often anymore, it’s easier now to sit home on Saturday nights and watch reruns of ‘Gunsmoke’. I saw some very popular plays, from ‘Evita’, ‘Curse of the Werewolf, and ‘Showboat’, to ‘Phantom of the Opera’. One of the worst plays we saw was the one that I liked the best; a dreadful thing called ‘The Boys in Autumn’ starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas portraying Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in their senior years. It was awful, but seeing those two guys together was priceless! When we went to most of the plays we always parked at the O’Farrell and Mason Street Garage, seen here in the early 1970’s. (SF Gate / SF Chronicle)
Children braving the pigeons in Union Square in 1955: In the background is the St. Francis Hotel. There is an enormous amount of San Francisco history surrounding this hotel. Actor John Barrymore was staying here when the 1906 Earthquake and Fire occurred. “Fatty” Arbuckle’s career was ruined in 1921 when he was accused of raping a girl in the hotel and causing her death. Like the clock at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, many people met at the clock in the St. Francis during World War Two. In 1975, Sara Jane Moore tried to kill President Gerald Ford with a handgun as he exited the hotel. In September of 1944, one of the most significant military decisions of World War Two was finalized during a three day conference in the northeastern wing of the St. Francis Hotel. I’ll go into this next. The northeastern wing of the hotel is the first wing just to the left of the Dewey Monument in these pictures. (Gene Wright)
In the opening chapter of James and William Belote’s book about the battle of Okinawa, ‘Typhoon of Steel’, the authors write about a three day conference held in the northeast wing of the St Francis in September of 1944 to determine the final campaigns of the Pacific Theater of World War Two; whether the United States would invade the island of Formosa or the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa as Admiral Nimitz and General McArthur, who were not at the meetings, had agreed upon earlier in Hawaii.
Looking down Powell Street toward the St. Francis Hotel in August of 1962, and a rainy February in 2019: The northeastern wing of the St. Francis on the corner of Powell and Post Streets is in the center of the two photos: (opensfhistory.org)
The fog obscures the Ferry Building in this noir like picture at Pier 1 on the Embarcadero. Put on your trench coats, slip a bottle of inexpensive whisky in the pocket, light up a cigarette, and follow me while we explore a little more San Francisco Film Noir.
The best place to start is the beginning of an attempted murder. Valentine Cortese leaves her home on Telegraph Hill heading south on Montgomery Street little realizing that her husband, Richard Basehart, has tampered with the brakes on her car in the 1951 film ‘House on Telegraph Hill’.
When her brakes fail, Cortese skillfully navigates her car down just about every steep street on Telegraph Hill, turning here on Calhoun Terrace before crashing block behind this location at Union and Montgomery Streets.
Another noir looking picture from the 1950’s of the view down Clay Street, although, this isn’t from any movie. (skyscrapercity.com)
Ann Sheridan, along with Dennis O’Keefe, searching for her missing husband up at the Coit Tower Parking lot in the 1950 film ‘Woman on the Run’. This movie has many terrific film locations in San Francisco from the 1950’s. Save your money on the telescopes here today; you can see almost nothing of the once beautiful view from here now because of the overgrown Cypress and Monterey pine trees. It is rumored that this is because trimming them would be harmful to the trees. My horticulturist friend Tonytomeo would know more about that than I would. (Movie image, reelsf.com)
A “safe house’ for Communist saboteurs in the 1948 film ‘Walk a Crooked Mile’: This is another interesting crime thriller with great off beat San Francisco locations. My images are from a DVD copy in need of restoration that may still be the only DVD of the movie available.
The house is on the corner of Mason and Clay Streets. That’s a nice touch; a mother and her children out for a stroll not realizing that they’re passing a house occupied by enemy insurgents.
However, the F.B.I. is on to these guys. They keep surveillance on the house waiting for a chance to go in for evidence. As the last “Commie” leaves from the steps of the building for lunch, they search the apartment.
The SICA, (Secret Insurgent Communist Agent) crosses the intersection while the government agents wait for him to leave.
The agents sneak into the apartment to gather evidence.
This is a weird scene! As the spy approaches Grant Avenue at Sacramento Street, there seems to have been an unrelated taxicab accident on the corner. The bad guy, caring little for humanity, passes by unconcerned. I don’t know if this was staged or if it really happened, and they filmed around it.
As the infiltrator heads back to the house along Grant Avenue after his lunch, a telephone signal is made to our heroes rifling the house, enabling them to make a getaway and crack down on the gang shortly after.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 