Hollywood Twilight
Topic: Historic Hollywood
This is a bit of delving into the past, cleaning up photos taken with the old Sony Mavica digital still camera (MVC-FD-88) - before the Nikon. These are from September 2004, documenting how Hollywood has faded.
The pastel globe at the old RKO Hollywood Studios, 780 Gower Avenue, at Melrose, now owned by CBS Paramount Television. The Fred Astaire - Ginger Rodgers movies were filmed here, including "Flying Down to Rio." RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures was formed in October 1928 as a combination of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chains, Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio, and RCA Photophone, the new sound-on-film division of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). First under the majority ownership of RCA, in later years it was taken over by maverick industrialist Howard Hughes and finally by the General Tire and Rubber Company. The original RKO Pictures ceased production in 1957 and was out of business as of 1960. There's a complete corporate history here. It's wild. But the glory days are long gone.
In Hollywood,
the Hollywood Tower apartments on Franklin Avenue -
The plaque by the front door reads: HOLLYWOOD TOWER. 1929. SOPHISTICATED LIVING FOR FILM LUMINARIES DURING THE "GOLDEN AGE" OF HOLLYWOOD. PLACED ON THE REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES BY THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR.
No one remembers who actually lived here. They remember the classic episode from the Twilight Zone concerning the building, and what Disney
did with that -
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, more commonly known as Tower of Terror, is a simulated freefall thrill ride at Disney-MGM Studios in Lake Buena Vista, Florida and at Disney's California Adventure Park in Anaheim, California. It is based upon the television show The Twilight Zone. The Disney-MGM Studios ride opened in 1994 and the California Adventure version in 2004.
As part of the "Happiest Homecoming on Earth" celebration, another Tower of Terror attraction will open at Tokyo DisneySea in Japan (2006), and later at Walt Disney Studios in France (2008). The Tokyo DisneySea version of Tower of Terror will not have a Twilight Zone theme.
The ride is themed to resemble the fictional Hollywood Tower Hotel. The storyline of the ride is that on October 31, 1939, the hotel was struck by lightning, transporting an elevator car full of passengers to the Twilight Zone. The exterior of the ride resembles an old hotel with a blackened scorch mark across the front of the façade where the lightning destroyed part of the building.
No blackened scorch mark across the front of the façade of the original. It's not very scary. Apartments are available. October 31st, Halloween, isn't that far off. Maybe there'll be storms and lightning this year. You never know.
Faded Stars
Topic: Historic Hollywood
There will be more photography late Monday evening or Tuesday. The Labor Day weekend calls for a trip south, down San Diego way, to join the family for some relaxing - away from the computer and all that. It's a small vacation, but it will do.
The from-the-ground-up redesign of the weekly magazine-style Just Above Sunset was exhausting. But that is done, and the new issue has been posted. Time to relax.
As a parting shot, or shots, detail of one of the Hollywood murals - Delores Del Rio on a wall on Hudson at Hollywood Boulevard, still dancing with Fred Astaire (you no doubt remember the movie).
Across the street? Get your Star Burgers.
Reference shot - the Delores Del Rio mural on Hudson at Hollywood Boulevard -
Glamour Restored: The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl
Topic: Historic Hollywood
Glamour Restored: The George Stanley Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl
Streamline Moderne writ large…
From the June 20, 2006, Los Angeles Times - Hollywood Bowl's Fountain Gets a Splash from The Past. The subhead - "Neglected for decades, refurbished Streamline Moderne-style fountain is greeting visitors to the Hollywood Bowl."
So this is almost a month late. But the traffic past the Hollywood Bowl is always dicey - come south down the hill where Cahuenga turns into Highland Avenue and people get crazy, darting on and off the 101 freeway and maneuvering for the right lane as you roll down into the heart of Hollywood. But Wednesday, July 19, the lane was right and the parking lots empty at the Bowl, and the camera was in the car. So here it is.
From the Times - Memories of Hollywood's elegant era flowed along with dancing water Monday night as a huge hillside fountain at the entrance to the Hollywood Bowl was brought back to life after more than three decades of neglect.
The Streamline Moderne-style fountain was built in 1940 by the sculptor best known for creating the Academy Awards' Oscar statue. Standing over the bowl's Highland Avenue entryway, it depicts the muses of music, dance and drama.
The 200-foot long, 22-foot high sculpture was heralded as one of America's most ambitious art projects in 1939 when artists and craftsmen hired by the federal government for the Depression-era WPA Federal Arts Project began constructing it.
But in more recent years, it has been more of a symbol of Hollywood decay.
