Accolades aside, Chaplin’s masterpiece The Kid preserves a treasure trove of visual history, including Olvera Street near the Plaza de Los Angeles, and the Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd Alley in Hollywood. It’s complicated (more below), but The Kid also captures the precise spot where Chaplin filmed scenes from Police (1916), Buster Keaton filmed scenes from Neighbors (1920), and Jackie Coogan filmed scenes from My Boy (1921), all south of the Plaza along Sanchez Street behind the Garnier Building.

As explained in my Chaplin book Silent Traces, in other posts on this blog, and in my new YouTube video The Kid – Part Two, when Charlie rescues Jackie Coogan from an orphanage truck, the south end of Sanchez appears in the background as they turn right onto Arcadia Street (above left – click to enlarge). Likewise, during Neighbors a cop drags Buster by the hand around the corner from Arcadia onto Sanchez, straight into a cement lamp post. With the aid of a movie frame from The Kid, this post shows how scenes from Police, Neighbors, and My Boy were all filmed behind the Garnier Building, part of which survives today as the Chinese American Museum https://camla.org/.

Above, a closer view of Sanchez and the Garnier Building, the aerial view looking east, as Jackie Coogan hides from a suspicious cop by strolling north from Arcadia in front of a washerwoman. As you can see, Sanchez was just one block long, wedged between the Plaza and Arcadia. With little through traffic and few pedestrians to redirect, this colorful “urban” alley was easy to shut down for filming, and became a popular movie location.

To begin, these frames show Charlie and Jackie turning right through a loading dock gate onto Arcadia. Click to enlarge – you can read “ARCADIA ST.” on the corner sign at back. The right frame looks north up Sanchez, revealing the back doorways and windows of the Garnier Building (more below).

As seen here, during Police Charlie slyly picks the pocket of the thief robbing him (left), matched with an enlarged frame from The Kid (at right). The red frame outlines the Police frame filmed on Sanchez. Unique clues from Neighbors and My Boy confirm Charlie stood beside the back door to store 6 (below).

Built in 1890, the Garnier Building provided eight long, narrow, ground floor retail spaces for Chinese merchants, each storefront facing Los Angeles Street. Left and right rear windows flanked the central back door of each store along Sanchez, creating a repeating pattern of window-door-window eight times over along the back of the building. (Notice the “Opium Joint” identified on this 1906 map next to the first store.) The bottom ledges for each pair of windows in the back were of equal height, but since Sanchez gradually sloped uphill toward the Plaza, certain right window ledges were higher than their neighboring left window ledges. Further, the left window of store 7 was expanded into a narrow doorway, breaking the window-door-window pattern.

Click to enlarge – above, in a later tracking shot during Neighbors, as Buster wipes paint from his face, a cop leads Buster north up Sanchez behind the Garnier Building past the four stores between the red lines. Everything to the right of the yellow line was later demolished, including Garnier stores 6, 7, and 8.

Above, distorting the view of Sanchez from The Kid matches three of the stores Buster passes during Neighbors. The repeating window-door-window pattern for each store is clearly evident, except the left “window” for store 7 was extended into a narrow doorway (yellow), breaking the pattern.Above, as confirmed by the matching two-board, single-board window gap enclosures (red), Buster walked right past the same spot as Charlie during Police. The doors to store 5 and store 6 appear in both images.

The same two-board, single board window gap enclosures (red) appear with Jackie during My Boy. Notice the right window of store 4 (yellow) is higher than the neighboring left window of store 5.

Once again, the view of Sanchez from The Kid (right) confirms the high right window-low left window ledges (yellow) appearing in My Boy. The red box marks the My Boy frame.

And now for the glass-half-full payoff. You can visit Sanchez today and stand in the very same spot as Jackie, Charlie, and Buster. But there’s a catch. By 1956 the Santa Ana Freeway plowed through downtown LA, demolishing Arcadia Street and the south end of Sanchez, including three of the eight Garnier storefronts. While the five north storefronts more or less survive, store 6 appearing prominently during Police is lost. The back windows and door for store 4 have been remodeled, and store 5  has been reconfigured to create a “corner” from what was once the middle of the original building. The back windows and door to store 5 are now an open arch.

Then and now views of Sanchez, both photographed from atop LA City Hall. The pink roof in both images marks the remaining five-eights portion of the Garnier Building. All vintage buildings in the foreground were demolished. USC Digital Library.

Some film sites remain. As Jackie looks back at the cop chasing him during My Boy you can read the corner “Plaza-Sanchez” street signs above him. The north end of Sanchez facing the Plaza has been preserved.

What does this mean? Prior scenes from My Boy appeared in a 1921 Chaplin movie and this scene appears in a 2023 “Jake from State Farm” commercial!

Thanks to the Eye Filmmuseum for posting Jackie’s My Boy on YouTube which you can watch HERE.

My blog has several other posts about silent filming along Sanchez and Arcadia. This post explores more about Jackie Coogan filming My Boy, and later The Rag Man (1925) at this historic, now lost, downtown intersection.

My latest YouTube video shows how Charlie and Jackie made The Kid filming around the Plaza de Los Angeles and its neighboring working class streets.

So much of early LA has been lost, but intriguing glimpses remain hidden in the background of silent film, and in State Farm commercials! You’ll never know where another silent film site might appear. Below, looking north up Sanchez toward the filming site. “Arcadia” is now an access road parallel to the freeway. Rotate the view to see the freeway and downtown behind.