Clubs in Film: Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' (1958)
A thinly-veiled cameo for the Pacific-Union Club of San Francisco.
Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) meets “Scottie” Ferguson (James Stewart) in the unnamed club, recreated on Stage 5 at Paramount Studios. Two members and a liveried waiter can be seen in the background.
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller Vertigo is highly regarded - in 2012, it even topped the decennial Sight & Sound critics’ poll of the greatest films of all time. It is not generally considered synonymous with Clubland. Yet the San Francisco-based film, shot on location around the city’s real-life sights, features a key scene in an unnamed private members’ club. In fact, it was a detailed studio recreation of a real-life club: the Pacific-Union Club which traces its roots back to 1852, and is generally considered one of the West Coast’s most socially prestigious and secretive clubs.
The Club in the film
The film follows retired detective John “Scottie” Ferguson (James Stewart), who is asked by his patrician old college acquaintance Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) to follow his wife, believing that she has been possessed by the otherworldly spirit of a suicidal ancestor. Elster initially meets Ferguson in the wood-panelled offices of his shipping firm. Later, Ferguson presents his findings to Elster, at the latter’s unnamed club.
It is a fitting setting to establish one of the film’s recurring themes. Elster, who married into a Baltimore shipping family, is shown to be preoccupied with old money throughout the film, and says, “I'd like to have lived here then [in 19th century San Francisco]. The color and excitement; the power; the freedom”; while a bookseller later mournfully tells Ferguson how a century earlier, “Men could do that in those days. They had the power and the freedom.” Near the end of the film, Ferguson rues how Elster behaved once “He had all her [his wife’s] money, and the freedom and the power.” The Pacific-Union Club, with its archetypally patriarchal setting, provides a perfect backdrop to illustrate this old money theme.
The club interior radiates opulence, with its comfortable armchairs, Ionic pillars, ornate fireplace, elaborate chandelier, atmospheric lighting, leatherbound books, deep carpets, and potted palms.
A third member is visible in the background of this angle, apparently completing a crossword.
The shooting script does not name the club - simply describing it as “Gavin Elster’s Club - (Night)”, with the description:
“a San Francisco Club - there are one or two members reading newspapers, etc., while a waiter moves by in the background serving drinks.”
The emphasis appears to be on discretion - unlike the screenplay’s stage direction, the uniformed waiter is not seen doing any serving, instead he fleetingly walks by in the opening seconds of the scene. In pantomime, two solitary members in the background are preoccupied with reading papers, one of them theatrically puffing on a cigarette, the other then curling up to sleep in his armchair. A change of camera angle shows a third member alone in an armchair, this one appearing to do the crossword. A fourth member later walks in silently. None of the members seems to be socialising with one another, the only engagement being between Elster and his outside guest. Everyone in the background looks decidedly bored.
Elster and Ferguson have their drinks pre-poured, with Ferguson quipping at the end of the scene, “Boy, I need this!” as he raises his glass.
“Boy, I need this!”, exclaims James Stewart ahead of downing his drink in the Club.
Others have remarked upon the set’s faithful reflection of the Pacific-Union Club, including film analyst Juli Kearns, and a detailed write-up of the film’s locations on Reel SF (chronicling “San Francisco movie locations from classic films”), which notes that it, “was filmed on a studio set meticulously created by art director Henry Bumstead.” This is very true. Hitchcock had a long-running habit of scrupulously researching interiors and recreating real-life locations, both inside and out - typically after being refused filming permission, but sometimes because he simply preferred the greater control over lighting afforded within a studio. Examples included the Royal Courts of Justice in Sabotage (1936), Westminster Cathedral in Foreign Correspondent (1940), the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur (1942), and the United Nations building and Mount Rushmore national park in North by Northwest (1959).
Indeed, the film more broadly is structured around real-life San Francisco locations, and one of the more common complaints about it is the slow pace of certain sections; most notably several lengthy car journeys, which accurately reflect the geography of the city’s street layout.
The Pacific-Union Club today. (Photo credit: Library of Congress website.)
The real-life Pacific-Union Club
The Pacific-Union Club was formed by the 1889 merger of two of the West Coast’s oldest clubs, both dating to before the Civil War: the Pacific Club formed in 1852, and the Union Club from 1854. Located at 1000 California Street on Nob Hill, it takes up a whole block and is located one block west of the University Club of San Francisco, and three blocks north of the city’s main concentration of clubs, including the Bohemian Club, the Francisca Club, the Metropolitan Club, and the city clubhouse of the Olympic Club. It occupies the 1886-built Flood Mansion, constructed for the silver magnate James Clair Flood. The shell of the building survived the 1906 earthquake, although the interior was devastated - leading to its sale to the Club, and their remodelling it as a clubhouse in 1910.
The San Francisco socialite and philanthropist Merla Zellerbach (1930-2014) famously quipped that the Club contained, “No Democrats, no women, and no reporters.” It remains a gentlemen’s club, with women guests entering through a side entrance.
The Club scrupulously guards its privacy and refuses permission to film or photograph its interior. Indeed, the bylaws of the Club would not permit it, since they read, “No information regarding any Club activity or function shall be released by anyone to the media.” This makes Bumstead’s accumulation of an accurate rendition of the interior all the more remarkable.
The Club today reciprocates with a handful of conspicuously aristocratic clubs worldwide, including Boodle's and Brooks's in London, the Jockey Club and Travellers Club in Paris, the Nuovo Circolo degli Scacchi (New Chess Club) in Rome, and the Somerset Club of Boston.
The Pacific-Union Club’s exterior in the film
The Pacific-Union Club itself makes a brief appearance earlier in Vertigo, as an exterior. “Scottie” Ferguson is seen waiting in his car, parked in front of the Club, whilst he waits for Gavin Elster’s wife to emerge from the Brocklebank Apartments building opposite. This suggests that Elster himself has just a short walk from his home to the clubhouse directly across the street.
The rear of the brownstone Pacific-Union Club building can be seen in the background, behind James Stewart’s car.
The inclusion of this shot, filmed on a public street, allowed Hitchcock to establish the clubhouse in the audience’s mind as a location, without the necessity to ask for permission to film. (On his next picture, Hitchcock would grow even bolder: refused permission to shoot in or around the United Nations headquarters in New York, he nonetheless hid a camera on the back of a waiting truck, to film an establishing shot of Cary Grant walking towards the building. The fly-by-night nature of the shoot is slightly obvious from the way that at least one passer-by visibly recognises Grant.)
Overall, Vertigo is a film steeped in its San Francisco locations, to evoke a unique atmosphere, and idiosyncratic ideas. The Pacific-Union Club is used to evoke the old-world wealth and power that Gavin Elster represents - something that becomes ever more important to the film’s ensuing plot twists.
If you enjoyed this piece, you may also like my other Clubland Substack posts on the portrayal of clubs in film and television:
Barry Lyndon (1975).
Jeeves & Wooster (1990-3).
There's a nice club scene in John Braine's Room at the Top, but I'd have to re-watch the film (it's on YouTube) to see if it's included in the film. I imagine quite a rare example in fiction of a club in a northern city.