Déjà Vu All Over Again

All the big movie studios kept stock architectural elements on hand to reconfigure into new structures for different films. Perhaps the best-known example is from Gone With the Wind: the burning of Atlanta is, in fact, the burning of Skull Island from King Kong.

Well, I just spotted another instance of a dream factory being more factory than dream: I’m watching A Place In the Sun (I guess this is also a follow-up post to “An American Tragedy”) and during the lead up to the big, fat close-up of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift as they’re dancing, they walk past a curving staircase.

Hold on a minute, thought I. That staircase rings a bell. Let’s see. A Place In the Sun… Paramount… 1951. What else was made around that time by that studio? What other movie might have featured a grand, curving staircase?

Altogether now: Sunset Boulevard, naturally.

And in a mere two Google clicks I found the evidence I needed and which I present here. I like to think of Norma Desmond lurking at the top of the stairs and wondering who are all these little people desecrating her mansion.

“Max!”