Clarence and on-duty cops are at the police station when he hears the news of the Chronicle fire …
They pile into a car, Clarence hanging on the side, to rush across town to Chron headquarters. (This doorway location is yet to be found - a Los Angeles precinct, a studio back lot, somewhere else?).
Then … They drive out of Golden Gate Avenue in downtown San Francisco, captured here turning east on Market Street. The projecting marquee of the Granada Theater at 1066 Market Street can be seen in the block behind them near the corner of Jones.
… and Now, the same block today. The Granada Theater is no longer there; after being renamed the Paramount in 1931 it was demolished in 1965.
Then … They are on Market again. This view was filmed looking east from 1st Street towards the Ferry Building in the background. Note at top center the ‘MOISE’ sign on the corner of Fremont Street…
… in 1930 … Here’s a photo taken a few years later from the same spot. A city directory entry revealed that the ‘MOISE’ sign belonged to the Moise-Klinkner store that sold a mix of rubber stamps, badges and signs.
… and Now, the traffic nightmare omnipresent on Market Street over the past century has recently been exorcised by the simple expedient of restricting access to commuter vehicles and taxis. Dead center in the distance the Ferry Building still stands like a sentinel on the Embarcadero, visible along most of the 3-mile length of arrow-straight Market Street.
Then … Now heading north they are on Stockton Street entering the south portal of the Stockton Tunnel near Union Square. Market Street crosses at the south end of Stockton.
… and Now, the first block on the left was rebuilt in 1960 as the Sutter-Stockton garage.
Here’s a reverse look at the south entrance of the tunnel in 1953 seven years before the current Sutter-Stockton garage was built.
… and just for fun check out this cool 1913 photo of the tunnel being excavated. It opened in 1914 after taking only 17 months to build. People worked hard in those days. The building at top right at 590 Bush Street is also visible in the image above.
Then … We then see them emerging from the tunnel’s north portal into Chinatown.
… and Now, the north portal today looks the same.
Clarence arrives outside the Chronicle press room to find an angry crowd surrounding Tom, wrongly accusing him of starting the fire. He is hauled off to jail where he briefly sees Ray before being dragged off to his own cell.
Meanwhile the fire rages on while a growing crowd of onlookers gather where Market Street and Geary come together. Customers of Bercovich Cigars on the ground floor at 700 Market Street could conveniently head up to dentist Chas. Strub on the 3rd floor to take care of the yellow stains. The stylishly-hatted lady in white on the 2nd floor windowsill has the best view of all.
Then … Across Market another crowd stands in front of the Monadnock Building at 685 Market adjacent to the Palace Hotel.
… and Now, The Beaux Arts building, built the year after the ‘06 earthquake, now features in its atrium lobby colorful murals depicting in Renaissance Baroque style many well-known San Francisco personalities including Mayor Adolph Sutro, fountain donor Lotta Crabtree and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
For history buffs here’s a 1910 postcard photo of the Monadnock showing the original iteration of Lotta’s Fountain in the foreground.
(The next location shot lasts for less than two seconds but there’s enough in it to justify a dedicated post… read on… )
Tom, mortified by the Chronicle’s front page exposé of the bribery arrest of his son, tries to stop the presses but he’s knocked to the ground in a tussle with his boss.
Then … He imagines a busy downtown street, seen here through the doorway of a corner store as a cable car passes by. Lots of people are walking past a newsstand and in his mind’s eye he sees them all snapping up the Chronicle’s scandalous last edition.
… and Now, here’s what a time traveler standing in that doorway would see today. The view looks east across Powell Street along O’Farrell to Stockton (at the Macy’s sign). A cable car passes by just as it did, above, one hundred years ago. CitySleuth is delighted that the old low-tech cable cars are still running. May they always.
