Harold Lloyd Brooklyn – Speedy Tour

Posted on May 16, 2011 by John Bengtson

Harold Lloyd Brooklyn – Speedy Tour – Film Forum October 21, 22, 2012

I will be presenting Harold Lloyd’s final silent comedy Speedy (1928) at 3:10 pm on Sunday, October 21, 2012, and at 7:30 pm on Monday, October 22,  at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, New York, NY 10014, based on the discoveries in my new Lloyd book Silent Visions.  Using animated slides I will lead viewers to dozens of landmarks and forgotten byways across town, in what is the first comprehensive study of New York’s most prominent role in a major silent film.  The following PDF tour, accessed by clicking the link below, shows the Brooklyn locations appearing during the film.  Of course the Coney Island sequences from the movie were also filmed in Brooklyn, but I cover that as an entirely separate chapter in my book.

Manhattan viewed from Kent and 8th in Brooklyn
Harold Lloyd Brooklyn Speedy Film Location Tour Film Forum

HAROLD LLOYD images and the names of Mr. Lloyd’s films are all trademarks and/or service marks of Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc. Images and movie frame images reproduced courtesy of The Harold Lloyd Trust and Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc.

Posted in Brooklyn, Harold Lloyd, Lloyd Tour, Manhattan, New York, Speedy | Tagged , , , , , | 12 Comments

Michael Scott (?!) and the Mayfair Hotel – admittedly OT

Posted on May 10, 2011 by John Bengtson

Fans of The Office television show cheered when Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) and Holly Flax (Amy Ryan) finally rekindled their romance with a rooftop kiss at the conclusion of Episode 15, Season 7, entitled The Search.  During the show, an emergency forces Jim to leave Michael behind at a gas station restroom. When Michael emerges from the restroom, without money or his wallet, he wonders off aimlessly.  Searching for Michael, Dwight and Erin are stunned to realize that Holly’s quirky hunches and random fixations are actually leading them closer and closer to Michael’s whereabouts. When Holly decides she might spot Michael from atop a tall building, she climbs to the rooftop of the Mayfair Hotel, to find Michael waiting there for her.

While admittedly off-topic for a silent movie blog, the brief glimpse of a classic Beaux Art-style 1920s-era building during the episode immediately grabbed my attention.  I went through a mental list of possible matches in downtown Los Angeles, and then checked possible buildings in Hollywood, and Burbank, but they were all dead-ends.  A few months later, while searching online for a downtown hotel, the Mayfair Hotel popped up, and I immediately recognized it as the setting from the show.  The hotel is not part of the Los Angeles Historic Core, but located instead several blocks west at the SW corner of Hartford Avenue and W. 7th Street.

This brief view of the Mayfair appears during the show – at right, a view south down Witmer towards W. 7th Street.

The hotel was built during 1926, and celebrated its grand opening in early 1927.  Designed with 350 rooms, each with a private bath, the hotel was well-known for its nightclub Rainbow Isle.  There, guests could enjoy dancing on an all glass dance floor blazing with color and light, while listening to George Eckhardts Jr. lead the Rainbow Isle orchestra, broadcasting nightly from 10 to 11 over KFWB radio.  Remember folks, “at the end of the rainbow there’s happiness.”

Noted author Raymond Chandler, famous for creations such as L.A. private detective Philip Marlowe, reportedly stayed and drank at the Mayfair on occasion.  His short story I’ll Be Waiting, published in the October 14, 1939 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, is said to take place at the Mayfair, although given the fictionalized name Windermere in the story.

Holly finds Michael on the roof of the Mayfair Hotel – click to enlarge

Once I had discovered the Mayfair, I became intrigued by other settings from the same episode. Noticing the 14546 address during Michael and Jim’s sales call, I Googled “14546 office burbank” and the first hit was an office for rent in Van Nuys that matched the site.

At the beginning of the episode, Michael and Jim pay a sales call at 14546 Hamlin Street, Van Nuys

From then on it was like eating peanuts.  I couldn’t stop after just one, and with a few more Google and Bing searches I had soon lined up the entire episode.

Jim strands Michael at the Civic Center Gas Station – 6171 Van Nuys Boulevard, Van Nuys

Michael walks towards the Van Nuys State Office Building at Van Nuys Boulevard and Delano Street

Michael tries to purchase a hot dog at Larry’s Chili Dog – 3122 W. Burbank Boulevard, Burbank

Micheal plans to dine and dash at “Mr. Choo’s” – Kung Pao China Bistro – 11838 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City

Erin, Dwight, and Holly ponder where Michael could be – the NW corner of Ingraham and Witmer Streets

The apartment behind Dwight, Erin, and Holly also served as the apartment for JD and Turk in the long-running medical sit-com Scrubs – Season 2, Eps. 14 My Brother, My Keeper.

Holly leaves Dwight and Erin – at back, the SW corner of Ingraham and Witmer

Holly walks down Witmer towards 7th Street and the Mayfair Hotel

The Office office – home to Dundler Mifflin – 13927 Saticoy Street, Van Nuys – click to enlarge

This Google Map identifies all of the locations appearing during the episode.   I learned of the location of The Office office, and of Mr. Choo’s, from Lindsay Blake’s I’m Not a Stalker movie location website.

