The iconic Transamerica Pyramid has become a symbol for San Francisco, often used alongside the famed Golden Gate Bridge as an establishing shot in various films. Many do not remember how controversial the construction of the tower initially was. Now it has become synonymous with the City by the Bay.
When the top floor was used as a board room for Transamerica, an unlikely film director gifted the facility with a telescope. It was Francis Ford Coppola. Mr. Coppola had a private editing studio in Berkeley, right across the bay. When he was editing Apocolypse Now, which he was producing for United Artists, which was owned by Transamerica at the time, he sought to soothe the jittery executives by setting up the telescope and training it on his editing studio across the bay. This way, he joked, they could personally supervise his progress.
It also turns out that the architect who designed the building- William Pereira- once worked in Hollywood himself, sharing an Academy Award for best art design. One of his most famous buildings with a Hollywood connection is The DISNEYLAND Hotel, designed for Hollywood mogul Jack Wrather, who built the hotel for as a favor for his friend Walt Disney.
