Philadelphia - Cinema Philadelphia

In planning our trip to Philadelphia, I was only thinking of historical locations, not movie locations.

I did know that Rocky was filmed there, and there were the steps, and that there would be nothing more touristy that you could do than run up the steps and jump around, but that was all I had in mind.

There was a lot more.

We learned that the Eastern State Penitentiary has been used as a filming location often. I don't seem to have seen any movies shot there, but I have seen the music video for Tina Turner's "We Don't Need Another Hero". You can't really tell it's there - they just needed someplace big and dark - but since then I have watched "Punk Rock Girl" by The Dead Kennedy's, and you can totally see that.

Actually, that is a very Philadelphia video and song. We did not stop at the Hard Rock Cafe, so I do not have photographs of memorabilia of Philadelphia groups like Hall & Oates and Boyz II Men, so I will probably not do a post on Philadelphia music and I feel bad about that now.

The bus tour let us know about other films too. We passed by the house where the birthday party in The Sixth Sense was filmed, and the Wells Fargo Building that stood in for Duke and Duke in Trading Places.

(I know. I was on a moving vehicle and my camera kept dying.)

I liked both of these movies, but I had not strongly associated them with Philadelphia. I think I was just never familiar enough with it before.

Having been there now, I believe it will be different. I saw some news footage recently and without hearing where it was I recognized (correctly) City Hall right away.

But the coolest movie location for us was one my sisters knew about already. They started talking about Mannequin while we were en route, and I had not known that at all, so I looked it up, and there was an address, 1313 Chestnut Street, that was right by our hotel.

Prince & Company was basically Wanamakers (now a Macy's but still in the Wanamaker Building), and our hotel was next to it. Actually, in this video about filming locations for Mannequin, you can see our hotel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la7sIrNo8Sw&feature=youtu.be&list=UUjU-Cwjfqbo2hMRItlXwnnQ

This was very cool to me, but looking around it became kind of sad. The windows don't have those cool displays any more, for the most part. We only found one with actual mannequins in it, and they had no heads. Stairways are closed off. I get that people could fall, but then the balconies become dumping grounds for boxes, when there could probably still be some cool displays set up.

The one legacy that they do still honor is the Wanamaker Organ, which is important historically, is huge, and which still has regular concerts. That is probably only because they have a society of friends of the organ keeping it going:

http://www.wanamakerorgan.com/

It feels like there are some lost opportunities there. I feel pretty comfortable blaming Macy's.

I'm still glad I got to see it.