Category: Simulated Places
Movie sets, trainers, simulators, fake cities, etc.
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Volcano Redoubt in You Only Live Twice (Film – 1967)
The true face of the James Bond series, at least throughout the Sixties and Seventies, isn’t Sean Connery. It’s a German-born set designer named Ken Adam.
Born in Berlin in 1921, trained as an architect in London, Adam’s hand has influenced film style through movies such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Ipcress File, Goldfinger, Dr. Strangelove, and countless others. But his greatest, or at least his most costly, achievement was the volcano redoubt in the 5th offering of the Bond series: You Only Live Twice.
From Fleming’s Pen to Pinewood
In the movie version, James Bond infiltrates evil villain Blofeld’s secret hideaway located inside of a hollowed-out volcano in Japan. Complete with a sliding door on top.
Published in 1964, Ian Fleming’s novel had nothing of the sort. It wasn’t a volcano, and it wasn’t Blofeld’s. It was a castle that belonged to a Doctor Shatterhand. In the novel, Bond views the castle:
…the soaring black-and-gold pile reared monstrously over him, and the diminishing curved roofs of the storeys were like vast bat-wings against the stars.
Clearly, Adam and film director Lewis Gilbert had to come up with something that would better appeal to late-Sixties sensibilities. Something bigger. Something more contemporary.
The Volcano Rises
Even though exterior shots show a real volcano, Pinewood Studios, about 20 miles from London, became the location for building the interiors of Blofeld’s volcano. Cost was projected at $1 million.
The volcano could be seen from miles around the Pinewood studios. It rose 120 feet and consisted of a movable helicopter platform, a working monorail system, a rocket launching complete with a full-scale rocket.
It is estimated that 700 tons of structural steel and 200 miles of tubular steel were used. But it wasn’t a permanent structure. They also used a quarter million square yards of canvas and 200 tons of plaster.
The Volcano’s Legacy
The volcano set wasn’t by any means the first grandiose Bond set. The Ft. Knox set in Goldfinger rivalled it–but it was certainly the biggest. It opened the way for an era of large-volume sets such as Adam’s supertanker set in The Spy Who Loved Me.
Short Video…
See a short video about the volcano hideout from You Only Live Twice.
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See the Fake White House in Suburban Maryland: James J. Rowley Training Center
James J. Rowley Training Facility Replica White House, Beltsville MD, 2009 In an April 5, 1982 TIME magazine article, it was mentioned that a fake White House and Blair House (the little auxiliary house across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House) were going to be built in Beltsville, Maryland:
Thomas Jefferson, the architect President, designed parts of the White House. Now with Ronald Reagan, the thespian President, there are plans to build a movie-set White House in the Maryland suburbs. The Secret Service plans to put up the mock White House (and a false-front Blair House, the nearby VIP guest quarters) so that its burgeoning presidential security force can properly learn the particulars of the presidential mansion. With 3,000 recruits being trained this year, maneuvers are difficult to conduct around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Explains Special Agent Mary Ann Gordon: “It’s better if you know the lay of the land.”
The new project at the Secret Service’s training center in Beltsville, Md., may not be finished for years. Nor will a full-scale chimera come cheap. The Hollywood White House is budgeted at $381,000—just about as much as it cost to build the original 182 years ago.
On a Google Map, the Secret Service training area is very clear. But the White House part of it is not clear. I have to guess that the photograph at the top is of the White House, due to the general shape of the building and the circular driveway. If so, that’s a pretty unconvincing White House.
Training Facility Overview, 2009
2017 Update
James J. Rowley Training Facility Beltsville MD 2017 2017
James J. Rowley Training Facility, Beltsville MD 2017 View of Replica White House
James J. Rowley Training Facility Replica White House, Beltsville MD 2017 -
Building the Matterhorn – Disneyland June 14, 1959
Let’s say right off the bat that it’s not the “Matterhorn.” Official term for it was “Matterhorn Bobsleds, because the included roller coaster was a big deal. Such a big deal: the first steel roller coaster in the world.
But we’re less interested in the bobsleds than in the mountain itself–a 147-foot fake mountain rising out of long-disappeared Southern California orange groves. The snow, according to John Hench in Designing Disney, is an “astonishingly realistic silvery-white blue-shadowed snow.” The designers nudged the peak to make it a bit more lop-sided than the original, creating more of a shadow effect on the side of the Disney mountain. The “real” Matterhorn is 14,700 feet, which makes the Disney version about 1/100th the size of the original.
Before the Matterhorn
The Matterhorn (let’s just call it that) began as a 20-foot mound of cast-off construction dirt. Walt Disney eventually sculpted the mound to make it more attractive and called it Holiday Hill. But still, his imagination couldn’t rest. After a 1958 trip to Zermatt, Switzerland to observe the filming of the Disney movie Third Man on the Mountain, Disney came up with the idea of building a scale replica in Anaheim.
Building the Matterhorn
In 1959, the hill (since named Snow Hill) was bulldozed and work begun on the steel framework for the Matterhorn by WED (the Disney group), Arrow (the roller coaster builders), and American Bridge Company. 2,175 steel pieces were used–all different sizes. Enough plywood for 27 homes and 500 tons of concrete were used, too. Four waterfalls were created. One waterfalls was 50 feet tall.
Forced Perspective
One way to “force” the illusion of height in any kind of structure is to use forced perspective; the Matterhorn was no exception. Full-sized spruce trees were planted at the bottom of the Matterhorn, with trees decreasing in height farther up the mountain. Towards the “treeline” (about 65 feet up, or halfway up the mountain), the smallest trees were planted: two-foot-tall pinion trees from Arizona.
Skyway
One advantage of the Matterhorn, in early years, was that it hid one of the Skyway’s support towers. The Skyway actually ran through the Matterhorn, giving visitors a glimpse of the mountain’s inner steel skeleton. In 1994, the Skyway ran its last car through, and the holes in the side of the Matterhorn were sealed off for good.
Matterhorn Size Comparison
The “real” Matterhorn in Switzerland is 14,700 feet tall; the “fake” Matterhorn in Disneyland is about 1/100th that size.
