Happy 150th Anniversary to Golden Gate Park! Almost 125 of those years have been captured by motion picture cameras. It's changed over the years, but not enough to prevent Marielle Heller to shoot the opening scene for her 1970s-set Diary of a Teenage Girl there five years ago.

Though the earliest films I've seen cited as shot in Golden Gate Park were made by James H. White in 1897, the ones I've seen don't actually show the park. But this 1903 Panorama of Beach & Cliff House, filmed by Herbert Miles, does. See the windmill spin! https://www.loc.gov/item/00694424/ 

The windmill keeps spinning at the end of one of two films Charlie Chaplin partly filmed in Golden Gate Park: A Jitney Elopement (Jitneys were their era's rideshare cars). Gerald Smith's website has a 1915/20th Century comparison for this 2-reel comedy. http://jerre.com/TandN/OldPaper/Films/JitneyElopement/index.html

The other Golden Gate Park comedy Chaplin filmed in 1915 was In The Park. He wasn't the only comic filming there the year of the Pan-Pacific International Exposition. Roscoe Arbuckle directed & co-starred in Wished On Mabel that year. Here's a great blog: http://macksennett.blogspot.com/2015/04/100-year-ago-mabel-normand-and-roscoe.html

Other silent-era films with Golden Gate Park scenes include the Mary Pickford production Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, directed in 1924 by Marshall Neilan, until his drinking got the better of him. After he was taken off the picture, Pickford finished directing it herself.

That'll be it for now. Will add more to this thread soon.

Okay, getting back into this. Before leaving the silent era, I'll note there are lots of films claimed to have been filmed in Golden Gate Park but that I've seen no evidence to back up that claim for. Erich von Stroheim's 1924 Greed, for one. Maybe it's part of the lost footage?

The 1930s saw a downturn in Hollywood features shot on location in San Francisco. There were some, but I'm not aware of any filmed in Golden Gate Park. But W.S. Van Dyke's 1936 melodrama San Francisco ends stirringly in a SoCal-shot scene set in the park's post-quake tent city.

One of the few 1930s Hollywood films I'm aware of that shows the actual Golden Gate Park is one of MGM's Pete Smith shorts, 1932's Color Scales, featuring the Steinhart Aquarium. Not on DVD or (that I can find) streaming online, its been known to pop up broadcast on @TCM.

Of course the greatest scene shot in the old Steinhart Aquarium, before its 2004 remodel, is this encounter between Rita Hayworth & Orson Welles in the latter's 1947 The Lady From Shanghai. A mixture of on-set shooting & rear projection lends eerie power. http://reelsf.com/lady-from-shanghai-aquarium

Skipping ahead to Don Siegel's 1958 The Lineup, an entirely-shot-on-location scene contextualizes the Aquarium within the Academy of Sciences (whose courtyard is shown) & near the Music Concourse & DeYoung Musuem. Even the SFPD mounted patrol gets a cameo. http://reelsf.com/reelsf/the-lineup-steinhart-aquarioum-and-de-young-m

Thinking I'll add about five tweets to this thread every Saturday. The celebration of Golden Gate Park is planned to last all year; I'm guessing I can go at least a month or so at that rate.

If I'd been planning this out I'd have saved the (a few posts) above shot from W.S. Van Dyke's 1936 San Francisco, in which a Southern California field stands in for the 1906 Golden Gate Park tent city, for today, the anniversary of the Great Earthquake & Fire. Here it is again.

I'm unaware of any extant moving image footage of Golden Gate Park during the disaster's aftermath. There's a batch of films shot in San Francisco before & after the quake at the Library of Congress. This one probably shows a refugee camp in The Presidio. https://www.loc.gov/item/00694428/ 

This one shows a smaller tent city in the Western Addition's Jefferson Square. https://www.loc.gov/item/00694433/ 

I'm aware of some films shot (or at least purported to have been shot) in Golden Gate Park during that period. Vitagraph made one called Park Lodge, Golden Gate Park. Lubin made Thieves in Camp, Golden Gate Park & Refugees At The Golden Gate Park. I don't think these survive.

