Blue Gum Eucalyptus trees in the movies and in television shows

by James K. Sayre

Of course, movies and television shows that are set in coastal California may often have the tall ubiquitous Blue Gum Eucalyptus trees (Eucalyptus globulus) in the background, for they have been happily growing here for about one hundred and fifty years.

However, it is a little surprising to see them popping up in the backgrounds of such supposed midwestern settings as Iowa (in the 1945 version of State Fair starring Jeanne Crain). In the first scenes of If Winter Comes, a 1947 movie set in pre-WWII rural England and starring Walter Pigeon and Deborah Kerr, you can see the tall and characteristically scraggly tops of Blue Gums in the background. Check out some of the backgrounds in High Society, made in 1956 and starring Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. This movie was set in coastal Newport in Rhode Island, hardly a place where the Blue Gum Eucalyptus would be growing.

In television comedies, you can see rows of Blue Gum trees in the Hogan's Heroes show, which is allegedly set in northern Germany. In the Andy Griffith Show, which is set in mythical Mayberry, location in rural North Carolina, juvenile and adult leaves of the Blue Gum can be seem to the right of the service station that Goober works in.

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Web page last updated on 4 September 2007.