Paramount on Location, Pt. 2

In 1935, the Paramount film “Coronado” was filmed on Coronado Island in San Diego, using the famous Hotel del Coronado for many of the exterior locations, including the opening titles. The film starred Johnny Downs, Betty Burgess, Jack Haley, Andy Devine, Leon Errol, and Alice White.



Above is a production still that used the hotel’s pool. The detail image shows Betty Burgess with either a blurred Johnny Downs or his stand-in. In the finished film, his hair is more tousled.



A synopsis of the film edited from the Turner Classic Movies site:

Wealthy Walter and Gloria Marvin (Berton Churchill and Nella Walker) and their troublesome son Johnny (Johnny Downs) come to stay at the Hotel Coronado in southern California. To keep Johnny out of mischief, the manager asks house bandleader Eddie (Eddy Duchin) to give Johnny a part in the band, and asks singer June Wray (Betty Burgess) to perform a song that Johnny wrote. June lives with her poor father Otto (Leon Errol), who intensely dislikes her sister Violet's (Alice White) new sailor husband, Chuck Hornbostel (Jack Haley), because he was too poor to buy her a ring. Believing Johnny to be poor and starving, June befriends him, buys him a meal, and takes him dancing with Chuck and Vi. Johnny inadvertently wins a talent contest but uses the prize to buy a bracelet for Vi in Chuck's name. After June pleads with the manager Carlton to give Johnny a job in the band, she discovers he is actually from a wealthy family and thinks she has been deceived. Walter visits with Otto and they agree to try to keep their unsuitably paired children apart by exaggerating their differences.

You’ll have to watch the film to see how it ends. Another production still showing the hotel’s pool:





The vintage postcard image below shows the location of the pool in proximity to the hotel:



Another vintage postcard image showing the pool:



How the pool looked in July 1962:



…in March 2008:



…and December 2012:



A few more production shots from the movie, taken on Coronado Island:



This detailed view shows Johnny Downs on the right:



…and Betty Burgess on the right:



One last production shot of the Island:



Tent City? That’s right!



From 1900 until 1938, the Hotel del Coronado’s Tent City was a popular camp-style destination for travelers who couldn’t afford to stay in the hotel. Designed like a small city, its grid of dirt streets eventually became well-worn thoroughfares, lined with mature trees. An early getaway brochure described the accommodations: “A furnished tent comprises electric lights, matting on boarded floor, comfortable beds and cots, bedding, wash-stand, mirror, tables, chairs, rockers, camp-chairs and stools, necessary cooking utensils, clean linen, daily care of tent, and laundry service of tent linen.” Tent City also featured restaurants, a soda fountain, library, grocery store, shops, a small hotel (the Arcade), theatre, bandstand, dance pavilion, merry-go-round, shooting gallery, swimming floats (one with a high-diving board), its own police department, and daily newspaper.



See…I couldn’t make this stuff up. TENT CITY!

Want to see the whole flick? It’s embedded below, courtesy of archive.org:



See more Classic Movie & TV photos at my main website.

Music Box Monday

“The Music Box” (1932) is a Laurel and Hardy MGM comedy that won the first Academy Award for Best Live Action Short (Comedy). In 1997, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, as it is probably one of the most popular shorts that the team made. The premise is that the two are attempting to move a piano up a large flight of stairs into the home of the woman who purchased it as a birthday surprise for her husband. Below, Oliver points to the long flight of steps that they must climb WITH the piano.



How that flight of stairs looks today. Yes, they are still around!



There’s even have a sign denoting their historic landmark status:



Another view of the steps from the 1932 film:



A badly worn plaque is embedded into the steps:



As you can imagine, the boys struggle with the crated piano. Multiple times they manage to get about halfway up, and then the crate slides back down to the bottom.




One of these comedy bits involves Lilyan Irene, who plays a nursemaid. Needing the boys to get out of her, of course this causes them to lose the piano, once again. Irene mainly had a career of uncredited roles  in movies such as “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1935), “The Little Princess” (1939), “Journey for Margaret” (1942), “Till the Clouds Roll By” (1946), and her final film, “Million Dollar Mermaid” (1952.



