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Catch
Me If You Can location: The ‘Tropicana Motel’: Roosevelt
Hotel, Hollywood
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CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
filming locations
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CREDITS
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After
the serious disappointment of A.I.
Artificial Intelligence, Steven
Spielberg bounced back with two corkers, Minority
Report and Catch Me
If You Can. From the stylish credits and
John Williams’ jazzy score, the incredible story
of opportunist con artist Frank Abagnale Jr (Leonardo
DiCaprio) bounces along at a lick, fast-paced, light-as-air
and with a Spielbergian theme of distant fathers.
Ricocheting around the USA from ‘Florida’
to ‘Louisiana’, the movie was shot largely
around L A,
and in Quebec
(the French scenes).
Montreal and Quebec stood in for ‘France’. Place
Royale, Quebec City, with Notre
Dame des Victoires in the background, stood
in for the square of ‘Montrichard’ where Abagnale
is arrested.
Union
Station, 800 North Alameda Street, between
the Santa Ana Freeway (US 101) and Cesar E. Chavez Avenue
(formerly Macy Street), downtown LA
(seen in plenty of movies, most famously Blade
Runner), became the grandiose ‘Miami Mutual
Bank’, where Frank comes onto the cashier, who
helpfully explains the workings of the system. Union
Station, built in 1939, considered to be
“The last of America’s great rail stations”
is a breathtaking taste of 30s glamour.
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Catch
Me If You Can location: The ‘Miami Mutual Bank':
Union Station, Alameda Street, downtown LA |
The ‘Tropicana Motel’, where Abagnale has
a really close encounter with Hanratty (Tom
Hanks) – palming him off with a walletful of
cardboard labels – is the rear of the Roosevelt
Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Boulevard.
The hotel opened in 1927, on the site of strawberry
fields. In 1929, the first Academy Awards (all three
of them) were presented in its Blossom Room (now the
Academy Room),
when Wings picked
up the first Best Picture statuette. Janet Gaynor and
Emil Jannings picked up the other two awards, for Best
Actress and Actor. The poolside area, where Abagnale
stays, is a forties addition to the hotel. The rooms
donít actually look out on to the street. The poolside Tropicana Bar is
real, though.
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Catch
Me If You Can location: The ‘Tropicana Motel entrance’:
Roosevelt Hotel rear, Hawthorn Avenue, Hollywood |
The real Tropicana stood on Sunset in West Hollywood
(Andy Warhol’s Heat,
his typically spaced-out take on Sunset
Boulevard was filmed there), but has since been
demolished.
School scenes were filmed at Rose
City High School, 325 South Oak Knoll Avenue
in Pasadena (which
also hosted filming for Legally
Blonde, Stuart
Little 2 and Pleasantville).
The Strong family home in ‘New Orleans’ is
in Altadena, and
the white house, where the Hanratty informs Frank’s
mother that he owes $1.3 million, is 3077
East California Boulevard, Pasadena.
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Catch
Me If You Can location: Frank's mother's house: East
California Boulevard, Pasadena |
In the real New
York, Frank makes a phone call on Park
Avenue at East 50th Street in front of what
was the old Pan Am Building.
The sleekly 60s New
York airport is also the real deal, the 1962
TWA Building at
JFK
Airport, which stood conveniently empty at the time
of filming. The smaller apartment that Frank and his
family move to after they lose their home, is on Buena
Vista Avenue, downtown Yonkers.
And also in Yonkers are the ëWashington DCí square, which is Larkin
Park; and Launderland
Laundromat, 151 Lake Avenue, where the rather
down-at-heel Hanratty does his laundry while Frank lives
the high life.
Back in California,
‘Monroe High School’ is Bellarmine
Jefferson High School, Burbank. The courthouse
is Old Orange Courthouse, 211
West Santa Ana Boulevard, Santa Ana, south
of LA.
The university, where Frank recruits ‘eight young
ladies’ as stewardesses, is the Fine
Arts Auditorium of the Ebell
of Los Angeles, 4401 West
Eighth Street at Lucerne Boulevard, off Wilshire
Boulevard, midtown. The complex, comprising a women's
club and the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, is a frequent film
location, seen in Forrest Gump
and Air
Force One among many other films.
‘Miami International Airport’, where Abagnale
evades the FBI by escorting a chorus line of flight
attendants, is Ontario Airport – which is not in Canada, but on I-10 east of LA
(seen also in American
Wedding).
The ‘FBI offices’are the old Boeing-Aerospace
facility in Downey.
The hotel where Frank enjoys himself with model Cheryl
(Jennifer Garner)
was the old (recently demolished) Ambassador
Hotel, 3400 Wilshire Boulevard. The Ambassador
also stands in for the ‘Miami’ hotel, where
Frank forges Pan An cheques with model plane labels.
Back on the east coast, the cathedral-like ‘Chase
Bank’is Brooklyn Borough
Hall. There was filming also at New
York’s Waldorf-Astoria
Hotel, Brooklyn bank and courthouse buildings;
and in Orange, New
Jersey.
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FILMING
LOCATIONS FOR CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
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TRAVEL
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