• Remember Bing Crosby as "Father O'Malley" in the 1944 classic "GOING MY WAY"?
  
  Well, his parish church (called Saint Dominic's in the movie) was, in fact, Saint Monica's Catholic Church, located at 715 California Avenue, in Santa Monica.
  
  
  

• By now the 1946 movie "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE" has become a Christmas classic.

There is a key scene in that film where Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed are dancing the Charleston at the "Bedford Falls High School" prom, when suddenly the gym floor slides open, plunging the dancers into a swimming pool. (Later, when walking home, wearing a bathrobe, Donna gets stuck in the bushes without any clothes on.)

That dance scene was filmed using an actual covered swimming pool in the gym at Beverly Hills High School (241 Moreno Drive) near Century City. The gym is located on the south side of the campus, near the high school's track.

• That same Beverly Hills High School was also featured in 1993's "THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES." It was where Ellie Mae went to school, and whipped the boys' wrestling team in the gym.
  
  
  
  

In the 1942 classic "CASABLANCA", there is an early scene where French Captain Renault (Claude Rains) meets Major Strasser's plane, when the Nazi officer first arrives at the Casablanca airport. Strasser is there to capture Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), and after Strasser gets off the plane and is welcomed by Renault, he pressures Renault to arrest Ugarte (Peter Lorre). This airport runway scene was actually shot on the east side of the Van Nuys Airport.

(At the end of the film. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) shoots Strasser at the same Casablanca airport, as Laszlo and his wife (Ingrid Bergman) escape aboard a plane.)

The hanger is no longer part of the nearby airport (it's used for storage), and the old runway used in the movie is now a narrow alley called Waterman Drive. You'll find the exact spot on the south side of Waterman Drive, just west of Woodley Avenue. (In late 2007, they began to tear down Hanger #1, a hanger seen in the background of those "Casablanca" scenes, but it was spared at the last moment, when its facade was purchased by Jim Dunn, owner of the nearby Airtel Plaza Hotel. The hanger will reportedly be erelocated to the hotel - at 7277 Valjean Ave, in Van Nuys.)

(Some books mistakenly identify the location as the Burbank Airport, since the existing control tower there closely resembles the old Art Deco "radio tower" at Van Nuys Airport - which was torn down in the 1960's). *

• You can also see the faux streets of "Paris" (where the flashback love scenes of "CASABLANCA" were filmed) during the tour of the Warner Bros Studios The streets are still there on the studio's back lot (at 4000 Warner Blvd., in Burbank.) Remember the line:

"We'll always have Paris... "