San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now

“Bawdway” The Broadway strip clubs (Thumbnail image).

 

“A sorry / full situation.” The Union Square Garage. (Thumbnail image)

Powell Street. Herb Caen called the cable cars “San Francisco’s slot machines”. (Thumbnail image)

1st and Mission Streets in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s. The “Muniserable Railway.” (Thumbnail image)

This September will be the 140th birthday of Lotta’s Fountain at the intersections of Kearny. Geary, and Market, dedicated September 9th 1875. Nobody pays much attention to this ugly and neglected fountain, but like the Golden Gate Bridge or the Ferry Building, San Francisco will never get rid of it. For over one hundred years survivors of the 1906 Earthquake met at this fountain on the April 18th anniversary until they all died. A replica was made of Lotta’s Fountain for the opening scenes of the 1936 Clark Gable movie ‘San Francisco’. On Christmas Eve, 1910 opera soprano Luisa Tetrazzini gave a free concert at Lotta’s Fountain that drew over 200,000 spectators! It remains, and, probably, always will, the biggest concert ever held in San Francisco. I wonder if Paul McCartney could top that if he gave a free concert at Lotta’s Fountain! This turn of the Twentieth Century photo shows the fountain in its original size, but relocated from where it was first dedicated. I love all the hustle and bustle in this picture; like, the little cutie with the cop. Is she getting directions? Is she getting bawled out? And, maybe, he’s just paying special attention to her! Or the family, hand in hand, stepping onto the sidewalk on Market Street, behind them. At the left, a coachman with baggage heads off to the Winchester Hotel, not to be confused with the Best Western Motel.

Frank Sinatra dodging cops in front of the Ferry Building in the opening scenes of ‘Pal Joey’ (1957).

Another alert policeman in the 1958 film ‘The Lineup’ at the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park spots the bad guys, and starts the action rolling that ends in their demise. My pick for one of the best police movies shot in San Francisco. That’s the old and new De Young Museum in the back.

Steve McQueen in ‘Bullitt’: The hydrant, street sign, and call box are still there, but the call box has been relocate. The corner grocery store at this spot where Bullitt stacks up on TV dinners is still in business. There are a few slow scenes in this movie, but Ah, that chase scene!

Super Cop, Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood) dispatches a bad guy in a guard tower with a mini bazooka in the 1976 film ‘The Enforcer’.

Nicely done!

The guard tower explosion in the film created an outcry from some uninformed San Francisco politicians who thought the film makers were destroying historical landmarks on the island, but a dummy guard tower was constructed for the explosion scene. Real guard towers like this one were left alone.

Tyne Daly, (Cagney and Lacey) Dirty Harry’s partner in the 1976 film ‘The Enforcer’:

Here Tyne Daly is at 43 Osgood Alley trying to keep up with Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” whose chasing a bad guy. She doesn’t realize that she’s carrying a bomb in that brief case.

Some serious police action going on in Golden Gate Park in the 1950’s: The Park Mounties still patrol the park out of the old Police Stables Building built in the 1930’s. (Images of America)

 

 

Well, Dianne hasn’t, actually, bumped anybody off, but that’s just because she hasn’t got around to it yet.

The following collections are of more San Francisco crime images both real and from the movies. This remarkable 1927 shot was taken during an actual bank robbery in progress at the French American Bank on Hayes at Octavia.

In February of 1974 when Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, much of the sympathy and hope for her safety disappeared when this surveillance video of her helping to rob the Hibernia Bank at 22nd and Noriega in April of 1974 stunned the country. Of the five SLA members robbing the bank all, but Patty Hearst died in a fiery police shootout the following month in Los Angeles. Miraculously, Hearst was shopping and not a the safehouse when police raided it and killed all seven members of the SLA in the house that day. At the right is Natasha Richardson, who portrayed Hearst in the 1988 film ‘Patty’ reenacting the robbery. Sadly, Natasha Richardson died as the result of a skiing accident in 2009. Click on the link below to see the famous footage of the robbery.

The bank building robbed by the Patty Hearst and company at 22nd and Noriega today, seen from the outside and inside where the robbery took place.

Theodore Durant, the “Demon in the Belfry”, was a creep who, in 1895, murdered two woman, Blanche Lamont, and Minnie Williams, on two separate occasions in the Emmanuel Baptist Church on Bartlett Street in the Mission District between 22nd and 23rd, where he worked as a supervisor, and he wasn’t, particularly tidy about his killings, mutilating the bodies. He was hanged at San Quentin in 1898. Blanche Lamont’s body was found up in the spire, and Minnie Williams was found directly below at ground level in the library. Durrant approached the church from 22nd St. to the left of the church with Blanche Lamont on April 3rd 1895, and from 23rd St to the right of the church with Minnie Williams, on April 12th 1895, and was observed by many of the neighbors on Bartlett Street. His stroll with Lamont was amicable, and pleasant, but there is evidence that Minnie Williams might have known about the fate of Blanche Lamont as they argued loudly at the door of the church, and were reproached by a passerby. Also, she was reported to have said to a friend in Alameda, “I know too much about the disappearance of Blanche.”

Blanch Lamont (left of the stairs) with her students in Montana, where she came from two years before the murders.

The Assessor’s Office and the Masonic History Book state that the Emmanuel Baptist Church stood here where this parking lot and the building to the left of the parking lot are. The rector’s house was where the Masonic Building is, and the main church structure was where the white building on the left is.

San Francisco crime at it’s most loathsome; ladies jaywalking at Fifth and Market Streets in the 1940’s.

In a film overlap from the 1951 movie ‘House on Telegraph Hill’, Valentina Cortese leaves her house and heads up Montgomery Street unaware that her brakes have been tampered with by her husband, Richard Basehart.

Valentina Cortese’s car crashes at the corner of Montague and Montgomery, but she survives.

In a film overlap, Humphrey Bogart catches a cable car at Greenwich and Hyde after accidentally killing Agnes Moorehead in the 1947 movie ‘Dark Passage’. Well, it was an accident, so I guess it really doesn’t constitute a crime, but that won’t matter to the cops.

Thrill killer, Penny Bjorkland, shot a man to death just for the fun of it in 1959 and threw the gun down a storm drain on the corner of Camellia and Castle Manor in the Excelsior District. Check out the link below that follows a terrible poem, whose author must remain anonymous, for her story.

Bjorkland reenacts the murder for police at the murder site with the gun she threw down the drain. (Bob Calhoun)

I knew I couldn’t stay away.
I had to find that drain.
I left for BART one Saturday,
and went there on a train.

A lady stopped from a near bus line
I said to her, “Good day!”
She knew of Penny “Bjorkenstein”.
She told me, “Go away!”

She asked me why I came here.
I said I had to do it!
She whispered with an evil leer,
“Shhh….. That’s where I threw it.”

http://murderpedia.org/female.B/b/bjorkland-penny.htm

Divisadero and Oak Streets in the 1930’s. This picture reeks of the Great Depression right down to the Relief Stamps Redeemed sign!

“Tanks!” “You’re welcome!” Alright, I stole that from Chico Marx. Here at Pier 1, an army tank is ready to move against the striking dock workers during the 1934 labor crisis.

These two images are of the Powell Street Cable Car from both sides of the street as it climbs Nob Hill in the 1940’s.