Netflix background watching of Los Angeles


Everyone loves a sentimental journey - seeing the old neighborhood, that sort of thing. And luckily for me, one of my old 'hoods was Los Angeles in the 1980s. And that means that I can see it in the backgrounds of low-budget movies on Netflix. I do it all of the time.

But it gets better. Because I'm not just interested in a sentimental journey, I like time-traveling to Los Angeles in any era. And since so many TV shows and movies were made in the Los Angeles area, I can see a lot of it, just by "background watching".

A few days ago I discovered an old TV show from 1955 called "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". They're short stories (mysteries I guess you'd call them) shot in Los Angeles. And while I'm sure that the stories are wonderful, and the acting is great, I'm looking at the backgrounds.

The first episode, called "Revenge" (remember that these were thrilling mystery stories) is set in a trailer court near the beach where the lead characters have recently moved to relax. Of course, there's a mystery. But what really caught my eye was the Pacific Coast Highway, near Malibu, which I'm very familiar with. I immediately posted some screenshots on Facebook, hoping to get the help of my California friends, which I did.

This looks to be a trailer court that's still there, looking towards Will Rogers Beach, on the Pacific Coast Highway a little south of Sunset. I know that Alfred Hitchcock didn't intend for this to be a "slice of life" from 1955 Los Angeles, but it is.





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