Los Angeles City Hall - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

The building has been featured in the following popular movies and television shows:

• Adventures of Superman: The building appears as the Daily Planet building beginning in the second season of the 1950s TV series. At the time the TV program was broadcast, the show's Daily Planet building (Los Angeles City Hall) was frequently confused with the similarly designed Pennsylvania Power & Light Building in Allentown, also built in 1928. Additionally, the exact design of this building is used as the Newstime magazine headquarters in the Superman comic books.
• Alias: A CIA black ops unit is located behind a maintenance door at Civic Station.
• Dragnet: The building appears as itself in the TV series. The first episode of Dragnet (1951) Season 1, Episode 1: "The Human Bomb", Original Air Date: 16 December 1951, was filmed at Los Angeles City Hall. It was embossed on Sgt. Joe Friday's famous badge number 714 that was displayed under the credits.
• Perry Mason: The City Hall building appears in the view from Perry's office window. This has led viewers of the show to spectulate where the fictional office would have been located in downtown Los Angeles.
• Tower of Terror: In this 1997 made-for-TV movie, the main character's love interest works at a fictional newspaper, The Los Angeles Banner. The newspaper's logo is based on the top of the city hall.
• Adam-12: During the seventh season opening credits montage, City Hall is shown directly at the end, as the building that officers Reed and Malloy drive away from. It is also shown on the embossed badges numbered 744 (Malloy) and 2430 (Reed).
• The 2003 Dragnet series used the L.A. City Hall building aerial shot and badge throughout its introduction.

• War of the Worlds: The City Hall was destroyed in the 1953 film version (although the H.G. Wells book has the aliens attacking London, the setting was changed to Los Angeles for the film).
• The 1976 film The Bad News Bears included a scene both shot and set in the city council chamber that included a close-up of the electronic voting board with the names of the incumbent council members.
• The 2011 film Atlas Shrugged: Part I
• The 2011 series Torchwood: Miracle Day used the main entrance of City Hall to represent the C.I.A. Archive Esther Drummond visits in "The New World", and the exterior to the medical conference where Vera Juarez meets Jilly Kitzinger in "Rendition"/"Dead of Night".

The building has also been featured in the following other media:

• In the Midnight Club: Los Angeles video game as part of Downtown Los Angeles.
• In the video game L.A. Noire, City Hall is featured as itself in 1947 Los Angeles.
• In Mission: Impossible, "Ultimatum" 1972: A thermonuclear bomb is planted under City hall in a sewer duct by a frustrated nuclear scientist in order to blackmail the US government into changing of its foreign policy and replacing some "corrupt" Congress and cabinet members. If demands are not met, the 50-megaton bomb will detonate, destroying all of Los Angeles County. The IMF must locate and defuse the bomb before it is too late.
• In GTA:San Andreas video game as part of the city of Los Santos.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin (Japanese manga series), the building serves as the headquarters for one of the main occupation armies of the antagonist Principality of Zeon, under Garma Zabi.
• In Miss Murder, music video by the band AFI (April 2006).
• In Escape From L.A., the building is shown sunken, along with the ruins of Los Angeles, as Snake Plissken operates his submarine toward the prison.
• In SWAT 3, one mission has the player rescuing hostages and defusing a bomb within the top floors of the building.
• In the video game L.A. Noire the building covers almost an entire city block, bounded by 1st Street to the South, Spring Street to the West, Main Street to the East and Temple Street to the North. It is, unfortunately, impossible to enter the building.