The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) Filming Locations ~ Part 3 Cambridge Cemetery

After finding the filming locations in Downtown Boston and Beacon Hill for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968),  Carlos and I headed to Cambridge, MA to find the cemetery from the film. Finding specific locations in cemeteries is more difficult than it seems. I personally have tried to find the graves of the author Henry James (Cambridge, MA) and the actress Thelma Todd (Lawrence, MA) with no luck and even though I had photo and location references from the Find-A-Grave website.

You would figure that cemeteries would not change much over time, with the exception of new headstones, but that's just not the case. Weather causes damage, teenagers vandalize and knock over headstones, many gravestones get replaced, plants and trees grow or are taken down, etc. Also, unless you are looking for something in a small cemetery, most cemeteries are complex labyrinths of stone, pavement and plants and are difficult to navigate if you don't know what you are looking for or don't have some guidance.

I went into this particular project with an open mind. Carlos didn't. He thought he could find the exact spots right away but I knew better! Our first mistake was thinking that the cemetery scenes in the film were shot at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. We went there and good thing Carlos asked someone at the visitor center because we were told the actual filming location was the adjacent Cambridge Cemetery and not Mt. Auburn. IMDb clearly states Cambridge Cemetery so I'm still confused why I thought it was Mt. Auburn to begin with!

The well-organized bank heist in the films ends with a money drop off at a cemetery just outside of the city. The bags of money are deposited in a trash can and shortly afterwards Thomas Crown arrives to pick up the loot. There are several shots of the Cambridge Cemetery, before you get to the drop off location, and I picked this one above because it stood out. The sculpture is of four cannons topped off with cannon balls and what look like graves of veterans surrounding it. I figured this one would be the easiest to find. It took some time but I found it.

And here it is! Notice how all the headstones are gone? They were replaced by flat markers. See what I mean about cemeteries changing over time? This part of the cemetery was a Civil War memorial and the graves were of fallen soldiers. It was very sobering to be there.

What the Civil War memorial looks like from the other side

Then we started looking for the money drop off location. I knew this one would be tricky and that we would need to compare screen shots from the movie with the areas and specific headstones we came across. I made an album on Picasa of my screen shots and accessed them on my iPhone. It helped a lot to have the screen shots on hand to compare with what we were seeing in real life.

This is the spot we were looking for!

This is the one screen shot I was most grateful for because it helped me find the exact location of the drop off. Compare the three tombstones in the foreground of the shot with the ones below.

I tried to line up the shot as close as I could to the original, even trying to get that pointed headstone in the bottom left of my picture. Notice how different the tombstones look 45 years later. That one on the right seems to be sliding off some sort of pedestal. The trashcan where Steve McQueen picks up the trash would have been towards the back.

Here are some more shots of the area.

If you watch the film closely, you'll spot these two headstones, the Skelton above and Nourse below. Kudos to Carlos who took the time to note the names.

We looked for this headstone in particular but couldn't find it. It was supposedly next to the Skelton and Nourse headstones but when we were there that spot was empty. There wasn't even a marker. I'm wondering if this was a fake headstone added for effect. "Blessed are the Pure in Heart" is what you see when Steve McQueen drives away with the bank loot.

You might think it's pretty strange of me to visit a cemetery looking for filming locations and photographing graves. That's actually pretty normal for me. Ever since I was a teenager, I have been fascinated with cemeteries and I did a lot of photography work at many of them.

I hope you enjoyed my little series on the filming locations of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Carlos and I plan to find more locations but we may have to wait a while before we have time to do this kind of research again.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) Filming Locations ~ Part 2 Beacon Hill

After Carlos and I explored Downtown Boston in search of filming locations for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) (you can see a post about that here), we headed to Beacon Hill where the character Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) lived. Beacon Hill is a district of Boston that has great historical importance for both local history and American history in general. In Beacon Hill you'll find the Massachusetts State House and the African Meeting House, it was a stop on the Underground Railroad,  important writers, politicians and dignitaries have lived and worked there. It's also an aesthetically beautiful neighborhood. It is so sought after that properties there have a very high value and are sold for top dollar. Where else would Thomas Crown, a man whose main goal in life is to seek wealth at any cost, call home?

In the film, we first see Beacon Hill when Thomas Crown drives up Mt. Vernon Street.

What the drive up Mt. Vernon Street looks like today

Thomas Crown's car takes a left and enters the driveway of 85 Mt. Vernon Street.

85 Mt. Vernon Street

The same cobblestone driveway you see in the movie is still there. It's a private residence so we couldn't go in. It looks like some contractors were there hence all the extra cars parked in the driveway.

Source: GlamAmor

In the film, Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway) and Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) attend an auction in Beacon Hill. I wasn't even looking for this location and didn't grab my own screen cap for it. However, Carlos really wanted to find it and we did! 

46 Beacon Street

46 Beacon Street

Vicki Anderson and Thomas Crown have a love affair. Is she trying to use her feminine charms on Thomas Crown to find out if he was responsible for the bank heist or is she falling for him in earnest? The line between business and pleasure starts to get really blurry. In this scene, Thomas Crown is taking Vicki Anderson back to his place. They walk up Acorn Street in Beacon Hill, one of the most photographed streets in America.

Sign for Acorn Street, which is to the right of this picture

Acorn Street, Beacon Hill

Acorn Street is beautiful and if you compare the screen cap from the movie and these pictures, it doesn't seem that much has changed from 1968 to 2013. Acorn Street seems to be frozen in time.

Acorn Street, Beacon Hill

It's a gorgeous little street, perfect for a romantic walk and a discreet kiss.

