Once again when the action hits the streets the director cuts between locations filmed in San Francisco and Los Angeles …
Then … Clarence slowly tails Red Moran to find out where he will deliver the bribe. As he crosses an intersection, note the streetlight post, mailbox and power pole cheek by jowl on the corner at right; these helped confirm the location.
and Now, This was filmed in Hollywood. They were heading east on Hollywood Boulevard, crossing Wilcox Avenue (map).
CitySleuth’s fellow gumshoe Notcom found this location. This vintage photo from the 1920s clearly show that grouping of streetlight, mailbox and power pole at Hollywood and Wilcox outside the Hollywood Public Market at 6500 Hollywood Boulevard. (There’s now a 7-Eleven at this site).
And this 1924 photo looking north up Wilcox with Hollywood Boulevard crossing ahead shows the same grouping at left. In addition it shows the white square pattern below the corner store window at right that is seen in the Then image above. Proof positive!
Moran sneaks into the office of deputy assistant D.A. Ray McDonald (Tom’s son) and leaves the bribe - a whopping $50,000 - on his desk.
Clarence accosts him as he leaves, resulting in an extended knock-down drag-out fight between them through the building.
Moran eventually prevails and rushes towards the exit. CitySleuth is curious as to where this interior was filmed, with its tiled walls and distinctive pillars.
Then … He flees the building (that’s Clarence’s car parked outside).
and Now, In the storyline the exit was from San Francisco’s City Hall but it was filmed in L.A. at the Masonic Temple at 6840 Hollywood Boulevard which today is the home of the Jimmy Kimmel late night television show.
Then … He leaps into a passing cab in front of the building that’s next to the Masonic Temple (partially visible at left).
and Now, This is the Mary Moll Building, still there at 6912 Hollywood Boulevard. Interesting and sad how a chunk of the classis building to the right of the entrance was demolished to make way for the nondescript store in its place.
Then … The cab cuts across town. The two hotels make this location easy to find. We are back in San Francisco: the Odeon was at 40 7th Street, the Atlanta at 92 7th Street. So the cab is heading east on Market at 7th.
and Now, The Federal Building at 90 7th Street and its plaza now sit where the two hotels used to be. It opened as an innovative energy-saving structure in 2007 to critical acclaim by fellow architects but considerable criticism by those who work in it. The doorway in the center both Then and Now with a fanciful masonry pediment above it is the entrance to the Independent Order Of Odd Fellows Hall. The building has housed the IOOF organization since 1909 and more recently other tenants but has recently been listed for sale.
Then … Clarence follows; he’s also travelling east on Market, between 7th and 8th Streets just passing the Civic Center Market at 1143-1145 Market and an Army and Navy Goods store at 1133 Market.
and Now, These are those same addresses today. The building on the right that housed the Civic Center Market has since been replaced by the white-walled office building but a thrift store continues to do business at 1143 Market on the left.
Then … Jo has given up on finding Chan Hung. “Here’s a picture of Chan”, he says, “and I still can’t see him”. The two friends are posing on either side of a Buddha in front of a gift shop. (That’s director Wayne Wang posing as Chan). The reflection in the window of the building across the street was the clue that led CitySleuth to this location.
… and Now, here’s the same shop window today with the same reflection. This is the Canton Bazaar gift shop at 616 Grant Avenue. Compare the Then and Now reflection within the highlighted area but don’t be fooled by the fact that one of the reflected building’s windows below its carved wooden pediment has since been bricked up.
… and Now, the reflected building was then, and still is today, the Bank of America Chinatown branch at 701 Grant on the corner of Sacramento. Note the carved wooden pediments that span groups of three windows; one of each group is now bricked up. The blue box outlines the area reflected in the Canton Bazaar shop window (that reflection of course is a reversed mirror image).
Bank of America opened the branch in 1962 in what was originally the Nanking Fook Woh Company building. In this 1960s photo we see the window (at left, partially obscured) before it was bricked up.
The Canton Bazaar building was built soon after the 1906 earthquake - it’s seen here in a 1910 photograph that also shows the Nanking Fook Woh Co. building on the left. Had the man next to the Canton Bazaar entrance stopped and looked back he would have seen the same reflection in its window of the area outlined in yellow that director Wang captured behind Jo seventy years later.
… and Now, it’s been 114 years since it opened and the Canton Bazaar is still there. In Chinatown, a neighborhood of relative stability, many things resist change.
On a historical note, the Nanking Fook Woh Company imported and sold oriental fine arts. This colorful lithograph depicted it soon after it was built. Note the cable car on Sacramento Street running on the Sacramento & Clay line that would eventually close down in 1942.
And, thirty or so years later, here’s a cable car at that corner one year before the line closed down; the tenant in the Nanking Fook Woh Company building at that time was T. Iwata & Co. Incidentally, the telegram office on the left appeared in scenes in the 1948 noir Walk A Crooked Mile and in the 1949 noir Impact - each posted in this blog.
