Long Beach, California - Film and Television

Film and Television

Balboa Amusement Producing Company, also known as Balboa Studios, was located at Sixth Street and Alamitos Avenue; they used 11 acres (45,000 m2) on Signal Hill for outdoor locations. Silent film stars who lived in Long Beach included Fatty Arbuckle and Theda Bara. The 1917 film Cleopatra, starring Theda Bara, was filmed at the Dominguez Slough just west of Long Beach, and Moses parted the Red Sea for Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 version of The Ten Commandments on the flat seashore of Seal Beach, southeast of Long Beach. Long Beach was the famous location of Paramount newsreel footage of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, out-takes from the W.C. Fields featurette International House (1933 film) was possibly the first earthquake to be captured in action on film.

Because of its proximity to LA-area studios and its variety of locations, today Long Beach is regularly used for movies, television shows, and advertisements. The city has filled in for locations across the nation and around the globe. One advantage for Long Beach is that the film industry uses a zone that extends 30 miles (48 km) from Beverly Blvd. and La Cienega Blvd. in the West Hollywood area. It is cheaper to film within that zone, so Long Beach and other South Bay cities often stand in for areas of Orange County (such as for The O.C. TV show) because almost all of Orange County is outside of the zone.

One of the most famous Long Beach movie locations is the home of Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Though the film was set in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago the actual house is located at 4160 Country Club Dr.

Long Beach's high schools are especially popular with the film industry. Long Beach Polytechnic High School has played host to numerous films, providing the outdoor high school grounds of Coach Carter and the indoor high school rooms and hallways of Robert A. Millikan High School American Pie, among others. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo High School has been a very popular place to film movies as well, with 2–4 movies filmed per year, and is currently being used to film 20th Century Fox's musical comedy-drama, Glee. Recently, a film was shot in Jordan High School. St. Anthony High School's gymnasium has also been featured in many movies and television shows, including Coach Carter and Joan of Arcadia. Long Beach Woodrow Wilson High School has been used to film Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and many commercials featuring Nike and Addidas with LA Sparks Basketball star, Candace Parker. Long Beach Woodrow Wilson was also the focus of the movie Freedom Writers.

Other locations in Long Beach have been used quite frequently as well. Shoreline Drive visually approximates a freeway but is a municipal roadway and permits are accepted for its closure for filming – it has become a frequent film and television freeway stand-in. Many car chase and crash scenes have been filmed on stretches of road near the Long Beach harbor and along the city's Shoreline Drive. Among these are the 1963 movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and numerous episodes of the 1970s TV drama CHiPs. Long Beach's downtown neighborhood has stood in for various urban areas in a variety of films. Multiple scenes from the movie Gone in 60 Seconds and Speed were filmed in Long Beach. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was also filmed in Long Beach and so was Big Momma's House 2 and Freedom Writers. Both CSI: Miami and Dexter, although set in Miami, Florida, regularly film in Long Beach. Much of Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny was filmed in Long Beach. Although there was a chase scene Downtown, most of Tenacious D was filmed at Alex's Bar at 2913 E. Anaheim St. A Punk Rock/Alternative Rock Venue. Most of the viral hit Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus was also filmed by the Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier and Alamitos power station in Long Beach. The Long Beach Terrace Theatre has also been used for various commercials, an Episode of Glee, as well as the movie "Last Action Hero".