Images from The Office copyright (c) NBCUniversal Media, LLC.  Aerial views -(c) 2010 NAVTEQ, Pictometry Bird’s Eye (c) 2010 Pictometry International Corp., (c) 2010 Microsoft Corporation.  Street views Google Street View (c) 2011 Google Inc.; Streetside Views (c) 2010 Microsoft Corporation.

Posted in The Office, TV Shows | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Harold Lloyd on Deadman’s Island

Posted on May 7, 2011 by John Bengtson

Deadman’s Island ahoy – Lonesome Luke’s Wild Women

It sounds like an adventure befitting Indiana Jones, but in the waning days of 1916 Harold Lloyd filmed his sixth “Lonesome Luke” production on Deadman’s Island near San Pedro.  Rising up from the extreme tip of Terminal Island, the spectral rock was a prominent early California landmark guiding sailors into Los Angeles Harbor.

The Shah on Deadman’s Island

Lloyd’s production was called Lonesome Luke’s Wild Women, and involved Harold and Snub Pollard being shipwrecked on an island occupied by a Shah and his harem of wives.  Though not widely distributed today, the film provides a fascinating historical record of this once familiar setting, and may be the only extant movie footage of this now lost geologic feature.

In his 1840 classic Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. describes Deadman’s Island in great detail, and how the previously unnamed island came to be known as La Isla de los Muertos.  Dana visited San Pedro in 1835, and the beachfront community Dana Point fifty miles to the south is named in his honor.  Dana writes as follows:

“[T]he only … thing which broke the surface of the great bay was a small, dreary-looking island, steep and conical, of a clayey soil, and without the sign of vegetable life upon it, yet which had a peculiar and melancholy interest, for on the top of it were buried the remains of an Englishman, the commander of a small merchant brig, who died while lying in this port. It was always a solemn and affecting spot to me. There it stood, desolate, and in the midst of desolation; and there were the remains of one who died and was buried alone and friendless. Had it been a common burying-place, it would have been nothing. The single body corresponded well with the solitary character of everything around. It was the only spot in California that impressed me with anything like poetic interest. Then, too, the man died far from home, without a friend near him,— by poison, it was suspected, and no one to inquire into it,— and without proper funeral rites; the mate (as I was told), glad to have him out of the way, hurrying him up the hill and into the ground, without a word or a prayer.”

Early map showing Deadman’s Island – Rattlesnake Island would be built up and become known as Terminal Island – Los Angeles Public Library SPNB Collection

A few years later, in October, 1846, six American marines from the U.S.S. Savannah, who were killed or died of wounds in the fight at Dominguez ranch, when Mexico successfully expelled the United States’ occupying forces from Los Angeles, were also buried on the island, expanding its mystique as the Isle of the Dead.  Following accelerated erosion and deterioration on the island, their remains were removed many years later to military cemeteries in San Pedro, and in the Presidio in San Francisco.

The natural arch on Deadman’s Island – Lonesome Luke’s Wild Women at left, USC Digital Archive California Historical Society

In 1916, the year Harold shot his movie, the United States War Department relinquished its 60-year control of the island to the Department of the Treasury, which planned to flatten and enlarge the site for a quarantine station, and officially christened the site with the decidedly unromantic name “Reservation Point” that appears on maps of that era.

Deadman’s Island – Lonesome Luke’s Wild Women – USC Digital Archive California Historical Society

Projecting halfway across the mouth of the harbor channel, the island posed a navigation hazard to large ships, and was excavated and dredged into oblivion during the years 1927 to 1929.  The fill removed from the island was deposited to the east, away from the channel, reclaiming a parcel equal to what was lost.  Long-rumored to be a secret base for Prohibition rum-runners, and home to buried treasure, even in death Deadman’s Island lived up to its sinister reputation.  The Los Angeles Times reports the suction drudge dismantling the island brought forth three redwood caskets each containing skeletal remains, and that tragically two dredge-men were killed during the island’s destruction.

All Aboard

Deadman’s Island makes cameo appearances in other silent comedies.  Lloyd filmed one of his early Glass Character shorts, a stowaway comedy entitled All Aboard (1917), at San Pedro Harbor, where the island appears in the background.

Deadman’s Island viewed from San Pedro – USC Digital Archive California Historical Society at left, All Aboard at right

A Day’s Pleasure (c) Roy Export Company Establishment

Charlie Chaplin also filmed at San Pedro Harbor.  In A Day’s Pleasure (1919), as Charlie and his family depart for an afternoon cruise, Deadman’s Island appears in the background.  I discuss this film and San Pedro more fully in my book Silent Traces.

A clear view of Dead Man's Island appearing in Charlie Chaplin's Shanghaied (1915).

A clear view of Dead Man’s Island appearing in Charlie Chaplin’s Shanghaied (1915).

Deadman’s Island also appears briefly in Charlie Chaplin’s 1915 Essanay film, Shanghaied, which was also filmed near San Pedro.

Now lost to history, the ghost-like Deadman’s Island still stands sentinel, guarding the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor, in the films of Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin.

PS – Scott Trimble writes that according to Wikipedia, here are the GPS coordinates for where the island once existed, http://goo.gl/maps/ovbk

HAROLD LLOYD images and the names of Mr. Lloyd’s films are all trademarks and/or service marks of Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc. Images and movie frame images reproduced courtesy of The Harold Lloyd Trust and Harold Lloyd Entertainment Inc.

Posted in Harold Lloyd | Tagged , , , , , , , | 15 Comments