Hazzard Square

[HossC]

I've been looking for the hospital building used in 'Brotherly Love'/'Cale Yarborough Comes to Hazzard' for over 18 months now (post #88, 4th picture/post#120, 3rd picture), and finally I think I've found its location. Take a good look at the picture below as I'll be referring back to it. Y'all may have noticed that it's been stitched together from two pictures to show the whole building and some of its surroundings.

Recently I was watching an episode of Knight Rider called 'Give Me Liberty... or Give Me Death' to get some screengrabs of the orange '69 Charger in it. While I was watching the scenes near the start of the race, I thought I saw the house from 'Psycho' in the background. A quick Google later and I found myself on the forum of a site called 'knightrideronline', plowing through a thread similar to Hazzard Square for Knight Rider (with a similar number of posts, I can now appreciate what Hazzard Square looks like to newcomers). You can see the original thread here, and the newer episode-by-episode guide here. I quickly confirmed that I had seen the 'Psycho' house, and that it featured close-up in another episode.

While I was there, it seemed silly not to look for Dukes locations, since they were filmed at about the same time. Although Knight Rider used a much wider range of locations, they did go to Santa Clarita a few times. I also spotted a very short clip that was filmed on the bridge on East Carlisle Road (see this post for how it looked it Dukes). I'd nearly given up hope of finding more when I saw this post, which included a screengrab similar to the one below from the pilot episode, 'Knight Of The Phoenix'.

Firstly, the road and wall with trees (behind the white pickup) looked familiar. Then I read "Doesn't look like the gas station is a Shell anymore". Look back to the first picture in this post and you'll see the wall and trees behind the General, and a Shell sign peeking over the hospital roof on the right. The address of the gas station was listed as "Lyons Ave & Fourl Rd in Santa Clarita", so I quickly looked it up on Google Maps (see color map below). The gas station has been remodeled since Knight Rider, and is now run by Arco - I've labeled it as "2" on the map. I initially had no luck finding the hospital building, but then I decided to look up an aerial picture from 1980 (below left). The building I've marked "1" looked like it fitted the bill for the hospital, but, as you can see, the center area has been redeveloped over time (all the rest looks virtually unchanged). I've failed to find any pictures of the old building, and seeing as it's no longer extant, I'm going to put my case together using lots of small pieces of evidence.

Here's another screengrab from Knight Rider which shows that it was a Shell station in the early '80s.

[HossC]

This picture from 'Brotherly Love' shows Bo on the roof of the bad guys' car in the hospital car park. You can clearly see the wall/trees in the background. The trees are much bigger now, but I managed to get the inset house picture from Street View. I'm sure it's the house on the right, marked "3" on the map above. You briefly get to see the gas station to the left of the rainbow truck, but I could only get blurry screengrabs. Watch the episode and you'll see a different building to the one that's there today, and I'd say it matches the 45 degree angle of the old building that I've marked "4" on the map.

Looking in the other direction you'll see a distinctive pylon. I've inset the one that's there today, and it looks the same to me. That would make the low building above the green car the Valley Community Church (labeled "6" on the map). It's still there today, but is now hidden by a new store.

The next two pictures go together. Sorry the first is a little blurry, but look at the hilltop houses to the left of Bo's shoulder.

I think they're the same as ones above the stop sign in this picture from Knight Rider.

[HossC]

In this picture you can just see a water tower on top of the hill. I know these are all over the area, but there is one (now two together) to the south-east of the site, which would put it in the right place.

Look in the background of this picture and you'll see that the design of the street lights is the same as the current ones. If my research is correct, the street sign (highlighted) would read "Wiley Cyn Rd" - it's not legible in the show, but the words are the right length. Above the blue car on the right is some sort of electricity transformer station (it's now owned by Edison), labeled "5" on the map. The blue car itself looks like an early Firebird, possibly the same model as the one driven by the car thieves in Knight Rider (inset). They steal KITT from the Shell gas station.

As I said, I've found no definitive pictures of the hospital; the new building there now belongs to Realty Executives, but hopefully the pictures above have led you to the same conclusion as me. I will add that the first Knight Rider picture above shows the building in question offered "Preventive Medicine and Chelation Therapy" back in 1982 - not a million miles away from a hospital. If I've read the sign correctly, the telephone number still belongs to a chiropractor in another part of Santa Clarita.

