Section 7. Harold and Maude
Although I grew up in Los Gatos, and later attended college in Berkeley, except for occasionally taking Highway 101 up to Candlestick Park (just south of San Francisco) to catch some Giants games, I knew nothing of San Mateo County in my younger life. So when I first saw the movie Harold and Maude in 1971, I recognized very few of the exterior locales from the movie, since most of those were shots on the Peninsula. And if the truth be told, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the movie then.
But a decade later, Robin Outzen1 mentioned that she liked the movie. Well, love does some interesting things to a fella, and her interest in the movie certainly captured my attention. So I viewed it again, and this time was absolutely captivated by it. She also told me that she knew someone who had painted “Harold loves Maude” at one of the location sites of the movie: the Sutro Baths (adjacent to the Cliff House) in San Francisco. That idea appealed to me, and so to pay homage to the movie (and the previous “tagger”), on a wind-swept and dark night in May 1982, I donned a cape and brought along a lantern (to accent the furtiveness of our mission), met Robin, and we went to the ruins of the Sutro Baths and using a stencil and a can of black spray paint, we … hold on a tic2 … OK, we’re good, on with the story … left the same message on a rockside wall there (Fig. 7.7.1).
Sometime afterwards, while driving north on Highway 101, just east of the freeway I noticed an auto junkyard (next to the San Carlos airport), and recognized it as the site of an early scene in the movie (Fig 7.7.2). Well, lucking upon that site got me really excited, and so in 1984 I began driving all over San Mateo County, looking for additional filming locales to photograph. A couple were easy to find: by then I already knew about the Sutro Baths (Fig. 7.7.3) (which lead me to the nearby Sutro Heights Park with a gazebo) (Fig. 7.7.4). I had driven on the Dumbarton Bridge (Fig. 7.7.5) linking Fremont with San Mateo, as well as visited the Santa Cruz Boardwalk (Fig. 7.7.6), and just to drive past the Emeryville mudflats (Fig. 7.7.7) all the time, but that was about it. Bear in mind, this was before the internet, and I wasn’t aware of any fan groups or in contact with any movie aficionados of the movie – I was totally on my own. But I had a car, plenty of time, a fairly good understanding of the geography of the area, and what’s most important: a quest.
Some sites proved relatively easy to find. For example, Colma, just south of San Francisco, has so many cemeteries that it was famed for having more dead people than living. Since the movie included several cemetery scenes, I thought that should be my first search area, and found Holy Cross Cemetery (where Harold first laid eyes on Maude) which was one of the biggest (Fig. 7.7.8). Other sites I found through logical deductions, like the National Cemetery in San Bruno (Fig. 7.7.9), downtown San Mateo, where Harold and Maude dug up the street tree (Fig. 7.7.10), and Mori Point, where the finale was shot (Fig. 7.7.11). On the other hand, I found a couple of sites only through sheer luck – like when I happened to be transversing the same road where Maude drove past the hitchhikers on the verge of the road (Fig. 7.7.12), and the one which went by Glaucus’ studio (Fig. 7.7.13). On the other hand, I didn’t even try to find the site where Harold and Maude picnicked on a hillside under an oak – there was nothing there to distinguish it from hundreds of similar spots in the area, nor any number of driving scenes that didn’t include a significant landmark. But in the end, I believe I pinpointed and photographed all but three of the significant outdoor scenes: Harold’s house (which I thought must be in Atherton), Maude’s railway car (which I thought must be in the narrow stretch of land between San Bruno Mountain and the Bay), and the church where Harold and Maude finally met (where the marching band paraded by). However, in 2021 I finally thought to consult the web and discovered the website ReelSF.com, and it was only then I found where those three sites were located as well – so I hurried out to add some more shots to my collection.
Regrettably, some sites (like Maude’s railway car and the old Dumbarton Bridge) have long been obliterated, but many of the other sites still remain. And for any of you who may be fans of this delicious black comedy, in 2022 I posted my collection of photographs (noting, in my typical pedantic style, the scene, location, and at least a portion of the dialogue, and any additional remarks) on Facebook, which should be accessible at this link:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/50851093183/posts/10160232658133184/?comment_id=10160234425278184
1 Discussed (at length) in Chapter 5.
2 Wait a sec: let me just look something up. Let’s see – “defacing public property” … falls under vandalism, Penal Code 594 … misdemeanor if under $400 … “statute of limitations” … oh, only one year? Cool … never mind.