Shadow of a Doubt House - Santa Rosa

The Shadow of a Doubt house is located on McDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa, California.  It was stood in for the Newton family home in the 1943 Alfred Hitchcock production.  During wartime Hollywood faced certain restrictions in the use of materials for their films.  One such restriction imposed by the War Production Board was a $5,000 limit on the cost of sets constructed for movies.  This restriction forced Alfred Hitchcock to use cheaper means to recreate the fabricated world of his films.  The final answer to the problem was to leave the controlled environment of the studio and go on location, searching for a town that fit the needs of the story he was going to tell.  Santa Rosa fit the bill for the next Hitchcock story.  Shadow of a Doubt, with a script co-written by Thornton Wilder, was the story of the small town Newton family and the visit they received from their beloved Uncle Charlie, who also happened to be a serial killer.  The cast included Joseph Cotten as Uncle Charlie, and Teresa Wright as his niece, Charlie, who eventually suspects who her uncle really is.  Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers, Wallace Ford, Patricia Collinge and Hume Cronyn rounded out the cast.  The production moved to Santa Rosa in late 1942 for several weeks of shooting.  Many of the locations used in the film were later destyroyed in a 1969 earthquake.  The Newton home, however, does still stand on McDonald Avenue, as does the train station Uncle Charlie arrives at near the beginning of the film.  The film was released in January 1943 to critical praise and was Oscar nominated for Best Story.  Hitchcock would later claim this film was his favorite.  Shadow of A Doubt was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of congress in 1991.

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