October 9th and 16th | 8 films
Join Turner Classic Movies for two Mondays in October as we explore full-length and short films featuring some of the United States’ most picturesque and famous landmarks and national parks, coast to coast.
From the gargantuan skyscrapers and statues of New York to the jaw-dropping Grand Canyon to the vast landscape of Yosemite National Park, not only have so many films captured the beauty and wonder of these sites, but many stand as supporting players in the plotline.
While director Alfred Hitchcock was a native of England, after his move to the United States to continue his filmmaking career many of his films would be set in American cities, with several monuments and parks featuring prominently.
In Saboteur (1942), when three workers in an aircraft carrier production plant literally bump into each other, this chance encounter begins a chain reaction of events that bring Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) into the center of a ring of saboteurs. After Barry and his friend Ken Mason (an uncredited Virgil Summers) return a dropped $100 bill and letter to Frank Fry (Norman Lloyd), a fire breaks out in the plant. As Fry hands Mason a fire extinguisher, the blaze grows out of control, killing Mason. Once the investigation into the fatal fire points the finger at Barry as the prime suspect, the film’s action travels eastward from metro Los Angeles all the way to New York as Barry tries to exonerate himself and track down Fry, who not only disappeared but was never said to exist as an employee to begin with. Crossing paths with multiple members of the ring in his travels, the true nature of the aircraft carrier fire as part of the saboteurs’ path of destruction comes to light. Barry’s shocking reunion with Fry near the Brooklyn Navy Yard occurs as the latter is about to set another catastrophe in motion. Their eventual physical confrontation in the torch of the Statue of Liberty leaves Fry hanging off the edge of the statue’s hand; holding on for dear life as the seam of his jacket’s sleeve begins to rip.
According to Wikipedia, the Statue of Liberty (officially The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World) was designed by sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi and was a gift to the U.S. from France. Situated on Liberty Island within New York Harbor, the copper statue depicting the Roman goddess Libertas has become an almost universal symbol not only for New York as a whole (so much so, its silhouette is on the state’s license plates), but as a visual representation of freedom. Standing over 305 feet tall from the ground to her torch, the patina that has formed over the surface throughout the years created the green hue we are familiar with. Visitors are permitted to climb up into the Statue of Liberty’s crown, but not to the torch.
A man mistaken for another, a person being framed for a crime they didn’t commit, the unraveling of a nefarious plot, and a showdown at a gigantic national monument was revisited by Hitchcock seventeen years later in 1959’s North by Northwest. Assumed to be a government agent by the name of George Kaplan, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is thrust into a spy ring, which includes the evil Vandamm (James Mason), that is trying to smuggle microfilm loaded with secret government details out of the country. Accused of murdering a government diplomat and a target for the spies, Thornhill goes on the run and must dodge frequent attempts to kill him (with one attempt brilliantly and famously showcased in the crop duster scene). Along with Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), an undercover agent who has infiltrated the group, all roads eventually lead to Mount Rushmore. The monument provides a breathtaking albeit harrowing view and is where there will be the inevitable fight to the end.
Located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, according to Wikipedia, Mount Rushmore (known as the Shrine of Democracy) is carved with the faces of four American presidents: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and George Washington. Designed by Gutzon Borglum and assisted by his son Lincoln, each carving is approximately 60 feet tall and the location of the monument was selected for optimum solar exposure. In addition, the National Park Service consults with 21 Associated Tribal Nations “who have historical, spiritual, and cultural ties to the Black Hills”, according to an NPS page dedicated to the site. Motorcycle enthusiasts participating in the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally often incorporate Mount Rushmore into their ride route.
The similarities between North by Northwest and Saboteur were not lost on many, with several of the concepts addressed in “Hitchcock/Truffaut”, the 1966 book comprised of interviews between Hitchcock and French critic and filmmaker François Truffaut from four years prior. As they are discussing various elements in comparison to one another, including the faceoffs at the two monuments, the hands of one person pulling another to safety, along with the phallic symbolism in the closing shot of the former film, Truffaut states: “In some respects, North by Northwest can be seen as a remake of Saboteur”, to which Hitchcock replied:
“The approach to both pictures was a desire to cover various parts of America in the same way that The Thirty-nine Steps traveled across England and Scotland. But North by Northwest had a bigger leading man and I managed to embody Mount Rushmore in the action; I’d been wanting to do that for years. “
The woman in 1954’s Dangerous Mission that is a witness to a New York murder connected to organized crime, flees the area in the opposite direction finding work in Glacier National Park. Louise Graham (Piper Laurie) gets out of town to start fresh as a worker in the connecting hotel. Two men (Victor Mature and Vincent Price, in a role that was quite a departure from the macabre parts he would be most known for) are fighting for her attention, each with opposing motives of protection and annihilation towards one another, as well as Louise. Subplots involving park rangers, a Native American man wanted for murder, and his daughter falling in love with the worst possible man all culminate in a battle in the park’s snow and ice-covered terrain.
In northwestern Montana near the Canadian border, according to the National Park Service page for the site, Glacier National Park boasts over a million acres of land, which includes 26 glaciers (with the largest one, Harrison Glacier, being over 1.6 million square meters),175 mountains, hundreds of lakes and streams, and an abundance of bears in the area. Originally established in 1910, it was combined with the Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta Canada to form the Waterton Glacier International Peace Park in 1932, which was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.
While Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow have been popular subjects in various films, that doesn’t mean that other movies haven’t borrowed their story. 1950’s Gun Crazy features a couple that turns to crime to earn a living, bound together by passion and a mutual love of firearms. Young Bart Tare is sent to a reformatory after breaking into a store to steal a gun. Following his release and a stint in the military, a now-adult Bart (John Dall) comes back to his hometown to try to figure out his next move for the future. A trip to a local carnival where he watches the act of crack shot Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) and competes with her earns him a win, a job with the carnival, and a new love. They end up marrying and soon run out of cash while on their honeymoon, so Laurie makes the unbelievable threat that her husband join her in criminal activity or she’s gone. Laurie’s true love is actually the thrill of committing crimes and she has no problem with violence, while Bart has been extremely wary of harming another since he was young. As expected, all the robberies they commit earn them plenty of notoriety and media exposure. With his conscience getting to him, Bart has had enough, but Laurie convinces her husband to help pull one last job that will allow them to escape the country and live comfortably. Only this holdup will result in multiple murders by the criminal couple, an attempted escape into mountainous forests while being pursued by the authorities and an unsurprising yet tragic demise in marshlands.
One of the locations for the film was at the Angeles National Forest, which is located approximately 16 miles northeast of Los Angeles in Arcadia, California. Established in 1892, according to the National Park Service page for the site, the Angeles National Forest is over 700,000 acres in size. Visitors can hike, camp, fish, enjoy the wildlife and ski all in one place.
In addition to these films, you can bask in the wonder of California’s Sequoia National Forest in Sequoia (1934), the Empire State Building in King Kong (1933), the Washington Monument in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and multiple national parks in Arizona, California, Illinois and South Dakota in How the West Was Won (1962). The special theme also includes select shorts of James A. FitzPatrick’s TravelTalks. Many of these sites are maintained by the National Park Service and welcome visitors from all over the world, so you can make that special trip to see the stunning sites encapsulated in these movies.
