Harold And Maude | 1971
- Locations |
- San Francisco, California
- DIRECTOR |
- Hal Ashby
Another of those films that didn’t make much of a splash at the box office, but has gone on to be favourite with many people long after big blockbusters have faded.
It’s filmed around the Bay Area of Northern California.
The railway carriage home of Maude (Ruth Gordon) was parked on Oyster Point Boulevard at Eccles Avenue, Oyster Point, South San Francisco – just north of San Francisco International Airport.
A couple of miles to the west, the cemetery where Harold first glimpses Maude (and where there’s the monumental mausoleum building), is Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery, 1500 Old Mission Road in Colma, just south of the city of San Francisco near Daly City. Colma is something of cemetery central, founded in 1924 as San Francisco's necropolis and most of its land is dedicated to cemeteries. With the population of the dead outnumbering the living by over a thousand to one, Colma's sardonic motto is It's great to be alive in Colma. Holy Cross is the last resting place of baseball hero (and one-time husband of Marilyn Monroe) Joe DMaggio.
South of the Airport, the Chasen family mansion where Harold (Bud Cort) stages elaborate mock suicides to gain the attention of his flighty mother (Vivian Pickles) is Rose Court Mansion, Stacey Court, off Redington Road, in Hillsborough, northwest of San Mateo, Route 101 about 15 miles south of San Francisco. Remember, this is a private home, so please respect the owners' privacy.
About 12 miles further south on Route 101, between San Francisco and San Jose, is Palo Alto. Here you'll find St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, 751 Waverly Street at Homer Avenue, where the pair meets up over the offer of some licorice.
The vast, military-style cemetery is Golden Gate National Cemetery, 1300 Sneath Lane, just northwest of San Francisco International Airport in San Bruno.
The tree, liberated by Maude, was on Marshall Street, between Hamilton and Winslow, in Redwood City, between San Mateo and Palo Alto.
The toll bridge, where they’re chased by the cop (an unbilled Tom Skerritt under the name of M Borman), was Dumbarton Bridge, carrying Route 84 across the bay from Palo Alto and Union City. A new and wider bridge opened in 1982, and the central 'vertical-lift' span of the original bridge was demolished in a controlled explosion in 1984.
The seaside ruins where Harold’s Uncle Victor (Charles Tyner) extols the virtues of war in an attempt to get the boy to enlist in the army, and where Maude turns up as a peace campaigner, are the ruins of Sutro Baths on San Francisco’s west coast.
The funfair, where Maude tosses the ‘Harold loves Maude’ token into the sea, is the famous the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, 400 Beach Street, Santa Cruz, seen in The Lost Boys and Killer Klowns From Outer Space.
Harold’s customised sports hearse finally plunges over the bluff at Mori Point, south of Pacifica, on the west coast south of Daly City.
