Film and Television Appearances
Marilyn Monroe was born in the charity ward of this hospital on June 1, 1926. The hospital also has a jail ward. In 1954, Stan Getz was processed in the jail ward as his wife gave birth to their third child one floor below. He had been arrested for attempting to rob a pharmacy to get a morphine fix.
The hospital was featured briefly in the 1953 version of "The War Of The Worlds" directed by Byron Haskins in scenes depicting the evacuation of Los Angeles from the oncoming Martians.
The distinct Art Deco-style main building served as the exterior of the hospital in the 1998 movie City of Angels. In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the episode entitled "The Good Wound", exterior shots of the older LAC+USC facility to represent the hospital where Riley was being held. The outside of the hospital appeared in the television series Dr. Kildare, where it was known as "Blair General Hospital". There were a number of scenes filmed in one of the hospital's larger operating theaters in the TV series Ben Casey. The hospital also appears in the movie El Norte. The stairs and front entrance of the original LAC+USC Medical Center is seen in a scene in the 1993 film Blood In, Blood Out when one of the main characters is released after being treated for gunshot wounds. The exterior is also used in shots portraying Jessica Alba's hospital stay in the 2008 horror movie The Eye.
Beginning in 1975, the ABC soap opera General Hospital began using the facility for its exterior shots, appearing primarily in the show's opening sequence, where it still remains. The lower floors of the show's Los Angeles studio are modeled after the actual hospital's emergency room entrance, allowing for the show to shoot outdoor scenes in their own parking lot. On their spin-off, General Hospital: Night Shift, the upper floors were edited in digitally to fit on top of the show's studio, creating a CGI look, modeled after the real hospital's original exterior.
The doctors in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial were played by doctors from the USC Medical Center who were recruited to play the doctors who try to save E.T. after government agents take over Elliott's home. Spielberg felt that actors in the roles, performing lines of technical medical dialogue, would come across as unnatural. During post-production, Spielberg decided to cut a scene featuring Harrison Ford as the headmaster at Elliott's school. The scene featured Ford's character reprimanding Elliott for his behavior in science class and warning of the dangers of underage drinking; he is then taken aback as Elliott's chair rises from the floor, while E.T. is levitating his "phone" equipment up the staircase with Gertie.
Read more about this topic: Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center
Famous quotes containing the words film, television and/or appearances:
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)
“Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“We often think ourselves inconsistent creatures, when we are the furthest from it, and all the variety of shapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth but so many different attempts to gratify the same governing appetite.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)