A Fresh Look at San Francisco’s Starring Hollywood Roles

San Francisco has long captured the imagination of filmmakers, who love shooting establishing shots of the Golden Gate Bridge almost as much as destroying it. For over a century, the city’s downtown skyline, distinctive neighborhoods and dramatic history have provided iconic backdrops for cinematic imaginings.

Local writer and historian (and former librarian) Jim Van Buskirk, co-author of the 2006 book Celluloid San Francisco: The Film Lover’s Guide to Bay Area Movie Locations, knows this well. Now, in a series of lively Tuesday night talks in the San Francisco Public Library’s Koret Auditorium, he’ll share some of that knowledge, along with clips and still photographs related to movie-making in the Bay.

The program kicks off on June 4 with “San Francisco on the Silver Screen,” a broad survey of the region’s role in movies and television shows. Christina Moretta, photo curator of the library’s San Francisco History Center, worked with Van Buskirk to pull images from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue, a collection of over 2 million photographs donated to the library in the 1960s.

“We actually went through the photo morgue identifying all the movie stars and found original photographs of [them] on set here in San Francisco,” says Moretta. “For example, one is Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart in the cemetery of Mission Dolores, with the lights in the background and them talking over a script.”

In addition to glimpses of behind-the-scenes action, the photographs tell a story of the studio publicity machine, Moretta notes: “For Bette Davis, they had like two cartons of photographs of her.” (Orson Welles? “Maybe five folders.”)

On June 11, Van Buskirk turns his focus to depictions of the 1906 earthquake and fire for “Hollywood Shakes San Francisco.” Alongside newsreels, the program includes clips from the silent film When the Earth Trembled (1913), possibly the first drama to depict the disaster via early 20th-century special effects. In the ’30s, Frisco Jenny, San Francisco and The Sisters all included the earthquake in their mix of political, romantic and musical drama, the devastation bringing characters together or temporarily forcing them apart.

A note here on the format of these Tuesday nights: Moretta implies that “talk” is a bit dry for what Van Buskirk has in store. “He does encourage audience participation and there’s kind of a camp element to it,” she says. (Van Buskirk has previously given presentations for San Francisco Neon on Market Street movie marquees and gay bar signs.)

In the final two events of the series, he’ll turn his attention to the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz (June 18 and 25, respectively). The bridge isn’t just a recognizable backdrop, Van Buskirk argues, but a character in its own right — one that has withstood sea monsters, natural disasters and villains of all stripes, in movies like Superman (1978), A View to a Kill (1985) and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).

Alcatraz, rocky and removed, was depicted on film in 1937, just three years after it opened as a federal prison. Its role shifted in film as it did in real life: in 1967 the by-then deserted site was the setting of an ambush in Point Blank; a criminal organization hides out on the island in 1976’s The Enforcer, the third Dirty Harry film. Van Buskirk, of course, will not overlook The Rock.

(For those seeking a deeper dive on any of the above, the library has compiled a list of recommendations for further reading, and all the titles discussed are available to library patrons via Kanopy or on DVD.)

Moretta says the talks, peppered throughout with short clips, are for anyone interested in film and learning more about San Francisco. “And then also for anyone who thinks they know everything,” she says. “I think everyone will have a discovery in the moment.”

Jim Van Buskirk’s series of ‘Film: Cinematic San Francisco’ talks take place June 4, 11, 18 and 25 in the San Francisco Public Library’s Koret Auditorium (100 Larkin St.). All events begin at 6:00 p.m. and are free to attend.