"The Killing"

We're all over town in Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing" (United Artists, 1956). It's a film about a heist at a race track. This shot is looking west from the top of the 3rd St. Tunnel. We'll be back to this neighborhood later in the film when Sterling Hayden buys a suitcase for the loot in the 800 block.

As we pan down there's a view of the building that used to be the Tunnel Theatre, 712 W. 3rd St. The arched opening on the lower left was the theatre entrance. By the 50s it had been a garage for decades. See the page about the Tunnel Theatre on the Los Angeles Theatres site for more data.

Here we're on Hollywood Blvd. as Sterling Hayden is coming out of a store just east of the Warner Hollywood, 6433 Hollywood Blvd. The fuzzy marquee in the background is the Warner.

As Hayden gets into his car we get a glimpse in the background of the Iris Theatre. It's the second vertical down -- the first is for a Karl's shoe store.

Another frame a moment later gives us sharper look at the Iris, 6508 Hollywood Blvd.  See the pages on the Warner Hollywood and the Iris, later rebranded as the Fox Theatre, for more on those two buildings, both still on Hollywood Blvd.

Hayden has engineered a heist at the track. His buddies have all been killed so he has all the loot. He heads to a pawn shop on W. 3rd St. to buy the biggest suitcase he could find to put it all in for his flight to Boston. It doesn't end well for him -- he needed better locks on the suitcase. A lovely film.

That pawn shop is adjacent to the Lux Theatre, 827 W. 3rd St., here seen at the right of the frame. It's no longer with us -- a victim of the Bunker Hill redevelopment. See the page about the Lux Theatre for more details. The posters we see for Lenny Bruce with a burlesque show aren't for the Lux -- they're for the Gayety Club in Hollywood.

On IMDb: "The Killing"