This reverse shot of the bad guy who confronts Jud Kane as he leaves the hospital confused me for a while. I couldn't match any of the blurry background buildings, and have now concluded that it was filmed elsewhere.

I'll finish with a final picture from 'Knight Of The Phoenix'. Only three years after 'Hazzard Connection', and poor old Augie Detweiller is now having to drive the demolition derby car himself! Another of the cars is driven by Charles Napier, who appeared in two Dukes episodes.

[RogerDuke]

As always you amaze me with this stuff Hoss. Thanks. It is appreciated.

[Chandler Prime 01]

?

I'm afraid that for this post I have to be the bearer of sad news. I'm sure y'all are familiar with the covered bridge at the Disney Golden Oak ranch that I dealt with in post #233. In that post I used a 45 degree aerial view because I usually find locations easier to spot when I look at them from an angle. Here's what the area looked like from directly overhead.

If you noticed that I said "looked like" in the previous paragraph, it's because it doesn't look like that any more. When I looked at the area last week I happened to have the 45 degree view turned off, and found that the pond/lake seems to have been filled in and the bridge is missing.

I guess it's progress. The ranch now includes two relatively new urban street sets and less rural buildings. I still think it's a shame to lose this iconic structure. As well as Dukes, you may remember it from other shows such as 'The Fall Guy' episode 'Mighty Myron' ...

... or the 'Murder She Wrote' episode 'Night of the Headless Horseman', amongst others.

Where is this bridge at ?

[HossC]

Where is this bridge at ?

It used to be on Disney's Golden Oak Ranch just east of Santa Clarita, CA. It was one of at least three movie ranches used to film the California episodes. As you can see from the pictures, it has recently disappeared as they take out some of the rural elements and build urban ones. Check it out on Google Maps.

I think the Hazzard Stockyard buildings that are a few hundred yards south-west of the bridge location are now the only ones that still survive from when Dukes was filmed there. As for the other two main ranches, Sherwood was completely remodeled and turned into a golf club, and Valencia Oaks is now overgrown with the threat of housing development. CDoherty has a thread about the Valencia Oaks Ranch here.

[Boss Hogg]

I've spent the last 2 days reviewing this thread:)

HossC- Your work here has been phenomenal!

[HossC]

Boss Hogg said:

I've spent the last 2 days reviewing this thread:)

HossC- Your work here has been phenomenal!

Thanks for your comments.

Y'all may remember this picture from post #81. It's the hospital that Uncle Jesse gets taken to in 'Witness: Jesse Duke'.

It looks like I was right about the clip being stock footage of a real hospital, because I think I've found it. Check out this view on Google Maps. It shows the east side of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. Using Historic Aerials, I've checked the location and found that the square white building with the helipad on the roof was just a car park back in 1980. Google Earth gives historical views back to 1989, and the white building was there by then. The height, roof and general design all look right to me - it's just a shame you can no longer get the view used in the show to confirm it.

[HossC]

I sometimes come across information for this thread in the strangest of places. Today I was reading through some information about the history of Los Angeles when I saw a YouTube video called 'Hollywood by Helicopter'. The short 1958 film follows a young actress on an aerial tour of several movie studios with narration by Hogan's Heroes' star Bob Crane. You can watch it below:

I was hoping for a good aerial view of the Warner Bros' backlot (jump to 3:53 for the WB section), but I only got to see the sound stages before the helicopter landed and they went behind-the-scenes of the Lee Marvin movie The Missouri Traveler. The black and white footage is quite blurry, but I managed to recognize Midwest Street in the background of a fight scene.

A quick Google search told me that The Missouri Traveler is public domain, and the whole movie is available on archive.org. The color/picture quality isn't perfect, but it still gives us a good look at Hazzard Square about 20 years before the Dukes arrived! As well as Lee Marvin, the movie also features Paul Ford, probably better known as Bilko's colonel in 'The Phil Silvers Show'.

Here's some screengrabs that I've rearranged them into a tour of the square. I'll start with the title screen:

On the right is Boss Hogg's house. The church spire can be seen in the background:

Looking in the other direction, here are the two houses next to Boss's house:

On to the square itself, and we get to see the base of the church. Apart from some buildings being visible to the right of the church (the back of the Western Street set), so far it all looks very familiar.

