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Endereço dos Estúdios de Cinema na Califórnia
Os estúdios que não estão com o nome do Condado no Endereço ficam no Condado de Los Angeles
Where is Hollywood´s Studios located Today?
Paramount Pictures – A Viacom Company
http://www.paramount.com/
http://www.viacom.com/
5555 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90038
20th Century Fox Studios
http://www.foxstudios.com/
10201 West Pico Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90035
Columbia Pictures Industries Inc – Sony Pictures Entertainment
1
http://www.sonypictures.com/
10202 West Washington Boulevard
Culver City, CA 9023
Warner Bros. Pictures Group
http://www.warnerbros.com/
4000 Warner Boulevard
Burbank, CA 91522
Universal City Studios, Inc. – Vivendi Universal Entertainment LLP
http://www.universalstudios.com/
http://www.universalpictures.com/
100 Universal City Plaza
Universal City, CA 91608
Universal Studios Orlando
https://www.universalorlando.com/
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6000 Universal Boulevard
Orlando, Orange County, Florida 32819
Estão juntas atualmente, 2014, Miramax e Lions Gate
Miramax Film NY, LLC
http://www.miramax.com/
2540 Colorado Avenue, Suite 100E
Santa Monica, California 90404
Lions Gate Entertainment – Summit
http://www.miramax.com/
2700 Colorado Avenue – 1630 Stewart Street
Santa Monica, California 90404
Summit
Nota: No Google Mapas, o 1630 Stewart Street Santa Mônica ainda é a Summit.
Mas, este endereço, é, atualmente, 2014, é da:
SCE Worldwide Studios
http://www.worldwidestudios.net/santamonica
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http://sms.playstation.com/studio/
1630, Stewart Street
Main-Studio 100
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Pixar Animation Studios
http://www.pixar.com/
1200 Park Avenue
Emeryville, Alameda County, CA 94608
Disney Studios – Disney Pictures – Buena Vista
http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/
500 South Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. – MGM Studios
www.mgm.com
245 North Beverly Drive,4
Beverly Hills, California 90210
DreamWorks Studios
http://www.dreamworksstudios.com/
It is located on the Universal Studios lot in Universal City, California.
100 Universal City Plaza
Universal City, CA 91608
Are DreamWorks Studios and DreamWorks Animation the same company?
No: They are two completely separate companies.
DreamWorks Animation
http://www.dreamworksanimation.com/company
1000 Flower Street
Glendale, Los Angeles Count, CA 91201
PDI Dreamworks SKG
http://www.dreamworksanimation.com/company
1400 – A Seaport Boulevard
Redwood City, San Mateo County, CA 94063
SUNSET GOWER STUDIOS
http://sgsandsbs.com/
1438 N. Gower Street / Hollywood, CA 90028
p. 323.467.1001 / f. 323.467.2717
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SUNSET BRONSON STUDIOS
http://sgsandsbs.com/
5800 W. Sunset Boulevard / Hollywood, CA 90028
p. 323.460.5858 / f. 323.460.3844
Hollywood Center Studios
http://www.hollywoodcenter.com/
Hollywood Center Studios is Centrally located in the heart of the Media District.1040 North Las Palmas, Los Angeles, CA 90038General Info & Booking(323) 860.0000
Mack Sennett Studios:
http://www.macksennettstudios.net/
1215 Bates Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
p: 323-660-8466
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http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/linkbackups/hollywood-center_history.htm
http://www.retroweb.com/tv_studios_and_ranches.html
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Charlie Chaplin
John Jasper
1919
A veteran of the Little Tramp's filmmaking fiefdom for 13 years, designer John Jasper quits Chaplin Studios to build three production-stages on a stretch of undeveloped Hollywood property. Hollywood Studios, Inc. (aka Jasper Hollywood Studios) is born, and it's operated by Chicago moneyman C.E. Toberman. He is the first in a long chain of real estate developers, businessmen, and producers who flirt with these 15 acres of studios and bungalows.
The early stages look like horticulturists' hothouses built with steel frames, cloth walls, and glass roofs and clerestory windows. The greenhouse effect is necessary in order to illuminate sets in these days of slow film stocks before arc lighting had been perfected. This doesn't happen until the early 30's when Edison makes industrial-strength incandescent light bulbs.
Clara Bow
Harold Lloyd
ON THE LOT1922
Comedian Harold Lloyd leaves Hal Roach Studios and moves to Jasper's lot with his entourage. In May, Fred Newmeyer directs Grandma's Boys. Later in the decade he teams with screenwriter Sam Taylor to direct Girl Shy, Hot Water, and The Freshman. Alone, Taylor directs For Heaven's Sake in 1926.
