Director Wayne Wang cast a light not only on the Chinese in Chinatown but also other Asian communities, including Filipino. This next scene was filmed at the Senior Center in Manilatown, a ten block section of Kearny Street that overlapped Chinatown as it stretched from Market Street, on the left below, to Columbus Avenue, on the right.
At its peak, over 1000 residents lived in Manilatown together with 30,000 transient laborers who for decades were forbidden by legislation to own land or set up businesses. They mostly lived in rooming houses and low-income residential hotels such as the International Hotel at 848 Kearny, which also housed the Manilatown Senior center until 1977 when the hotel was evicted prior to being torn down.
Jo and Steve stop by the Manilatown Senior Center after hearing that Chan often enjoyed listening to mariachi music there.
The camera pans the width of the room then captures several shots of the manongs and manangs as they relax and dance to the easy rhythm of Sabor A Mi by Los Lobos del Este de L.A. (you can hear it here).
Then … But this isn’t the International Hotel, which was an empty lot when the movie was made: instead it was filmed two blocks away at the Senior Center’s transplanted home at 636 Clay Street in the basement of the Hotel Justice building, seen below in a 1964 photo (map).
… and Now, the hotel has since been renamed the Balmoral Hotel. 636 Clay is the entrance in the center of the building; it’s now the DaVita Chinatown Dialysis Center. (CitySleuth was unable to enter to get a matching Now photo of the interior space because it’s off-limits to non-patients).
In a back room Jo and Steve meet staffer Presco Tabios (left, in front of a photo of tenants taken outside the International Hotel before it was torn down) and Frankie Alarcon (right). They each have different ideas about where Chan might be. Presco tells a long story about a musician who lost his ability to play and ended up realizing the only person who could help him was right there reflected in a rain puddle.
“You guys are looking for Mr. Chan?” Presco asks, “Why don’t you look in the puddle?”
Blogger Jimmy J. Aquino captured that thought with this whimsical cartoon ...
Frankie tells them he thinks Chan went back to mainland China to sort out a property issue with his brothers. Then he remembers Chan had left a jacket right there in the Senior Center. They find it and in a pocket there’s a newspaper cutting about an old friend of Chan’s, a People’s Republic of China supporter, accused of shooting a Chinese flag-waver at San Francisco’s recent Chinese New Year Celebration - because it was a Taiwanese flag. (The P.R.C versus R.C. antipathy within the community is a recurring theme throughout the movie).
A word is in order here about the shameful demise of the International Hotel. It had been at 848 Kearny since 1873, eventually becoming the heart of the Filipino-American community, surrounded by restaurants, coffee shops, pool halls, gambling venues - all things Filipino. But by 1968 the city had decided to gentrify (aka ethnic-cleanse) the area and supported the eviction of the elderly tenants, prompting a bitter nine-year conflict with anti-eviction protesters. This 1977 photo of the hotel shows one of their protest banners spanning Kearny Street.
Most of the 179 residents were evicted during the 1970s but 55 of them held out. ln the early hours of Aug 4, 1977 3,000 protesters assembled there to resist a rumored forcible eviction by the police (photo by Nancy Wong).
Sure enough, they came, 300 strong. Police on horseback dispersed the crowd with batons while others used ladders to gain access to the building (photo by Terry Schmitt/Chronicle).
Sheriff Richard Hongisto wielded a sledgehammer to personally evict one of the tenants. Earlier, he had been held in contempt of court and sentenced to jail for 5 days for refusing to carry out the eviction order. Go figure! (photo by Terry Schmitt/Chronicle).
… by 1979 … after the eviction the hotel was demolished, seen here reduced to a street-level facade (photo by Nancy Wong). The Manilatown Kearny Street corridor would never be the same again.
… and Now, the corner site remained an empty parking lot for years; the developers withdrew while both sides of the conflict licked their wounds and bickered over what to do with it. In a final irony, a cross-cultural coalition received federal HUD funding to build a community center and 104-unit building for low-income seniors; it opened in 2005, 28 years after the eviction.
