BALTIMORE -- Some movie trivia: What's the common thread connecting "The Blair Witch Project," "Runaway Bride," "Patriot Games," "Hairspray," "Tin Men" and Alfred Hitchcock's 1964 thriller "Marnie"?
Two thumbs up for those who knew that all were filmed in Maryland.Better known for its Chesapeake Bay oysters and crabs and for its baseball Orioles, this scenically diverse state has been a favorite locale for filmmakers for nearly a century.
In 1928, Gary Cooper portrayed a waterman in "The First Kiss," which was filmed in St. Michaels, a fishing village on the Eastern Shore of the Bay. Shirley Temple came to this historic city in 1949 to play a suffragist in "Adventure in Baltimore."
Sissy Spacek and Kevin Kline filmed "Violets Are Blue" in the beach resort of Ocean City in 1986. In the 1998 "Enemy of the State," Will Smith drove a car in a ventilator shaft below the Fort Henry Harbor Tunnel.
The state's supporting role in movies is entertainingly examined in "Filming Maryland," an exhibition that opened in Baltimore this month at the Maryland Historical Society Museum and will run through Oct. 8.
Beginning with the first movie shot in Maryland -- the 1908 short "Barbara Freitchie: The Story of a Patriotic Woman" -- the exhibit traces a cinematic culture stretching to last year's surprise hit, "The Blair Witch Project," shot in tiny Burkittsville.
In recent decades, Maryland moviemaking has been boosted by two home-grown directors who have located many of their works in Baltimore. Through these films, John Waters and Barry Levinson have become as closely associated with their hometown as Woody Allen has with New York City.
"I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore," said Waters, whose distinctive films "Pink Flamingoes," "Hairspray," "Serial Mom," "Cry Baby" and "Pecker" were all set here.
"You can look far and wide, but you'll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore and decided to stay," he said.
Levinson calls Baltimore his "homeland" and describes the city as a unique setting for telling universal stories.
His 1990 "Avalon" is a multi-generational story beginning with Levinson's immigrant grandfather arriving in Baltimore. Up through his 1999 "Liberty Heights," the director says, his works contain stories that "are sort of Baltimore mythology."
During an all-night Baltimore shoot for his 1987 "Tin Men," Levinson recalls, neighborhood folks came to the street with soft-shell crab sandwiches for Danny DeVito, Richard Dreyfuss and other cast members.
The museum exhibit links Waters and Levinson with Baltimore through their writings and videotaped appearances as well as with film clips and artifacts from their movies. Their films grow from their roots in the city.
Waters used Baltimore TV's real "Buddy Dean Show" from the early 1960s as the inspiration for the "Corney Collins Show" where Ricki Lake danced with other teenagers in beehives and ducktails in "Hairspray."
The actual Baltimore diner where Levinson and his buddies hung out in 1958 was gone when he got around to filming his coming-of-age movie in 1981. The namesake eatery in the movie "Diner" was brought in from New Jersey but now serves french fries with gravy at the corner of Holliday and Saratoga streets in the filmmaker's hometown.
Of course, not all filmmakers who work in Maryland are native sons. Outsiders come for the varied locations.
In filming "Runaway Bride" in Maryland, director Garry Marshall found that the Worchester County villages of Berlin and Snow Hill could be combined into fictitious Hale, hometown of altar-wary Julia Roberts. Meanwhile, Baltimore masqueraded as New York in street scenes for newspaper reporter Richard Gere.
Compact but full of "visual diversity," Maryland has a reputation with directors as being a sort of "America in miniature," explained Jed Dietz, president of the Maryland Producers Club and a contributor to the museum exhibit.
Oprah Winfrey's rural Ohio homestead in the 1998 "Beloved" was actually located at the Fair Hill Natural Resources Area in Cecil County. The 19th century New York portrayed in "Washington Square" was actually Baltimore's Union Square and nearby historic brick homes. The Paris scene in that 1997 Disney movie was shot in Baltimore's Mount Vernon Place.
In the 1997 "Absolute Power," Clint Eastwood supposedly sketches at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington but is really at downtown Baltimore's Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore serves as Dublin, Ireland, in "Violets are Blue."
In "Major League II," Baltimore's Camden Yards subs as the home field for the Cleveland Indians. In "Random Hearts," the fateful Potomac plane crash was filmed at Maryland's Patapsco River. In "Guarding Tess," the Ohio home of first lady Shirley MacLaine was actually in Baltimore's Mt. Washington neighborhood.
In addition to providing imposter locations, Maryland strives to be an accommodating host to filmmakers, Dietz said. He recalled how director and actor Jodie Foster was riding around Baltimore with Jack Gerbes, a location scout with the Maryland Film Commission, in preparation for shooting the 1995 movie "Home for the Holidays."
Foster spotted a house on Hartford Road that she wanted to examine. So, without any notice, Gerbes knocked on the door.
A friendly couple answered, invited Foster inside, fed her homemade cookies and played songs for her on an organ in their living room, said Dietz. That house became the model for the film's main interior soundstage.
Dietz said the film industry generates about $75 million a year for the Maryland economy, about as much as provided by the Baltimore Orioles operation.
Baltimore's Tremont Plaza Hotel has cultivated this cinematic trade. Two floors have been turned into production offices for visiting film crews, and a movie theater was built so directors can review every day's filming.
Many movies have been shot in Maryland simply because that's where the story takes place.
"There have been 12 to 15 'Annapolis stories' -- all with essentially the same plot" about rival midshipmen wooing the same girl and enduring the rigors of the Naval Academy, said Leith Johnson, the exhibit's curator.
Midshipmen have been portrayed by leading men ranging from Johnny Mack Brown to John Derek, and all have acted in scenes shot in Annapolis.
In "Sleepless in Seattle," Meg Ryan plays a Baltimore Sun reporter, so some scenes are shot at the paper and in the city. In "He Said, She Said," Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins also portray Baltimore journalists, so that comedy focuses on the city. Alfred Hitchcock thought the Baltimore waterfront would provide a foreboding setting for "Marnie" and even researched hairstyles of working-class women in the city for Tippi Hedren in the thriller.
Naturally, the state provided the horse-racing locales in the 1940 movie "Maryland," starring Walter Brennan.
Composing a list of all the movies made in Maryland has been a challenge, Johnson said. He came up with 150 in preparing literature for the exhibit -- and learned of four more shortly after sending the list to the printer.
Maryland's filmography "is a work in progress," he said.