Southern California Cameos

William, that’s a good and interesting list.

Hey, guys — can you add those cameos using our Add News page?

Edwards Drive-In (Monrovia) “There Goes My Baby” outside only, marquee renamed “Paradise Drive-In” showing “Cat Ballou”

Great job to all compiling this info!

“Blade Runner” (1982) featured the Million Dollar Theatre (307 South Broadway, Los Angeles, CA)

Also note that according to Director Randall Kleiser, the Drive-In sequence in “Grease” (1978) was filmed at the Pickwick Drive-In (1100 W. Alameda Ave., Burbank, CA). The drive-in was closed in 1989 and torn down shortly afterward. A shopping center (including a Pavilions grocery store where the outdoor movie screen had stood) now stands on the site.

This quote from Kleiser came from a 1998 Los Angeles Times article on the making of Grease: “At the Drive-In, when Olivia’s character leaves Travolta alone, there was a song in the play called “Alone at a Drive-In Movie”. None of us felt this would work effectively in the screen version and our musical director, Louis St. Louis, wrote the song “Sandy” to replace it. Now the challenge was how to stage it so it was interesting. We didn’t want him to just sit in his car and sing. When I was in high school I used to go to the Main Line Drive-In (which is now a housing development). Just below the screen there was a small playground for kids to amuse themselves at dusk waiting for the movie to start. I loved the idea of Travolta sitting on the kid’s swing, pining away for his girlfriend. The popcorn trailers that ran between drive-in features encouraged viewers to visit the refreshment stand with animated countdowns of when the next movie would start. We sent away to a Chicago distributor for about twenty vintage 50’s popcorn trailers, but they didn’t arrive until the night we were shooting at Burbank’s Pickwick Drive-in (now a shopping mall). Bill Hansard, the industry’s top process projectionist, ran the trailers one by one on the drive-in screen as the crew sat around waiting. My eye was caught by one that had a hot dog jumping into a bun at the end. I asked Bill if he could synch that action up to the end of the song. The end result looked like it had been carefully planned instead of improvised on the spot. Thinking back, I guess I should have played more of the ending on Travolta; this was his solo. But, I was so excited by the animated hot dog falling into synch that I was swept along and didn’t shoot a closeup. One of my regrets.”

See: http://www.directorsnet.com/kleiser/latimes2.html

A few more:

Omega Man — Charlton Heston drives up to the Olympic Theater downtown, with the Tower Theater in the background. He is shown inside a theater watching “Woodstock” — I assume this is also at the Olympic.

Daredevil — used the exteriors of the Olympic in flashbacks as the location of Matt’s father’s fight.

Charlie’s Angels and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle — both filmed at the Los Angeles. In the first movie, the disco where Cameron Diaz has her dream dance sequence was in the lobby. The finale of the second movie took place on the stage.

Forgot about “48 Hours,” in which Nick Nolte drives down Broadway at night and you can see the marquee of the Rialto theater all lit up. You might be able to see the Orpheum in the distance in that one.

Was the New Amsterdam Theater in New York used as a filming location for “The Great Ziegfeld” (1936)? Some scenes with Fanny Brice supposedly take place in the auditorium and lobby of that theater, and it’s hard to tell if it’s a set or the real thing! It’s a pretty good recreation, if it’s a Hollywood set!