[HossC]

To the left of the church, the buildings at the end of the street haven't been built yet. I'm guessing that Mexican Street should be just over the white fence.

The hotel building looks a little fancier here. It has bay windows, a porch, and a pointed parapet complete with finials!

For everyone thinking that the square looks better with the General in it, here he is! The statue is General Whitby Sterling Love of the Confederate States Army, founder of Delphi (the town in the movie).

Believe it or not, the corner shop (left) is a drug store in the movie, just like it is Hazzard. The building in the middle of the block gets a covered section of sidewalk, just like in The Shootist. I'd swear that that's the same mail box that used to sit outside the Hazzard Post Office.

[HossC]

The bank building on the left is seen here with a different entrance to the one we're used to (the main doorway gets a little more stonework by the time Dukes is filmed). The parade features several Confederate flags, and the band even plays 'Dixie'. They also play

(OK, OK, it's probably Yankee Doodle!).

Here's the road between the bank and the drug store. The building on the right was a barber shop for most of Dukes.

It seems odd seeing the square without its gazebo, but the central feature here is a cannon.

Here's a close-up of the cannon.

[HossC]

This barn featured a few times on Dukes, including as the back of Cooter's Garage and part of the marijuana distribution compound in 'Mason Dixon's Girls'.

The barn (above) and these buildings are just behind Boss's house (see the roof peak above the man in the middle), and are at one end of the now demolished Western Street.

Want some racing around the square? It does happen, but it's with horses and buggies.

I really wanted to see what Cooter's looked like, but it's never shown. Even the courthouse only appears very briefly in the background - I think they were trying to portray a smaller town.

So there you have it: Confederate flags, Dixie, a general, and racing around the square, all in 1958.

[i1976]

I've spent the last 2 days reviewing this thread:)

HossC- Your work here has been phenomenal!

I TOTALLY agree with Boss.

This thread is GREAT. There's a LOT of work behind it, and your devotion is impressing, Hoss.

[HossC]

This thread is GREAT. There's a LOT of work behind it, and your devotion is impressing, Hoss.

Thanks, Ila .

Back in post #129, when I first covered the 'Reunion' movie, I speculated that Cooter's/Rhuebottom's must've already been torn down because they're never shown. Google Earth now has aerials for the WB Backlot dating back to 1989, but they're too blurry to make out the detail. Then, a couple of days ago, Roth posted a video featuring John Schneider behind the scenes of the 'Reunion' movie (sadly, the video has already been removed by the uploader). Before it was deleted, I managed to get this screengrab where the replacement buildings are visible over Rick's shoulder (far left of shot).

For a better look at the new buildings, here's a picture I found on itsfilmedthere.com (link includes many recent pictures of the backlot). The new buildings didn't feature in 'Reunion', but were used in 'Hazzard in Hollywood' (see post #139).

[RogerDuke]

This thread is GREAT. There's a LOT of work behind it, and your devotion is impressing, Hoss.

There's a lot of threads this quote could apply to. Thanks for all you do Hoss.

[HossC]

While I was hanging out on a forum about Los Angeles recently, I came across a fellow member, Moxie, who has been tracking down filming locations for the '80s TV series 'Scarecrow and Mrs King'. What piqued my interest is that they also used the WB backlot overlapping the time when Dukes was filmed there, although they preferred to work on New York and Hennesy Streets:

SMK on the WB backlot:

http://scarecrowandmrskingforum.yuku.com/topic/2255/SMK-on-the-WB-backlot

There's another thread for all the other filming locations. Moxie and friends really had their work cut out finding some of these places as both east and west coast locations were used, as well as a few in Europe. You'll even find maps that tie all the locations together.

Other filming locations:

http://scarecrowandmrskingforum.yuku.com/topic/2245/Filming-Locations

[Meadowmufn]

There's a lot of threads this quote could apply to. Thanks for all you do Hoss.

Ditto. Thanks for adding so much to this forum, Hoss. It is greatly appreciated.

[HossC]

Do y'all remember the Capital City Motel that appeared in 'Enos and Daisy's Wedding'. I posted pictures back in post #123. Here's a reminder:

At the time, I thought it might have been a real motel, but as I found more locations, I got the feeling that it could be somewhere on the backlot. I now have the location courtesy of Moxie from the 'Scarecrow and Mrs King' site (see two posts back). The picture below shows the office building on the WB backlot that was used as the motel. It was taken by Moxie during a visit to Burbank at the beginning of the year.

