Due to the transparent turn of photographic film get there , Los Angeles is filled with iconicmovie locations . One of the most historic landmarks in Hollywood is easy to miss . Located south of the intersection of Hollywood and Cahuenga Boulevards , EaCa Alley seem in some of the biggest films of the silent era . Now , one film historian is fighting for its realization .
According toAtlas Obscura , John Bengtson discovered the bit shortly after he set out tracking downimportant movie locationsin the mid-1990s . He recognized the T - form alley as the backdrop of a famous laugh from the Buster Keaton movieCops(1922 ) . In the understood picture , Keaton runs out of the alleyway with a mob of policemen furrow behind him . He flies off the screen after seize onto the back of a passing car . The location is also used for the tantrum when Keaton ’s hand is bitten by a dog .
In accession toCops , the location appears in two other motion-picture show in the National Film Registry : Harold Lloyd’sSafety Last!(1923 ) andCharlie Chaplin’sThe Kid(1921 ) . unsounded film theater director Al Christie , Cleo Madison , and Lois Weber also made movies at the site .
The Hollywood alley attract to filmmaker for legion reason . One was lighting ; a share of it run from east to west , which means the flight strip is well - light throughout the Clarence Shepard Day Jr. . Another intellect is that much of Los Angeles was still fairly undeveloped at the turn of the 20th hundred . If director want to make a film in a seemingly urban setting , this alleyway was one of their best choice .
Most people who pass the location today are unaware of its function in cinema story . It ’s currently used as out-of-door seating room for a nearby restaurant , and there ’s no preindication or plaque marking its historical condition . Bengtson has been lobby to get the turning point the credit it ’s due by advert it Chaplin - Keaton - Lloyd Alley . The retentive division of the T - human body already has a name — East Cahuenga Alley , or EaCa Alley for brusque — but the president of the EaCa Alley Association supports naming the perpendicular section after the understood film legend . Bengtson will probably ask to push his marriage offer through more bureaucratic red tape to make it prescribed .
To hear more about this piece of plastic film history , you could watch over a video made by Bengtson below .
[ h / tAtlas Obscura ]
