The Day The Earth Stood Still | 1951
- Locations |
- Washington DC;
- Los Angeles, California
- DIRECTOR |
- Robert Wise
Famously set in Washington DC, Robert Wise's classic sci-fi was filmed for the most part at 20th Century Fox Studios in Los Angeles. A Second Unit filmed scenes in DC but none of the main cast left California.
The alien craft carrying Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and his robot backup Gort passes over DC, giving views of the Lincoln Memorial, the US Capitol Building, the Jefferson Memorial and the maybe less familiar Smithsonian Institution Building (The Castle), 1000 Jefferson Drive SW, before touching down on The Ellipse, the 52-acre green oval standing between the White House and The Mall.
Notice that once the craft has landed, the surrounding backdrop of DC disappears, leaving nothing but trees. The wide exterior shots were filmed at the RKO Encino Movie Ranch, which stood northeast of Burbank and Balboa Boulevards, now occupied by Encino Village in the San Fernando Valley.
"They're here! They landed on The Mall!" Cries a distressed onlooker running across 15th Street NW from the Treasury Building toward the Hotel Washington, and into F Street NW in the real DC.
The address of the boarding house where Klaatu lodges as Mr Carpenter, '1412 Harvard Street NW' is real enough but the building looks nothing like the one seen onscreen, which is the studio backlot in LA.
When Bobby (Billy Gray) shows Mr Carpenter the sights of the city, looking carefully, you'll notice that the close-ups of the two actors use back-projection, while long shots feature a couple of stand-ins.
So Bobby is able apparently to visit his father's grave in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, before moving on to the Lincoln Memorial.
When the seemingly awestruck Carpenter, reading the memorial's inscription, says he'd like to meet a man like that, Bobby quickly suggests the Einstein-like scientist Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe) who, conveniently, happens to live in DC.
The brief exterior of the Professor's house is 1609 16th Street NW (currently hidden behind lots of foliage), east of Dupont Circle, but we're soon back to the studio.
When the army is mobilised there are shots of Fort Meade in Maryland, (the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment helpfully supplied soldiers and vehicles for the production).
The montage as the military springs into action includes (what is now) Ronald Reagan National Airport, DC's Union Station, 50 Massachusetts Avenue NE (more recently featured in Ridley Scott's Hannibal), and the Warner Building, 1299 Pennsylvania Avenue at E Street NW.