1923-25The studio changes hands once, when it's bought by some LA businessmen in 1923 and then again in 1924 when B. P. Schulberg, the producer who discovered Clara Bow, buys a controlling interest in the studio for
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Preferred Pictures Corp. In January 1925 , the studio is flipped over a third time when John Jasper leaves and Al and Charles Christie, producers of the Christie Comedies and owners of the Christies Film Corporation, buy the lot. Toberman takes with him the frontage on Santa Monica Boulevard and the studio entrance is moved to the Las Palmas side. William Sistrom, formerly a production manager at Universal City, is named the new manager.
Howard Hughes
1925
After being talked into making a picture by a movie star acquaintance, the restless millionaire, Howard Hughes leaves the management of the family oil drilling business to his financial advisers and makes himself president of Cado Pictures. An unsalvageable disaster, Swell Hogan doubles in budget and is never released, but Hughes, the producer, has bought himself a film school education on real sets. Lewis Milestone, sells him on his next picture the nine-reel Two Arabian Knights in 1927. (Milestone won his first best director Oscar for the picture; today he's perhaps most famous for the Rat Pack Vegas caper movie Ocean's Eleven.)
During the summer or '26, Metropolitan's executives hear the sound of the future and, yes, it involved audio. They break ground on the Metropolitan Sound Stages. It is the introduction of sound that converts filmmaking to an indoor activity--audio requires packing production into a soundstage where recording levels and acoustics could be better controlled. By 1929, Stages 1 and 2 are being outfitted with Vitaphone equipment and the Las Palmas lot is renamed Metropolitan Sound Studio.
While Harold Lloyd plays handball in a garage on the lot, Howard Hughes goes from dilettante producer to wannabe auteur. He cans two directors and takes over the helm of the WWI dogfight film Hell's Angels , part of which is shot at GSS. Enamored as much with audio as with aviation, Hughes reshoots with sound
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for many sequences and fires his leading lady and replaces her with Jean Harlow, who makes her screen debut.
Harold Lloyd
1928
Over the course of the shoot--which is half Heaven's Gate half Twilight Zone, the movie--Hughes employs 28 cameramen working under two DPs, three stunt pilots are killed, and the Depression takes with it a small chunk of Hughes' fortune during postproduction. Nineteen months and $4 million dollars later, the film is released. But at 25 cents a ticket, the film never makes its money back. And reflecting on his high-flying costs and what the red ink might imply about his prowess for producing, Hughes retrenches to more modest budgets.
By the end of the decade Harold Lloyd wraps For Heaven's Sake (1926), The Kid Brother (1927),Speedy (1928) and Welcome Danger(1929). In 1929 110 million people are going to the movies every week.
GeneralServices Studio ON THE LOT
1930
Trem Carr (later head of the Monogram Studio) shoots The Chinatown Mystery, a serial on existing sets, an idea that Roger Corman later turned into a low budget commandment.
Howard Hughes leaves a year after releasing The Front Page; his new digs are at United Artists (1041 N. Formosa Ave). The laughs keep coming though; Harold Lloyd follows Feet First (1930 in Movietone Sound) with Movie Crazy, considered one of his best films. Far from being the hapless victim of circumstance he plays on the screen, Lloyd is
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becoming one of the wealthiest men in Hollywood as an the independent producer of his own films.
The Depression makes an entrance from stage left, and in January of 1933, the Christie brothers find themselves in receivership and cede control of Metropolitan to General Service Studios which operated several studios on both coasts. Its parent company Electrical Research Products, Inc., (ERPI) an AT&T holding which had developed Vitaphone sound, positions the stages to capture sound business. Stages 1 and 2 become showplaces for shooting talkies. Both are built from the ground up with a double-walled thermos style peripheral barrier creating a dead sound-proof space. Today, you can still walk entirely around both stages between these peripheral walls.
Mae West
1935 & 1936
Charles Christie is still on the lot supervising Vanity Comedies, the Andy Clyde Comedies, and the Moran and Mack Comedies. Merle Oberon moves into Bungalow A, her husband, the director and Hungarian expat Alexander Korda, joins her.
After scandalizing the Hays Office with Belle of the Nineties, Mae West arrives on the lot under strict orders from Paramount to clean up her act. Originally called Ain't No Sin and written by West, the offending film featured the Divine Miss M as an unrepentant "scarlet woman," who was not only good at what she did but fast with the louche double entendres that propelled West to fame. The film was cut after raising the pique of Mr. Hays himself, an ex-Post-Master General charged with enforcing the Production Code, an equation guaranteeing that good triumphed over evil in Hollywood pictures.
