'Greed' in SF

von Stroheim's Greed was based on Frank Norris's McTeague, a novel he based on actual events in San Francisco that occurred while he was in school at Berkeley. Filmed in the same year as Thief of Bagdad, the initial cut of Greed ran nine and a half hours. The studio made him cut it to two, and much of the cut footage was lost.

In 1999 Turner Entertainment did a partial restoration, which got good reviews. In retrospect, that would have been a good time to watch it...

Greed was filmed on location in San Francisco and Death Valley. One of the most important locations was this building at Hayes and Laguna. In the novel McTeague's dental office was at the corner of Kearny and Geary, and there was an actual dentist's office at that location (note the tooth hanging over the street...actually, that whole americahurrah site is very cool...).

This fellow has built a website about the movie. A summary of the movie is here.