(A Bunker Hill movie in a San Francisco blog? CitySleuth explains why).
The Exiles begins with the sound of a beating drum behind a montage of 19th century Indian images - sun-baked wizened faces below feathered headdresses, riders single file on the open plains, tepees dotted around like haystacks, in short replaying the Indian stereotype of the 1950s.
Just as quickly, while tribal chants rise above the rhythmic beat another montage is shown of sun-baked, wizened clapboard lodging houses, badly in need at the very least of a coat of paint, the sort of inexpensive abodes in Bunker Hill where young reservation transplants looking for a better life in the big city could afford to live. We will soon meet such a group.
Then ... The steep streets of Bunker Hill imposed a fair amount of climbing on its denizens; for many the Angels Flight funicular, there since 1901 and seen here descending its track, was a godsend. For a nickel a ride a lot of shoe leather could be saved. Off to the side is a clear view of the Hillcrest Hotel and Sunshine Apartments residential buildings.
... and Now, Angels Flight soared alongside and above the 3rd Street tunnel between Hill and Olive Streets at the edge of downtown Los Angeles (map). The dotted line indicates the path of the funicular before it closed down in 1969 and the arrow points in the direction of the movie shot above. Today the tunnel has survived but all of the buildings alongside it on both sides were, after being declared unhealthy by the development-driven city government at the time, expurgated. A monolithic building now straddles the tunnel. Progress? Not.
Then ... When the funicular reaches its downhill terminus at Hill Street we get a better overall view including the three block tunnel and the upper terminus at Olive a block away. The Hillcrest Hotel and Sunshine Apartments can still be seen from this vantage point on the right hand side.
... and Now, this recent view is as good an example as any of the total annihilation of a neighborhood.
... in 1962 ... the dissection process was captured in this vintage photo of Angels Flight taken just three or four years after this movie scene was filmed, with all of the buildings to its left and the Hillcrest Hotel and Sunshine Apartments to its right already razed. Let's not even get into the thousands of Bunker Hill and adjacent Court Hill residents who were forced from their homes at this time in the name of urban renewal.
... and Now, Los Angeles gave a nod to nostalgia by resurrecting the dismantled funicular and reinstalling it in 1996 a half block south from its original location, again linking Hill and Olive. After an extended hiatus following a fatal accident the ride reopened - at 50 cents, 10 times the 1950s rate, it is worth it for the memories.
Lois Frazer (Jane Wyatt) is a married woman having an affair with homicide Lieutenant Ed Cullen (Lee J. Cobb). After she tells her husband that she intends to divorce him she finds a hidden gun at home and, convinced he is planning to kill her, calls Cullen and asks him to come help her.
Then ... Cullen drives out of the Hall of Justice garage, pausing to say Hi to Janet (Lisa Howard), the fiancé of Cullen's younger brother Andy (John Dall). She is parked outside, waiting for Andy, who also happens to be Cullen's junior partner.
... and Now, the old Hall of Justice, demolished in 1967, was on the corner of Kearny and Washington on Portsmouth Square in Chinatown. Today a hotel, the Hilton Financial District, occupies the site. In this recent photo looking east down Washington (map), the hotel is seen on the right. Two-way traffic then is one-way now but the tall white building at top left in both Then and Now images is still there - the Appraisers Building at 603 Sansome Street.
Then ... Cullen drives off and Andy comes out to meet Janet. The lovebirds share a passionate kiss in the middle of the street.
... and Now, this is the view west along Washington towards Kearny. There's a newly completed building on the right and that's Portsmouth Square plaza bounded by trees on the left.
Here's the old Hall of Justice from 1961 in a photo taken six years before it was demolished. The movie scene was filmed on Washington at the side of the building at left.
... and Now, the Hilton San Francisco Financial District hotel now occupies this site. Originally built in 1970 as the Holiday Inn Downtown, it was taken over and refurbished in 2005 by Hilton.
Sometimes it takes an epiphanous moment for an alcoholic to see the light. In Joe's case it happened as he walked downtown one day and caught his reflection in a window.
