Where in NYC
Looks like this was shot in on location. NY? Brooklyn?? Anyone know the neighborhood and street it was filmed on? Thanks.
vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit...share
Looks like this was shot in on location. NY? Brooklyn?? Anyone know the neighborhood and street it was filmed on? Thanks.
vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit...share
Cushy:
I read somewhere where King Vidor had them erect a complete STREET just for the movie. It was certainly too realistic to be a fake. So I am not really convinced it wasn't real! AH what a wonderful wonderful movie....
Enrique Sanchez
I loved the set, or whatever the heck it was! Very realistic, to be sure!
shareHehe, ALIX...if it WAS fake....what a great and detailed job they did - FOR THOSE TIMES! Gosh...all the work to make it look real! It boggles the mind!
Enrique Sanchez
It was all set according to this interview with Sylvia Sidney:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVL-ozea5qo&feature=related
COOOL Thanks, CRISSO!!
Enrique Sanchez
Thanks for the info crisso.
It had to be a set. In those early days of sound film, I don't think they could have had the control they needed if on location.
The wheel is turning
and you can't slow down
You can't let go
and you can't hold on
I'm watching this movie now and I don't think it was a set. Looks too real ! Great movie and Sylvia Sidney is gorgeous ! Love Beulah Bondi always.
shareOf course it's a set. No way they got that image and sound quality outdoors in 1931. Cameras and sound equipment were incredibly bulky, and total control was needed.
Yes, it looked real. That's what Hollywood set builders do. You'd be amazed at how many shows and movies, even to this day, are filmed on sets that people think are real places.
Actually, according to Robert Osbourne of TCM, it was two identical sets. They were build at opposite ends of a sound stage. That was to speed up production. While they shot a scene at one end, they could re-light the set at the other end and be ready to shoot the next scene. King Vidor never use the same camera angle twice.
Remember, this was 1931 and materials and workers were real cheap. It was cheaper to build two entire sets than to try to shoot on location in NYC.
They shot some B role in NYC but the acting was done on a sound stage in L.A.
It was a very nice set. Very realitic and detailed.
thanks radioriot - makes perfect sense when looked at economically. Probably used immigrants like my grandparents and great grandparents who would build a set-house as if it were to stay up 100 years.
Thanks for replying ~
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All this is true, except it wasn't filmed on a "sound stage" (an indoor stage), but rather on an outdoor backlot street set.
shareTrue,set designers then and now are increcible.
shareApparently, it's a set, but very well done. As to where it's supposed to be, could be any of a number of places in Manhattan. There were at least two elevated trains at that time, the ninth av El and the 3rd av El, maybe a sixth av El. My best guess would be the east 40's or 50's between third and second av, based on the final shot where the camera a rising up over the neighborhood and you can see the Chrysler building on the left and the Empire State on the right. My mother lived in a neighborhood like that at the time that movie was made, the west thirties west of ninth av. She was in her early twenties
shareMy best guess would be the east 40's or 50's between third and second av, based on the final shot where the camera a rising up over the neighborhood and you can see the Chrysler building on the left and the Empire State on the right. My mother lived in a neighborhood like that at the time that movie was made, the west thirties west of ninth av.
One of the characters says "There's hardly any shade this side of Columbus" (i.e. Columbus Avenue). Which suggests that it's on the West Side, and the elevated is the 9th Avenue El.
shareCorrect - it was absolutely meant to take place on the West side of Manhattan. It's simple: if the Chrysler building appears on the left and the Empire State building appears to the right of the Chrysler (as they do), it MUST be filmed to the ~west~ of those buildings, given the fact that the Chrysler building is above (ie, just north of) the Empire State bldg. That's all I was trying to say...
shareAuthor Elmer Rice said he based the setting on a tenement block on West 65th Street. The location of the elevated train (the Ninth Avenue Line) on the corner indicates the brownstone is between between Columbus Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue.
The Ninth Avenue Line was shut down in 1940, replaced by the West Side IRT subway (the 1,2,3 line) but there is still a subway stop on that corner. The brownstones in that area were demolished in the early 1960s to create Lincoln Center and new public housing high rise buildings. (It's the same general area where "West Side Story" was filmed, just before the demolition.)
Hell's Kitchen is the neighborhood just southwest of the lower bounds of Central Park. It's labelled on Google Maps.
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