Then … Scorpio crosses under the Embarcadero Freeway heading to the brightly lit liquor store across the street at 148 Embarcadero South (map), next to the entrance of the Embarcadero Hotel at 146 Embarcadero South. That’s one of the freeway’s concrete support pillars on the right.
… in 1971 … this vintage photo, taken in March, 1971 (the year Dirty Harry was filmed) captured not only the double-decker freeway in all its ugliness, but also the Dirty Harry liquor store site (arrowed). It was vacant at that time, in fact it had been vacant since 1968 when it was the Longshoreman Cafe and continued to be vacant for several more years. So clearly the Dirty Harry set designers must have created the liquor store specifically for the movie.
… and Now, there’s no concrete pillar in today’s matching shot below - the freeway was taken down after being badly damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Perry’s restaurant took over the 146/148 Embarcadero retail space in 2008. The hotel above it is now the Griffon Hotel.
Here’s the 1971 city directory for the 100 block of Embarcadero South which lists number 148 as a vacant property. Elsewhere in the block were two real liquor stores.
Then … another freeway pillar is seen behind Scorpio as he approaches the store. The Ferry Building is visible two blocks away along the Embarcadero.
… and Now, the Embarcadero went through a transformative upgrade after the freeway was pulled down and is now a wonderful open thoroughfare popular with walkers, joggers and visitors who enjoy the food courts and restaurants in the repurposed Ferry Building or a ride in a vintage streetcar along the Embarcadero to Fisherman’s Wharf.
Then … In this closer view of the liquor store we see some of the detailed set design including flashing neon beer signs. Next to it are the Embarcadero Hotel entrance at 146 Embarcadero and the Admiral Tavern on the right.
… and Now, The hotel entrance is now the Embarcadero entrance into Perry’s - its main entrance is on Steuart Street.
Then … Inside the store the owner tells Scorpio he carries a gun for safety’s sake. Bad idea. Scorpio buys a bottle of whisky, violently knocks him to the ground with it, takes his gun, and leaves.
… and Now, the Perry’s space is an expansion of the 148 Embarcadero store space; the action above was filmed in the right side corner.
Then … Jo and Steve talk about Chan as they cut through Ross Alley, the oldest (dating from 1849) of Chinatown’s 41 alleyways. The alley (formerly named Stout Alley) runs north-south between Jackson and Washington (map). They are approaching 32 Ross Alley, which at that time was the Gin Alan barber shop.
… and Now, 32 Ross Alley has been Amy’s Hair Shop since 2018. But for many decades before that it was Jun Yu’s Barber Shop; he was well-known for taking breaks between customers to play his erhu (a two-stringed bowed musical instrument popular in China) for passers-by.
Here he is doing exactly that. Many celebrities have over the years stopped by at Jun Yu’s for a haircut, including Frank Sinatra and Michael Douglas. He has been featured on local TV and in The Pursuit Of Happyness, qualifying him to proudly tell his listeners “I am movie star!”. (Photo by Henk Binnendijk).
Ross Alley has come a long way from its early days when Chinatown’s population was predominantly male (resulting from the discriminatory 1875 Page Act that prevented Chinese immigrant workers from bringing their wives and family into the U.S.). They would find solace in its opium dens, drinking joints, gambling parlors and brothels. This photo of the alley, titled Street Of The Gamblers, is part of Arnold Genthe’s Chinatown series. It was taken eight years before the 1906 earthquake and fire reduced Chinatown in its entirety to ashes before it was reborn in its present form.
Then … In this shot carefully framed to add a converging lines effect Jo and Steve walk past a residential apartment doorway at 20 1/2 Ross Alley.
… and Now, here’s the same doorway today. To take this matching shot CitySleuth couldn’t stand in the narrow passage (above) because its access has been blocked off.