This location was confirmed by identifying the two buildings on either side of Stockton circled in red and in blue, and by the sign circled in green…
… Here are contemporaneous vintage photos of those two buildings. On the left, circled in blue above, is D. Samuels Lace House Company (today replaced by Macy’s store). On the right, circled in red above, is the City Of Paris store with its huge rooftop sign, (today replaced by a retail/residential building). In 1925 when the movie was filmed the KFRC radio station (you did spot its vertical blade sign above, right?) was broadcasting from this store. (Note that the City Of Paris occupied the whole Stockton block from Geary to O’Farrell back then - the photo shows at far left an identical rooftop sign at Geary Street.
In the movie shot the sign partially legible in the green circle reads “… INTON …IA”; it’s part of the Clinton’s Cafeteria sign mid-block at 136 O’Farrell, listed below in the 1925 city directory.
Just in case more confirmatory proof is needed … note that this location was a street junction where cable car lines crossed as evidenced by the glimpse of another cable car down the road, circled in red…
A cable car map of the system as it was after the 1906 earthquake confirms that the California Street Cable Railroad ran along O’Farrell across Powell (circled in yellow). This map is fascinating; it shows how extensive the system used to be, extending west to Golden Gate Park in the Richmond and south to Noe Valley before being cut back to today’s 3 surviving lines.
But wait, there’s more … kudos to ReelSF reader Notcom for pointing out that the headlines of the newspapers on the stand precisely date when this scene was filmed…
Two different newspapers report the death of politician William Jennings Bryan … the date was Monday, July 27, 1925.
And finally, this ad in a newspaper dated April 11, 1925 tells us that the corner store from which the scene was filmed was the Lundstrom Hat Company store; they had opened up there, their 9th location, just 6 weeks prior. Thanks to the vicissitudes of fashion, there aren’t many of those stores around any more.
Here, photographed the year the movie was filmed, is the actual newsstand that was at the Stockton/O’Farrell street junction. The photo indicates it was at the northeast corner which is kitty-korner from the southwest corner location in the movie shot but who knows, perhaps it was moved there during filming.
Enraged, Tom grabs a spanner intending as it were to throw it in the works.
Then … Jo is listening to the radio in his cab while approaching the south portal of the Stockton Street Tunnel where Bush Street crosses over (map) . The tunnel, 2 1/2 blocks long, was built to provide a level streetcar connection from the Union Square neighborhood to Chinatown. It opened in 1914.
and Now… this portal has long been a favorite with film directors, having appeared in several movies. Note the same two blade signs Then and Now, at upper left. The Sutter-Stockton Parking Garage on the right has been there since 1960.
Before the tunnel was built this block of Stockton Street climbed an 18% grade to Bush Street. The 1913 image below shows the dig in preparation for boring the tunnel. The Bush Street apartment building facing us at upper right, built 5 years earlier in 1908, is still there today - it’s now a Wyndham Destinations time-share.
Then … As he drives through the tunnel he hears the radio announcer talking about the arrest of the 82 year old Mainland Chinese supporter who shot and killed a man at the Chinese New Year parade because he was waving a Taiwanese flag; the same incident as that described in the newspaper cutting that Jo had found in Chan’s jacket pocket.
and Now… the northern portal welcomes traffic to Chinatown just south of Sacramento Street. The construction site on the left, above, has been fully built out, below. Note the walkway railings on both sides of the tunnel, added in 1984 after a pedestrian was killed by a passing car (a classic case of closing the barn door).
On a trivia note, the radio announcer was Jim Clancy, a reporter at that time at the local KGO-TV station; he would go on to a 34 year career at CNN. Here he is c. 1979 interviewing tourists on a cable car. (Photo by Nancy Wong).
Then … Jo and Steve wait for customers in front of the Holiday Inn Hotel at 750 Kearny Street under the bridge that crosses over from Portsmouth Square plaza. Jo is puzzled: why did Chan have that newspaper cutting about the flag-waving murder in his pocket? Steve shrugs … “ Shit, the Chinese they love to fight, man … over mahjong, food, anything”.
and Now… this is the ‘Bridge To Nowhere’ which is hardly ever used. That will soon be even more so; city planning approval is well underway to remove it as part of yet another major plaza redesign (will they ever get it right?) scheduled for completion by 2026.
