Hotel Vertigo

Personality Hotels is expanding fast, adding two new properties to its stable of five hotels, Hotel Union Square, Hotel Diva, Kensington Park Hotel, Hotel Metropolis, and The Steinhart. The San Francisco boutique hotel company, whose properties are clustered around Union Square, has acquired both the York and Maxwell hotels, which are also near Union Square. The new owners are embarking on a series of renovations, according to a recent article in the San Francisco Business Times.

Company President Yvonne Lembi-Detert said Personality plans to relaunch the 96-room York as the Vertigo, a nod to the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name. The movie was filmed partly at the hotel, and a key shot involved the hotel’s staircase.

The film Vertigo stars James Stewart as Johnny (Scottie) Ferguson, Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster/Judy Barton and the city of San Francisco as itself.

The York Hotel 940 Sutter Street: When Scottie first catches a glimpse of Judy Barton, he follows her back to her hotel and invites her to dinner at Ernie’s. Judy’s room is located on the third floor of the hotel, whose interiors were all created back in Hollywood. The flashing green neon of the “Hotel Empire” sign creates a ghostly effect for Judy’s transformation into Scottie’s make-believe vision of Madeleine, although the neon sign was replaced when the Hotel was re-named The York Hotel.

Visitors to the city take the Vertigo Movie Tour of San Francisco. According to Vertigo’s associate producer, Hitchcock often picked a location and then developed a story to be filmed there. He liked to show a familiar location and introduce a twist of malice. When he first saw San Francisco, he said it would be a good place for a murder mystery, and he chose a French novel, “D’Entre les Morts”(From Among the Dead). It’s a story of deception and obsession, of love lost and regained, and of course, Hitchcock’s signature plot twist at the end.