Here at OBH HQ, there's forever something clackety-clackin' on the ol' Bell & Howell.  Sometimes Criss Cross, oftentimes it's Cry Danger...Act of Violence and Losey's M are usual suspects up on the silver.  But ain't every day something new comes along, much less something so remarkable this writer goes into dehydration-related coma due to drooling; can say without fear of contradiction the Citizen Kane of Bunker Hill pictures has at last been released, and good things come in small packages:  our Kane is all of six minutes long.  This movie without a name.  This, The Greatest Film Ever Made.

Don't get me wrong:  I love violence and nudity, and that other nonsense they put in Vaster Achievements of Cinema, whatsitcalled, narrative, and this picture still achieves greatness after dispensing with all that.  This mere piece of process-plate photography, footage shot so, whomever, Alan Ladd could lounge in some studio, well-lit and well-recorded, "driving" in a fake-o car and they'd throw this filmic business behind him, while we're in the OBH HQ screening room sixty years later screaming "Hey Alan Ladd!  Move your stupid head!  That's the Lovejoy Apartments you're blocking!"

Those values of its structure notwithstanding (it actually does have three acts) this cinematic curiosity pops its head up after sixty some-odd years (dated to the Summer of '48 with convincing authority).  I naturally thought it fun to link her to a few of the OBH posts we'd written, and make mention of just a few of those structures we failed to cover.

We begin innocently enough, peering down Second over the railing above the tunnel.  The Fashion League Bldg (née the Union League, LA's arm of the Republican Party) and Astor Hotel are at our left and right, in the distance, on Hill. 

The Northern sits atop Clay, the Claridge above; at our immediate right is the Mission.  Then we begin to ascend -- glimpse the Argyle down on Olive -- and turn to proceed down Grand.  Note the Moderne genius that is 144 S Grand hanging out with the Richelieu and Melrose in the bg. 

There's the Dome at the corner of Second and Grand, and across the street, the Frontenac.  Third and Grand harbor of course the Nugent and the Lovejoy. 

When you see the Biltmore at about 1:35 --

-- the white building across the street from it is the Capitol Hotel, once site of the Bryan Mansion; to its immediate south, the service garage at Fourth and Grand that was once the site of the Brunson Mansion.  Things changed a bit after the Fourth St Cut, of course.  

The viaduct required the August 1954 demo of  the Zelda; below her we see the Granada, and just a wee bit of the Sherwood --

Then at about two minutes in, it's ka-bang, we're right back where we started, Second & Olive.  Pointed toward the Mission, backing up the street toward Grand, just like a minute ago, though this time, we see some dishy dames strolling toward the aforementioned 144...

...and then there's a rare shot of the Shell station across the street from the Dome:

Criminally underphotographed because everyone's back was to it, shooting, as they were, the Dome (yeah, I'm talking to you, Hylen.  You too, Reagh!)...this is roughly equivalent to why we have so few pictures of the Snow (all n sundry shooting the Richfield) or the Casa Alta (everbody capturing Angels Flight upper terminus).  Of course, who in 1948 would photograph a gas station?  More importantly, come 2011, who could care?  (Most saliently, how have I ever had a girlfriend?)  It is still the greatest film capture ever, and should you disagree, you are a stupidy dumb stupidhead (Kracauer's term orginated in one of his early discourses on mise-en-scène, I'm pretty sure).  But I digress.

We go past The Judd at 344 and in the distance view the Casa Alta at Third and Olive and the backside of the Mutual Garage at Fourth and Olive:

Below, the apartments at 422 S Grand are feeling a little hemmed in by its new neighbor, the cool, Late Moderne, ten -story Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co Building, which broke ground in 1946 and is completed in January 1948.  (422 S Grand will disappear in the late 50s when work begins on the Pacific Telephone Communications Center, which you know as the building with the far-out 1961 Heinsbergen mural.  Their 1924 telephone building neighbor to the east, facing Olive, is also still extant, though you wouldn't know it from its 1972 recladding.) 

