Read an Excerpt
World Film Locations New Orleans
By Scott Jordan Harris Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-589-3
CHAPTER 1
UPFRONT
NEW ORLEANS
City of the Imagination
Text by JONATHAN RAY AND SCOT JORDAN HARRIS
'Don't you just love those long rainy afernoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour, but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands, and who knows what to do with it?'
– Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
THERE IS NO CITY LIKE NEW ORLEANS. For a long time, that was why Hollywood came here. New Orleans always conjured up images of mule-drawn carriage-rides through the French Quarter; of listening to jazz at Preservation Hall; of eating beignets at Café Du Monde; and maybe even of taking the time to sit on a balcony and enjoy a Sazerac. That has all changed. In the twenty-first century, New Orleans has become a true player in the TV and film industries. Our city is now known not only as the birthplace of jazz and The Big Easy, but also as Hollywood South.
New Orleans has always had a vivid history on the silver screen. That history can be traced from the American Mutoscope Company's short 1898 documentaries, whose subjects are revealed by their titles: Mardi Gras, City Hall and Loading A Mississippi Steamboat. It runs through Cecil B. DeMille coming here in 1938 to film The Buccaneer, the first talking picture to showcase this special city. It includes Vivien Leigh stepping off the train in Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and uttering the famous words, 'Well ... they told me to take a streetcar named desire and transfer to one called cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields'.
It encompasses the sleaze and corruption exposed in crime thrillers such as The Big Easy (Jim McBride, 1986) and Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987). And it runs up to Brad Pitt playing a man aging backwards in David Fincher's love letter to New Orleans, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Those films were all meant to celebrate this amazing city: its culture, its people and its architecture.
Since huge tax incentives for film production were put in place in 2002, film-makers have been flocking here – and not just to make movies about New Orleans. We have everything a film-maker needs to start and finish their project. We have a Panavision camera shop, pre-and post-production facilities, movie studios and special effect houses. A film can be made here entirely, without shipping anything off to Los Angeles or New York, the only two cities in America that currently film more movies than we do.
Two thirds of the films being produced here are no longer set here. Gone are the days of showing off the French Quarter and its amazing balconies. Gone are the days of watching people suck the head and squeeze the tails of crawfish. Now, we see G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Jon M. Chu, 2012) turn downtown New Orleans into Pakistan; we watch Ryan Reynolds fighting comic book monsters in The Green Lantern (Martin Campbell, 2011); and we host Jason Statham battling bad guys in 'downtown Chicago' in The Mechanic (Simon West, 2011). Our facilities allow film-makers to do whatever is necessary to turn New Orleans into any city or country they want.
This is not a bad thing. In fact, it is a wonderful thing. The Hollywood spotlight is shining on us and showing a new side of New Orleans to the world. This does not lessen the old magic of the city: it simply enhances it. Through all our recent struggles and setbacks, the people of New Orleans have persevered and even moved forward. Now, as John Goodman's Creighton Bernette said in season 1 of HBO's Treme, 'New Orleans is a great city – a city that lives in the imagination of the world.'
JEZEBEL (1938)
LOCATION
(A Hollywood recreation of) St Louis Hotel, some of which was incorporated into The Royal Orleans Hotel, 621 Saint Louis Street, LA 70140
EVEN IF HE HAD WANTED TO, William Wyler couldn't shoot on location in the St Louis Hotel for his Jezebel. Afer all, the St Louis Hotel – once a shimmering landmark of 19th Century New Orleans – had decayed and crumbled decades before Wyler started filming; it was the victim of a hurricane in 1915. But no mater. The reconstruction that was built on a studio back lot captured the hotel's old opulence in spades. Its staircases sweep, its chandeliers glisten, and its bar goes on and on and on. Besides, there is something about the real-life decline of the St Louis that is thematically suited to Wyler's film. In early scenes, the hotel is shown as a decorous place for a decorous society. Men wander around upright and top-hatted, and resolve their disputes with very proper duels. But later, as yellow fever descends upon the city, it is a site of disorder and devastation. The top hats are now clustered and confused, almost a visual representation of contagion. The men beneath them are sweaty and afraid. And into this steps Preston Dillard, played by Henry Fonda. Is it any wonder that he collapses before the scene is through? Is it any wonder that nobody, but one friend, rushes to help him? Propriety died with the fever. ->Peter Hoskin
MODERN NEW ORLEANS (1940)
LOCATION
The Huey P. Long Bridge, over the Mississippi River, Jefferson Parish,