At the bottom of the stairs, things get nasty between the three, involving a kick in the nurse’s behind, a slap to Laurel…



and a bottom of milk over Hardy’s head. Don’t mess with the babysitter!



In another bit, you can see poor Hardy getting steamrolled by the crate as it soars back down to ground zero:



The classic Hardy stare:



How the view down the steps looks today:



The matching down view from the movie:



The boys do finally reach the top, where we see this side shot of Laurel:



…followed by a cut to a set built on a soundstage.



While the top of the stairs doesn’t have the ornate home from the movie, it does have some vintage-styled lamp posts:



A sign exists at the top of the stairs as well:



And yes, I climbed up all 133 steps, but did not make Willis do so. He stayed behind for this one.

See more Laurel and Hardy Music Box steps photos at my main website.

John Marshall High: From Wrecking Ball to Star

Whenever I get a chance to re-photograph an old shot from my 35mm point-and-shoot camera days, I am happy to do so. Back then, I used ALL the automatic settings and the flash for every shot, ensuring every detail was obliterated by that blinding light! I snapped the above shot of John Marshall High School from a tour bus back in 2005. Twenty years later, I drove back up to the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles and rectified my former lapses in photographic judgment.



Even though it’s a cool piece of historic architecture and a recognizable location for many famous films, it barely survived the wrecking ball. Edited from a 2017 feature from the LA Curbed website:

John Marshall High School’s Hollywood dream nearly died on February 9, 1971. The 6.6-magnitude Sylmar earthquake struck that day, just before dawn, killing 64 people. Among the casualties: A number of buildings at John Marshall High School, designed by George M. Lindsey in the Collegiate Gothic style. Several of the damaged structures were subsequently condemned, including the campus's eye-popping centerpiece: A five-story tower rising above Tracy Street in Los Feliz like a Tudor-brick cathedral. The threat of a wrecking ball loomed.



Today, John Marshall High is regarded as a treasured artifact. After pieces began falling from the famed tower in 2012, the school district approved $1.1 million in repairs to the historic structure. When the problem was found to be more serious than previously thought, more than 10 times that amount was allotted, and a temporary glass scaffolding was erected to protect students and faculty from falling debris. But, in 1971, John Marshall hadn’t yet transcended its status as an ingénue. It was already famous among locals for its use in Mr. Novak, the NBC TV series that followed an idealistic young teacher (James D. Franciscus) during his first year in the classroom.



But it had yet to rack up the A-list credits that would cement its stardom. “I guess film production ended up there, because it's so accessible,” says class of ’72 alumnus and music photographer Aaron Rapaport. “ABC was a half block away and all the studios." Geographic convenience aside, JMHS’s formal beauty was undeniably more important in attracting industry attention. Like the similarly photogenic Los Angeles High School located in Mid-Wilshire, the campus was an aesthetic jewel of the Los Angeles Unified School District and a popular draw with Hollywood location managers. Unlike the latter school, which also suffered damage in the 1971 quake, Marshall's dramatic edifice was spared demolition. “I was involved with the effort to retain and renovate the high school, not destroy it like they did to Los Angeles High School, where they turned a beautiful school into a cookie-cutter school,” says John Marshall alumnus (class of ’57) and former Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who served in the California State Assembly from 1973 to 1978. “In the [Assembly] I put in legislation to stop that. And finally the school board backed down and renovated [it].”



The success of that campaign (spurred on by several neighborhood activists) was an undisputed win for Hollywood, a town well-known for its infatuation with physical beauty. “It's a gem,” says Marcia Hinds, a production designer who helped secure the campus for the 1998 teen comedy Can't Hardly Wait. “It's one of a kind.” Many LA-area high schools have extensive filmographies, but John Marshall is distinguished by the sheer number of iconic movies and TV shows that have used the campus as a backdrop. While I was unable to independently confirm several productions rumored to have shot there (Rebel Without a Cause allegedly shot interiors at the school, but I turned up no evidence of this), there are countless others whose use of the campus is well-documented.