Westerns are riding a wave of popularity and Harry Sherman settles in at the lot to produce the Hopalong
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Cassidy films, a 21 picture series starring William Boyd, for Paramount Pictures.
Alexander Korda
ON THE LOT1940
At the peak of their creative golden age, United Artists leases General Service studio for their producers, Alexander Korda and Benedict Bogeaus. Korda, came to the US from war-torn Britain, with the reels of The Four Feathers as collateral against which he raises nearly $4 million for the production of six pictures (four to be made in the States). Korda editsThe Thief of Bagdhad on the lot and goes on to directLaurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh in That Hamilton Woman. Writer Gore Vidal remembers the film, a glorification of war, in Palimpsest: ..the film was made..to glorify resistance to a predator-tyrant like Hitler. British propaganda in the thirties and forties was most effectively deployed in Hollywood films so that the American people would be emotionally ready to fight, yet again, with England against Germany." Later Korda produces Lydia and Jungle Book.
By '42 Korda and other high-profile producers had left, precipitating a downward slide in UA's slate that continues unchecked until 1950.
1941
AT&T is ordered by the U.S. government to divest its interest in GSS. Two suitors, both independent producers, zero-in a for the lot: Benedict Bogeaus one of UA's second-string who rose to the front rank
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whenDavid Selznick and Alexander Korda left, and Eddie Small. Bogeaus wins with the low bid by promising to give the government use of the facility for the wartime effort. The army's propaganda machine, as it turned out, doesn't demand much, and before long Bogeaus is back in the commercial motion picture business with six releases from United Artists and the overflow from Paramount.
From 1941-1942, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Fred Astaire, Carey Grant, Glenn Ford, Frederic March, Erich von Stroheim (in an acting role) and the Artie Shaw Orchestra are on the lot. The United Artists producerDavid Loew exercises a stock option and buys control of General Service Studios from its major stock holderBenedict Bogeaus in 1943. David was the son ofMarcus Loew, who'd gone from operating a 23rd St. arcade in Manhattan called the People's Vaudeville Company, to owner of one of the US's largest film chains and the man who fashioned MGM out ofMetro Pictures, Louis B. Mayer's operation andGoldwyn.
James Cagney
For the next four years, there are only a few producers working on the lot. The very popular RKO actressConstance Bennett and UA are among the most active. Expat Jean Renoir directs The Southerner forDavid Loew in 1945 and the Marx Brothers star in A Night in Casablanca the following year. By March 0f 1946, Bogeaus is back. He reorganizes his company, acquiring the land and all of the buildings of the studio. By May, he begins a $500,000 construction program of television sound stages.
In July, William Cagney (brother and partner ofJimmy) purchases a substantial interest in the studio.Bogeaus aligns his production company with Cagney Productions which moves into 1040 N. Las Palmas. (Charles is president, Jimmy is vice president, and Edward serves as secretary.) Blood on
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the Sun (1945) and The Time of Your Life (1948) are both made on the lot. It's not a long stay, the Cagneys decamp toWarner Bros., their distributor, in 1949.
George Burns
1948
Another trio of brothers Jimmy, George, and Ted Nasser, managers for Bogeaus/Cagney buy into the studio. By 1950 they own it outright. They zero-in on the niche of television which the majors reject after being barred from entering the new medium by a monopoly-wary FCC. Because they can't join 'em, the studios are forced into a beat 'em mentality. Seeing only competition from television, they bar it from their lots. As television was passing from its live era in New York, to its prerecorded form in LA, the Nasserscapture a windfall of new business. Burns and Allenmoves in during the early fifties (George Burns was a tenant until March 1996 when he died at 100 years-old).
At this time, there is only other place in LA to produce television, Hal Roach Studios. TV at the turn-of-the-decade is really in the hands of advertising agencies and sponsors, it's not until the 50's that the networks take control of programming, largely through deals with independent producers.
