The ghosts of Vertigo at the Legion of Honor
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which opened in 1958, was shot almost entirely in the city of San Francisco, and for fans of the “Master of Suspense,” many locations remain accessible. The Empire Hotel, where Jimmy Stewart finds an ever-sultry Kim Novak, is still at 940 Sutter Street—now named the Hotel Vertigo. You can even book Room 501, where Novak’s character Judy lived. The Podesta Baldocchi flower shop, visited by Novak’s other character, Madeleine, also is still in business, although no longer at its original address.
And then there’s the Legion of Honor museum. In the particularly haunting scene filmed there, Madeleine sits in Gallery 6 contemplating the Portrait of Carlotta, a life-sized painting of a woman she strongly resembles. Hitchcock took a week to get the lighting in the gallery just right. Incidentally, Gallery 6 holds the work of such French Baroque painters as Claude Lorrain, Georges de La Tour, Louis Le Nain, Eustache Le Sueur, and Simon Vouet, and recently added a painting by Laurent de La Hyre (1606–1656), Allegory of Geometry.
Info
Address Legion of Honor, 100 34th Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94121, www.legionofhonor.famsf.org, +1 415.750.3600 | Public Transport Bus: 18 (Legion of Honor stop) | Hours Tues–Sun, 9:30am–5:15pm| Tip At the edge of Lincoln Park, at California Street and 32nd Avenue, you’ll find a stunning Art Nouveau-inspired bench and steps, recently restored and hand tiled by the artist Aileen Barr.
Portrait of Carlotta was created by American Abstract Expressionist painter John Ferren (1905–1970). Sadly, the painting was eventually lost. Ferren, who also painted Stewart’s “nightmare sequence” in Vertigo, briefly went to art school in San Francisco and eventually made his way to Paris, where he was greatly influenced by Matisse and Kandinsky.
The Legion of Honor is a neoclassical building sitting on the top of a grassy cliff at Lands End, overlooking the Pacific Ocean with the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands to the north and the Lincoln Park Golf Course to the south. The building, constructed expressly as a gift to the city from Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, was completed in 1924. The Legion’s timeless elegance was inspired by the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris, also known as the Hôtel de Salm.
Back
To the online map