Filming of Hitchcock’s
”
Vertigo
”
thrilled local residents
– one in particular
Kim Novak was in San Juan Bautista, and Sandy Lydon was very
excited.
It was October, 1957, and the word was out
– director Alfred Hitchcock, Hollywood’s master of suspense, was
going to shoot several key scenes for his latest film,
”
Vertigo,
”
starring Novak and James Stewart, in the tiny mission city. In
this time before Americans were bombarded with 24-hour a day news
of popular celebrities, the thought of seeing actual
”
movie stars
”
was quite a thrilling one for local residents
– Lydon in particular.
Filming of Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” thrilled local residents – one in particular
Kim Novak was in San Juan Bautista, and Sandy Lydon was very excited.
It was October, 1957, and the word was out – director Alfred Hitchcock, Hollywood’s master of suspense, was going to shoot several key scenes for his latest film, “Vertigo,” starring Novak and James Stewart, in the tiny mission city. In this time before Americans were bombarded with 24-hour a day news of popular celebrities, the thought of seeing actual “movie stars” was quite a thrilling one for local residents – Lydon in particular.
Lydon was a Hollister native who had graduated from San Benito High School just a few months earlier. He was attending classes at the University of California Davis when the news that his favorite actress was in San Juan reached him. Schoolwork quickly became the furthest thing from his mind.
“A couple of buddies and I drove down on the Friday (after we heard about it) and dashed over to San Juan on Saturday to see what we could see,” Lydon said. “Kim Novak was a huge favorite of young testosterone-driven men in 1957. Sadly, we got there too late as they had shot several of the livery stable scenes and then left for an unspecified destination. I later learned it was Cypress Point. And that was that. I went away disappointed, but over the years I became more obsessed with Kim, and the film, particularly after it came out.”
Lydon saw “Vertigo” shortly after its May, 1958 release in Hollister’s old State Theater on San Benito Street. The theater was packed, and Lydon remembers much of the audience laughing aloud at the liberties Hitchcock took with San Juan’s landscape, such as putting a bell tower on top of the mission and changing the arches in front of the mission to be all the same shape.
“The mission was constructed with a colonnade across the front – and two of the arches in the row are actually larger than the rest and are square, to allow mounted processions to exit and enter the mission courtyard,” Lydon said. “Apparently Hitchcock found those squared openings detracted from the entire scene, so he had them filled in by carpenters and coated with stucco so as to look like the others. The construction was removed after the filming was completed and they are now square, as they always had been.”
Locals were not the only ones who noticed the subtle and not-so-subtle alterations made to the San Juan Bautista landscape. After the film’s release, many tourists visiting the mission would ask about the “tower” so prominently featured in the movie. Even now, in spite of the addition of a belfry in 1976, visitors are seemingly baffled by the differences in the mission’s appearance.
“I was disappointed and confused when I didn’t see the big tower I remembered from the movie,” Salli Lundgren, from Oakland, said as she toured the mission last week. “It had been a long time since I saw the movie, but I remembered the tower and was surprised when I didn’t see it.”
“Vertigo” was not well received upon its initial release – the critics called the plot “slow” and “confusing” and most audiences seemingly felt the same. But the story of obsession and murder did strike the right chord with quite a few people, many of whom would come to San Juan Bautista to see where the film’s most climatic scenes took place.
The film was re-released in 1983, and a restored version was released on video in 1996. The years were kind to Hitchcock’s vision – “Vertigo” today is considered by many to be the director’s masterpiece, and just this year the American Film Institute ranked it ninth on its list of the 100 greatest movies of all time.
“Young film students today really love the film,” Lydon said. “Not only is it a great story, but there are so many technical things going on in the film.”
As the film’s popularity grows, so do the number of people venturing into San Juan for the chance to see where such an important piece of American film history took place.
“I just saw a special on ‘View of the Bay’ about ‘Vertigo’ and thought I’d come down. It doesn’t really look a thing like the mission in the movie – you really notice there is no tower once you are here,” Sharon Miller, of San Jose, said. “I thought it was a good movie, and it had great camera angles. Poor Jimmy Stewart – I feel so sorry for him every time I see the movie.”
“I saw the movie a long time ago, and it’s a good movie. The people in it were good and it’s a great story,” Ireton Bradshaw, from Massachusetts, said. “Actually, I knew some of the scenes were shot here, but until I came here I had forgotten. You do notice there is no bell tower, though, right away.”
It has been 50 years since Hitchcock turned the quiet town of San Juan Bautista into a movie set, but many, such as Lydon, have not forgotten. An anniversary celebration/symposium will be held Oct. 5-7, featuring a variety of events such as a screening of the film in the mission church, a walking tour of different sites in the film and a fund-raising dinner with proceeds going to Mission San Juan Bautista. Confirmed guests/speakers include Hitchcock’s daughter, Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell and documentarians Jim Katz and Joe McBride.
