I was awaiting a bus home one evening in the summer of 2008 when a movie crew commandeered Mount Vernon Place. Dressing room trailers and vintage automobiles turned Charles Street into 1953. I never got to see the star, Renee Zellweger, that evening, but recently I caught up with the finished product, entitled "My One and Only."
The film producers selected Baltimore to shoot that film, but the story placed the action in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and points west. While watching their work, I got swept up in trying to link the story line with the actual Baltimore landmark or location.
In the scene where Zellweger helps herself to the contents of a bank safe-deposit box, I broke into a broad smile. I recognized that vault. The building survived the Great Baltimore Fire and it was the only vault my grandfather would trust. Located in the old Maryland Trust Co., at Calvert and Redwood streets, it's now a boutique hotel, with a public lobby.
The film celebrates Baltimore's beloved downtown landmarks. The crew used the exterior of the Belvedere Hotel and the interior of the Lord Baltimore, making the Radisson hotel look very much like the old Baltimore of the Miller Brothers restaurant-O'Neill's department store era.
The movie crew transformed the supper room at the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion (The Engineering Society of Baltimore on Mount Vernon Place) into a stylish 1950s dining spot. With its tons of polished marble and fancy plaster, this is a dreamy space even without the Hollywood treatment. A glamorous cast, atmospheric lighting and good period music made the scene all the better.
Plenty of the locations stumped me. I had to call upon local casting mogul Pat Moran for a quick cheat sheet. Who knew the film creators would seek out the Institute of Notre Dame on Aisquith Street for school room shots? They also made use of Poly-Western's tiled corridors.
Several legendary Baltimore suburban mansions, which are occasionally opened for charity functions, became movie sets for an afternoon. The terraced gardens at Tyrconnell in Woodbrook looked glorious - as did the old F. Grainger Marbury home (known as Hambledune or Selsed House in Lutherville) and the Greenspring Valley's Rainbow Hill, where Gen. Douglas MacArthur resided many years ago.
The movie crew got around. There was an outdoor picnic scene at Gunpowder State Park. The Spotlighters Theatre on St. Paul Street in Mount Vernon became the Golden Mirror night club. The filmmakers used the Bengies Drive-In and a white frame house on Falls near Mount Carmel roads. The Scottish Rite Temple and the Church of the Redeemer, both on Charles Street, made it to Hollywood for the day.
The company employed East Baltimore's Oliver neighborhood to fill in as Pittsburgh and tapped my friend Father Kevin Mueller's Baltimore Transit Co. bus, which had Dunkirk Road on its destination sign. His 1950s refrigerator, borrowed for the film, got as much camera time as some of the fancier locations.
The film also has dozens of local actors. Just last week, I was speaking with Susan Rome, a teacher at the Baltimore Lab School. Bingo! She popped up on the screen wearing a very stylish 1953 hat. Could it have come from Maison Annette?