Ronald Reagan
Desi & Lucy
ON THE LOT1951
Ronald Reagan is taking direction for Lewis R. Foster in The Last Outpost. Lucille Ball and husband Desi Arnaz rent Stage #2 to shoot the pilot for I Love Lucy. Ball and her sponsor insist on filming the series in front of a live audience with three-cameras, this,
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and the fact that the comedienne won't back down on the decision to cast her Cuban husband Desi as Ricky, causes CBS to sell its financial stake in the series back to Desilu. Lucky for Lucy: The series is the most profitable 30-minutes in CBS history and the show stays in the Top Ten for nine seasons. Sound Stage 2 is retrofitted for the series which costs between $21K and $27-an episode to shoot. Desilu also produces the Eve Arden series Our Miss Brooks and shoots spots for Philip Morris cigarette and General Foods. Desi and Lucy stay for two years.
l952
CBS has thirteen shows in production on the lot. From this point on, GSS continues to service a full load of television productions. Ozzie and Harriet, The Bob Cummings Show, The People's Choice andHennesey locate there and at the same time the commercial business begins to thrive.
Mr. EdON THE LOT
Hollywood General becomes a sort of ground zero for popular culture, the home of TV shows that babysit the baby boomers and decorate their lunchboxes. Many of the series are greenlighted under the watch of CBShead James T. Aubrey who returns the network to strong ratings and prosperity with: Green Acres, Mr. Ed (which ex-vaudevillian George Burns produced),Beverly Hillbillies, and Petticoat Junction. Also shooting on the lot are The Lone Ranger and The Addams Family (in 1991 director Barry Sonnenfeldreturns to the lot to shoot the movie of the Charles Addams classic). Burns and Allen and Perry Masonare successfully reworked from radio to TV shows, as
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early seasons of I Love Lucy had been. Radio retreads were a way to generate scripts in the early, comparatively low-budget days of TV.
ON THE LOT
After 27 years of running the lot the Nasser Brothers finally sell it to the Dallas oil and gas firm, Miles Production Company in the winter of 1976. Owner Ellison Miles renames the lot Hollywood General Studios and moves with the times to provide video services. Universal Television rents nine stages, paying yearly whether they are in use or not. The studio produces Baretta, The Rockford Files, and the Wheelsminiseries on the lot.
The last theatrical feature to be shot in the 1970s was the me-decade send-up Shampoo. Offices were booked up through the 70s, by producers such as James Aubrey, Frank O'Connor, Pat Curtis, Herm Saunders, George Burns, and Irving Fein.
By 1979 the Nasser Brothers appear on the scene once again to take control of the lot, but only briefly because producer/director Francis Ford Coppola is in the wings.
Francis Coppola
the 80s
ON THE LOT
Francis Ford Coppola takes over the lot March 14,
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1980, intending to film a slate of his own pictures there. Zoetrope produces Hammett, One From the Heart, The Outsiders, The Black Stallion Returns, Rumblefish, and The Escape Artist.
Ironically it's One From the Heart, an elaborate modern musical that pushes the studio into financial difficulty. The budget escalates on the picture largely due to the creation of lush period sets within the studios' sound stages. In 1984, the studio is acquired by the Singer family, Canadian real estate developers.
ON THE LOT
Studio Management Services, headed by Tim Mahoney, moves quickly to renovate the entire facility and within a year, all eight sound stages are revitalized. Office space is redone to house a community of new tenants. The stages are marketed to commercial spot producers, independent feature film producers, and the music industry, which uses the stages for rehearsal. A new rock & roll client base starts shooting music videos and specials, including artists Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jackson Browne, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Ray Charles.
Also during this period, the eighties classics Body Heat and When Harry Met Sally shoot on the lot.
ON THE LOT
Today the lot is a creative neighborhood that is home to TV series, commercial production companies, production support, special effects and post outfits and
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new media operations. And if you've heard the HCS referred to as "being wired," it's because you can jack into the vanguard of new digital production services here. Review storyboards, edits, or casting sessions from other cities, or set up digital video conferences.
Hollywood Center Studios taps into the digital revolution in 1995, when Alan Singer and Tim Mahoney start to lay the infrastructure for the most advanced sound stage facilities in Hollywood by wiring the studios with the bandwidth necessary to carry high-quality digital images and sound around the lot.
This decade has seen the production of Robert Altman's instant classic Hollywood satire The Player, many TV shows, and hundreds of commercials.
Visit the website for . . .
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http://www.beckerfilms.com/HollywoodMovieStudios.htm
Sept. 13, 2005
Hollywood Movie Studios
On December 11th, 1938 Atlanta burned to the ground. This was the very first
scenephotographed for the film Gone With the Wind, and it was shot on the RKO-Pathé lot in
Culver City, next door to MGM Studios. Although producer David O. Selznick needed the
scenes of Atlanta burning for the film, the initial reason for the fire was to clear the 40-acre film
lot of all the old movie sets cluttering it up so they could build new sets. Among the old sets set
aflame that night were the giant doors and wall from the Skull Island set of King Kong, to which
they had simply nailed antebellum facades. But the set wasn’t even originally built for King
Kong; it was actually built as the main gate and walls of Jerusalem for Cecil B.
