Could well be mistaken but the amusement park in the climax looks a lot like an LA adjacent park (noticed a couple of same-named businesses and attractions) that appear in Quicksand, a Mickey Rooney movie of same period apparently shot in a Southern California beach fun pier. Anyone know where this sequence was really shot?
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The "filming Locations" section (here on the IMDB) lists both the Carmel Amusement Park, in Carmel, CA and Playland in San Francisco. Since there was quite a bit of location shooting in San Francisco, I wonder why they bothered with the Carmel park, unless it somehow lent itself to their particular needs. I am hoping someone who knows the answers can add to this information. San Francisco's Playland at the Beach was a major amusement park back in those days. It eventually fell on lean times, became dangerous and sleazy, and was finally bulldozed to make room for condos. Very sad.
TCM announcer said it was actually filmed at Pacific Ocean Park, Santa Monica.
shareJust now on TCM, the guest host says that it was Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ocean_Park
(W)hat are we without our dreams?
Making sure our fantasies
Do not overpower our realities. ~ RC
I just saw this movie for the first time tonight on TCM and it was very good. I was impressed with all the location photography in San Francisco but wondered if the amusement park scenes might have been filmed at one of the piers in southern California purely because of logistics. Those scenes were filmed at night in the closed environment of an amusement park and they wouldn't have the expense of an out of town location.
I live about 2 blocks from where the Ocean Park Pier used to be, it was long gone before I moved to this neighborhood. At the time this film was made it was known as the Ocean Park Pier. In the mid 1950s it got a major makeover and was renamed Pacific Ocean Park. (So when the host on tonight's showing called the location Pacific Ocean Park he was right about the "location" but premature by about 5 years regarding the name.) POP eventually failed and the neighborhood reverted to it's rather seedy nature for a while. But being at the coast and in Santa Monica, private homes are now selling $3 million and up.
yes, I saw this on TCM as well, wonderful location shooting and not a bad noir!
Yes it was filmed at Santa Monica, not Playland, but they used the laughing fortune teller attraction a couple times which I thought was unique to Playland. That attraction now resides at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, rescued from Playland. It was called Laughing Sal.
But reading wiki on Laughing Sal, looks like I was wrong, there was one at Santa Monica as well. Oh well!
BTW, this is a cool site that details SF movie locations:
http://reelsf.com/woman-on-the-run-1950/
The amusement park scenes were shot at Ocean Park Pier from May 22 to 26, 1950. Yes, the TCM guy introducing the movie said it was shot at Pacific (something-or-other) park but that wasn't the name of the place 'til much later in the 1950s.
The guy introducing the movie also said that WOMAN ON THE RUN vanished after 1950, not seen by ANYone until tonight .... and then he added, "other than people who had bootleg copies of TV broadcasts." Why can't ALL lost movies have decades of TV broadcasts and bootleg copies? (Not to mention the fact that WOMAN ON THE RUN is on DVD from one or two home video companies.) But if the intro guy had said all that, then he couldn't have painted himself as the movie's rescuer and savior.
He did not impress me.