San Francisco has a lot of Victorian homes like the one in the sketch above. There is one famous photo that shoes a Victorian home knocked off its foundation and listing severely as a result of the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. In more recent years, I learned that a great aunt of mine had in fact survived the earthquake, and married her second husband just months afterward. She and her new husband lived with his family, her new in-laws, in a house in the Richmond district of San Francisco (many, MANY people lost their homes in the earthquake), not far from another iconic site.

The "painted ladies" of San Francisco.

This row of houses are also Victorian, and called "painted ladies" due to their vivid colors. The way these houses were built along steep streets have made them basically icons of San Francisco. Whether it's historic structures from the late Victorian era in the US, the "summer of love", or other famous events and people, San Francisco has never been a stranger to creativity and new ideas.

Even before the earthquake, San Francisco had a lot of theaters. Many of them were decimated by the earthquake, but they were among the first to make efforts to gather and perform for the public in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. So many had lost their homes, and to this day, the exact number of deaths is unknown, but estimated to be somewhere around 3,000 people. Those who died weren't all necessarily victims of the quake itself, but of the fire that swept through San Francisco for the next three days.

The fire was able to spread as far as it did and destroy as much as it did because...houses, these Victorian houses among them, and other structures were built very close to each other. So how did the fire finally stop spreading?

A trench, some dynamite and the unfortunate but necessary implosion of structures along the trench. That created a "fire break" by impeding its spread with the removal of anything that would further fuel it. In this case, structures. And while San Francisco recovered, those who were determined to keep theaters alive did so in any way they could. It was a way for the public to take their minds off of their horrific circumstances for just a little bit.

The Victorian houses that did survive are, in their own way, the silent witnesses of San Francisco's history. If we were to really dissect the work Michael Curry did through his "Great Expectations", though fictional, we would probably find out that that work included many original Victorians like the one Louis was interviewed in and the one Anne Rice herself lived in. In fact, Michael Curry mentioned as much in The Witching Hour as he gazed at the items in Carlotta Mayfair's bedroom before he began the restoration of the house.

Is it any wonder, then, that a city like this, with the history it has along with its longstanding tradition of creativity and innovation, would become the place where a new novelist and her incredible tale of a vampire being interviewed about his long existence was born?

San Francisco is where both Interview With the Vampire (1994) and Anne Rice's literary career began with the publication of the novel in 1976.

When we first meet Michael Curry in The Witching Hour, he is holed up in the bedroom of his Victorian house on Liberty Street in San Francisco. It had been two months since Michael had drowned and come back after having tumbled into the bay from the rocks near the Cliff House. While he was aware of his own body floating face down in the icy waters of San Francisco Bay, he also found himself accepting a specific mission put to him by long dead Mayfair Witches. Essentially, return to hometown of New Orleans and stop Lasher from fulfilling his objective via the 13th Mayfair Witch, Rowan. We then meet Rowan Mayfair, the doctor daughter of Deirdre Mayfair whose photograph was seen by Deirdre's doctor in 1983. She had agreed to meet this man, Michael Curry, to help him remember details of his near-death in San Francisco Bay two months earlier. But why her?

Rowan Mayfair was the person who had pulled Michael Curry from the water and onto the deck of her boat, the Sweet Christine.

Like the Vampire Chronicles, the Lives of the Mayfair Witches opens for those characters in the present day in San Francisco. Indeed, San Francisco Bay and into San Francisco is where the 1994 film, Interview With the Vampire, opens...

The 1994 film, Interview With the Vampire (directed by Neil Jordan) opens with aerial shots panning around the Port of San Francisco...

The opening shot then takes us into San Francisco, seeming to fly over the Ferry Building...

and up Market Street...

to this building on Market Street at the corner of Golden Gate Avenue and Taylor Street where the interview takes place...

This was where the interviewer, Daniel (Christian Slater), met with Louis (Brad Pitt) to hear his tale of becoming a vampire in late 18th century Louisiana, of his relationship with his maker, Lestat (Tom Cruise), and his grief for the loss of the child vampire he created, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst)...

This is not the first time San Francisco has appeared in films--far from it. One film that often comes to mind when I think of San Francisco in film is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (Paramount, Universal 1958). However, it is possible to go a lot further back in time--to the silent era.

Those of you who are fans of silent films have probably heard of the one I'm going to show a few (public domain) screenshots from, a 1920 film called The Penalty, which was directed by Wallace Worsley (he also directed The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Universal 1923), and starred Lon Chaney (1883-1930). The Penalty was based upon a 1913 novel of the same name and filmed on location in San Francisco in early 1920--right as Prohibition actually began. Like the immortal universe Anne Rice created in her novels, Lon Chaney played a number of characters in such a way that as horrified by the character's circumstances (and the character) the audience is, they still end up feeling a certain sympathy for them. Another thing about Lon Chaney that made me want to talk about him here was his approach to adapting novels and stories to the early screen.

In bringing a character to life, Lon Chaney was very particular. His source material? The author's description in the novel or story. As I say a bit later on, a screenplay (this was called a "scenario" in the silent era) might have made a few adjustments to where the story was set or it might not have included all of the characters from the novel, etc. In The Penalty, the film was set in San Francisco while the novel was set in New York.

For those of you unfamiliar with Lon Chaney, let's have an intermission to discuss some of the films Lon Chaney is remembered for...