“We’ve attracted almost every other ‘Vertigarian’ – a word I’ve invented to describe aficionados and fans of the movie – in the country, and they’re all coming to San Juan,” Lydon said. “It’s going to be a blast.”
One notable absence, and the one most heartbreaking to Lydon, is Novak, who has retired from acting and now lives in Oregon with her husband, veterinarian Robert Malloy. Lydon said the actress – who made her last film in 1991 – is “happily ensconced” in her home.
And even though it is 50 years later, Lydon said the hopes a “testosterone-driven” young man had of seeing his favorite actress live on.
“One sub-text of all this was the hope that if we put on a big enough affair in October 2007, we might be able to lure Ms. Novak out of her comfortable home in Oregon. And I would finally have the glimpse of her that has been on hold for 50 years,” he said. “Alas, we have not been able to do that. But I am still holding onto the fantasy that on Friday evening, as we’re all filing into the church to see the movie, a green Jaguar will drive up and out of it will step, in a gray dress, Kim Novak. I can dream, right?”
A movie worthy of celebration
For six days in October 1957, the small town of San Juan Bautista was transformed into a Hollywood movie set.
Mission San Juan Bautista, and the historic buildings surrounding it, serves as a vital plot point in the suspense thriller “Vertigo,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, and some of the film’s most important scenes were shot there. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of its filming, a weekend celebration/commemoration event will be held Oct. 5-7. Various planned activities include a walking tour of “Vertigo” sites, a special commemorative Mass at the mission church and a special showing of the film itself.
“What continues to strike me is the level of intensity and actual obsession people seem to have with this movie,” said Sandy Lydon, a Hollister native and history professor now living in Monterey County who was in San Juan during the end of the film’s location shots. “We have people coming from as far away as Rhode Island.”
The event will begin Friday, Oct. 5 with a showing of “Vertigo” in the San Juan Bautista mission church at 7:30 p.m. This will be the first time the movie has been shown in the church where it was filmed.
On Saturday, Oct. 6, the first ever Central California Hitchcock Symposium begins with a special Mass at 9:30 a.m. at the Mission church led by Bishop Richard Garcia. Following the mass, the symposium will continue with the showing of the documentary “Obsessed with Vertigo: New Life for Hitchcock’s Masterpiece,” released in 1996. The documentary accompanied the re-release of “Vertigo” and chronicled not only the expensive and time-consuming effort to restore the movie but contains interviews with a number of the film’s participants, include the reclusive Kim Novak.
After the showing of the documentary, a directed discussion will feature confirmed guest speakers Joe McBride, a San Francisco State University professor and the writer and co-producer of “Obsessed,” as well as James Katz, the restorer of “Vertigo.” The discussion will take place from 1-3:30 p.m. and include such topics as the impact of the shooting on San Juan Bautista and the creation and replication of the bell tower.
A guided walking tour of the exterior of the mission church, the livery stable and the Plaza Hall will be held from 3:30-5 p.m. Guides will use photographs and stills to illustrate how Hitchcock used the various locations in the film.
Saturday’s celebration will end with a fund-raising dinner/silent auction at Casa Maria restaurant in downtown San Juan Bautista beginning at 6:30 p.m. While the cost of the dinner is $125 per person and entrance is by invitation only, an anonymous donor announced he or she would cover part of the cost for 100 tickets. The discounted tickets will sell for $75. To receive an invitation and purchase a ticket, contact Donna Guerra Howe at 207-3192 or via e-mail at
BD*****@ao*.com
. All proceeds from the dinner will go to restoration of Mission San Juan Bautista.
“When Hitchcock was filming the movie, he became somewhat concerned with the condition of the mission church and felt it was in need of restoration,” Lydon said. “He realized the need. And although a restoration was done in the ’70s and it is not the pressing need it was while Hitch was there, we are, in some ways, working in the spirit of what Hitchcock wanted.”
The weekend will conclude on Sunday, Oct. 7, with “Vertigo on Wheels,” a day-long bus tour of regional sites in the movie, including the Avenue of the Trees and the hotel where Kim Novak stayed while the movie was filmed. The tour begins at 10 a.m. and will return at approximately 6 p.m.
For more information about any of the “Vertigo” commemoration events, go to www.vertigo2007.com. For more information about the fund-raising dinner/silent auction, go to www.oldmissionsjb.org/vertigo.html.
A dizzying quiz
Think living in San Benito County makes you a “Vertigo” expert? Although the film initially was dismissed by both critics and audiences alike upon its original 1958 release, “Vertigo” today is considered one of the greatest films of all time and one of director Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpieces.