Yeah it had been a mess, overgrown with weeds, the fountains leaking. But it's all fixed up now - George Stanley, who designed the Academy Awards' Oscar statue had been commissioned in 1937 to design the fountain by the Hollywood Bowl Association and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The feds paid for it out of those WPA Arts funds ($125,000 back then) and, as the owner of the bowl, the county paid about a thousand to get things going. And now it's back.
Trivia - Stanley was already a well-known Hollywood artist who liked to joke that he became a sculptor by accident.
He had been studying at the Otis Art Institute in 1924 in hopes of becoming a commercial artist when he received a part-time job as a school "monitor" whose chief duty was to keep sculpture department modeling clay wet. That job prompted him to experiment with the clay. Playing around, he discovered he had a knack for molding images.
He went on to win sculpture commissions for wealthy Beverly Hills residents, the classic Isaac Newton statue at Griffith Park and artwork for such places as Hoover High School in Glendale and Long Beach Polytechnic High School. Commercial pieces included bas reliefs over the downtown Los Angeles telephone company headquarters and Bullocks Wilshire department store.
His most widely seen piece was only 13 1/2 inches tall, however.
Stanley was the sculptor who molded the original movie Oscar statue. He used a napkin sketch of a man standing on a reel of film grasping a sword that was drawn in 1927 by studio art director Cedric Gibbons.
But this thing was serious. You've got your tiered fountain with a fifteen-foot kneeling "Muse of Music" on top, and, in their niches on the sides, ten foot tall muses of dance and drama. The thing is concrete covered with slabs of decorative granite quarried locally near Victorville. And the whole thing works as a retaining wall that keeps the steep hillside north of the bowl's entry drive in place. Rios Clementi Hale Studios of Hollywood oversaw the four-month renovation that cost almost two million dollars.
It's a hoot, but Hollywood, which had turned incredibly seedy in the sixties, is booming once again, and discovering its odd history.
Dance -
Drama -
Landmarks: The Forgotten Major Studio
Topic: Historic Hollywood
Landmarks: The Forgotten Major Studio
The forgotten major studio would be Culver Studios, in Culver City, a few miles southwest of Hollywood in the flats.
Okay, almost a hundred years ago, Harry Culver, the founding father of Culver City, decided he had to meet Thomas Ince, the father of the westerns - Culver had seen Ince directing one of his westerns in nearby La Ballona Creek. Culver was building a city after all - he'd moved to California in 1910 and learned the real estate business from I. N. Van Nuys - and wanted this new movie business in his new town. The Articles of Incorporation for Culver City were filed with the California Secretary of State on September 20, 1917, but the place was already booming. Culver convinced Ince to move his studio operations from Florida to Culver City and in 1915 the first Culver City studio was under construction - Ince/Triangle Studios. Ince added a few stages and an administration building but sold out his share in the business to his partners D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett, and relocated down the street and built what you see here as The Culver Studios. Harry Culver leased the land to him. Of course by 1918 Triangle Studios itself was up for sale - and Samuel Goldwyn bought the place. In 1924, Marcus Loew orchestrated the merger of three motion picture companies - The Metro Pictures Corporation, Goldwyn Studios and Louis B. Mayer Productions to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Things were a bit turbulent back in the silent movie days. MGM, down the street, is famous of course (photos here and a good history here). That's now Sony-Columbia. It's all very fluid. What used to be MGM gets all the tourists. It's legendary.
The city has more on Culver Studios, which isn't quite as famous, here - it took two years to build the Thomas H. Ince Studio at 9336 Washington Boulevard, with its Mount Vernon mansion - a December 1, 1918 Los Angeles newspaper called it a "motion picture plant that looks like a beautiful Southern estate." The studio was planned by Meyer and Holler of the Milwaukee Building Company, the same firm that created two of the historic theaters on Hollywood Boulevard, the Chinese Theater (1927) and the Egyptian (1922).
And you have to love this detail - Ince, a visionary in the industry, and actor turned producer, promoted the glamour of moviemaking with a reverence. He entertained the King and Queen of Belgium, and President Woodrow Wilson. The administration building became a well-known landmark, and Ince was rapidly expanding his successful facility. In the early days, the studio fire chief also acted as the city fire chief. But in November of 1924, amidst clouded circumstances, Thomas Harper Ince fell ill on William Randolph Hearst's yacht, and reportedly died of a heart attack at home within the week. His wife Elinor K. Ince, once a talent agent, took the reins until the next year, when it became De Mille Studios.
