Van Nuys Boulevard has rarely looked as far from Van Nuys as it does on this postcard.
Printed in black and salmon pink, the card promotes the 1979 cruising comedy Van Nuys Blvd. for a Japanese audience. Its design compresses the movie into a feverish catalog of attractions: custom vans, a drag race, a carhop, a couple sharing a hamburger and the boulevard after dark. Even before the Japanese copy is translated, the pitch is easy to read. This is California as youth fantasy—fast, flirtatious and available for export.
In Japan, the film received the wonderfully rhythmic title バン・バニング・バン, literally romanized as Ban Baningu Ban and suggestive of “Van Vanning Van.” The wording does not reproduce “Van Nuys Boulevard.” Instead, it stacks up the sound of “van” and an English-derived Japanese expression for van-centered driving culture, giving the release a title that feels like motion.
A “catalog movie” shipped from California
The large copy across the upper right roughly translates as:
Summer is fresh and ready for fun—take a big bite of entertaining information! Direct from sunny California. This is the much-talked-about “catalog movie.”
“Catalog movie” is an inspired description of the postcard itself. The layout offers no single dominant scene. It sells a menu of pleasures instead: the customized vehicle, the open road, young bodies, fast food, nightlife and the promise of an American summer.
That approach fits the movie. The American Film Institute describes Van Nuys Blvd. as a 93-minute, R-rated teenage comedy about a young drag racer named Bobby who hears about Van Nuys Boulevard, drives west from New Mexico and arrives for the boulevard’s Wednesday cruise night. The film was written and directed by William Sachs, produced by Marilyn J. Tenser, photographed by Joseph Mangine and released in the United States by Crown International Pictures.
The postcard names Bill Adler, Cynthia Wood, Dennis Bowen, Melissa Prophet, David Hayward and Tara Strohmeier. Rather than emphasizing plot, its pictures present the stars as pieces of a larger California lifestyle.
The real boulevard behind the fantasy
For Valley viewers, the title was not an abstraction. Cruising on Van Nuys Boulevard was the subject of the movie and its principal attraction. AFI records location filming in the San Fernando Valley, Northridge and Valencia, with production running from October through December 1978.
The film opened in Los Angeles and other West Coast markets on May 9, 1979. It was Crown International’s largest opening up to that time, booked into 250 theaters across Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland. A week later, Variety reported $310,000 from its first five days in 47 Los Angeles-area theaters—a strong local response to a movie selling the Valley back to itself.
The postcard shows how that very local phenomenon traveled. The English words VAN NUYS BLVD. remain visible near the bottom, but the oversized Japanese title runs across them in pink. Van Nuys is both a real place and a brand: an instantly packaged version of Southern California youth culture.
Turn it over: an invitation to Ginza
The reverse changes the card from a piece of advertising into a record of a particular night. Beneath the words 特別試写会ご招待—“Invitation to a special preview”—it gives the following details:
- Date: Friday, May 16
- Doors: 6:00 p.m.
- Screening: 6:30 p.m.
- Place: Ginza Gas Hall, near Ginza subway station
- Presenter: World Film Co., Ltd.
No year is printed. The evidence points to 1980: May 16 fell on a Friday that year, and Japanese film records date the movie’s public opening to June 28, 1980. The preview therefore appears to have taken place about six weeks before the general release.
The fine print admits one guest per invitation, refuses admission after the screening begins and warns that entry may be denied when the hall reaches its fire-code capacity. At the bottom is the Ginza address and telephone number of World Film, the company credited with distributing the picture in Japan.
Ginza Gas Hall was an apt landing place for this imported vision of Los Angeles. The hall belonged to a building that Tokyo Gas later described as a longtime venue for concerts, lectures and other cultural events. The building closed in 2007 and its site became the GINZA gCUBE development, which opened the following year.
A Valley souvenir with two lives
The front and back tell two different stories. One turns Van Nuys into a fantasy of endless summer. The other pins that fantasy to a date, time and theater in central Tokyo.
That combination is what makes the postcard special. It is a souvenir of a San Fernando Valley street, a document of Japanese film distribution and a small example of how place changes when it travels. The boulevard on the card is not quite the boulevard locals knew. It is Van Nuys translated, redesigned and sent halfway around the world—still cruising.
Explore more local history in the Van Nuys Postcards collection, or browse the blog’s complete San Fernando Valley Postcards collection.
Want more San Fernando Valley history, postcards and lost-landmark stories? Subscribe free to the SFV Blog by email.
Sources
- American Film Institute Catalog: Van Nuys Blvd. — production, release, cast and box-office history.
- Allcinema: Ban Baningu Ban — Japanese title and June 28, 1980 opening date.
- Mitsui Fudosan: opening of GINZA gCUBE — history of the former Ginza Gas Hall site.
- Japanese promotional postcard for Van Nuys Blvd., front and reverse; supplied collection. The translation is interpretive rather than an official English rendering.
Post a Comment