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 The
Sweet Christine in San Francisco Bay created with NightCafe From Sketch In
The Witches' Companion by Katherine
Ramsland
I have decided to expand this page to include San Francisco in the Lives of the Mayfair
Witches. Michael Curry's company, Great Expectations, specialized in the restoration of Victorian structures in San Francisco.
While this page aims to combine the two, I also want to talk a bit more about San Francisco in Anne Rice's life and work.
It has also figured prominently in entertainment for well over a century...
Victorian England and America
I want to use this page of the site to show the contrasts and maybe even similarities
between Victorian houses and an "antebellum" house like First Street. Michael Curry's fascination with houses and their central
place in his life and work play an important role in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches.
This is also an excuse for me to indulge in Victorian anything. I've been "into" Victoriana since 1993, mostly Victorian
England, but Michael Curry's restoration specialty, besides the monumental overhaul of First Street, was the American Victorian
style. A visit to San Francisco will show you what a Victorian home in the United States looked like as many of them are
still standing. A story I recently wrote also features a restored Victorian home.
The thing about the Victorian era is that despite its many decades, it glides right into the Edwardian era of the early 1900's
so things that are Victorian from that time period might also have Edwardian features and vice versa. They are similar.
The name "Victorian" refers to the Queen of England at the time, Queen Victoria. Periods in England's history are often referred
to according to the reigning monarch of the time, for example, Elizabethan (Elizabeth I), Georgian, (King
George, 1700's), and Regency (King George's Prince Regent). It is Regency England that immediately preceded Victorian
England.
Below is an image rendered in NightCafe based on a sketch from The Vampire Companion by Katherine Ramsland...
 Divisadero
Street house in San Francisco where Louis was interviewed created with NightCafe From Sketch on Pg. 100 In
The Vampire
Companion by Katherine Ramsland
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Some Victoriana Periodicals
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A Video Gallery of Victoriana
Thank You to Victorian Station for the photos in the collage...
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A Tale of San Francisco
In the Beginning: San Francisco
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 began.
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)...
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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 , Universal 1923) was 1920's The Penalty.
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San Francisco In the Movies
Many movies and television shows have been set in and/or filmed in San Francisco. The 1992 film Basic
Instinct, the classic 1958 James Stewart film, Vertigo, and even a cute TV series, Monk; all of them set and/or filmed in
and around San Francisco.
But did you know that San Francisco has been a setting in movies for well over a century now? Take a look...
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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