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Intermission: The Man of A Thousand Faces

The Phantom of the Opera, Warner Brothers, 2004

Left: Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera, Universal 1925

To look at this image of Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera, it's hard to imagine what the actor might have looked like. But can we imagine that the title character could have looked like this at all? Perhaps.

Lon Chaney was not called "The Man of A Thousand Faces" for nothing. This particular character is a perfect example of why Chaney earned that nickname that is still used to describe his work to this day. Lon Chaney put a great deal of skill, talent and research into making himself into the characters he played. A combination of makeup, costumes, devices of his own design and more were used to create an authentic character on the screen. For characters in films that adapted novels and stories to the screen, his resource for these characterizations were the novels and stories themselves.

This appears to have been the case whether the script was 100% faithful to the original authors' descriptions or not. Yes, believe it or not, silent films did have scripts.

Right: Building Stage 28, "The Phantom Stage", Universal Studios, 1924. Stage 28 at Universal Studios Hollywood was demolished in 2014.

Lon Chaney wasn't the only one who invested a great deal of realism into the film. Universal Studios head Carl Laemmle Sr. had traveled to Paris and had seen the Paris Opera House that was the setting of Gaston Leroux's 1911 novel, The Phantom of the Opera. To make the film, Universal built a massive new soundstage that also had a water tank beneath it for the scenes of the Phantom and his subterranean lair. Its most famous feature was the set of the Opera House itself.

The Opera House set was a very detailed one, right to the stage curtains and elaborate mouldings. Most today who are familiar with the stage as it appeared in the final years of Stage 28 would recognize the box seats still in place. The soundstage and Phantom set would be used in many films and television shows, including a 1943 remake of the 1925 film, from their construction in 1924 until recent decades before the soundstage was demolished in 2014.

Stage 28 was known for another reason over the 90 years it stood. Ghosts. While it seems that many stages have at least one ghost rumored to be that of a crew member who was killed in a fall from a catwalk, this stage had another ghost. The Phantom, Lon Chaney himself.

Left: Lon Chaney in The Miracle Man, 1919 (Image: Wikipedia)

For years, whenever I heard the name "Lon Chaney" in connection to The Phantom of the Opera, the image of him as the Phantom is the one that always came to mind. It came to mind in a "that's Lon Chaney" way rather than a "that's Lon Chaney as the Phantom" way. Several years ago, however, I got curious. This was because I do love to explore ghosts of Old Hollywood, and it was the ghost stories surrounding Stage 28 that finally made me curious about Lon Chaney himself.

Lon Chaney was not referred to as Lon Chaney Sr. during his lifetime. This was because his son, Lon Chaney Jr. (Creighton Tull Chaney), did not use his father's name professionally until after his father's death. Lon Chaney was born to deaf mute parents in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1883, and died of cancer at age 47 in 1930. It would not be until later in the 1930s that his son would enter films and become known as Lon Chaney Jr.

I admit I was actually startled when I first saw this image of Lon Chaney on Wikipedia. It is from The Miracle Man, a 1919 film Chaney starred in as The Frog. May I just say I love the character's name...

The Miracle Man has a more subtle example of the ways Lon Chaney transformed himself on screen, but that is limited to appearance. What really made him stand out in this film was his physical abilities in performance. These physical abilities enabled him to perform in ways that could even make the audience believe he actually was paralyzed or actually had a hunched back. Lon Chaney was in a number of films set in San Francisco. He also performed in a number of stage productions in San Francisco and many other places before he entered films around 1913.

Right: Lon Chaney in The Penalty, 1920

One of the earliest and best films in Lon Chaney's career would show his ability to transform himself into a man with two amputated legs. This film, set and filmed in San Francisco, was directed by Wallace Worsley (who would also direct Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Universal 1923) was 1920's The Penalty.

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San Francisco In the Movies

Before we begin, let's take a moment for a brief tutorial. Earlier, I used the term "public domain". Note that I used it in the context of the screenshots from The Penalty that I'm about to discuss. But what is "public domain", and why does it matter here?

Simply put, "public domain" means that for a variety of possible reasons, a particular piece of intellectual property is no longer under copyright protection.

Wait-WHAT?!

Let's see what the U.S. Copyright Office says about public domain:

"A work of authorship is in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner." - https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq-definitions.html

I've provided the URL to the FAQ on the U.S. Copyright Office website that this came from in case you'd like to learn more.

And now, let me show you those screenshots...

Left: The Penalty, 1920

Like Storyville in New Orleans, San Francisco had its own "red light district": the Barbary Coast. Even though the part of San Francisco that had been the Barbary Coast had ceased to be the red light district it once was in 1917, and most of the original Barbary Coast had been destroyed by the 1906 earthquake, bits of it can still be seen in this film.

By "bits of it", I mean some of the famous dance halls of the time.
However, dance halls were not the only locations in San Francisco to appear in The Penalty. As I gather together more details and possibly images to show here, let me just share the most fascinating clips from the film. You will understand why I've included brief clips of the opening credits of 1994's Interview With the Vampire...

Right: The Penalty, 1920

The Ferry Building has been around for a very long time. Long before it was seen in the opening credits of Interview With the Vampire in 1994, it appeared in the opening credits of a film shot on location in San Francisco in 1920...

Left: The Penalty, 1920

Another view of the Ferry Building in the opening credits of The Penalty...

Right: Aerial view of San Francisco in The Penalty, 1920

The Ferry Building can be seen along the port in this aerial view of San Francisco from The Penalty. Today, this same view obviously looks very different.

Please keep checking back as this section is not finished...

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