Bodie's Baddies: The Fire Station

I thought I would end my Bodie's Baddies phase by showing a little more of the fire station. It is one of the few buildings left that you can point out in the movie.
The front of it. Some thieves stole the bell on top. The caretaker at Bodie heard the bell which woke him up. Eventually, the bell was found and restored to its rightful place. Bodie's Baddies (Youtube Version)

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)

Bodies Baddies: Lottie's Place

Where I am in this entry and the last one makes more sense if you see the video. I will link it below. Some of these structures in the last blog and the next one are really close to each other. The picture above was taken many years back. The picture below is just from my last trip. You can see the place has held up quite well.

I covered the Lottie Johl story a few blogs back which I will link at the bottom, but this is where she lived. It was later the post office for limited time. This was shot at an angle.

Lottie's Gravesite blog

Bodie's Baddies (Youtube Version)

Bodie's Baddies: U.S. Hotel, Sam Leon's Cafe, Barbershop

We are now in the second phase of my last visit to Bodie ghost town. In this phase, I wll cover some of the places on mainstreet that I did not do two years ago. It will also supplement what I did on this blog two years ago. I will post a link at the bottom if you have not seen what I did in Dec. 2008.

What I did back then was put up a bunch of scenes of the movie, Hell's Heroes, which used Bodie at the beginning and the ending of the movie. Originally, I put up many scenes from the movie in the old channel since it was a rare movie at the time. Since then it has become a little easier to find. The movie is important since it shows what the town once was before the big fire that wiped out most of the town a few years after it was filmed. I have gone back and done some re-editing of some of those blog entries to make them more current with what I will have now.

This phase deals with the scenes filmed on Bodie's mainstreet. Keep in mind that am combining the real history with the reel history of cinema. While the "Bad Man of Bodie" is partly legend, this movie does fit in well with the real history of Bodie.

This first picture I am showing is an old one from two years ago, but I wanted to use it again for point of reference. We are on mainstreet looking to the west. If I were to turn around behind me to the right you would see the remains of the bank. However, from the point of view of the picture, if you turn to the left you would see where the U.S. Hotel would have been.

This is a picture of the U.S. Hotel. It was wiped out in the big fire of June 23, 1932. You do see this structure in the movie.
In the 1920's, a chinese man by the name of Sam Leon owned the U.S. Hotel. When the hotel burned down he moved down across the street to start his new bar (or cafe). In the first picture above, it is part of the first structure you see on the right side of the street.
Sam Leon is the one of the left. The barbershop is on the right. Eventually, he moved his business to the DeChambeau Hotel. Here is one of my pictures from some years back.
Here is from my latest trip. You will notice that they have added on the barber shop pole sign.

I should take this time to mention that this structures are in a state of arrested decay. Meaning, the park employees do just enough to keep them from falling over. Nothing is rebuilt and is close as you will get to what the town was like when it was still functioning.

Bodie's Hell's Heroes blog entries from 2008

Bodie's Baddies (Youtube Version)