Then … Blotz arrives at his destination. Finding this location was easy for CitySleuth - he turned to John Bengston, host of the blog silentlocations.com, knowing that he had already discovered it in numerous silent movies and that he had described it in detail in his blog. This is E. Cahuenga Alley in Hollywood, since renamed the Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd Alley in recognition of the silent movie stars who filmed there (map).
… in 1922 … 3 years earlier Buster Keaton was filmed at exactly this spot in the comedy My Wife’s Relations.
… and Now, here’s how that location looks today. The building facing us, other than its brick walls having been stuccoed over, hasn’t changed.
In this 1920s aerial photo the T-shaped alley is highlighted in yellow. It has an east-west section between Cahuenga and Cosmo and a north-south section down to Selma Avenue. The circle shows where Blotz’s car was parked, at the corner with Cosmo.
… and Now, this matching Google satellite view shows the alley as it looks today. It’s a century later but several of these buildings are still there.
Then … Blotz enters the Pal’s Club via a back entrance. But where was this doorway? There aren’t any other views or clues to help find it, other than the adjacent elevated window on the left.
Once again silentlocations.com provides the answer. John Bengston came across the same doorway in the 1932 silent movie Hells House (on the left, below). This was filmed 7 years after The Last Edition but check out how various wall features still matched up.
Hells House had other scenes that identified precisely where the doorway was. Here’s another 1920s aerial photo viewed from a different angle showing the doorway (within the circle), on the north-south section of the alley and around the corner from where Blotz’s car was parked.
… and Now, the doorway is still there, seen here looking south along the section of the alley that runs down to Selma Ave.
Meanwhile Clarence has caught up with Blotz and spots him entering the club. This was filmed in the east-west section of the alley; Cahuenga Blvd crosses in the background.
Then … Unable to enter the back door he takes a chance on spotting Blotz within one of the building’s windows; He (well, a stunt-man, no doubt) daringly climbs to an adjoining rooftop then down to the window. Note the address above the Chime Lunch entrance - 6374; this is the rear of 6374 Hollywood Boulevard.
That building is circled in this 1920s aerial view; the arrow points to the window that Clarence is about to peer into…
… and Now, the purple-walled building facing us at the end of the alley has since been added in front of the Chime Lunch building. This north-facing view also captures the Pal’s Club doorway, highlighted at left. (Note the continuity hiccup - we now realize that the doorway and the window he climbed up to were not at the same building).
… then when Clarence looks inside there’s another continuity goof - this is a different window; the brick windowsill is not the same as in the Then image above. To be fair, most movie watchers would never notice, but CitySleuth obsesses over details like this.
He’s in luck - he sees Blotz conferring with his accomplice Red Moran and overhears him, livid over his exposé by the Chronicle, instructing Moran to deliver a cash bribe to the city’s assistant D.A. Gerald Fuller to get the police off his back.
Director Wang trained a camera on a bus stop to capture the ebb and flow of the activity there. For a minute and a half we are voyeurs as shoppers pass by and make their way in and out of the two stores. Waiting passengers gaze expectantly in the direction of the oncoming bus in hopes it will hasten its arrival. The GIF below is a brief representation.
Then … the clue to finding this location was the brick detail highlighted below; fortunately it’s still there today. The bus stop was on the west side of Stockton Street near Jackson alongside a restaurant and a flower shop.
… and Now, here’s that location today. The rectangle outlines the movie frame’s field of view; the oval outlines two vertical columns of bricks, now partly covered with security bars but the exposed left column matches Then and Now. On the right Wellman’s Pharmacy at 1053 Stockton was the Lai Wah Florist when Chan was filmed while the restaurant on the left was then, and still is, the Gourmet Kitchen at 1051 Stockton.
That same bus stop was the subject of a wide angle 1970s photo by Bob Eckert Photography, perfectly capturing the diurnal hustle and bustle of Chinatown. But you won’t find the bus stop at this location now, it’s been moved south one block.
Interesting trivia - the movie Petulia was filmed here twelve years before Chan. It included a scene showing Julie Christie shopping on Stockton Street in Chinatown. The boutique on the left, street number 1053, was the Lai Wah flower shop seen above (the Chinese characters on the window say so and the phone number was the flower shop’s number) repurposed for this scene to complement the colorful fruit stand next to it.
Undulating waves and ripples fills the screen, capturing Jo’s confusion as he admits he no longer knows who Chan Hung really is. He recounts one by one in voiceover how everybody he has asked remembers Chan as a completely different person. Is he real or is he really the embodiment of the Chinatown community?
Then … Jo muses on while driving along Grant Avenue. Just as in the movie’s opening scene the sidewalk storefronts pass by horizontally while concurrently the upper floors of the buildings, reflected and flipped 90 degrees by the steeply raked windshield, overlap and slide by vertically.
… and Now, he was passing the elaborately oriental-styled building on the corner of Grant and Clay, home of the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association and the Louie Fong and Fong Family Association. This corner had also been seen earlier in the movie.
