Morton Beebe
San Francisco Films
in the 60s
Mort worked on some of the most iconic films shot in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s including Petulia, The Graduate, and Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run.
The Graduate
The Graduate is a 1967 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Mike Nichols and written by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham. The film tells the story of 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), a recent college graduate with no well-defined aim in life, who is seduced by an older woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), and then falls in love with her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross).
The film was released on December 22, 1967, received positive reviews and grossed $104.9 million in the U.S. and Canada. It won the Academy Award for Best Director and was nominated in six other categories. In 1996, The Graduate was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
A number of the scenes were filmed on Durant Avenue and College Ave. across from the Unit One Dorms in the city of Berkeley, as well as on the Berkeley campus itself (shot remotely from Telegraph Avenue, as the university did not permit commercial filming at the time).
Most scenes at Carl’s fraternity were filmed at the Theta Delta Chi Delta Deuteron Charge house in Berkeley on College and Durant. The real fraternity flag is visible in both the exterior and dining room shots.
Petulia
Petulia is a 1968 American drama film directed by Richard Lester. The screenplay by Lawrence B. Marcus is based on the novel Me and the Arch Kook Petulia by John Haase.
Petulia Danner is a young San Francisco socialite married to a savagely abusive architect, David. At a benefit concert for victims of traffic accidents, she meets Dr. Archie Bollen, with whom she became smitten as he treated an injured Mexican boy.
Archie is in the process of divorcing his wife Polo, sifting through relationships with the new man in his ex’s life, his estranged sons, and well-to-do friends who only know Archie as one-half of a couple. Petulia and Archie embark on a quirky, desperate, and ultimately tragic affair.
Filmed on location throughout San Francisco, Petulia included scenes at the apartment building located at 307 Filbert Street, the Cala Foods on Hyde, and in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel.
Lester utilized current west coast musicians of the time including Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead playing “Viola Lee Blues”, The Committee, and Ace Trucking Company. Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and Bill Kreutzmann appear in cameos.
Take the Money and Run
Take the Money and Run is a 1969 American mockumentary comedy film directed by Woody Allen and starring Allen and Janet Margolin (with Louise Lasser in a small role). Written by Allen and Mickey Rose, the film chronicles the life of Virgil Starkwell (Woody Allen), an inept bank robber.
Filmed in San Francisco and San Quentin State Prison, Take the Money and Run received Golden Laurel nominations for Male Comedy Performance (Woody Allen) and Male New Face (Woody Allen), and a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen (Woody Allen, Mickey Rose).
The film was shot on location in San Francisco, including one scene set in Ernie’s restaurant, whose striking red interior was immortalized in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Other scenes were filmed at San Quentin State Prison, where 100 prisoners were paid a small fee to work on the film.
The regular cast and crew were stamped each day with a special ink that glowed under ultra-violet light so the guards could tell who was allowed to leave the prison grounds at the end of the day. (One of the actors in the San Quentin scenes was Micil Murphy, who knew the prison well: he served five and a half years there, for armed robbery, before being paroled in 1966.)