Ok, in my need to be useless to society, here's a whole lot of obsessive stuff about the 1949 picture
Criss Cross.
First of all, it begins with a "fly in" across City Hall onto North Spring St. I could spend a whole lotta time going on about whether "that" may or may not be a remaining building at Ord & Alameda. But I got a whole lot of film to get through. Suffice it to say, it may be
the greatest opening in the history of film. Obviously, I'm a little biased.
I mean, it really has to be seen to be believed. Old LA geeks could and would go off for days just on it alone.
We swoop in on Yvonne De Carlo and Burt Lancaster in a parking lot, here:
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say at the outset that I've had a crush on Yvonne De Carlo since my introduction to
The Munsters, which KTLA played in reruns in the late 70s when I was a kid. She made me this way. Blame her for everything. Moving on.
I would argue that one of the characters in the picture
is the Round Up Café:
So
Sins of the City said (p. 76) that La Bamba was the location of the "Round Up." Heimann is a first-rate researcher, by and large. I think he's right. Check it out:
Mmm. Pointy skylight atop.
Witness:
Skylites!
I
told you this would be obsessive. More in a moment.