Woman On The Run - Cab Ride 2
The police continue to watch Eleanor in hopes she will lead them to her missing husband. She gives them the slip and takes a cab to meet up with Leggett.
Then ... This is Union Street at the corner of Montgomery on Telegraph Hill - the cab drives up Union from the left which incidentally is a cul-de-sac in the real world! (And on a trivia note the cab picks Leggett up outside Midge's apartment in the movie Vertigo). The white building at far left is the Sidney Kahn house, built in the 1930s on lower Calhoun Terrace and across from it on upper Calhoun Terrace the low building on the corner is the famous Hoeffler's Compound, a warren of tiny studio apartments once favored by artists and bohemians.
... and Now, in today's view below, the Kahn house is still there but a modern apartment house has replaced the Compound. Next to that are some of the oldest homes on Telegraph Hill including the 1860s Cooney house at 291 Union (on the right of the purple house).
Then ... They head off west down Union Street. The store on the left corner at Montgomery is the beloved Speedy's New Union Grocery Store, a venerable neighborhood institution since 1915. This store was also featured in the movie The House On Telegraph Hill released a year later.
... and Now, in the same view today we see that the store has finally closed (in 2008), after serving generations of local denizens for almost a century. Such is life. Sad. Incongruous 1960s high rise apartment buildings mar the Russian Hill skyline in the distance. At least the older highrises there had class. (CitySleuth apologizes for taking this opportunity to pulpit a pet peeve).
The cab drops them off at the Hart & Winston store downtown where Eleanor's husband Frank had worked as a window dresser. As they look at one of his displays, featuring bathing suit cladded mannequins in her image, her memory is jogged and she suddenly solves the riddle in Frank's letter - he is asking to meet her on the beach at Carmel, a seaside resort they had visited shortly after their marriage.