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Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire
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I caught this movie a few weeks ago. O.K. it's a 2005/6 film and it is well known that it was filmed in Cape Town, South Africa. The opening scene showing Hill Street Tunnel and Angel's flight was obviously going to be a mock -up, since by that time the original Angel's' Flight was gone by some 40 years.
It was very surreal looking at the scene with the caption "Los Angeles 1933". At first glance it looked good and compelling, but then what's going on up the Angels' Flight? Where is the Ferguson Building and the Elk's Lodge? At the top of the hill is our old friend, the Crocker Mansion (demolished c 1908).
Makes you wonder why they did this. Was it on purpose or was it a mistake? Maybe it was deliberate -the old 1900s street scene and Crocker mansion were a whole lot more photogenic than their post 1908 replacements. Maybe it was an error -the set people may have been using 1900s postcards/ photos as guides and hadn't realised that the area had altered by 1933.
The 1976 film about Woodie Guthrie, Bound For Glory, also has a lot of L.A. scenes. Although the film took a critical knocking, it has some nice period scenes. The only problem is that there are a lot of mistakes.
Researching the locations used for this film is a bit of a nightmare as there is very little detailed information out there. IMDB just lists vagueries like Altamont, but no specific addresses are given.
The whole film is now viewable on You Tube. Interesting location shots include:
0:59:00 Airplane Cafe. It isn't clear whether it is a mock up on the movie. If it was faux, it was a copy of one that really existed. A photo of it is shown in FredH's post of 13 Dec 12 (p543).
01:41:20 Shot of a great Streamline moderne building. It is stuccoed, 3 stories high, stepped. There is a radio station sign outside "KTNS".
This is probably wrong. Woodie Guthrie's Californian radio years, I understand, were spent at KFVD, our old friend previously discussed on this site. It was originally run by Cord, but he sold it on in 1936 to Frank Burke, who became president and the station's manager. The station had relocated by Guthrie's time to 338 S Western Avenue.
I have Googled 338 but no suspect survives. Further up the road is 365 -Western and 3 rd. Medical Centre which looks as if it might have been at one time Art Deco, but which has now undergone a grotesque make over.
Incidently KTNS is licensed to Oakhurst CA and the location is distinctly rural -the buildings look nothing like the beautiful 3 storey streamline building on the film. Wonder where that was -was it L.A. or was it a building in some other Californian town???
1:54:30 KFVD again, but the building has morphed into a brick building. As a bonus we see our old friend, Pacific streetcar no. 1058 in front of the building. I gather that it was fitted with rubber tires. It's not so easy to tell this at first as there is a concrete ridge in front of the tram -was this deliberately put there by the filmmakers to disguise the lack of tracks?
The change of buildings may be explained by the streetcar shot -could it be that the vehicle was based in L.A. and couldn't travel far? Does this put the brick building somewhere near the streetcar's storage location? (Understood to have been somewhere near the port area).
This filming location malarkey is sure a curious business....
Alester