Cops A to Z

Cops Locations Timeline – A to Z

Buster Keaton’s masterpiece Cops (1922) is one of his seven films inducted into the National Film Registry, and his only independently produced film with no interior scenes. Every scene was filmed outdoors at true locations, or on the backlots of Buster’s small studio, and the Goldwyn, Metro, and Brunton (United) Studios. The location for every scene has been identified. From A to Z, from beginning to end, you can now travel with Buster every step of the way during his journey filming Cops.

Each scene below is time-referenced according to the 18:31 minute Kino-Lorber 2011 Blu-ray of Cops, also posted on YouTube, link below. This lengthy timeline is divided into 9 pages in sequential order, with links at the bottom of each page. Most locations and even streets such as Arcadia and New High no longer exist, except in vintage photos, maps, and aerial views. Los Angeles and Hollywood looked different a century ago, now lost to history, but we can use Cops as a window into the past. Buster filmed Cops everywhere, from Culver City to Pasadena, from Hollywood to USC to south of downtown LA. Buster’s effort, planning, and production values are beyond amazing.

Here’s a Google Maps overview of the sites Cops filming locations. This timeline contains links to various posts explaining certain locations in more detail, along with “KC” annotations that refer to explanatory stories in The Keaton Chronicle.  https://youtu.be/cdTzfYI5Nhw?si=HyB8O9fYsCzsknEQ

00:18   “Love laughs at locksmiths. ~ Houdini.” Harry Houdini knew and worked with Buster’s family during their early medicine show days. But Harry filmed scenes from The Grim Game in 1919 at locations Buster would later use in Cops. See 00:51 below.

00:25   Buster appears behind bars, apparently in prison. A 1921 aerial photo of Buster’s studio, once located at 1025 Lillian Way at Eleanor, reveals the “WANTED” poster and other sets appearing in The Goat, as well as the prison set built for Convict 13 still standing at the back corner of the studio along Cahuenga and Romaine. Presumably some element of this Keaton Studio prison set appears here. Hollywood

00:36 – 00:50  The gate sequence where Virginia Fox insists Buster become a “big business man” before marrying him was filmed at the Jewett Estate, 1145 Arden Road in Pasadena, a private residence built in 1915 located east of Lake Avenue and south of California Boulevard.

The estate appears in many films, including the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933), William Haines and Joan Crawford in Spring Fever (1927), Clara Bow and Gary Cooper in Children of Divorce (1927), Lon Chaney’s Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928), Ann Harding’s Paris Bound (1929), the sole Amos ‘n Andy feature film Check and Double Check (1930), Leo Carillo in The Guilty Generation (1931), George Arliss and James Cagney in The Millionaire (1931), Ginger Rogers in Finishing School (1934), Miriam Hopkins in The Richest Girl in the World (1934), Bette Davis in It’s Love I’m After (1937), Abbott and Costello’s In Society (1944), the film noir murder classic Born to Kill (1947), the 1980s soap opera Dynasty, and the 5th season, episode 9 of Murder She Wrote – Something Borrowed, Something Blue (1989). Pasadena https://silentlocations.com/2015/07/05/groucho-buster-and-noir-at-the-pasadena-jewett-estate/