Saturday, December 18, 2010

Bodie's Baddies: Return to Bodie Bank

We have been here before since it is one of the key points in Hell's Heroes. I will link the old blog at the bottom. At that time I thought there was little chance the interiors were filmed here. In the video I mentioned I had changed my mine, but it is still not too clear to me what they did here. While I do not think this is something to lose sleep over, let me give you some of the possibilties that could have gone on here.

First, we know they were in front of the real bank. Lots of old pictures confirm that, and even with very little left of the bank we can still show they were there. Check my old Bodie Bank blog below for that. Here is all that is left of the bank. It is the old picture I posted before of the vault.
Looking at the movie pictures it becomes very difficult to make any connection with what they show in the movie with the remains of the vault.
My conclusion was they must have used a set elsewhere, or another place in Bodie for the interiors of the bank.
In 1913, a picture inside the bank was taken of Stuart Cain (left) and Ed Stinson. You will notice the huge desk they would do business with customers is almost the same. The puzzling thing is you see the main vault (that we have remains of) on the right side, but some other type of closet area is on the left. Keep in mind this is about 15 years before they filmed the movie.
In the movie, the bank area looks a little smaller than this. On the other hand, they do not show you everything in the bank. While I am still open to the idea they filmed elsewhere, I think there is a good possiblity they created a fascade of walls and vault inside the bank. That huge desk seems about right, but does not go over far enough in the movie. Is that "wall" draping down on the desk? That clock in the movie looks like it is holding down something. At the end of the day, do I care either way? Not really, but it is interesting to a point with me about what they may have done here. I thought I would close this one off by showing you some of what the museum has on the bank.

Old Blog on Bodie Bank

Bodie's Baddies (Youtube Version)

Bodie's Baddies (Vimeo Version)

No comments: