611 Laguna,
then and now. |
This building on the
northwest corner of Laguna and Hayes Streets was built in the 1880s by Colonel
Michael Hayes to serve as an amusement pavilion, which Hayes hoped would
attract traffic and lead to the extension of a streetcar line here. In Erich
Von Stroheim's 1925 silent masterpiece Greed, the property at 611
Laguna stands in for 611 Polk Street, the office of McTeague, a dentist.
Based on the novel McTeague by San Franciscan Frank
Norris, Greed takes place mostly in Polk Gulch. Norris grew up on Van
Ness Avenue and used Polk Gulch locations in the novel to brilliant effect
in capturing the blue collar character of the neighborhood at the end of
the 19th Century. The structures at the actual Polk locations had not survived
the 1906 Earthquake as those on Laguna had, and in 1925 were, according
to perfectionist Von Stroheim, too modern to play themselves. (Norris' book
was written in 1899.) Von Stroheim insisted on using locations named in
Norris' novel such as the Orpheum Theatre,
Cliff
House, and St. Paulus Evangelical Lutheran
Church in San Francisco, and the Oakland
train depot, Placer County, and Death Valley elsewhere. Greed is the subject
of much fascination in cinema history. Von Stroheim's epic character study
was originally nine hours long. The studio, MGM, cut the film to commercial
length. The result is a 2 and-a-quarter hour Cliff's Notes version of Von
Stroheim's vision, yet it's still considered by many to be among the greatest
films ever made. Greed depicts the undoing of McTeague (Gibson Gowland),
his bride (Zasu Pitts), and friend Marcus (Jean Hersholt) that starts when
the Pitts character wins the lottery after throwing Marcus over for McTeague.
More
about Greed |