What a way to go, on the Hearst yacht. Cecil B. De Mille soon made "King of Kings" here - the first movie shown at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre. In 1940, RKO made Citizen Kane here, all about William Randolph Hearst. Very odd.
The studio itself has a website with its own history - Gone With The Wind was shot on Stages 11 and 12 in 1939, and all the exteriors of Tara, Twelve Oaks and the city of Atlanta were created on the back lot and torched for the filming of the burning of Atlanta sequence in the film. But the mansion isn't Tara.
And this - Going back in time to just after Thomas Ince died, the studio was purchased by Cecil B. DeMille who built monumental sets on the back lot. The most impressive were replicas of the streets of Jerusalem for one of his biggest budgeted features The King of Kings in 1927. These sets were used in many movies over the years. They were seen in King Kong as part of Skull's Island in 1933. These sets towered over the studio for a dozen years until they were burned to the ground for Gone With the Wind in 1939.
RKO acquired the studios in 1928 and Joseph Kennedy served as one of the studio heads. It was during his tenure here that he had his infamous love affair with leading lady Gloria Swanson. Legend has it that Kennedy built her a private dressing room as a gift. Only much later and after the affair ended did Swanson discover Kennedy had used her money to pay for it. The bungalow still stands and is used as an office for writer/producers.
That would be President Kennedy's father, later our ambassador to England. The son had that thing with Marilyn Monroe. Make of it what you will.
RKO controlled the lot for almost thirty years - the days of Bette Davis, Robert Mitchum, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, King Kong, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. So think A Star Is Born (1937), Tom Sawyer (1938), Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) and Spellbound (1945). And Citizen Kane was shot on the lot in 1940. Howard Hughes bought the place in the fifties and ran it into the ground. Desilu Productions purchased the lot in 1956 and television became the main business - The Andy Griffith Show, Hogan's Heroes, The Untouchables, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Lassie and Gomer Pyle - and in 1967 Peyton Place, as well as The Green Hornet, Batman and the pilot for Star Trek. Star Trek became a Paramount franchise and moved down to Melrose Avenue.
In 1968 new owners sold off most of the back lot and by the late seventies the place was pretty much abandoned. In 1977, the studio became Laird International Studios, a rental facility. When Laird filed Chapter 11 in 1986, Grant Tinker (Mary Tyler Moore's producer and husband) and Gannett (USA Today), bought the place and called it GTG Entertainment, then The Culver Studios. In 1991 it became a part of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Sony sold the studio to Pacific Coast Capital Partners (PCCP) Studio City Los Angeles in 2004. Sony had too much television production space.
So that's it, but as the studio's site notes - Walk through any of the restored buildings and there is a feeling of another era. Over the years, unsubstantiated rumors of studio hauntings have circulated among the studio staff. Stage hands high in the catwalks have reportedly been confronted by a ghostly figure resembling Thomas Ince. It's rumored that late at night a spirit - some say Gloria Swanson - roams the halls of the mansion. While there is no proof of these sightings, eerily similar reports occur year after year.
Many recording artists have utilized the studio's private atmosphere to rehearse (Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Don Henley, Janet Jackson) and to shoot music videos (Ricky Martin, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Luis Miguel). The Culver Studios is also the birthplace of Baywatch, Mad About You, and The Nanny.
Baywatch? Ouch.
The studio is not open to the public, and no tours are offered.
But there are the stories, like this from the days when Louis B. Mayer's son-in-law, the Pittsburgh-born RKO executive David O. Selznick, ran the place -They even staged the famous "burning of Atlanta" scene from "Gone With The Wind" here on the back lot of Culver Studios, on December 10, 1938. The city of "Atlanta" was actually made up of various old sets from previous films made on the lot, which David O. Selznick set ablaze to make room for the construction of the exterior of Tara. (The fire consumed old sets from "King Kong," "The Last of the Mohicans" and "Little Lord Fauntleroy.") Yet the key role of Scarlett O'Hara still had not been cast. As Selznick watched from atop an observation tower as the red flames consumed "Atlanta," his brother Myron introduced him to Vivien Leigh, with the words: "I'd like you to meet your Scarlett O'Hara."
Lucille Ball was one of the many actresses who tried out, unsuccessfully, for the part of Scarlett in "Gone With the Wind." She got her revenge later, though, when she bought the studio, turned it into her own Desilu Studios, and took David O. Selznick's office as her own. (Desilu later moved to what is now part of the Paramount lot.)
Amusing.
The working end of things -
Nearby, the new De L'Esprie bronze of Harry Culver, dedicated March 26, 2006 -