Though Venice High School largely stood in for Rydell High in the classic 1978 musical “Grease,” John Marshall's athletic field provided the setting for the school carnival where John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John performed “You’re the One that I Want,” “We Go Together,” and then fly off in a hot rod.



Alumna Anne-Marie Johnson, who attended JMHS from 1975-78 before going on to star in such TV series as What Happens Now, In the Heat of the Night, and In Living Color, speaks enthusiastically about seeing the film’s cast milling around campus.“Those of us in the theater arts department were all very excited because Sid Caesar and Eve Arden and John Travolta and Olivia [Newton-John]—I mean, we were all just starstruck,” she says. “They were all on our campus for several days ... I just remember sitting in the bleachers watching them film the same scene over and over and over.” John Marshall High’s Grease connection runs even deeper: Annette Charles (née Annette Cardona), who played Cha Cha in the film, was an alumna. As noted by Joanna Erdos, a former student who taught at the school for over 30 years, the actress’s death in 2011 prompted the school to plant a tree in her honor.

Below is my 2005 shot of the field behind the school where the carnival sequence was filmed for “Grease”:



How it looks today:





Other films that used John Marshall include “Zapped” (1982), “Bachelor Party” (1984), Van Halen “Hot for Teacher” music video (1984), “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984), “Pretty In Pink” (1986), and the film version of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1992). If you can’t get to Los Feliz, the video below is your next best option!



See more Hollywood movie location photos at my main website.

Mulholland Monday: A David Lynch Tribute

It has taken over two years, but I have finally visited the other film location sites on my bucket list for “Mulholland Drive” (2001), David Lynch’s masterpiece. This post (a follow-up to the one from January 2023) also acts as a tribute to Lynch who passed away on January 16 of this year. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that Winkie’s Diner on Sunset Boulevard plays a pivotal part in numerous scenes. In actuality, the restaurant used was called Caesar’s, on El Segundo Boulevard in Gardena. It closed roughly eight years ago.



Below are Naomi Watts and Laura Harring in a scene filmed outside the restaurant, which is now boarded up.



Another screenshot from the movie showing the steps that the police officers approach as they are looking for the creepy character from one of the detective’s dream.



The steps are still there, but a homeless person and all their possessions were blocking the way. If you’ve seen the movie, you would understand why I took that as a sign to turn around and leave.



An interior shot of the restaurant from the movie with Harring and Watts:



How the interior looks today:



The frame below shows the Paramount Studio gate, as Watts’ character approaches for her screen test:



How the gate looked when I was there in 2019:



Eagle-eyed film buffs will note that the classic car just inside the gate…



is the same one that Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) owned when she drove through the gates in the 1950 classic, “Sunset Boulevard.”



The biggie on my checklist was the vintage complex called the Sierra Bonita Apartments in the film:



How the storybook cottage looks today:





The front of the complex, which has been dubbed the Snow White Cottages, were built in 1931, just around the corner from the original Walt Disney Studio in Los Feliz (torn down, of course).



In the film, Harring and Watts’ characters approach this directory:



Since the complex is a real apartment building, I was a bit hesitant to nose around too much. Not sure if this is the “tunnel” that was used and the sign was added as a bit of movie magic or what.



Love that weather vane, so typical of this style of architecture.



The directory was created for the movie, and done very well, as the style makes it look as if it had been there originally.



Watts and Harring’s characters are looking for the apartment of the mysterious Diane Selwyn, #17. She is on the directory as #12, but her ex-roommate lets the two know that she moved.



How #17 looks today:



I prefer the style of numbering used in the film! Note how the exposed brick near the entrance matches the screenshot:



I may go back at some point to attempt a few more exact matches of screenshots from the movie, but for now, this will suffice.

If you’ve never seen “Mulholland Drive,” you should. It’s the kind of film that will leave you baffled after the first viewing, but entice you to watch it again…and again. Lynch has left the interpretation up to the viewer, and even then, what is a dream and what is reality is hard to tell.

See more Hollywood Movie Locations photos at my main website.