Then … Jo drops in on Steve and his sister Amy (Laureen Chew) to speculate on how Chan might be involved with the flag-waving murder.
The kitchen scene above was filmed in the Richmond home of actress Laureen Chew. It appeared again in Wayne Wang’s follow-on 1985 movie Dim Sum: A Little Bit Of Heart, below. Everything matches, including the patterned kitchen tiles.
and Now… the home, in the center, is 416 20th Avenue in the Richmond district. The house also doubles later in the movie as Chan’s wife’s home.
Then … Jo next meets Henry the cook on that same bridge (we saw him earlier hilariously cooking in the Golden Dragon restaurant). This time he’s smartly dressed in a 3-piece suit, surprising at first until we learn he owns eight restaurants and is quite rich. Director Wang has Henry alternate between English and Mandarin as he speaks so that the English-speaking audience understands while at the same time experiencing the lilt of the Chinese language. Henry thinks that Chan, an FOB immigrant (‘Fresh Off the Boat’), went back to China because he was never accepted here by Americans nor by ABC’s (‘American Born Chinese’). Jo is not so sure.
and Now… behind them, above, is a decorative ornament and a sign for the Garden Restaurant at 716 Kearny, both of which are still there. The 14-sided polyhedron however has been reoriented.
and Now… the ornament is one of many arrayed in the reoriented position along both sides of the span of the bridge. The scene with Henry was filmed at the far end near the Holiday Inn (the hotel was renamed the Hilton Financial District in 2006). The 716 Kearny building is on the right.
Then … Local FBI agents fan out across town searching for the buildings depicted in Igor Braun’s intercepted painting. At upper right the vertical corner sign, reading ‘Marines’, belongs to the Marines Memorial Club which tells us where this was filmed.
… and Now, The view looks south down Mason with Sutter crossing in the foreground (map). The Marines Memorial Club at 601 Sutter still occupies the southwest corner of this junction but traffic on Mason has since been changed to one-way. In both Then and Now images, steeply sloped streets on Potrero Hill are clearly visible way off in the distance.
Then … Next, we see an agent in a different part of town; this appears to be somewhere South of Market.
… and Now, sure enough, this is 6th Street, unchanged since the neighborhood’s post-1906 earthquake and fire rebuild (map). That’s Minna Street on the left and straight ahead across Market is the Golden Gate Theatre.
Then … The agents spot buildings that might be those in the drawing. This shot was filmed in a studio using a rear-projected cityscape. To CitySleuth it looks very familiar but something about it isn’t quite right …
… that’s because the moviemakers reversed the image when they projected it! So let’s reverse it back - now it makes sense - it’s a view west across the Marina looking towards the Presidio in the distance. The prominent building in the upper center is the Marina Middle School. The eyesore gas holder at right used to be on the corner of Bay and Laguna.
… and Now, the movie’s view was taken from a Russian Hill apartment building, 1090 Chestnut on the corner of Larkin (map), as was the recent photo below. (That same building also appeared in the 1947 movie Dark Passage, described here by CitySleuth). The school is still there but the gas holder has been replaced by the Marina Cove Apartments.
They check the buildings in the painting …
Then … Bingo! The agent says “That’s it alright, it’s painted from the rear of one of those houses on Clay Street”. But this is nowhere near Clay Street; note the ‘McRoskey Airflex’ sign on the building at left - a giveaway as to where this actually is.
… and Now, both buildings are still there today, in the Mid Market section of Market Street. On the left is the McRoskey Mattress Company, a local family business founded in 1899 that has been at this 1687 Market Street location since 1925 (map). On the right is the Allen Hotel at 1693 Market which survived a fire in 1998 and today is a low-income housing facility with on-site support services.
In summary, the moviemakers used geographical trickery for Igor Braun’s studio location. The agent describes it as being on Clay Street but he’s in Russian Hill when he spots it, and the houses across the street from it are on Market Street. All miles apart. Go figure.
