Then ... Determined to do something about their addiction, Joe and Kirsten move in with her father (Charles Bickford) and help him run his nursery business while staying on the wagon.
... in the mid 1970s... The storyline sets this location as 'down the peninsula in San Mateo' but Citysleuth thinks that all of the nursery scenes were filmed on the Warner Bros. studio back lot in Burbank, seen in this 1970s aerial photo. If any reader knows to the contrary, please contact him.
After successfully staying sober for two months Joe brings home some hooch and Kirsten willingly helps him consume two bottles, one right after the other.
By now he is completely looped - he goes to the greenhouse to find a third bottle he had stashed away in one of the planter pots. In an astonishing performance which would have been comical were it not so disturbing he forgets which pot it was in and ends up destroying the entire inventory of the greenhouse before finding it.
He finished off that third bottle himself and ends up straitjacketed in a drying-out cell. He's really hit rock bottom now.
(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.