Lamanda Park Station of Santa Fe, corner of San Gabriel Boulevard and Walnut Street (Photo – Pasadena Museum of History, Hawkins Collection)
The Santa Fe train station that once stood at the corner of San Gabriel Boulevard and Walnut Street made a brief appearance in Frank Capra’s 1946 holiday classic, It’s a Wonderful Life.
By Matt Hormann
In April 1936, spectators in East Pasadena flocked to see the arrival of the Hale Telescope lens at the local Santa Fe train station. Flashbulbs popped and cameras rolled. One newspaper at the time noted, “Lamanda Park station probably won’t know so much excitement again—even when it masquerades in the movies!”
It’s unknown how many movies the station “masqueraded” in, but ten years later, in May 1946, filmmaker Frank Capra decided to use the same spot in his classic film It’s a Wonderful Life.
Doubling as the fictional Bedford Falls station, the 1886 train depot was a relic of the days when grapevines and orange groves covered the landscape. The surrounding area remained relatively untouched by modernity and was effective in doubling as a sleepy New York town, the setting of the film.
Capra was familiar with the neighborhood, having lived in Sierra Madre from 1915-16, and later Pasadena and Arcadia. As a young man he had attended Throop Institute (today’s Caltech) while working the graveyard shift at the Pasadena Light and Power Plant, and was involved in the Pasadena Community Players. He even tutored Arcadia founder Lucky Baldwin’s grandson to make ends meet.
Always on the lookout for authentic locales, Capra had previously used other nearby locations, including Pasadena’s Busch Gardens (It Happened One Night) and the U.S. Army Balloon School in Arcadia (Dirigible).
It’s a Wonderful Life spans the years 1919 to 1945, and the train station scene takes place in 1932, when protagonist George Bailey’s brother, Harry, returns from college with his wife, causing Bailey to consider his own life choices. To duplicate a slightly earlier time, Capra’s production crew found a vintage 1921 steam engine for the scene rather than the diesel engines that were becoming more popular by the 1940s.
As Michael Willian explains in The Essential It’s a Wonderful Life: A Scene-by-Scene Guide to the Classic Film (2006), “Capra had to keep the shots for this scene fairly tight due to the presence of several palm trees on the depot grounds. Palm trees simply would not do for a scene that is supposed to take place in New York.”
Locals took note of the shoot and flocked to the scene.
Lamanda Park Station of Santa Fe (Photo – Pasadena Museum of History, Hawkins Collection)
Former Pasadena resident Jody Lorin, who was 11 at the time, recalled the thrill of having a Hollywood movie come to town. “I was on my way home from school,” she said in a 2014 interview. “I think I got a brief look at [James] Stewart. I waved and he waved back. Everything was roped off, so you couldn’t get near the actors. One of the neighborhood boys found a bag of popcorn used as one of the props in the movie. He was passing it around until someone noticed it had trash in it. It must have been sweepings from a theater.”
Though the train station scene lasts just two-and-a-half minutes, it is pivotal to the plot, as George Bailey realizes he will have to make yet another sacrifice for his family’s business.
Ultimately, Capra settled on another area location — Viro Road in La Cañada — which doubled as the Bailey Park subdivision in the film. Capra knew the spot well: his father had worked on Los Angeles Express owner Edwin T. Earl’s ranch, which once stood nearby.
Though it might be a stretch to say Pasadena and environs inspired the fictional town of Capra’s film, a 1999 Sierra Madre Weekly article noted: “{Capra’s] years in the San Gabriel Valley […] were arguably the source for many influences that run through Capra’s works.”
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