Set here, shot elsewhere: the Fort Wayne of the story

1937 — 1968

Named, not filmed: Hollywood has set stories in Fort Wayne far oftener than it has photographed the city. The strongest case is Paramount's Appointment with Danger (shot 1949; released in the United States in 1951), in which Alan Ladd's postal inspector Al Goddard works a murder that runs from Gary to La Porte to Fort Wayne: the case's only witness, Sister Augustine, played by Phyllis Calvert, is traced to a convent in Fort Wayne, and the city is a plotted, named place in the film. Local writers have gone further — the genealogical society's page, following a 2011 blog examination built on frame photographs, holds that an early shot in the picture shows the real Fort Wayne, while conceding the preceding shot was Los Angeles with mountains in view. The claim is carried here as its makers made it: examined locally, believed locally, and not confirmed by any production record this chapter could reach; Paramount's picture was a studio production, and the Indiana location work reported for it belongs to Gary and Chicago, not to Fort Wayne.

The pattern repeats on television. The Fugitive's "Running Scared" (ABC, 22 February 1966) brings Kimble's family rendezvous to Fort Wayne — and was filmed in California, a correction the genealogical society's own page makes against the local rumor. Behind these stand the pure mentions: MGM's Mama Steps Out (1937), whose family is from Fort Wayne and leaves it for Europe, and the treasured local tradition that George Taylor, Charlton Heston's astronaut in Planet of the Apes (1968), learned to write at Jefferson School in Fort Wayne — a claim carried in the city's history circles as tradition, on a film shot in the Southwest and California. Fort Wayne's name travels much farther than its cameras have.

Sources:

1. Appointment with Danger — the film's own dialogue record (Sister Augustine traced to the Fort Wayne convent); production summary: filming began June 1949, British release April 1950, United States release May 1951, Paramount Pictures, director Lewis Allen.
2. ACGSI, "Videos for Allen County, Indiana" — the claim for a genuine Fort Wayne shot, citing the Casey Koester blog examination of 8 September 2011; The Fugitive "Running Scared," aired 22 February 1966, set in Fort Wayne and filmed in California; Mama Steps Out; the Planet of the Apes Jefferson School tradition.