Film that put Santa Rosa on the map

[Sequoia]

<snip>

It also brings us to Santa Rosa in the summer of 1942 and a movie that is a favorite of mine. It was a favorite of the director as well. It was also a favorite of the leading man. And both director Alfred Hitchcock and star Joseph Cotten had a lot of films from which to choose.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION had yet to end and an Allied victory over the Axis was still in grave doubt when Hitchcock brought his company to Santa Rosa not only to use the town as a location but to make it an integral part of the story as well.

“Shadow of a Doubt” was a lot of “firsts.” It was the English director’s first truly American film. It was the first movie (of many) made in Santa Rosa, and it was the first time in decades a major studio had “gone on location.”

The story Hitchcock wanted to tell was about what happens when an evil force invades a idyllic small town populated by average American families. To write the film he hired the acknowledged expert on small-town Americana, Pulitzer prize winning playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder, whose “Our Town” was a Broadway success and a recent movie.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090328/ARTICLES/903289948


"You think you know something, don't you? You think you're the clever little girl who knows something. There's so much you don't know . . . so much. What do you know really? You're just an ordinary little girl living in an ordinary little town. You wake up every morning of your life and you know perfectly well that there's nothing in the world to trouble you. You go through your ordinary little day and at night you sleep your untroubled, ordinary little sleep filled with peaceful, stupid dreams . . . and I brought you nightmares." --Uncle Charlie.

[LeftinOH]

1. Uncle Charlie got what he deserved (hit by a train)..Teresa Wright was a doll...n/t

[Sequoia]

2. I went to the house where it was filmed.

The back stairs where she was pushed was a stage set. The real house has no back stairs. It sure is beautiful over there with all those Victorian houses.

[Auggie]

3. Then there's the film that put Bodega Bay on the map

The Birds.


Not forgetting Vertigo, filmed in San Francisco.

Hitchcock liked Northern California.