At 3:35 we turn onto 5th St.  We view the back of the Biltmore Theatre, and some of the Biltmore's backside, then cruise past the Central Library; at 3:43 a guy seems to notice the camera car and waves at us.  Also, nice "AirporTransit" bus.

At 4:10 we turn up Flower. 

At 4:54

we cross Third with a kathump, and thereafter get a sense of this being a hill.  The Aida Apartments we remember as the Rollin.  A couple doors up from there, the St Regis and the Marcella. 

Bunker fans breathe with low, measured, muddy pulls; we love shots up at Angels Flight or up Olive from the park, but the Other Side of the Tunnels -- Hope, Flower, Figueroa -- from there comes mystery and intrigue.  Stonehenge, the Nazca Lines, those royal quarters of Cleopatra thrown into the sea?  Fine and good if you also like doing laundry in a Denny's during a sports cards convention.

The Van Fleet is on the other side of the street, as is the Stanley,

on the corner of Second.  Then we cruise up to First and idle a bit, and make the turn south onto First.  Of course, therefore, we go by our old friend 101-111 S Flower. 

We continue down First and about the last thing that happens is we pass through the intersection of First and Hope -- the multinamed Rossmere/Lima/Majestic/St James visible at left. 

And then...and then it's all over.  Then we play it again.

We live in blessed times.  It's hard to believe we started dedicating ourselves to Bunker Hill in just March 2008.  (Something in the collective unconscious was a work, as at the same time, Mr. Jim Dawson published Los Angeles's Angels Flight.  For a mere taste of its greatness, see here.)  We are then hipped to the glory of George Mann's color shots.  John Bengston's work has been a godsend to scholarship.  We've met some of Bunker Hill's royal lineage through the Offbunkerhill group, and of course owe special debt and gratitude to Gordon Pattison.  Above and beyond such, even beyond our archive.org clip dropped into our collective lap, LAPL has uncovered in its vaster vaults City appraisal logs whose attached images are a wealth of glory, for example these.    Remember what I said about "beyond the tunnels" as the Great Mystery of Mankind?  LAPL's newly-released images freely pee on Machu Pichu and Easter Island.  They liberally feature the northern end of Bunker Hill; the "other side" of First might as well be the damn moon.  Bless you, LAPL.

Of course, there's other activity to be had...get on the LA Noire free roam and just go driving around.  Which roughly approximates the archive.org movie...right?  It's been two months and change since the final dribblings of LAN dlc; and Nathan, you ask, having penned so much in advance of its release, haven't you effing so much as scribbled on a cocktail napkin as a wrap-up?  Oh, haaave I.  Forgive me for being distracted by the Greatest Movie Ever.  (Well, that, and this.)   But, see, my LA Noire postmortem is at present twenty thousand words, and should I prune its vain and fantastical imaginations (prone as I am to what Bacon termed Distempers of Learning) it would be reduced to a mere twenty. 

So before I'm to shear nineteen thousand-plus words off some post about LA Noire, I'll certainly watch this video...just...one...more...time.  

The footage not only provides a wonderful glimpse of post-WWII Bunker
Hill, now lost to civic redevelopment, but illuminates Los Angeles
during the silent film era as well.

As I explain in my book Silent Visions, Harold Lloyd filmed scenes for
seven different movies at the intersection of 3rd and Grand, on Bunker
Hill, more scenes than at any other location in Los Angeles. It was a
popular place for Laurel and Hardy, and other Hal Roach Studio stars to
film as well. The Prelinger film drives twice by Lloyd’s intersection of
3rd and Grand, providing razor sharp images of where Lloyd and other
silent stars filmed.

You can see where several Roach silent comedies were filmed along the Prelinger film route on my blog below.

http://SilentLocations.WordPress.com

Here is a route driven during the stock footage.