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Chicago, 1949. "Theater traffic on State Street." 35mm negative by Stanley Kubrick, on the outside looking in, for Look magazine. View full size.
The building's still there, but unfortunately the interior was gutted in the mid-late 80s and turned into the studio and offices for the local ABC TV station.
Anybody care to venture a guess on Stanley's camera/film settings here? There's a blurred car in the center, and blurred people under the theater entrance. What would have been 'typical' pro camera settings then?
The same cast of Jack Carson, Marion Hutton and Robert Alda performed in the play John Loves Mary (1947, by Norman Krasna) at the Strand Theatre in New York in February of 1949. Carson was also in the film version (1949) starring Ronald Reagan and Patricia Neal. The Chicago Theatre was built in 1921, is seven stories tall, fills half a city block, and seats 3,600.
Greyhound buses linked up on the right. My Chicago expert (and wife) points out that the Greyhound bus station is to the right around the next corner on Randolph St.
He Walked By Night (1948), B & W film noir, with Richard (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) Basehart. Jack Webb was also in this film, and a friendship he formed with a police technical advisor led to the creation of Dragnet.
Kubrick's camera appears to be about 25 feet off the ground for this shot. How did he get the camera up that high? Maybe a cherry picker? Or, maybe a sturdy tripod with a vertical extension shaft?
[This way. -tterrace]
Is this the same "Stanley Kubrick" that directed movies like "2001: a space Odyssey" and "Full Metal Jacket"?
This does show that 35mm film can produce a wonderful nighttime image.
[Yes, that Kubrick. And an early example of the "Kubrick perspective." -tterrace]
Kubrick's photo is from the same vantage as an earlier Shorpy photo from 1907.
Wow, this is just how I remember 1950s Chicago! When our family took the train from Buffalo to St. Paul, we had dinner at some fancy Chicago restaurant. It truly was a Toddling Town to this 5-year-old Upstate New York Country Girl!
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