Friday, April 6, 2018

LOCATION SHOTS - THE BRADBURY BUILDING & PALS


Today we're going on location to a building found all over the United States of Telemerica......


From Wikipedia:
The Bradbury Building is an architectural landmark located at 304 South Broadway at West 3rd Street in downtown Los Angeles, California. Built in 1893, the five-story office building is best known for its extraordinary sky-lit atrium of access walkways, stairs and elevators, and their ornate ironwork. The building was commissioned by Los Angeles gold-mining millionaire Lewis L. Bradbury and constructed by draftsman George Wyman from the original design by Sumner Hunt. It appears in many works of fiction and has been the site of many movie and television shoots and music videos.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977, one of only four office buildings in Los Angeles to be so honored. It was also designated a landmark by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission and is the city's oldest land-marked building.

The Bradbury Building is featured prominently as a setting in films, television, and literature – particularly in the science fiction genre. Most notably, the building is the setting in the 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner, for the character J. F. Sebastian's apartment, and the climactic rooftop scene.



Television series that featured the building include the 1964 'The Outer Limits' episode "Demon with a Glass Hand". During the season six episodes (1963–64) of the series '77 Sunset Strip', the Stuart "Stu" Bailey character had his office in the Bradbury. In 'Quantum Leap' the building is seen carrying the name "Gotham Towers" in "Play It Again, Seymour", the last episode of the first season (1989). The building appeared in at least one episode of the television series 'Banyon' (1972–73), where it was used as Robert Forster's office, 'City of Angels' (1976) and 'Mission: Impossible' (1966–73), as well as Ned and Chuck's Apartment in 'Pushing Daisies', which debuted in 2007. The building was also the setting for a scene from the series 'FlashForward' in the episode "Let No Man Put Asunder". In 2010 the building was transplanted to New York City for a two-part episode of 'CSI NY'. The Bradbury Building and a fake New York City subway entrance across the street were also used to represent the exterior of New York's High School for the Performing Arts in the opening credits of the television series 'Fame'.


The Bradbury appeared in a 1979 music video by Cher called "Take Me Home" in addition to music videos from the 1980s by Heart, Janet Jackson, Earth Wind and Fire, and Genesis, and [appeared in] a Pontiac Pursuit commercial.

The go-to will always be "Blade Runner" but for Toobworld, it's "Demon With A Glass Hand", the episode of 'The Outer Limits' featuring Robert Culp as Humanity's Guardian Trent.




It would have been great if all of the Bradbury Building's appearances definitely took place in Los Angeles.  But we've seen that it could be found in Seattle ("The Night Strangler"), New York City ('CSI:NY', and 'Fame' as the High School for Performing Arts, plus 'Quantum Leap') and somewhere in Papen County, which I think was in Oregon ('Pushing Daisies'.)  




For its actual location in Los Angeles, besides the aforementioned episode of 'The Outer Limits', it was seen in 'Perry Mason', 'Banyon', 'Blunt Talk', 'City of Angels', '77 Sunset Strip' (as Stu Bailey's office building once he went solo), 'The Six Million Dollar Man', and 'Pasadena', where it served as the headquarters for TV Crossover Hall of Fame member the Los Angeles Sun. 




I'm not sure how the Bradbury Building was utilized in the "The Dreamer Of Oz" but the TV bio-pic about L. Frank Baum takes place in the TV movie dimension known as Motwa Toobworld.  

It could also be found in the televersion of San Francisco, which is what sparked this edition of Location Shots:

'IRONSIDE'
"LICENSE TO KILL"






By whatever name the Bradbury Building was known as in the City by the Bay, that's where Buster Logan worked as a maintenance engineer.

The Bradbury Building as itself in Los Angeles could be a future inductee into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.  And its other incarnations could serve as the induction qualifications for some fictional architect in Toobworld (before the turn of the century) who ripped off the designs for the Bradbury Building in order to build imitations of it in all of those other cities.

Might be tough trying to find a fictional architect from the 1890s in some TV show, however.  Might have to look through the episode descriptions of shows like "Life With Father" among others.



BCnU!

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