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Thursday December 12th 2024

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid | 1982

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid filming location: Mayfield Senior School, Pasadena, Los Angeles
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid location: Reardon goes to Juliet’s mansion: Mayfield Senior School, Pasadena, Los Angeles

Since Carl Reiner’s homage to films noir ingeniously incorporates clips from Hollywood classics, most of the movie is filmed on sets which accurately match up to their Forties counterparts.

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid filming location: Union Station, South Alameda Street, downtown Los Angeles
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid location: Cary Grant follows Reardon onto the train: Union Station, South Alameda Street, downtown Los Angeles

There’s a sprinkling of real Los Angeles locations, notably Union Station, 800 North Alameda Street, downtown, where Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin) is followed onto the train by Cary Grant (in a clip from Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion). The station’s soaring interior has been seen in countless films, most notably as the futuristic cop station in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, and as 'Grand Central Station, New York' in Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor.

Reardon researches into ‘Captain’ Cody Jarrett at Los Angeles Central Library, South Flower Street at West Fifth Street, downtown LA. You probably wouldn’t be able to tell, but it was used as the interior of ‘New York Public Library’ in Ghostbusters.

The mansion of Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) is Mayfield Senior School, 500 Bellefontaine Street, which which has been seen in Devil in a Blue Dress, with Denzel Washington, the Eddie Murphy remake of The Nutty Professor) and dinosequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park.