But you probably want to see at least *one* real Golden Gate Park screen capture before I pause this thread for another week. So here's the Gjoa, which resided in the park from October 1906 to 1972 when it was repatriated to Norway. From a 1932 travelogue: https://archive.org/details/0169_San_Francisco_by_the_Golden_Gate_10_35_59_00

Some of the best imagery captured of Golden Gate Park over the last century+ was filmed by amateurs highlighting the park's intrinsic beauty, not using it as a backdrop for narrative. Examples abound at the @internetarchive; I love this 1942 color footage. https://archive.org/details/HM_Golden_Gate_Park_San_Francisco_June_1942

I doubt the filmer's identity is known (unless @footage does?), but there's a handsome title card "Golden Gate Park San Francisco June 1942". The reel includes shots of @sfzoo but the seal pits, foregrounding the old DeYoung, was definitely the park. A contemporaneous postcard:

Another key strand of non-Hollywood filmmaking in San Francisco is the San Francisco "art film", launched with Sidney Peterson's & James Broughton's The Potted Psalm, shot in an old cemetery in 1946. Broughton's 1948 "solo" debut Mother's Day has one Golden Gate Park scene in it:

The Potted Psalm inspired Douglas McAgy to hire Peterson to teach the 1st film courses at @SFAIofficial. Peterson & his students recorded late 40s SF beautifully in cine-poems like The Petrified Dog. Contra William Heick, quoted in Radical Light, that was filmed in Sutro Heights.

I haven't confirmed any of Peterson's Workshop 20 films were in fact shot in Golden Gate Park. Perhaps a bit of The Cage? Can't be sure. But James Broughton returned to the park many times after Mother's Day. I think this bit from 1950's The Adventures of Jimmy is Spreckels Lake?

Ending today's spurt with 1 more James Broughton still, from his 1951 film Loony Tom, filmed in part by the Milwright Cottage near Murphy Windmill in Golden Gate Park's Western edge. See the whole film (& others) via @facetschicago. Or watch the Broughton doc Big Joy via @Kanopy.

Welcome back to my thread about Golden Gate Park in cinema! Did you know a 1950 Bugs Bunny cartoon called Bushy Hare starts in the park near Lloyd Lake's Portals of the Past, before Bugs grabs a handful of balloons that transport him to Australia? Robert McKimson directed it.

Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock's ultimate SF film, is often named among films shot in Golden Gate Park. Some forget that the Portals of the Past, while mentioned by Gavin Elster, aren't ever on-screen. Others think the Conservatory of Flowers is seen. It isn't. http://reelsf.com/reelsf/vertigo-flower-shop

That 1958 masterpiece isn't the only crime film with such a misattribution. 1952's Sudden Fear & 1949's Impact also pop up on such lists. Impact has a scene I've seen cited as shot at Stow Lake, but according to the ever-reliable ReelSF website it's SoCal. http://reelsf.com/impact-larkspur-walter-settles-in

The actual Corrigan Movie Ranch lake seen in Impact is called Robin Hood Lake, because it's seen in Michael Curtiz's 1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood. Funnily, Chris Pollack's Golden Gate Park book cites that (and 1951's The Raging Tide, which I don't remember) as filmed there.

But @alancinephile's authoritative biography of Curtiz makes no mention of filming Adventures of Robin Hood in Golden Gate Park (or San Francisco). I think if such a famous classic were shot in the park, it would be better known. I'm extremely skeptical. https://alankrode.com/michael-curtiz-a-life-in-film/

Not that Golden Gate Park wasn't a good place to shoot scenes for a swashbuckling adventure film set in Europe. I mentioned Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall above; also George Sidney's 1952 Scaramouche, which unlike Impact DID shoot at Stow Lake, as @lchadbou reminded me last month.

I grabbed that image from a recent @Raemondjjjj article on Golden Gate Park in the movies @KQEDarts published a couple weeks ago. It's a fine primer that includes some of the films already highlighted in this thread, & some I'll include next week & beyond. https://www.kqed.org/arts/13861622/happy-150th-a-brief-history-of-golden-gate-park-in-the-movies

With Michael McClure's passing this week, I'm jumping this thread ahead, to filmed documentation of the Polo Fields' Jan. 14, 1967 Human Be-In event, where McClure performed using an autoharp Bob Dylan gave him. I think a KQED reporter shot this footage.