As with any other film that has earned a devoted following, “Vertigo” has been reviewed and scrutinized by millions of filmgoers, inspiring dozens of Web sites filled with trivia, bloopers and little known facts about one of America’s most beloved movies. For those who wish to test their own personal “Vertigo” knowledge, here is a series of questions based on the film.
1. Some of the film’s most important scenes are shot in San Juan Bautista, but in what city does most of the action take place?
2. Kim Novak was not Hitchcock’s first choice to play the dual role of Madeleine/Judy. Which actress was originally hired to play the role?
3. True or false: Hitchcock does not make his traditional cameo appearance in “Vertigo.”
4. How do John “Scottie” Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) and Galvin Elster know each other?
5. What is the name of the actress who portrays Scottie’s friend, Majorie “Midge” Wood?
6. How does Scottie realize he has acrophobia (a fear of heights)?
7. Where does Scottie see Madeleine for the first time?
8. Actress Ellen Corby plays the manager of the McKittrick Hotel, where Madeleine has been renting a room. Name another Jimmy Stewart film in which Corby has a small role.
9. True or false: The scene where Scottie looks down the stairs in the bell tower cost $19,000 to shoot.
10. When Madeleine recites the details of her dream to Scottie, he instantly knows the place she has dreamt of and offers to take her there. Where does he take her?
11. Who is Carlotta Valdes?
12. Where does the portrait of Carlotta hang in the film?
13. True or false: The scenes in the bell tower take place at an actual mission.
14. What does Midge do for a living?
15. When does Scottie take Madeleine back to his apartment?
16. How does Carlotta die?
17. True or false: Hitchcock personally chose Mission San Juan Bautista as one of the film’s locations.
18. How many movies did Hitchcock and Stewart make together?
19. True or false: Scotty and Madeleine drive through a grove of eucalyptus trees located south of San Juan Bautista on the way there from San Francisco.
20. How many days did it take for Hitchcock to finish filming the San Juan Bautista scenes?
21. To which hotel does Scottie follow Judy?
22. How does Judy attempt to hold on to a piece of her own personality when Scottie tries to transform her into Madeleine?
23. What does Scottie see that makes him realize he has been set up?
24. What startles Judy at the end of the film?
25. True or false: Hitchcock blamed Stewart for the failure of “Vertigo,” and ended their working relationship.
Answers
1. San Francisco
2. Vera Miles was Hitchcock’s first choice to play Madeleine, but the actress became pregnant shortly before filming began.
3. False. Hitchcock walks past Galvin Elster’s shipyard about 11 minutes into the film.
4. They were old college friends.
5. Actress Barbara Bel Geddes plays Midge. She is best known for her role as Miss Ellie in the television show “Dallas.”
6. As a detective with the San Francisco police department, Scottie is chasing a suspect across a high roof top when he slips and falls, catching himself on a rain gutter.
7. Ernie’s Restaurant.
8. Corby has a bit part in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
9. True. The view down the mission stairwell cost $19,000 for just a few seconds of air time.
10. San Juan Bautista.
11. Carlotta Valdes is Madeleine’s great-grandmother.
12. The California Palace of the Legion of Honor.
13. False. Mission San Juan Bautista never had a bell tower – the mission originally had a steeple which was demolished during a fire. Hitchcock had a bell tower built on a Hollywood set, which is where the film’s most climatic scenes were filmed. The outside shots of the mission with a bell tower were added with trick photography.
14. She designs underwear and brassieres.
15. After she jumps into the San Francisco Bay, Scottie rescues Madeleine then takes her back to his apartment so she can rest and dry her clothes.
16. Carlotta kills herself at age 26 after her husband takes her daughter away from her.
17. False. Hitchcock had originally opted for another location for the famous staircase sequence, but the daughter of associate producer Herbert Coleman suggested Mission San Juan Bautista instead.
18. Four – “Rope” (1948), “Rear Window” (1954), “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956) and “Vertigo” (1958).
19. True. The car is going the wrong way in two scenes where Scottie and Madeleine are supposed to be driving from San Francisco to San Juan Bautista. Local audiences who recognize the eucalyptus grove the car drives past will realize the car is actually well past San Juan and headed north.
20. Six days.
21. The Empire Hotel.
22. After Scottie has her dye her hair to match Madeleine’s color, Judy wears her hair down instead of up.
23. As she dresses for a dinner date with Scottie, Judy puts on a necklace Scottie recognizes as belonging to Carlotta Valdes.
24. As Judy and Scottie struggle at the top of the bell tower, a nun comes up the stairs to investigate the noise, causing Judy to fall.
25. Supposedly true. According to the Internet Movie Database Web site, Hitchcock was upset with the film’s failure and blamed Stewart, saying he “looked too old” to be a romantic lead. Hitchcock never worked with Stewart again.