The Google Maps view below shows the office/motel building roughly in the center at the top. Hazzard Square is at the bottom, and some of New York Street can be seen at the left. I've marked the rough camera location for Moxie's picture with an arrow. I had considered this building before, but ruled it out because I thought it was single-story. Also, the 45-degree view on Google Maps which shows the eastern side is too dark to see any detail.

Thanks to Moxie for both identifying the location and letting me use the picture.

[HossC]

I've already posted a couple of pictures in this thread from National Lampoon's 'Christmas Vacation' (see post #267), so I thought I'd include some from the original 'Vacation' movie. They made good use of the WB backlot in 1983.

This first picture is when the Griswolds get lost and are looking for the freeway. It's supposed to be St. Louis, but it's actually Brownstone Street. I think the only time it appeared in Dukes was when the studio security guard chased Boss and Rosco in 'The Dukes in Hollywood' (see post #113).

Just around the corner, the Griswolds first stop for directions in New York Street.

They then stop for directions on Hennesy Street, which is where their hubcaps are stolen.

A couple of minutes later the caption says "Dodge City, Kansas", but it's clearly Laramie Street. The buildings in the lower picture look almost identical to the way they appeared in 'The Dukes in Hollywood' (also in post #113).

[Roth Potter]

I don't understand how I didn't see they drove on Laramie Street. I watched the movie recently.

[HossC]

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine tipped me off to another show that made good use of the WB backlot. It's a 1980 mini-series called 'The Dream Merchants', and the full show is available on YouTube. The opening shot shows Midwest Street in the snow, although it's captioned "Albany, New York 1912; Where It All Began". Apologies for the quality of these grabs - they're from YouTube and probably come from a VHS copy.

The corner drug store from Hazzard Square is selling hot dogs.

One of the most underused buildings in Hazzard Square, the theater, becomes the focal point as Kesseler's Nickelodeon.

Another shot of Brownstone Street in the dark (see the 'Vacation' pics on the previous page).

[HossC]

New York Street actually gets to play New York!

Another Dukes connection - they also use the Disney Golden Oak Ranch. I kept an eye out for the Duke Farm, but didn't see it.

[HossC]

This theater is also on New York Street. It was seen briefly as the Bijou in 'Big Brothers, Duke' (see post #84).

Pappas moved on from selling hot dogs to owning theaters. This one is also on New York Street, about 100 yards left of the one above.

Now a screengrab from Dukes. When I first saw this marquee sign in 'R.I.P. Henry Flatt', it had me confused. I fruitlessly searched IMDb and various other sources to try and find the origin.

Well, it turns out that "The Bandit" is actually a play that features in 'The Dream Merchants'. This is the same building as the Pappas shot above.

[HossC]

A very short scene at the end makes use of Western Street. The building with the tower at the end of the street is building #15 (using my original numbering scheme). It's the only one in this shot that's still standing.

This building would've been just off the right side of the shot above.

Now some more familiar buildings. This part of Western Street was seen in 'Mason Dixon's Girls' and as Shoveltown in 'The Hack of Hazzard'.

I wish the quality of this final shot was better. It's a wider view of the same part of the street, but with one of the soundstages visible above the Western buildings on the left and Boss Hogg's house above them on the right.

[HossC]

After a few excursions, it's finally time to return to the identification of a Dukes filming location. This building and section of road was only seen in 'Deputy Dukes' in season 1, and I thoroughly searched the area around Lake Sherwood and the Golden Oak Ranch to no avail.

After putting it on the back burner, I eventually found the location a long way from other filming sites while I was using Google Maps to do an unrelated aerial tour of the Hollywood Hills. The signpost shows that it's where Lake Drive meets Franklin Canyon Drive. I'm not sure if the house was ever residential, or if it was connected to the nearby reservoirs. Either way, it's now boarded up and the wall at the front has gone, as has most of the fencing. You can check it out here.

This is the road to the right which winds up the side of the canyon. For a reverse view taken from near where the car is in the screengrab below, look at the second picture in this post from the 'Mistakes (Bloopers)/Things I've Noticed About The Show' thread.

I can't get a longer view of the building because the Google car didn't drive down the road to the north, and Bing don't cover it either. To give a better sense of the location, here's an aerial view from Bing Maps.