Then ... Four years have passed during which time Joe has been fired from five jobs because of his alcoholism. He is seen walking near Union Square along Maiden Lane (map), originally Morton Street and once a red-light destination for bars and brothels but by the 1960s an up-scale street of cafes and high-end boutiques. Nothing to do with the movie, but let CitySleuth draw your attention to the interesting building across the street - the one with the archway entrance ...
... and Now, that building, at 140 Maiden Lane, housed the V.C. (Vera Chase) Morris Gift Shop. Back in 1948 it had been renovated by Frank Lloyd Wright who designed its interior circular ramp as a prototype for the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Now the home of the Xanadu Gallery, this is the only Frank Lloyd Wright structure in San Francisco.
Then ... He pauses and catches sight of himself in the window of the Union Square Lounge at 177 Maiden Lane.
... and Now, the shop front has been remodeled and that window has been replaced by the entrance to Spectacles, an opticians.
... and Now, a recent photo of the store. Al fresco tables of the Mocca cafe next door (Bab's women's clothes store when the movie was shot) take advantage of Maiden Lane's traffic-free status today.
For the first time he confronts himself, recognizing the bum he has become.
He heads straight back to their shabby rooms and drags Kirsten, it's daytime but she's already drunk, to a mirror. In an emotional outburst he confronts their reflections - "Look at us ... see? ... a couple of bums! ..." and tells her they have to get sober and stay sober.
The Exiles was filmed entirely in and around the Bunker Hill neighborhood of late 1950s Los Angeles. So why include it in a San Francisco movie location blog? Well, two reasons. First, CitySleuth found out the hard way after scouring the city a number of times for locations featured in San Francisco movies that they had been filmed in Bunker Hill. As it turns out, L.A.'s Bunker Hill and S.F.'s Telegraph Hill had much in common with their turn-of-the-century wooden buildings, steps and steep streets. And second, because in researching these sites over the years CitySleuth has come to know and love the old Bunker Hill so well despite never having been there and despite its total erasure by the end of the 1960s. So imagine his delight in coming across this wonderfully restored movie and witnessing the preservation of sorts of so many locations from a bygone era. Such nostalgia, ergo it cried out to be shared.
Before we get to the movie, here are three scenes from different San Francisco films that stymied CitySleuth for a while before he zeroed in on Bunker Hill ...
Woman On The Run (1950) ... The police arrive to investigate a murder at the top of a steep flight of steps. This was filmed on Court Hill above the Hill Street tunnel in Los Angeles' Bunker Hill neighborhood. The building to the left at the bottom of the hill is the Bunker Hill Central Police Station at 1st Street and at right, receding south into the distance, is Hill Street and downtown Los Angeles.
... and Now, the steps and tunnel are gone and the hill flattened - here's Hill Street looking south from 1st Street today. The police station on the corner is gone too but worse, to the dismay of many, the very soul of the old neighborhood has been ripped out.
Sudden Fear (1952) ... An enraged Jack Palance aims his car at his wife (who turns out instead to be his lover). Again, this is in Bunker Hill where she is running past the Mission Apartments at the corner of 2nd and Olive.
... in 1948 ... here's the same building in this vintage photo which also captures the balustrade above the 2nd Street tunnel and, below it, the Hotel Astor on the corner of Hill Street.
... and Now, again unrecognizable. Because of neighborhood ethnic cleansing, those wonderfully evocative old places now seem like figments of the imagination.
The Sniper (1952) ... Arthur Franz is seen walking on a street with a distinctive building behind him. This is Court Street on top of Court Hill in the Bunker Hill neighborhood and to get there he has just climbed the steep Court Flight steps leading up from Broadway between 1st and Temple. The building behind him across Broadway is the old Hall Of Records.
... c. 1940 ... this vintage photo shows a wider view looking down the same stretch of Court Street revealing more of the Hall Of Justice with City Hall behind it. The structure at the end of the street was the upper terminus of the Court Flight railway, still operational at that time but closed down and demolished by the time The Sniper was filmed.
... and Now, Court Street, and indeed the entire Court Hill, has been eradicated to make way for this parking lot. City Hall is in the background but the old Hall of Records, which would have been at the left of this photo, was torn down in 1979.
