There are several films I love where small towns are a kind of supporting character. Back to the Future was one of the really big hits when I was in high school and that Courthouse Square of the fictional town, “Hill Valley,” seen as both the typical dilapidated American downtown of the 1980s and the vibrantly useful downtown of the 1950s, has a rich history. That scene where Michael J. Fox skateboards around the square really gives you a good look at that particular downtown back lot set at Universal Studios. The studio tour takes you on a tram through that set and many others, though at the time I took that tour, Back to the Future had not yet been made. The most famous use of that set before Back to the Future was in To Kill a Mockingbird, which never leaves my top ten list of most favorite films. You will recognize that square and especially the prominent courthouse in several other films, most notably, The Music Man and Bye Bye Birdie.
Courthouse Square in Back to the Future (film clip).
I visited Cooperstown, NY for the first time recently and the Main Street looks like it could be used for the set of The Music Man or perhaps Bedford Falls from It’s A Wonderful Life. That film is in my top ten as well. The several block stretch of Main Street Bedford Falls was a set built especially for the film. The details of the Main Street give character to the entire film. The town has a tree-lined center parkway, neighborhoods with white picket fences and a dozen little shops of note. There is Gower’s Drug Store, which has a soda fountain, the Building and Loan and the Bijou Theatre. Remember, as Jimmy Stewart runs through the snowy, Christmas decorated Main Street, that he yells out, “Merry Christmas, Movie House!”? An interesting factoid is that the snowy scenes of Bedford Falls were filmed at night during July and so all that snow is fake, but it looked so real that the film won a special Academy Award for the development of amazing movie snow.
Bedford Falls at Christmas
That Bijou Theatre represents a kind of phenomenon in America, which was the small town single screen movie theatre that was called “Bijou” more often than not. Bijou is a French word that generally means jewel. These theaters started to pop up in the 1880s for the purposes of vaudeville and were managed by the Keith Albee circuit. By the 1920s these Bijou theaters were converted to movies and although many of them have been demolished or repurposed, there are still several dozen operating Bijou theaters in the U.S. Pay a visit to a Bedford Falls style Bijou when visiting Iowa City, Monmouth, Chicago, Knoxville, Cincinnati, San Antonio or Pittsfield.
Another very favorite film, Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, was filmed on location in Santa Rosa. Today, Santa Rosa is quite expanded and changed, but in those days of the 1940s it was a sleepy little town that personified small town America. It looked like any small town from the east coast and through the midwest. They could have filmed It’s a Wonderful Life there except for the issue of making it snow. Although the impressive library seen in the film is gone, the all important house is still standing at McDonald Avenue and 4th Street. Hitchcock filmed on location because the kind of small town set he required wasn’t in existence in Hollywood and with building materials scarce during World War II., filming on location was more practical. However, when he found that he needed to re-shoot some scenes after having vacated Santa Rosa, a replica of the house had to be built in Hollywood for those extra scenes. You’d never be able to guess which scenes were filmed at the real house vs. the recreated house. The other building from the film that is still standing is the train station, though trains no longer stop there and the building is used as a visitor center. There is also a nice busy street scene in the film showing an old courthouse, but that environment has been largely developed and so Shadow of a Doubt captures a Santa Rosa that no longer exists.
Santa Rosa at the time of Shadow of a Doubt.
Take a field trip to small town America through Back to the Future, It’s a Wonderful Life, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Shadow of a Doubt. You’ll not only catch a glimpse of that simpler idealized way of American life, but you’ll get a very good film education seeing the work of some of the best directors, writers and acting performances that ever came out of Hollywood.
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