Production
Warner Bros. paid author David Goodis $25,000 for the rights to the story, which had originally been serialized in the Saturday Evening Post from July 20 to September 7, 1946, before being published in book form. At the time that Dark Passage was shot, Bogart was the best-paid actor in Hollywood, averaging $450,000 a year.
Robert Montgomery had made the film Lady in the Lake a year earlier, among the first major films to use a "subjective camera" technique, in which the viewer sees the action through the protagonist's eyes. This technique was used in 1927 in France by Abel Gance for Napoléon and in 1931 by the director Rouben Mamoulian for the first five minutes of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Film critic Hal Erikson believes Dark Passage does a better job at using this point-of-view technique, writing, "The first hour or so of Dark Passage does the same thing — and the results are far more successful than anything seen in Montgomery's film."
According to Bacall, in her autobiography By Myself, during the filming of Dark Passage, Bogart's hair began to fall out in clumps, the result of alopecia areata, caused by vitamin deficiencies. By the end of filming he wore a full wig. Bogart would need B-12 shots and other treatments to counteract the effects, but was helped by the fact that his next film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre required a full wig in any case.
Filming locations
Parts of the movie were filmed on location in San Francisco, California, including the Filbert Steps and the cable car system. The elegant Streamline Moderne Malloch Building on Telegraph Hill was used for the apartment of Jansen where Parry hides out and recuperates from his surgery. Apartment Number 10 was Jansen's. The current residents of that apartment occasionally place a cutout of Bogart in the window. The diner was "Harry's Wagon" at 1921 Post Street, a long-closed diner in the Fillmore District of San Francisco. The house which was used as the exterior location of Irene's house was razed after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
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