As Erroll Garner’s jazz standard “Misty” plays softly on a record player, Clint Eastwood’s character, Dave, is roused from sleep. Slowly he opens his eyes and, as the camera pulls back he realizes someone is standing over him in the dimly lit room. With a wanton scream and violent lunge, Jessica Walter, the actress playing Evelyn, plunges a kitchen knife down toward Dave. As the blade arrows toward his left eye, he rolls to the right, but not before feeling the rush of air and hearing the sibilant hiss of the blade as it passes his left temple and plants itself in the pillow with a powerful thud. As Evelyn runs from the bedroom with an incoherent curse he rolls onto the floor of the bedroom. Then he pushes himself up from the floor with unsteady hands and stands looking at the door through which Evelyn has run.
This pivotal scene from Play Misty for Me, the directorial debut for actor Clint Eastwood, bespeaks the overall tone of this thriller sometimes compared to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Shot on location in Carmel, Play Misty for Me was a story about a one-woman reign of terror — and it was revolutionary filmmaking. That it was made for less than $800,000 is extraordinary. When filming began in the autumn of 1970, the Monterey Peninsula had seen many filmmakers come to the area for exterior location shooting. Eastwood’s decision to film both exterior and interior shots in and around Carmel ultimately led to it being favorably compared to European films of the time for its intimate feel and immediacy. Play Misty for Me became a critical and financial success and gave the Monterey Peninsula additional tourist appeal.
According to the Monterey County Film Commission, a nonprofit organization that promotes the areas locations, crew, and businesses to the film industry, there have been more than 190 movies with scenes shot in Monterey County; most in and around the Monterey Bay. Greg Robinson, executive director, says, “The financial impact on filmmaking in any community can be staggering. A feature-length movie might generate over $30 million for local businesses through crews, catering, set design, location rentals, transportation, and hundreds of other components that go into making a movie. The movie makers also create a positive impact on tourist awareness.” Robinson believes the impact is vital for the areas economic vitality.
Although Evelyn’s homicidal mania helped keep the tension alive in Play Misty for Me other movies have placed spouses or lovers in peril. In Julie, with Doris Day and Louis Jourdan, our heroine plays a flight attendant who thinks her husband wants to kill her and is chased along 17-Mile Drive and into and out of various locations including The Lodge at Pebble Beach. Doris Day loved the area so much during filming she eventually moved her primary residence to Carmel Valley and lives there to this day. Basic Instinct, with Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, is a taut erotic thriller about murder and betrayal. In one scene, a home owned by the Sharon Stone character meant to be in Marin County is actually located on Spindrift Drive in the Carmel Highlands. The extraordinary scene in From Here to Eternity in which Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster kiss passionately on the beach in Hawaii was actually set south of the Monterey Bay on a beach in Big Sur. Due to a technical glitch, the scene was shot more than eight months after principal filming had ended in Hawaii.
Filmmakers have also been drawn to the area for its small-town feel and classically romantic locations. In the 1961 film The Parent Trap with Maureen O’Hara and Brian Keith the 5,200- acre Stuyvesant Fish ranch, just south of the Carmel River, was used for exteriors as well as the golf links as Pebble Beach. The family story of twins who, separated by divorce, try to reunite their parents includes the requisite Hollywood happy ending. The classic National Velvet, starring a 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor and co-starring Mickey Rooney, used extensive Pebble Beach locations and many scenes include both Taylor and Rooney.
Whether for love, lust, comedy, or drama the Monterey Peninsula continues to draw filmmakers to the area for its rugged and sublime scenery. Lovely beaches, soft forest glades, and spectacular cliff-side views have all played parts in many of the movies we all enjoy. Play Misty for Me drew on all the location possibilities for most of the exterior scenes. These scenes also moved the story forward with the help of music and direction. In what many call the first music video, Eastwood inserts a montage of himself and actress Donna Mills walking, talking, and making love in various parts of the area to the music of Robert Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. It created the perfect pause in the tense action thriller and, at the same time, showed viewers some of the most breathtaking views of the Peninsula ever seen in a major motion picture. In another scene from the movie, the backdrop is the Monterey Jazz Festival. Cameras easily moved in and out of an afternoon performance. To watch this movie is to wonder if Eastwood was at the same time writing a love letter to the people and the area with the making of this film.
