Who's Got the Action? (1962) - Film Locations

Dean Martin and Lana Turner headline this story about a man with a gambling addiction (Martin) and his wife (Turner) who does what she can to make sure her husband doesn't lose all of their money. The setup is quite a stretch. Turner has Martin's law partner (Eddie Albert) lead Martin to believe that Albert has found the best bookie in town, that bookie, being Martin's wife. The idea is if Martin loses then the money will stay in the household, but unfortunately, Martin goes on a winning streak, forcing Turner to sell their possessions to cover the winnings. Meanwhile, a real bookie in town (Walter Matthau ) is wondering who it is that is getting all the action? 

Despite the tagline claiming to be "the most riotous bedtime story ever!" Who's Got the Action? (1962), really isn't that riotous at all. Even at an hour and a half the movie feels long. Most of the gags just are not that funny and the plot struggles to unfold. I think a more appropriate tagline would be "a mildly amusing bedtime story,"because the film does have some merits.

My favorite part of Who's Got the Action? is seeing Matthau in one of his early film roles. He's the most fun to watch and steals every scene he is in. I also liked the 1960s set designs, particularly the interior of the apartment where Martin and Turner live.

The apartment building where Martin and Turner live is the Talmadge apartments located at 3278 Wilshire Boulevard. This building was built by Joseph M. Schenck in 1922 for his wife, the silent screen actress, Norma Talmadge. 

The Talmadge apartments as seen in the film.

The Talmadge building as it appears today.

The screenshot below shows Martin and Turner leaving the Talmadge apartments and driving down Wilshire Boulevard. They're in the red car, passing Immanuel Presbyterian Church.

Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd

Immanuel Presbyterian Church as it appears now.

Below is a side view of Immanuel Presbyterian Church looking across South Berendo Street from the Talmadge apartment building.

Martin about to enter the Talmadge building. Immanuel 

Presbyterian Church is in the background.

Side view of the church looking across S. Berendo St.

Each day Turner walks to the newsstand outside of the Thrifty drug store to read the paper and see the results of the horse races. The Thrifty drug store was located at 3333 Wilshire Boulevard, just a couple blocks down from the Talmadge apartment building. The Thrifty drug store is gone and now a modern office building, completed in 1983, stands in its place.

Turner visits the Thrifty Drug Store at

3333 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles

A glass and steel skyscraper now stands at

3333 Wilshire Boulevard.

Turner fainted when she saw the results of the races. Eddie Albert helps Turner back to her apartment. In the screenshot below we can see the Talmadage apartment building a couple blocks up in the background. The building in the foreground is a bank and that building is still being used as a bank today.

Eddie Albert helps Turner back to the Talmadge apartment.

Looking up Wilshire at the corner of S. Catalina Street.

A year later, in 1963, Dean Martin made another "bedtime story" comedy called Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? That film isn't a knee jerker either, but it is closer to the "riotous" tagline that this film claims. You can see some of the film locations from Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? here.

Who's Got the Action? is currently available as a Watch Instantly title on Netflix and will be released on DVD on March  27, 2012.

Bigger Than Life (1956) - Film Location

The first Nicholas Ray film I ever saw and I imagine is the case for many people, was Rebel Without a Cause, with James Dean and Natalie Wood. I was just a teenager who at the time was more interested in seeing James Dean. Even as a teen in the early 90s James Dean was still cool. But when I watched Rebel, it wasn't just Dean that sucked me in, it was the dramatic way the film was captured, such as the faraway camera shots and the striking camera angles, like the opening scene where the camera is looking up at James Dean lying on the ground, playing with a toy. It was the Nicholas Ray touch that made this teen drama so engaging.

Ray might not have been a Billy Wilder or a John Ford, but he had his own style that made him great and it was the auteurists who started the French New Wave that first recognized Ray's greatness. Appropriately, in college, when as a student I was expanding my knowledge of classic cinema, I discovered more of Ray's films and began to appreciate him as a director. The more I saw the more I liked Ray as a director. In A Lonely Place and On Dangerous Ground became fast favorites. 

This past August marked the centennial of Nicholas Ray and to celebrate, Tony Dayoub of the blog Cinema Viewfinder is hosting a Nicholas Ray blogathon, starting today and running through September 8, 2011.  To read all the entries, visit Cinema Viewfinder by clicking here.

