Saboteur | 1942

Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) is the innocent man suspected of being a wartime saboteur. Though made largely at Universal Studios in Hollywood, there are the usual Hitchcockian landmark locations, largely supplied by a second unit.

Kane thumbs across the desert near Lone Pine, on Route 395, central California. This is a much-visited desert location, usually featuring the photogenic rock formations of the Alabama Hills, can be seen in films as diverse as 1953 adventure King Of The Khyber Rifles and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

He arrives at the ghost town which overlooks the saboteurs’ next target, Hoover Dam, over the Colorado River just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. You can visit the dam, near Boulder City, on US Highway 93 South, about 20 miles from Las Vegas.

Arriving in New York, Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane) is held captive in the Rockefeller Center, and there’s a shoot-out at a film screening in Radio City Music Hall, 1260 Sixth Avenue at 50th Street. The extravagant art deco interior was largely recreated in the studio. Radio City is also featured in The Godfather, Woody Allen’s Radio Days and the musical Annie. There’s a one-hour walking tour of Radio City’s interior that departs from the Music Hall lobby. Tickets are sold on a first come, first served basis.

A new ending was added, incorporating shots of the real SS Normandie, supposedly in the ‘Brooklyn Navy Yard’. The ship had been burned in an accidental fire at a Manhattan pier in February 1942. Listing under the weight of water used to extinguish the blaze, a shot of the ailing ship was inserted into the movie, a supposed victim of the saboteur. The Navy was not best pleased, but the shot remains nevertheless.

Most of the famous climax atop the Statue of Liberty was filmed in the studio, where parts of the landmark statue were recreated.

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