Wuthering Heights | 1939
- Locations |
- Los Angeles, California
- DIRECTOR |
- William Wyler
Made entirely in California, I guess this first sound adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel will always be the definitive version for romantics and it does remain one of the screen's classic romances.
Kilos of heather were imported from northern England (that's as specific as the press reported) and replanted on the hills of Thousand Oaks, north of Los Angeles, as well as in the studio.
The 'Wuthering Heights' house was built on what was the Janss Conejo Ranch, a sheep and cattle grazing area which became much used from the Thirties to the Sixties – more usually as a Western backdrop for film and TV shows.
It sits within what's known as the 'Studio Zone', a thirty mile radius of Hollywood inside which studios are not obliged to pay extra for 'on-location' shooting. The area is now Wildwood Regional Park, 928 W Avenida De Los Arboles.
The same spread was seen as the ranch of Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and the area was also seen in Elvis Presley's Flaming Star (1960), the 1939 Bette Davis tearjerker Dark Victory and even Stanley Kubrick's 1960 Spartacus.
Overlooking the spread, the rocky crags of the 'Yorkshire Moors' are Mount Clef Ridge, an outcrop of volcanic rock, although 'Penistone Crag' – the favoured spot of Cathy (Merle Oberon) and Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier) – was reproduced, along with all the interiors, at what was the old Samuel Goldwyn Studios, now known as simply The Lot, 7200 Santa Monica Boulevard at North Formosa Avenue in West Hollywood.
William Wyler also made his 1946 Best Bicture Oscar-winner The Best Years Of Our Lives here, and other productions made at this venerable studio include Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940), Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959), Joseph L Mankiewicz's Guys And Dolls (1955) and Robert Wise's West Side Story.
The real ducks and geese in Wuthering Heights look cute, but do you notice how quiet they are? That's because they had their vocal cords snipped to prevent extraneous sounds on the soundtrack. The good old days, eh?