This is the first blogathon I have chose to participate in. The subject of Ray was just too good to pass up. As my contribution, I'm sticking with the theme of this blog so I am celebrating Ray's centennial with a look at some of the filming locations for three of his classics: Bigger Than Life (1956),  In A Lonely Place (1950), and Rebel Without A Cause (1955).

In Ray's film, Bigger Than Life, James Mason plays a father and school teacher who becomes seriously ill. When it appears that Mason's illness is hopeless, Mason becomes dependent on a miracle drug to cure him. The only problem is the drug causes Mason to go mad and he begins to scare and hurt those around him.

There are not many external film locations in Bigger Than Life, but there is one scene where Mason and his family go to a church service. That church is the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, located on the NE corner of Sixth Street and Commonwealth Avenue in the Wilshire District. The church is the oldest continuous Protestant Church in the city.

First Congregational Church of Los Angeles

as seen in Bigger Than Life (1956)

First Congregational Church of Los Angeles present day.

(c) Google 2011

Bigger Than Life also stars Barbara Rush as Mason's husband and Walter Matthau as Mason's friend.

For more Nicholas Ray film locations check out my previous posts on:

 In A Lonely Place 

and Rebel Without a Cause.

Your thoughts?

Billy Wilder's "The Front Page" Film Locations

The Front Page

Billy Wilder is one of my favorite directors and I haven't seen a film of his I didn't like. That was until just recently, when I finally saw one of his later films, The Front Page. The movie even has some of my favorite actors - Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Carol Burnett and a young Susan Surandon - but that still didn't help my opinion of the film. However, I was very excited to notice that this film which is set in Chicago was actually filmed in Los Angeles!

The film is about competing newspaper men in 1920s Chicago so I thought I would see some iconic Chicago locations. Instead, I found some iconic downtown Los Angeles locations.

The corner of 4th & Main, Los Angeles, as seen in The Front Page

In the film a prisoner who is awaiting execution is believed to have escaped. A circus of police go on a chase around the city in search of the convict. Above is a scene of the squad cars rounding the corner of 4th Street and Main Street as it appears in the film and below is the same corner today.

Hotel Barclay, Los Angeles, California

Right away I knew this film wasn't shot in Chicago because I recognized the above building as being the historic Hotel Barclay. If you look at the building it hasn't really changed too much over time, other than the shop at the bottom.

The Regent Theater, Main Street, Los Angeles

Continuing on the chase, we get a glimpse of the Regent Theater in downtown Los Angeles. The theater is on Main Street, just around the corner from the Hotel Barclay. Below is the present day view showing the Regent Theater.

Regent Theater, Main Street, Los Angeles (7/2009)


5th & Main Street, Los Angeles as seen in The Front Page

The chase continues down Main Street going towards 5th Street. Above is a screenshot of the intersection from the film and below is a photo I took of the intersection showing how it appears today. I'm very happy to see that the old building on the right is still standing. The chicken shop isn't so lucky. As you can see that building has been replaced by another building and a parking lot.

5th & Main Street, Los Angeles (7/2009)

4th Street & Main Street, Los Angeles as seen in The Front Page

In one scene, a doctor who was accidentally shot, is being rushed in an ambulance. The ambulance suddenly stops and the doctor goes flying out the back door on the stretcher which you can see in the screenshot above. This scene gives us another glimpse of the Hotel Barclay on the corner of 4th Street & Main Street. Below is the same location today.

Hotel Barclay, 4th Street & Main Street, LA (7/2009)

Spring Street as seen in The Front Page

Above is another screenshot from the police chase. Here the cops are driving down Spring Street. You can barely make out the Alexandria Hotel in the background. Below is a photo I took recently looking down Spring Street. The Alexandria Hotel can barely be seen in the back to the left. That hotel, which is now an apartment building, is a historic landmark with a rich film history. Everyone from Chaplin and Greta Garbo to Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable have stayed there. Perhaps I'll do a post just on the Alexandria Hotel at another time.

Looking North on Spring Street, Los Angeles

Here's the trailer for The Front Page. (At the end of the trailer is a clip of the ambulance scene.)

Strangers When We Meet: Film Locations

So far most of my film location posts have involved places in Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles. Well, this time I decided to track down some of the film locations for the Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak film, Strangers When We Meet (1961), which took me to some new areas of Los Angeles: Brentwood, Malibu, and Beverly Hills.

Most of the locations below I know for certain are the correct locations. There are a couple that I may be off on but based on some landmarks I think I may be right on these as well.