I hope you enjoyed my second installment in this filming location series on The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Next up, I look for the cemetery featured in the film.

10 Tips on Getting in More Classic Film Reading

I hear a lot of people say that they don’t read classic film related books or don’t read enough of them because they don’t have time. This is an issue for all of us really. We lead busy lives and it’s difficult to get a movie in sometimes let alone a whole book!

As you can tell by my Summer Reading Classic Film Book Challenge and my many book reviews on this blog, reading classic film books is incredibly important to me. I try my best to fit it into my life because I want to learn. There is so much to learn and even with all the books I’ve read already, I feel like I’ve only hit the tip of the iceberg. I know there is so much more out there and my insatiable curiosity won’t let me rest. However, even with my own self-motivation, I still struggle.

Here are ten tips that have helped me get more reading in. I use almost all of them on a regular basis (I have to get better at #10!). I find that I need as much motivation as possible to get in all the reading I want to do. And even then I wish I could read more. Some of these tips might help you, some might not. Look through the list and see if there are any that might help you get in more reading.

 1. Read what you want – I came up with the idea of a Summer Reading challenge instead of a book club because I wanted to people to read what they wanted instead of being assigned something. Don’t pick up a book you think you should read, pick up something you know you want to read. It can be a book about your favorite actor, actress or director or about a genre you love.

2. Challenge yourself – Make goals. Whether it’s to read 6 books in 3 months or to get that one book you’ve been reading for a long time finished by next week. You can even set page goals. For example, make a small goal to finish 100 pages of your book by the end of the day. I know this all makes reading sound like a chore. It really isn’t. Reading is a joy but it comes with effort. And it's more difficult these days with all the distractions. Our attention spans have become shorter. Reading a book will help you work on your attention span and you’ll feel accomplished after each book. Also, if you have an hour to devote to reading and you'll find you'll get advance more pages in an hour straight of reading than an hour's worth of reading in little bits. However, if little snippets of time is all you have then that’s better than nothing.

3. Keep track of your reading – I like to use a website like Goodreads. There is also LibraryThing, All Consuming and a few others. I keep track of books I’m currently reading, books I've read in the past, and how many books I want to read in a year (Goodreads has a cool tracking widget for that). You can also keep an offline journal or keep track of your reading on your blog if you have one. You can do full reviews or small ones to keep track of your thoughts on what you’ve read.

4. Find motivation – Read book reviews by other bloggers or readers, learn about new books coming out, take a look at the book section on TCM’s website, sign up for e-newsletters from your favorite publishers, talk to friends online and offline about what they are reading, etc. I find that talking to people about books or learning about them on and offline really encourages me to read more.

 5. Keep a book by your side constantly – Right now I’m reading Room 1219: The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood. It goes everywhere with me. It’s often found in my car, at my desk at work, in my purse, on my nightstand, on the coffee table by the couch and even in the bathroom sometimes. I read it in the morning when I wake up, at night before I go to sleep and I even read it during my lunch break. Bring a book with you when you travel or go to appointments. You’ll have a lot of down time and you can get some good reading in that way. In fact, if you have a lot of travel time ahead of you, such as a long flight or bus/train trip, then bring TWO books. When you get bored of one, switch to the other. And on that note...

6. Alternate your reading – Do you find yourself overwhelmed with a particular book no matter how much you enjoy reading it? Or is the book your reading a bit of a slog to get through? You don’t have to be faithful to one book at a time. Have a few going at once. I almost always have 3 or 4 books going at the same time. I also read young adult and children’s books for work. So sometimes I’ll alternate between my classic film book and one lighter book I’m reading for my job. Or I’ll alternate between two classic film books. I also like reading general non-fiction, history, classic literature and some contemporary fiction. I try to mix things up and it keeps things interesting.

7. Reward yourself – I remember one time I was so happy that I had finished a particularly long classic film book that was chock full of just so much information, that I rewarded myself with a day of luxury. On that day, I did beauty treatments, went shopping and watched my favorite films. Your rewards don’t have to encompass entire days. They can be small too! Sometimes I even reward myself with finishing one book by buying another. Just don't reward yourself with cake. Ha!

8. Do active reading – I keep a notebook or a pad of paper and a pen handy to make notes while I'm reading. I write down quotes (with page numbers), trivia bits I liked, things that struck me as interesting, thoughts I had about what was discussed and points maybe I want to include in my review if I’m doing one. This is especially useful when you are reading non-fiction like a biography. If I don't have paper nearby, I'll take notes on my iPhone and I'll even take pictures of quotes from the book that I want to refer to later! If you're reading a book about a specific genre of film, sometimes I stop to go to YouTube or TCM's MediaRoom to watch a trailer, scene, musical number, interview, etc. that was mentioned in the book. Or if I read about a film I haven’t seen yet, I go to Netflix or Classicflix to see if I can rent it. Or I’ll look it up on TCM’s website to see if they are showing it in the future. All of this may increase the time it takes you to finish a book. However, it will make you more absorbed in the reading experience and you'll enjoy it more because you have become an active participant instead of just a passive one.

9. Be realistic – You can’t read all the books in the world. There are so many classic film books out there and more are being published every year. Even though our niche is really specific, there is still a huge variety of books on it. So be picky. As I said before, read what you want. Also, if you have a super busy schedule, be realistic about what you can fit in. You might want to read 100 books in a year but if 10 or 20 is more realistic stick with that.

10. It’s okay to put a book down – I should take my own advice because I rarely do this. If you had high hopes for a book and your reading experience has been nothing but a big disappointment, then give yourself permission to stop reading the book . There are a lot of books out there that you will enjoy. It doesn’t make sense to waste your precious time on something that you just don’t like.