Volume 43- No. 36
By Mark Carlson
San Diego is only about 100 miles from the dream factory of Hollywood. And in the last 90 years scores of major motion pictures and television shows have been filmed in our own city, not just ‘Simon & Simon,’ but blockbusters like Top Gun and Some Like it Hot made our little city famous to the rest of the country.
It actually started in 1923 during the short-lived silent film era. Out on San Diego Bay, the script of an adventure thriller called ‘The Eleventh Hour’ required a sequence in which pilot Dick Kerwood would fly a J-1 Standard biplane over a The Paper - 760.747.7119
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surfaced submarine, whereupon the sub would fire upon the plane, causing the latter to explode in mid-air.
The U.S. Navy provided an SClass submarine from the Point Loma base. Kerwood set the plane with a charge of dynamite that was supposed to explode ten seconds after he set the timer and bailed out. However, when he reached 2,800 feet over the anchored sub, Kerwood set the timer and began to climb out. The plane suddenly exploded. He was stunned almost to the point of unconsciousness but managed to pull the ripcord and drop into San Diego Bay. The film also featured a young man
named Alan Hale, who would become one of Hollywood's most beloved character actors.
Three years later, the man who made The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera into movie legends came to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot to star in Tell it to the Marines. Silent film icon Lon Chaney portrayed Sergeant O’Hara, a ramrod-straight nononsense Marine drill instructor. In one of the few roles in which Chaney wore no makeup, he fitted the role of the grizzled career Marine better than any actor since, including R. Lee Ermey himself. In fact, Chaney was made an honorary Marine and a USMC honor
guard was present at his funeral. The early sequences were filmed at the Santa Fe train station and at the MCRD. The film provides a rare glimpse of San Diego in the Roaring Twenties. One of the main actors even refers to going down to ‘Tia Juana to the races,’ a longtime tradition to San Diegans. In 1934 Jimmy Cagney, who was riding the crest of his popularity, arrived in San Diego to act in two Warner militarythemed movies. Directed by Lloyd Bacon, Devil Dogs of the Air tells the story of a cocky exhibition pilot named Tommy O’Toole, who lands his colorful
“Hollywood Flies to San Diego” Continued on Page 2