THIS EIGHT-MINUTE documentary short, designed – as its title suggests – to showcase New Orleans's vibrant modernity, is one of the famous 'Traveltalks' made by James 'The Voice of the Globe' Fitzpatrick and distributed by MGM. It opens with an astonishing Technicolor shot of a bridge curving towards the camera, a steam train forcing out a stream of smoke as it approaches. 'En route to New Orleans,' intones Fitzpatrick. 'We cross the Mississippi River, by way of this magnificent 13 million dollar structure, named the Huey Long Bridge in honour of the late Huey P. Long, former governor of Louisiana, to whom New Orleans is largely indebted for this wonder of modern engineering, which characterises the indomitable spirit of the people of Louisiana and indicates the great strides that are being made in that state for economic recovery.' The music, urgent and hopeful, works in the chug of a train, as the locomotive snakes out of shot, an obvious image of America emerging from the ravages of the Great Depression. The bridge was only five years old at the time and remained unchanged for another 46 years, until 2006, when a massive widening project designed to turn its two nine-foot lanes into three eleven-foot lanes began. When that project is complete (which, at time of writing, should be in 2013), the bridge will perhaps become again what it was in 1940: a marvel of engineering fit to be used by film-makers as one of America's cinematic advertisements for itself. ->Scott Jordan Harris
SARATOGA TRUNK (1945)
LOCATION
(A Hollywood re-creation of) The French Opera House, now The Inn on Bourbon, 541 Bourbon Street, LA 70130
A LINGERING CLOSE-UP of an opera programme announces the setting: 'The Opera House, New Orleans'. In this scene, the location takes top billing – and with good reason. The French Opera house is, historically, architecturally and culturally, one of the most significant buildings in New Orleans's history. And yet it no longer exists. Constructed in 1859, it soon became New Orleans's key cultural arena; the opening of its opera season was the opening of the city's social season. In the early twentieth century, however, the Opera House struggled financially and was donated to Tulane University. At its grand reopening in 1919, it burned to the ground. It was never rebuilt. Which is why it needed to be recreated for Saratoga Trunk, in which Ingrid Bergman's Clio, an illegitimate daughter of the snobbish Dulaine family, returns to New Orleans to revenge herself on the relatives who made her mother an outcast. In this scene, she strikes at the heart of New Orleans's Creole aristocracy – by causing a scandal at the first night of the opera. She stands and scans the audience with her opera glasses, inviting people to stare at her. Soon, audience members begin to whisper. Overcome by embarrassment, the Dulaines leave their box. It's a short scene but one of the film's best. Besides quickly advancing the plot, it underlines the importance of the French Opera house in nineteenth century New Orleans. As Cleo proves, if you could make a scene there, anywhere. ->Scott Jordan Harris
NEW ORLEANS (1947)
LOCATION
(A fctionalised recreation of) Basin Street, Storyville
FITTINGLY, STORYVILLE is one of the most storied areas in New Orleans history. While it stood, it was the city's red light district, set up in the 1890s (to ensure that the more unseemly side of New Orleans nightlife was confined to one area) and outlawed in 1917 (when regulations preventing prostitution within five miles of military bases came into effect). Legends say that jazz was born in Storyville's brothels and bars (it actually developed all around the city), and this idea is propagated in the 1947 film that bears New Orleans's name. The movie is far from a classic, but it contains some classic musical scenes, one of which comes when the king and queen of jazz, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday, perform the title song in a Basin Street bar. Miralee Smith (Dorothy Patrick) is white, high-born and about to make her opera debut – but it isn't classical singing that has seized her soul. She is in love with jazz and so persuades her maid, Endie (Holliday), to take her to Basin Street while her mother, the disapproving Mrs Smith, is out for the evening. As soon as the ladies walk into their chosen dive, Endie joins the band. Holliday hated her role, and had signed on for the film thinking she would be playing herself. In this scene, she is. New Orleans jazz doesn't get much more memorable than Billie Holliday turning to Louis Armstrong and asking, 'Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?' ->Scott Jordan Harris
PANIC IN THE STREETS (1950)
LOCATION
Lafayette Square, 500 Saint Charles Avenue, LA 70130
ALL NEW ORLEANS: that's what you get from Elia Kazan's noirish thriller Panic in the Streets. Right from the very opening credits, which feature a tracking shot down the bar fronts of Bourbon Street, it's clear that this film is embedded in the city like a splinter – it just won't leave its streets and back alleys unless it's squeezed out. Except, unlike normal splinters, this one is a treat. In his hunt for a murderer who could kill a thousand times over, thanks to carrying the plague, Richard Widmark's health officer hurries everywhere from the beat-down docks of the Mississippi to the grander parades of Lafayette Square. And it's the latter where he meets with the Mayor, at night, to explain why a journalist has been locked up to prevent mass hysteria. 'The minute he prints [the story],' snarls our hero from the shadows, 'the men we're looking for will leave the city. Anyone leaving here with plague endangers the entire country.' Given Kazan's burgeoning anti-communist beliefs, the political parallels should be clear. But if they're not, just compare Widmark's monologue with the words of J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI. 'Communism,' said Hoover, 'is not a political party. It is a way of life — an evil and malignant way of life. It reveals a condition akin to disease that spreads like an epidemic and, like an epidemic, a quarantine is necessary to keep it from infecting the Nation.' The Cold War was now being fought on screen. ->Peter Hoskin
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)
LOCATION
