Can Anyone Identify These?

[danemodsandy]

Hello:

I am presently researching Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo for a magazine project, and I am trying to get two items seen on one of the movie's sets identified. They are a television set and a combination sink/range/refrigerator unit.

What I'm looking for is at least manufacturer info; if any model numbers are known to anyone, that would be the icing on the cake.

Any help on this would be ENORMOUSLY appreciated!

Here's the television set (at the extreme left of the frame); that's James Stewart and Kim Novak in the shot:

 

[danemodsandy]

Sink/Range/Fridge Unit:

This is not much information to go on, I know, but this combo unit is seen only very briefly:

 

[americansuds]

Seems like Kitchen Aid made a fridge/sink/cooktop/dw combo type thing. just a faint memory. someone here will know. I remember the ads in Life Magazine I think.

 

[danemodsandy]

Clearer Shot of Combo Unit:

I was able to find one place in the movie where the kitchen's combo unit is seen a little more clearly, so here goes. Fair warning: the oven door is open, so you can't see the range part as well as could be. What's going on in the scene is the Jimmy Stewart is drying Kim Novak's clothes in his kitchen by hanging them up and running the oven with the door open.

 

[rp2813]

Try This

Someone on the Antique Radios Forum can probably identify the TV. The link below is to the forum section for vintage television.

http://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=3

 

[danemodsandy]

Ralph:

I'll try that if no one here is able to I.D. it, thanks. BTW, the S.F. apartment used for the exterior shots in this scene was real; it's at 900 Lombard, corner of Lombard and Jones. Still looks very much the way it did in the movie, aside from some seriously overgrown shrubbery.

 

[maytagbear]

Television looks like

an RCA to me, and all-in-one kitchen looks like a Dwyer.

Just guesses.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[danemodsandy]

Lawrence, You Did It!

You nailed the kitchen for certain; a little research turned up an almost identical unit in someone's apartment in Astoria. Oddly, though the Astoria unit is identified on its nameplate as a product of Dwyer, it also has the name "Murph-Cabranette" on the nameplate as well. But it's definitely Dwyer; some cross-checking turned up other units as well.

Thank you SO much. I'm checking the TV out, too, but that may be a little harder.

 

[danemodsandy]

Dingdingdingdingding!

Ralph and Lawrence:

Thank you both so much! Lawrence, you nailed the Dwyer combo kitchen, and Ralph, your suggestion to ask at the Antique Radio Forums TV forum page was an excellent one; someone identified it as a Muntz, and some additional research confirmed that information.

Unbelievable what people know! Thanks again.

 

[jasonl]

Pun intended

And it was being used as a "Dwyer" in the movie as well.

 

[maytagbear]

Sandy

I'm smarter than I look. Sometimes.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[danemodsandy]

Now, Now, Lawrence:

"I'm smarter than I look."

You do okay, trust me.

 

[danemodsandy]

jasonl:

GRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN!

;-)

 

[toggleswitch2]

Where is Yogi when you need him?

Would that be "Smarter than the average bear?"

 

[yogitunes]

Toggles...your funny

I really needed to laugh today

Thanks a million

 

[toggleswitch2]

 

[rp2813]

Muntz

I'm glad somebody on the ARF was able to get you a quick answer. I checked the Early Televison Foundation site and they only had really early stuff there. I have to say that Muntz would never have made it into my slew of guesses. I thought they only made larger sets. The interesting thing about Muntz is that they have a very sparse chassis compared to most vintage sets. I like the case on that TV. Very smart color scheme.

I just watched Vertigo again on TV not too long ago. Great vintage views of the City By The Bay, and it also triggered me to suggest a day trip to San Juan Bautista with some friends who are relatively new to this area.

Have fun with your project Sandy!

 

[panthera]

Lawrence

is not only smarter than the average bear - if I'm the standard - but he's also sweet through and through.
(pun not intended, but no doubt taken).

