What's Love Got To Do With It | 1993

Angela Bassett takes on the formidable task of portraying Tina Turner in this biopic which, though set all over the US, was made almost entirely around Los Angeles.

Concert scenes were shot in the State Theater, 703 South Broadway (currently leased to a church; Judy Garland appeared here in 1929 with the Gumm Sisters); and the Embassy Auditorium, 851 South Grand Avenue (now converted to residential us), both downtown Los Angeles.

The ‘Ritz Club, New York’, which no longer exists, is represented by the Avalon Hollywood, 1735 North Vine Street, Hollywood opposite the Capitol Records Tower, at Hollywood Boulevard. Built as the Hollywood Playhouse in 1927, the theatre became El Capitan in 1942, venue for many TV shows including This Is Your Life in the Fifties. It became the Hollywood Palace Theater in 1964 and rock/jazz club Avalon in 2003. It’s seen also in Against All Odds and for the Rush concert in I Love You, Man.

Harlem’s famous ‘Apollo Theater’ is played by the Warner Grand Theater, 478 West Sixth Street in San Pedro (you can see the exterior of the theatre in Pearl Harbor), and the Sixties dance show uses Hollywood’s Nickelodeon on Sunset (previously the Earl Carroll Theatre, Star Search Theater and the Aquarius), 6230 Sunset Boulevard, now used for TV productions.

The briefly-glimpsed theatre, where Turner is about to perform when she finally cracks and does a runner, is S Charles Lee’s Streamline Moderne masterpiece, the Academy Theater, 3100 Manchester Boulevard at Crenshaw Boulevard (now used as a church), in Inglewood, just east of Los Angeles Airport.

The ‘Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco’, where Tina makes her solo début, is the Ballroom of the Park Plaza Hotel, 607 South Park View Street, downtown Los Angeles, seen in countless films, including Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York, Richard Attenborough’s biopic Chaplin and Steven Spielberg’s Hook among many others.

Ike (Laurence Fishburne) and Tina have a massive bust-up at Johnie’s Broiler in Downey, south LA, seen also in Michael Mann’s Heat, Reality Bites and Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. The diner closed in 2001, and was almost entirely demolished, before an amazing restoration as Bob’s Big Boy Broiler, 7447 Firestone Boulevard.

It’s the real Turner home, 4263 Olympiad Drive, View Park, between Baldwin Hills and Windsor Hills, seen in the movie. While researching the picture, it was discovered that the house had remained virtually untouched since the Sixties, even down to the lamps, the wallpaper – and a portrait of Ike. It came on the market in 2016.

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