The Louisville and Nashville Train Station, at the foot of Canal Street
WITH ITS FETID ATMOSPHERE of sublimated menace and incipient insanity, dripping sweat and sexual tension, A Streetcar Named Desire captures the quintessence of New Orleans – or at least the quintessence of New Orleans as film-makers often like to show it. It is remarkable, then, that only one scene in the film was shot in the city: the opening sequence, showing the arrival of a train at the Louisville and Nashville station and the arrival of Vivien Leigh's Blanche Dubois in New Orleans. A train ploughs through the rough-looking landscape around the station and the film cuts to Canal Street, bright and bustling with polished cars. We move past the hustle of the general waiting room to the platform where, through a wall of white smoke, the timid Blanche appears. 'They told me to take a streetcar named "Desire",' she says to a smart young sailor, and he helps her to it; the first time we see her she is relying on the kindness of a stranger. Even in this, some of the only location shooting in a movie that could otherwise almost be a filmed a stage production, Kazan opts for claustrophobia. The crowds jostle and surge, and Blanche looks fragile and lost among them. The congested station was a fitting choice of setting: as a report (by Bartholomew & Associates) noted in 1927, it is 'practically inaccessible [...] Taxis line up in the driveway [...] and [...] in Canal Street where they obstruct traffic'. Thankfully, they did not obstruct that streetcar named 'Desire'. ->Scott Jordan Harris
THE BUCCANEER (1958)
LOCATION
(A Hollywood recreation of) Chalmette Battlefield, 8606 West Street Bernard Hwy, Chalmette, LA 70043
A REMAKE OF Cecil B. DeMille's 1938 film of the same name, The Buccaneer features Yul Brynner stepping into the buccaneer boots of Jean Lafitte. Charlton Heston refreshes the role of Andrew Jackson, leading his hastily assembled army into a proud victory against the British Imperialists in one of the most famous events in Louisiana history: the Battle of New Orleans. The Chalmette Battlefied is here recreated in a Paramount studio, which accounts for the film's version of the battle being such an understated affair. Shrouded in fog, Jackson's army hold fast as their Tartan-clad enemy approaches. As the Imperialists move closer, we hear shrill bagpipes and the thumping of drums. Creeping into an ambush position to alert the army of its rival's whereabouts, Lafitte and his men hide among gnarled tree roots and shoot a blazing warning shot across the fog-filled sky. Far from the colourful culture of New Orleans or the homey bayou, a scarlet army trudges in unison across the rugged, grassy plane. As the British march defiantly into flying bullets, Jackson's forces hold fast behind a fort of sandbags; no man's land has no place in this stand-off, but the distance between the two sides is unrevealed as they fire at each other. The Scots have come a long way since the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 but, 501 years later on the Chalmette Battlefield, we see so many of them cut down by US forces – never sent homeward, nor to think again. ->Nicola Balkind
KING CREOLE (1958)
LOCATION
Balcony of 1018 Royal Street, LA 70116
CRITICS ARE SELDOM KIND to Elvis Presley films but King Creole is something of an exception: it's universally held to be one of The King's best films and often said to contain his best performance. (It was also, apparently, Elvis' favourite among his movies.) As its title suggests, King Creole is set in The Big Easy; its most memorable scene was shot on the historic Royal Street and showcases one of its characteristic iron lace balconies. A black crawfish seller, played by jazz singer Kitty White, drives her horse cart along the street. She calls out, 'Crawfish! Fresh and ready!' in such a melodic tone that we are unsurprised to hear music begin as a song starts. Up in his apartment, Elvis, as high-school student Danny Fisher, sings a reply. He pauses to comb his perfect hair, walks out onto his balcony, and the pair proceeds to duet – Kitty on the street below and Elvis on the balcony above. As he leans against the aforementioned iron lace (some of which has decorated Royal Street since the eighteenth century), Presley looks as beautiful and beguiling as any man has ever been onscreen. Royal Street now positions itself as a more refined version of its French Quarter cousin, Bourbon Street, and hosts fine restaurants and even finer antique shops, as well as numerous art galleries. It also often hosts street musicians – while it's worth making a trip to see them, none of them can quite compete with the King. ->Scott Jordan Harris
CHAPTER 2
UPFRONT
ALL THAT JAZZ
New Orleans Jazz Onscreen
Text by MARCELLINE BLOCK
JAZZ MUSIC PERMEATES films depicting New Orleans. The city's would-be anthem, 'When the Saints Go Marching In' – which, although originally a spiritual, was immortalized by Louis Armstrong through his trumpet and signature raspy voice – is featured on the soundtracks off innumerable New Orleans films.
The music of many legendary jazz musicians from the Big Easy infuses films either made or set in the city, include pioneering performers such as Tony Jackson (1876-1921), whose 1912 song 'Pretty Baby' inspired Louis Malle's eponymous 1978 film about Storyville; Jelly Roll Morton (1885-1941), the first to publish a jazz melody ('Jelly Roll Blues'); and Armstrong (1901-71), who appears as versions of himself in several films, including Arthur Lubin's New Orleans (1947) and Howard Hawks' A Song is Born (1948).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from World Film Locations New Orleans by Scott Jordan Harris. Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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