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Lights, Camera, Action!
Santa Barbara was the original "Hollywood"-the preferred site of film production, in the early 1900s. As a result, Santa Barbara has a star-studded cinematic history. The city and county have been the backdrop for thousands of films and commercials and have hosted steady streams of celebrity visitors (and residents). Your group can tour locations featured in films, sleep where the stars have slept, or otherwise indulge their film love. The Bureau can provide complimentary copies of the Lonely Planet Santa Barbara County Film Tour guides and wryly annotated maps of locations used in the movie Sideways.
- Combine wine, food, and film in an unconventional wine-country tour featuring locations in the Oscar®-winning film Sideways.
- Explore some lesser-known areas of northern Santa Barbara County on a movie location tour of the Lompoc and Santa Maria Valleys, with stops including the remote Guadalupe Dunes (Hidalgo, G.I. Jane, Pirates of the Caribbean III), where the massive sets of the Cecile B. DeMille's silent version of The Ten Commandments (1923)are still buried, and La Purisima Mission (Seabiscuit).
- Take your group on a city tour of Santa Barbara's iconic landmarks with a film-history bent, concluding with a martini reception in the Four Seasons Biltmore's Bungalow #5, where Rock Hudson wed Phyllis Gates in the 1950s.