That's probably the most comprehensive view of the event that some call the warm-up for the Summer of Love out there. But there were lots of film cameras running in Golden Gate Park that day. Jerry Abrams' @filmmakerscoop-distributed Be-In is better-known. https://film-makerscoop.com/catalogue/jerry-abrams-be-in-1967

Timothy Leary & Jerry Garcia were on hand of course. So was Allen Ginsberg. An edifying @Ginsbergpoem blog post points to a transfer of an edited-in-camera 8mm reel by Mark Green, a then-undergrad who now lives in L.A. Country. He even shot the bathrooms! https://allenginsberg.org/2011/07/human-be-in-in-san-francisco-1967-asv-8/

But perhaps my favorite film of the Human Be-In is Loren Sears' Be in, a Free Space Film, made by Loren Sears using his home-built optical printer and a variety of footage shot by different filmmakers. Here's an article by Sears with more information: https://www.lorensears.com/film-video-works/the-optical-printer-story/

I found this film through a @ShapingSF essay by Evie Johnson, that talks about the political underpinnings of the Human Be-In, which are often lost sight of by folks like me who didn't live through it. What better way to pause the thread for another week: http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Human_Be-In,_1967

Today I'll focus on poets filmed & filming in Golden Gate Park in the years prior to the Be-In. We already looked at James Broughton, who filmed Loony Tom by the Murphy Windmill in '51. Here's more shots from that film that might be the park; I can't tell. https://twitter.com/HellOnFriscoBay/status/1254116748397182976

10 years ago Brecht Andersch & I tried tracking down every possible location used by poet/filmmaker Christopher Maclaine in his 1953 masterpiece The End. We strongly suspect these shots of a rider (& maybe a sprinkler too?) were shot in Golden Gate Park. https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2011/03/christopher-maclaine-17-the-end-tour-15-climax-b/

The cinematographer for The End was Jordan Belson, who made his own films, almost exclusively in his North Beach studio. But the year he shot The End he also released Bop Scotch, made with painter/animator Patricia Marx. It's available via @CtrVisualMusic https://vimeo.com/ondemand/34063 

It's a bit of a diversion, since as far as I know Belson wasn't literally a poet (just a visual one), but I can't mention him in the context of Golden Gate Park without mentioning his role in Henry Jacobs' 1957-59 Vortex Concert Series, held in the park's Morrison Planetarium.

Douglas McKechnie wrote this about being asked to revive the Vortex concept in 1974, before the Laserium show replaced it in the Planetarium dome http://dougmckechnie.blogspot.com/2013/05/jordan-belson-vortex-and-me.html And here's the 1965 @calacademy-produced documentary Science In Action: Planetarium: https://archive.org/details/csfa_000029

Getting back on track, here's images from the 1961 film The Brink, filmed by one of the last living beat poets (she was set to be honored by @Cinequest in March, before COVID-19 postponed it), ruth weiss. Steve Seid writes that these were shot in the park. https://bampfa.org/page/out-of-the-vault-essay-ruth-weiss-brink

Lawrence Jordan may be the quintessential Beat filmmaker. In 1963 he filmed poet Kirby Doyle riding his motorcycle down Golden Gate Park's Main Drive (now JFK Drive) for his short Portrait of Sharon. I was shocked to still be able to view this on Fandor. https://www.fandor.com/films/portrait_of_sharon

Finally (for this week), in Philip Whalen's installment of Richard O. Moore's USA Poetry series, shared with Gary Snyder, Whalen reads his poem "WATERLILIES (and Iris)" in Lincoln Park, but when the De Young Museum is mentioned its front is seen on screen.

Is this thread still interesting folks? Let's continue with a batch of tweets on the Japanese Tea Garden, created in 1894 & run by Makoto Hagiwara until 1925. In 1919 Hollywood's first non-white matinee idol Sessue Hayakawa filmed the now-considered-lost A Heart In Pawn there.

I mentioned a 1932 travelogue San Francisco by the Golden Gate above. It includes good shots of the Garden before it was temporarily renamed the "Oriental Tea Garden" from World War II until 1952, a small part of that era's terrible anti-Japanese legacy. https://archive.org/details/0169_San_Francisco_by_the_Golden_Gate_10_35_59_00

It was back to being the Japanese Tea Garden by 1960, when Ross Hunter produced a terrifically entertaining murder melodrama Portrait in Black. Lana Turner & Anthony Quinn illicitly meet at the Garden, part of the film's streak of high-gloss Orientalism. http://reelsf.com/portrait-in-black-somebody-out-there-knows

That's not an ultra-widescreen process, but a pan composite created by Brian Hollins aka City Sleuth. His great website explores all locations for Portrait in Black as well as Richard Lester's 1968 Petulia, which also had a scene in the Japanese Tea Garden http://reelsf.com/reelsf/petulia-picnic-in-the-park

Poet @ filmmaker James Broughton, whom we've met before in this thread, also shot at least two films in the Japanese Tea Garden. High Kukus from 1973 was entirely trained on a pond within, & 1988's Scattered Remains includes a fun "zen" moment. Both streamable via @facetschicago.