 

[danemodsandy]

Ralph:

Ah, San Juan Bautista! A beautiful place. I've had several great phone conversations about Vertigo with the staff there; they were able to tell me things I didn't know, and I was able to share some tidbits with them, too (they hadn't realised that Hitchcock changed the archways that carriages used to pass through; they're square in real life, but Hitchcock had them rounded with plywood and plaster temporary constructions).

One of the things I like about the movie is that it serves as a record of a time when San Francisco worked better for people from all walks of life. Today, it's not a city for an average wage-earner, and that's a shame. I hope S.F. can somehow get back to some of that in the future. I also liked the city better before the big skyscrapers began springing up; it was a very human-scale, almost European place. Ah well - time marches on.

Today, a lot of the locations seen in Vertigo are changed. Ernie's is gone, and the building greatly changed. Ransohoff's is long since closed, and the building was Escada for a while, and now that's gone, too. The run-down Empire Hotel became the upscale York, and is now the Vertigo Hotel (blecch!). Old Fort Point and Marine Drive look much as they did in the movie, and the Palace of Fine Arts and the Palace of the Legion of Honour do, too. Mission Dolores is still intact, but the old house at the corner of Eddy and Gough that was used for the McKittrick Hotel (the Fortmann Mansion) survived barely eighteen months after Vertigo was filmed, then was lost to a fire.

Did I mention that I really love Vertigo? ;-)

 

[rp2813]

Yeah, Hitch was a local and had a nice spread right here in the Santa Cruz mountains. As far as I know, the place is still intact but doubt it rates any historical significance. Even homes locally where Jack Kerouac and Ken Keesey lived have been pushed over.

Interesting story about alterations made in SJB, and I agree with you about the SF that existed in the 50's. With so many skyscrapers now, several years ago they stopped flying the flags on top of the Telephone Company building that indicated wind conditions for seagoing vessels because nobody could see the top of that building anymore. And then SBC sold it, so it's not even the Telephone Company building anymore either.

 

[mpatoray]

Muntz

Muntz sets where very interesting, the story was told to me by someone at the ETF convention this year, apparently "Madman Muntz" took a standard RCA 630 style chassis and started removing tubes, if the set stopped working he would put that last tube back in and then continue. They where very poor performing sets, just like the Curtis Mathes ones later.

 

[appliguy]

Matt....

Muntz sets were not poor performers they were made to be used in and were usually sold in cities that had local tv stations...One big market for Muntz tv's, so I am told was Baltimore, another was Philidelphia. Muntz tv's were never designed for long distance reception, that is why they were so inexpensive and also why they were popular....PAT COFFEY

 

[rp2813]

It makes sense then that someone living in SF would be able to get away with owning a Muntz set since the transmitters were (and some still are) on a hilltop just south of town. I recently gave some friends in Oakland a small TV I replaced. They hooked it up to a digital converter and are getting tons of channels with just rabbit ears. So much for the pre-digital conversion ads saying rabbit ears wouldn't work anymore. I'm using a converter with rooftop antenna that's non-UHF and it's pulling in quite a few stations from 50 miles north.

 

[danemodsandy]

New News:

Since the identification I posted was made, new info has surfaced. The TV set is a Spartan, not a Muntz. The confusion arose because the cabinets are very, very similar. Spartan was a "value" division of Magnavox created when Maggie bought the TV and radio interests of the Sparks-Withington Company in about 1956. S-W had been making TV's and radios under the Sparton (note different spelling) brand for a long time, but was exiting the consumer electronics biz in favour of defence contracts. Maggie changed the spelling of the brand name a bit.

The confusion arose because of the similarity in cabinets; they are so much alike that it appears both manufacturers bought their cabinets from the same supplier. Stamped metal cabinets were expensive to make (stamped metal anything is expensive to make), so it seems that supplier companies made "stock" designs that could be customised (within certain limits) for smaller manufacturers. The biggies like RCA and Zenith were a different story, of course.

Anyhoo, the TV is very definitely a Spartan; I was given an original manufacturer's photo with a model number to confirm it. So, sorry, Muntz fans!