100 N. Kenter Avenue, Los Angeles

The film starts at a bus stop located at 100 N. Kenter Avenue in the Brentwood neighborhood of LA. It's here that Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak's characters first meet and begin their affair. This is a primary location in the film that appears throughout the story.

The trees have grown up quite a bit since the film was shot in the early 1960s but otherwise the location looks almost the same.

100 N. Kenter Avenue, Brentwood


Looking Northwest at the bus stop location as seen in the film.

Looking Northwest at the bus stop location present.

Kirk Douglas dropping his son off at the bus stop at Kenter Avenue.

Present view of where Kirk Douglas drops son off at bus stop.

Kim Novak standing at bus stop.

Present view of bus stop location.

Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak are seen here leaving the bus stop. That's Sunset Boulevard in the background. Below is the same view today.

Kenter Avenue at Sunset Boulevard

Kim Novak & Kirk Douglas, Tigertail Rd in background.

View looking up Tigertail Road today.

The next location below was a little difficult to figure out. In the film the location is known as the Village Market, a red country barn themed grocery store. It's here that Walter Matthau's character works as a butcher. However, today the country barn look is long gone.

11725 Barrington Ct, Los Angeles, CA

11725 Barrington Ct, Los Angele, CA (Present)

To figure out this location the only thing I could match was the white pillars next to the stairs in the center of the photo. If you look in the below photo you can see the same white pillars and the stairs going up the building. If it wasn't for that detail I don't think I would have ever found this location!

Brentwood Village Market

Kim Novak getting into her car outside the Nosh Box.

All the shops that were at this little strip mall when Strangers When We Meet was being filmed are all gone. The above photo I believe is the same shot as the one where Kim Novak is seen getting into her car.

Kirk Douglas at Service Station @ Brentwood Village Market

Another location I'm not sure about is the scene where Kirk Douglas is walking through the round overhang of the service station. In the photo below is what I'm guessing to be the same location as it appears today. In the film Douglas is walking from the service station towards Kim Novak getting into her car. If the service station was next to the strip mall then the below location would have to be where the service station was.

Possibly the service station location.

Barrington Ct, Brentwood, CA

The above photo is another shot of Kirk Douglas near the Brentwood Village Market. In the background you can see a Chevron service station. This location was easy to locate because if you look at the below photo you can see that the Chevron station almost looks exactly the same.

Chevron Station, Barrington Ct, Brentwood, CA

Romanoff's Restaurant, 140 S. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills

The famous Romanoff restuarant can be seen in Strangers When We Meet. Above is a screenshot featuring the restaurant. Romanoff's opened in 1941 at the location 326 N. Rodeo Drive. It became an instant hit with Hollywood stars. The restaurant was one of Humphrey Bogart's main hangouts. In 1951 the restaurant moved to 140 S. Rodeo Drive and it's this location that appears in Strangers When We Meet.

140 S. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills

Unfortunately, Romanoff's is no longer. The building has been torn down and today an office building stands on the site.

Albatross Hotel Restaurant site. 21202 W. Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu

Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak carry on their affair at the Albatross Hotel Restaurant. Back in the 1950s and 1960s business was good for the Albatross. Eventually, the business faded away and so to the building itself. The Albatross was torn down and today it is the empty lot you see above.

Kim Novak, leaving the Albatross Hotel Restaurant

Present day view of where Kim Novak is seen leaving the Albatross Hotel Restaurant

Kim Novak on PCH near Albatross Hotel

If you look at the above screenshot of Kim Novak driving down the Pacific Coast Highway you can see a sign to the right that says the Sea Lion. The Sea Lion restaurant no longer exists but their is a new restaurant at this location called Dukes. In the photo below you can see the sign for Dukes where the sign for Sea Lion used to stand.

21202 W. Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu

Now, you all were probably hoping to see photos of that house that Kirk Douglas's character is building for Ernie Kovacs's character - the one located high atop the hills in Brentwood. Well, I searched and searched for that home but could not find it. However, in the process I found Conan O'Brien's new west coast home. But, if anyone does know where the house is located please share in the comments section. I thought it might be on Tigertail Road which is near the bus stop sight.

Special thanks to Zinnia for coming with and her help on this film location hunt!

*UPDATE* (07/12/09)

Many thanks to Dr. Bitz for these photos below which show the Kim Novak house as it appears today compared to the screenshots of the house in the film:

Kim Novak house as it appears in the film. 512 Tigertail Rd.

Kim Novak house as it appears today.

Kim Novak leaving her house as seen in the film.

Kim Novak's neighbor's house as it appears today.