Dave’s arm and leg are badly slashed. Suddenly Evelyn lunges at him with the knife raised. He fends her off her strike with his bare hand. Grabbing the knife by the blade, he holds on, deflecting another blow. Evelyn turns and Dave sees his opportunity. He pulls back his right arm and punches Evelyn in the face. Dropping the knife, she falls backward toward the sliding glass door to the deck overlooking the ocean. Glass shatters as she falls through the slider and her body continues across the deck and to the rail, tumbling over and down toward the ocean. Her screams are heard as she sails into the void. The scream is cut short as she strikes the first outcropping of rocks. As Evelyn strikes the ocean the movie closes with her floating face up in the water. An overhead shot pulls back, revealing a breathtaking view of Big Sur while Misty plays in the background.
Surrounded by the beauty of the Monterey Peninsula it’s easy to understand the desire of moviemakers to film in the area. It’s exciting to feel a part of the action by going to the location of past films and many tours of the area include those stops. Residents and visitors relish imagining being a part of a film shot here and the translucent images of movie stars past surround us. Seeing them in the village shops and restaurants gives a thrill seldom experienced in other parts of the country. So, the next time you walk along Cannery Row keep a sharp eye out for Marilyn Monroe. Was that Jimmy Dean over there? Doris Day just dropped in at her beloved Cypress Inn. Oh, isn’t that Kim Novak walking Carmel Beach? Did I just see Joan Fontaine having brunch at the La Playa? Isn’t that Sharon Stone going into the Clement?
It’s 5:30 p.m. and Clint has just finished a round of golf, and now he’s strolling into the Mission Ranch Restaurant to see what the chef has cooking in the kitchen. Cut and print!
WELCOME TO THE SET!
Tourists have always looked for the locations from their favorite movies in the area and Monterey Movie Tours accommodates them with a one-of-a-kind site-seeing tour. The focus is on the movies, actors, and locations filmed over the past 90 years in and around the Monterey Peninsula. In a customized luxury coach with eight video monitors for viewing movie clips, owner Doug Lumsden narrates a tour filled with scenes from every ones favorite films. In 2001, with the 30th anniversary re-release of Play Misty for Me as a DVD he produced the one and only tour of the locations used for the movie. Lumsden includes earlier movies such as A Summer Place starring Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue, Clash by Night starring Barbara Stanwick and Marilyn Monroe and even Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home with scenes filmed at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He also works closely with the Monterey County Film Commission and continues to update his file of current and classic movie scenes from around this area. For more information about Doug’s movie tours, call (800) 209-3370.
SOME MOVIES FILMED ON THE MONTEREY PENINSULA
The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938
Anna Karenina, 1935
Basic Instinct, 1992
Blind Date, 1987
Brainstorm, 1983
The Candidate, 1972
Cannery Row, 1982
Captain January, 1936
Captains Courageous, 1937
The Color Purple, 1985
The Count of Monte Cristo, 1934
Deep Valley, 1947
Doctor Dolittle, 1967
East of Eden, 1955
The Eiger Sanction, 1975
Escape to Witch Mountain, 1975
Fast and the Furious, 1954
From Here to Eternity, 1953
Gentleman’s Agreement, 1947
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1947
The Graduate, 1967
Harry and the Hendersons, 1987
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, 1973
Julie, 1956
Lassie Come Home, 1943
The Limey, 1998
The Love Bug, 1969
Monterey Pop, 1969
The Muppet Movie, 1979
Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935
National Velvet, 1944
Of Mice and Men, 1939
The Parent Trap, 1961
Play Misty for Me, 1971
The Sandpiper, 1965
Sleeper, 1973
Star Trek IV: The Voyage
A Summer Place, 1959
Tortilla Flat, 1942
The Trial of Billy Jack, 1974
Turner and Hooch, 1989
Vertigo, 1958
For more information on movie making on the Monterey Peninsula, visit www.filmmonterey.org