Here’s that blocked passage. There are many of them in Chinatown linking streets and alleys which CitySleuth thinks were included in the post earthquake and fire rebuild of the area as exit routes in case of another disaster. But over the years they have all been blocked off, as too is the one above. When Jo and Steve walked by the passage, number 37 (below) was an Asian dive bar, the Rickshaw Cocktail lounge, where John Lennon and Ringo Starr spent an evening boozing it up before and after closing hour following the Beatles’ Cow Palace performance in 1964.
Then … As they continue on they pass another since-vanished bar, Danny’s Dynasty Lounge at 20 Ross Alley, directly opposite the Rickshaw Cocktail Lounge.
… and Now, post-pandemic visitors were back in force when CitySleuth took this matching photo. The crowd down the alley is lined up at the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory at 56 Ross Alley.
The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory has, since 1962, attracted more visitors to Ross Alley than any other business. In its compact space three part-time employees hand-fold, by their estimate, around 10,000 fortune cookies a day. (Fortune cookies by the way are a San Franciscan creation, unheard of in China).
Then … Along from the Dynasty Lounge they walk by the Canton Flower Shoppe at 12 Ross Alley. Steve tells Joe that Chan has no sense of humor because he didn’t get a joking comment he made. In voiceover Jo tells us that to the contrary, that was Chan’s way of pulling Steve’s leg.
… and Now, the Chinese Christian Mission, closed when this photo was taken, now occupies the number 12 address.
Ross Alley has been a magnet for more than gamblers, drinkers, addicts, johns and tourists; artists too have found it hard to resist. On the left is a 1921 etching by John William Winkler with a focus on family; on the right a contemporary ink-on-paper drawing by Paul Madonna, who resides in San Francisco. Paul leaves the alley’s goings-on to the imagination of the viewer.
Then … Bannister is about to begin his defense of O’Hara. Elsa meets him at the courthouse, worried that he is intent on losing the case, a verdict that would conveniently send his wife’s lover to the gas chamber. At first glance, this appears to have been filmed in the Fairmont Hotel’s Laurel Court at 950 Mason Street in Nob Hill.
… in 1907 … here’s a vintage image of the Laurel Court taken when the rebuilt Fairmont Hotel reopened after the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire. Note the chandelier hanging from the diamond-patterned domes, the marble pillars topped with ‘ram’s horn’ capitals and the ornate lamps attached to the side of the pillars. All of these features are seen above.
and Now, the ceiling of the Laurel Court has three of those large domes; the center one, below, still has its original chandelier. The wall and ceiling surfaces have been redone and the lamps removed from the pillars but the architecture remains unchanged. Note the design of the railings in the center of the room, also evoking ram’s horns, the same as in the movie view in the ‘Then’ image above.
But the movie scene was filmed not at the Fairmont but on a Columbia Pictures movie set that reproduced in great detail the Laurel Court architecture. Why go to so much trouble and expense? Just ask Alfred Hitchcock who recreated San Francisco’s Ernie’s restaurant, both interior and exterior, at Paramount Studios in Hollywood for a scene in ‘Vertigo”.
While Elsa greets her husband and his associate a couple climbs a staircase behind them. This is the biggest clue revealing that the location was a movie set - the only staircases in the Laurel Court are and always have been the two large curved staircases in the center of the room (above).
and Now, for additional confirmation, CitySleuth walked the Fairmont’s Laurel Court with chief concierge Tom Wolfe searching for the same alignment of doorway, pillars, railings and steps as in the movie scene. The closest match in the room is that pictured below but in comparing it with the Then image above, the alignment is different and there are no railings or stairs here. Neither do the striations in the marble pillars match. Tom and CitySleuth both concluded the movie scene could not have been filmed here.
In the 1948 movie I Remember Mama there was another amazingly realistic studio recreation, this one of the Fairmont’s lobby area, described in more detail here.
