Portrait In Black - Cabot Shipping Line
The movie opens with a waterfront view of the Cabot Shipping Line pier.
Then ... This is a view down the side of Pier 22 located between Folsom and Harrison streets, close to the spot where the Bay Bridge (seen behind the pier) crosses the Embarcadero.
... and Now, this pier and other adjacent ones were removed as part of the waterfront renovation following the 1989 earthquake. The same view today shows a gap were it used to be (map). The Waterbar restaurant on the left sits right in front of where the pier entrance was and on the right is SFFD's Firehouse No. 35. The fireboat Guardian, in red and white livery, is berthed next to it, at what is now called Pier 22 1/2 - the bridge tower behind it is the one seen in the movie view above.
... a vintage photo ... we see Pier 22 in this 1941 photo. The firehouse is next to it on the right, then called Firehouse No. 9, one of only two surviving structures from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, moved to this location in 1915. (The other survivor is the Palace of Fine Arts).
Then ... We next see the Cabot Line headquarters (or at least a model or a painting of it).
... a vintage photo ... the building is no longer there but this 1920s photo shows it as it was, the flat-iron Crocker Building at One Post Street at Market Street in the Financial District map).
... and Now, the Crocker Building sat on this spot from 1890 until it was replaced in 1969 (for shame!) by the sleek but featureless Aetna Building, below.
The invalided magnate Matthew Cabot (Lloyd Nolan) runs his shipping empire from his bedside. Cabot's wife Sheila (Lana Turner) looks on as he receives his daily injection from his doctor David Rivera (Anthony Quinn) but it soon becomes clear from Cabot's dismissive tone that the marriage is not going well.