Lost Cities

The movies are over and done with, Hollywood is a ghost town making foolish efforts to seem alive. Hollywood is like Egypt, full of crumbled pyramids. It'll never come back. It'll just keep on crumbling until finally the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands.- David O. Selznick, producer of Gone With The Wind, walking at dawn in the deserted Hollywood streets with Ben Hecht,1951

Hooray for Hollywood !!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      During this past Memorial Day weekend, as part of an early birthday present, my significant other and I spent the weekend down in Hollywood and Burbank at the Warner Brothers studio and took their tour of the lot. It's quite a tour, one that I first took way back in 1990 or 1991 [ memory fails ] that I took with my niece. It's partly a walking tour through the back lot and some sound stages of one of Hollywood's oldest studios.

The watertower

 In 1919 the brothers Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner rented a small studio in Culver City, California. Then they built their own in Hollywood at Sunset and Bronson. They took out incorporation papers in 1923. The brothers first star was a dog, Rin Tin Tin. In 1924 Warners hired a 24 year old Daryl F. Zanuck to write stories for their wonder dog and ' Rinty ' helped keep the brothers in the black. In 1924 Warners also signed John Barrymore, leading star of Broadway, to come west and make a partial sound film Don Juan.  It was a hit and Warners were leaders in a race with Fox Studios in bringing sound to motion pictures and on October 6,1927 with the release of  The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson the brothers Warner won that race. Though not entirely free of silence, The Jazz Singer was tantamount to a revolution.
Audiences, thrilled by all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing movies, made Warner Bros. the number one studio in Hollywood which is to say, the world. In 1929 the Warners bought the First National studios in Burbank, Ca.
and renamed the facility the Warners/First National Studio.

Various logos through the ages

Moi, posing with pictures from Warners Best Picture Oscar winners.

This intro was just taking the long way of telling you readers  some of the rich film history that has taken place on the fabled Burbank lot and the events leading up to the brothers occupancy of that piece of real estate. The tour is quite unlike the one Universal Studios has done for years. First off the Warner tour is only partially done by tram. The tour frequently stops at various sites and points of interest and lets the tourists debark and walk  the grounds as the guide explains some films and television shows that have been filmed right where you are standing.

The New York street. Feels like Cagney or Bogart are right around the corner.

Small town square: Well, ya got 'Trouble' my friends!

Another view of the NY street.

The movie theater from A Star is Born [1954]

The tour, which lasts about 2 1/2 to 3 hours, is also rather small in size with only about a dozen or so souls along for any given tour. Our guide was quite knowledgeable about the studio and various productions, some old but mostly new, that have been made there. I recognized the sets from some movies she didn't point out: the town square which was used for The Music Man, the small town street which was used for Young at Heart with Sinatra and Doris Day and King's Row with Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan, the movie theater used in 1954's A Star is Born and The Way We Were. And I could swear I saw a facade from Casablanca but our guide made no mention of it, so maybe not.

Was this a building used in Casablanca? It sure looks like it could be.

You gotta have 'Friends'

We also caught a glimpse of a still standing set from Friends  the long running hit TV show. Our guide says it's one of the most popular stops on the tour. Maybe, but not for me.

The schoolhouse/Jail from Rebel, Music Man and many more

Another view of small town. Is that a set from Casablanca on the right? We'll never know as out guide didn't say. Looks to me like ' Le Belle Aurora '

Of much more interest to me was the school house which was used for  The Music Man [ the school ], Rebel Without a Cause [ the jail ], The Chase [ a jail again ] with Marlon Brando. Then there are sets on the backlot that no longer exists: The western street and the jungle set, long since lost, bulldozed to make room for asphalt parking lots. But when one considers what other movie studios have gone thru, one must be grateful that this much is still here, with us to glimpse up close and personal. MGM in Culver City for example, was nearly completely decimated back in the early 1970's by a bottom-line casino and hotel owner. MGM, at the time the new owner took control, was $35 million dollars in the red. So the home of Garland, Gable, Garbo, Tracy, Hepburn, Loy, Harlow and many more, in fact All The Stars There Are in Heaven, sold it's props and costumes to the highest bidder in an infamous auction in May 1970. This was also before the great nostalgia wave that hit America in about 1974/75 and still continues, somewhat, today. But the real blow to that fabulous studio was the selling and destruction of it's backlot. The backlot of a movie studio is where one can see it's character. No two studio backlots are identical, each has it's particular brand of fake realism. The loss of MGM's is especially painful to me. So many terrific movies were lensed there, so that without it's backlot so much of it has receded, like a lost city, an Atlantis for movie buffs. The MGM backlot was more than one lot. MGM had a total of three. Lot one housed the soundstages and administration, make-up, props, costumes, music, editing, etc; and it is physically still there, though it is now the Sony Studios, home of Columbia Pictures and much changed.

MGM back in the day, main entrance.

Lost city: skyview of the MGM backlot

Lot two had the Andy Hardy house and New England street, Small town square, a cemetery, Tarzan's jungle and lake, Waterloo Bridge, a french courtyard, a railroad terminal, a spanish street, Verona square, Esther Williams pool, Copperfield court, Wimpole street and a southern mansion [ contrary to legend Gone With The Wind wasn't filmed at MGM, though it was an MGM release due to the fact that Metro had Clark Gable under contract and loaned him to Selznick, whose own studio was right down the street. That studio's backlot is another lost city, gone with the wind ] Lot 3 housed a western street, the St.Louis street, a Salem waterfront, the Kismet staircase, the Easter Parade street, circus grounds, Brooklyn street, an army base and a process tank. So one can imagine the enormity of the place.                                                                                                                                                                                            

Sony Studios, former home of MGM

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                The irony of course, is that the Sony Studios tour the history of Columbia Studios: It Happened One Night, Lawrence of Arabia, Gilda, Only Angels Have Wings, From Here To Eternity, and so on. But not one of these movies were made on this lot. This was the MGM studios. Columbia Pictures was originally a poverty row operation on Gower Street not far from Paramount and RKO [ another lost city ] in Hollywood. So the street and house where Judy adored the boy next door in Meet Me in St.Louis and the streetlamp that Gene Kelly famously wrapped himself around in Singin in the Rain, the house where Katharine Hepburn lived in The Philadelphia Story, the Verona that Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard tragically fell in love in Romeo and Juliet and more and more are all gone by way of the wrecking ball and bulldozer. Not only that but the studios were a city unto themselves. All studios had a police, fire and first aid department, a Western Union office, commissary, etc. And if a studio employee wanted or needed a alcoholic libation most studios had a bar near by. For the RKO/Paramount crowd it was Lucey's Restaurant and the now- gone Oblath's, which was practically right outside the gates of Paramount. I know all this lament is 40 years too late, but I find it tragic that way back in 1970 MGM's new owners didn't recognize the riches they owned. Didn't see that they had a Disneyland right under their feet and if they had slowed down and taken a little thought and foresight these owners not only could have saved movie history but would have become very rich in the process. The mind boggles when I think how much more money Universal has made off it's backlot tour than MGM made on it's get -the-money-quick fire sale. As Debbie Reynolds said " The shame of it is why didn't they see it. It's too late now ". This is one of several reasons why my trip to Warner Brothers studios was such a blast, yet also somewhat melancholy. Not only did I not want the tour to ever end, but I also realized I was witnessing a dying breed. Tomorrow it may not be there.            

                                                                                                                                   

The Classic Logo.