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Sunday December 1st 2024

Bell Book and Candle | 1958

Bell, Book and Candle filming location: Flatiron Building, New York
Bell, Book and Candle filming location: Flatiron Building, New York

This adaptation of John Van Druten’s stage comedy has James Stewart as a New York publisher slowly coming to the conclusion that girlfriend Kim Novak and her weird family are witches (the title refers to the objects used in the ritual of excommunication).

The film is set largely in a Hollywood studio-reconstruction of New York’s Greenwich Village. Stewart and Novak are magically transported to the roof of the Flatiron Building, 175 Fifth Avenue, the oddly-shaped skyscraper occupying the triangular block where Fifth Avenue crosses Broadway. Built in 1902, it was in its day, the tallest building in the world.

Seen also in Warren Beatty’s Reds, the 1998 remake of Godzilla, the Flatiron has since found major screen fame as the office of The Daily Bugle in Spider-Man.