Malibu Film Locations: 1962 and 1955

I was watching one of my favorite movies this last weekend (the 1962 classic "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) and I noticed something I hadn't noticed before. I knew all about the car chase scenes at the incline in Santa Monica and the famous scene of digging up the buried money (under the Big W) at a private residence at Portugese Bend in Palos Verdes but I hadn't noticed the location of parts of the car chase scene (Black Valiant driven by Spencer Tracy) being chased by two Taxis carrying Peter Falk, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, and others. I took a photo of my TV screen and you can clearly see the corner of Corral and the part of PCH heading towards Malibu Seafoods. The 76 Union station is located on the opposite side of Corral from where it is today.

As you look up PCH as it goes up the hill towards where Cher's house is now you can see what looks like a grass median between north and south bound lanes. There wasn't any median there until the last few years.

In another photo you can see Bette Davis from the very ending of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane", the 1962 classic starring Davis and Joan Crawford. Davis has kidnapped her crippled sister and taken her to Westward Beach on the part of the Beach adjacent to the road from Sunset Restaurant towards the parking area near the Pt. Dume Cliff. You can see the cliff in the upper far right corner of the photo. There is a house in the background. The house no longer exists but it does exist in a scene from another film, "Kiss me Deadly", filmed at the same location in 1955. The same director did both films. I have been on the road many times and never seen any foundation or remnants of that house. It hardly looks like there is any room for a house on that stretch of beach. I'd love to know when it was built and why it was torn down.