DeMille’s 1927 film,King of Kings.
That is a perfect example of the transitory nature of Hollywood: one
thing becomes something else, which then gets destroyed, then something else
is built on top of it, then nobody remembers what was there originally. There is
not a person living who remembers when the biggest stars in movies were
Florence Lawrence and John Bunny, and they were huge. At some point in the
none-too-distant future nobody will remember who Tom Cruise or Julia
Roberts were, either. Fame is fleeting.
The same transitory nature applies to the movie studios themselves.
Almost all of the Hollywood movie studios have changed owners and locations many times
over the years, yet nearly nobody remembers where or what they once were. It’s been just
about one hundred years since filmmakers began shooting movies in Los Angeles. Even though
this isn’t a very long history, as far as history goes, we seem to know more about the Roman
Republic 2,000 years ago than we do about Hollywood 90 years ago. Just like the King of
Kings set, and King Kong set (and the Gone With The Wind sets, too), once they’re gone,
nobody remembers that they were ever there in the first place.
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Motion pictures were so eager to come into existence that they were simultaneously
invented between 1888 and 1890 in the USA, England and France. For the first twenty years of
the movies’ existence, the capitals of world filmmaking were New York City, where hundreds
of film companies sprang up almost overnight; Lyon, France, where the Lumiere brothers were
located; West Orange, New Jersey, where Thomas Edison’s company was located; or
Vincennes, France, where the Pathé company was located (until 1918 over 60% of all cameras
in use in the world were made by Pathé).
But instead of any of these exotic places, the motion pictures found their capital in a
sleepy little southern California town called Los Angeles, whose population in 1900 had just
passed the 100,000 mark.
The first reason anyone came to Los Angeles to shoot a movie was because of the good
weather. In 1907 the very first film crew arrived in Los Angeles to shoot jungle movies, a
setting they were having great difficulty faking in a studio in Chicago. They were from the
Selig Polyscope Company, one of the first film companies in existence, having begun in 1896.
Selig Polyscope was owned and run by Col. William Selig, who had never actually been a
colonel of anything. He had been a clown, a juggler, and a minstrel show producer, when he
saw an early demonstration of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, a device that showed 12-second
movies in a hand-cranked machine
that you peered into, which cost a nickel (thus the establishments where these contraptions we
found became known as “Nickelodeons”. It was for the Kinetoscope that
Edison ordered from George Eastman at Eastman-Kodak, who had just recently
invented celluloid film, a specially-designed celluloid roll film with a frame
size of 35 millimeters, with four perforations on either side, which has
remained unchanged right up to today). Meanwhile, Col. Selig was so
impressed by the Kinetoscope that he immediately went into the motion picture
business.
Col. Selig liked the look of the footage he was getting back from Los Angeles so much,
with its many sunny days that made outdoor filming much easier and more dependable, that in
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William Selig
1909 he
built the very first movie studio in Los Angeles, Selig Polyscope Studios, at
3800 Mission Road in Echo Park. Col. Selig also started a zoo next door to his
studio, aptly named Selig Zoo, mainly to supply the animals needed for his
jungle pictures, but it was also open to the public. Selig Polyscope went
bankrupt in 1918, and the facility then became Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Selig
Zoo, however, stayed in business for over 25 more years, and finally went under
in the mid-1930s during the Great Depression.
The second reason that filmmakers began coming to Los Angeles to make movies was
due to the Motion Picture Patents Company, otherwise known as the “Edison Trust.” In 1908
Thomas Edison, along with the companies: Vitagraph, Biograph, Kalem, Lubin, Selig, Essanay,
Pathé, Méliès, and Gaumont, having collected together all the available patents on motion
picture cameras and projectors, tried to stop anyone else from producing, distributing or
exhibiting movies anywhere in the USA unless licensed by them. There were already so many
film production companies that were not members of the trust, and were thus in immediate
defiance of the trust, that this quickly escalated into what became known as the “Patents Trust
War.” Agents from the trust would actively sabotage the productions of “independents,”
frequently firing bullets from sniper rifles into their unlicensed movie cameras. So, if you got
on a train and left New York City going west, the last stop was Los Angeles, and that was as far
as you could get from the Trust. To escape the Trust, some early filmmakers also set up
productions in Cuba.
In 1909 the British company, Kinemacolor, owned by American, Charles Urban, built a
film
studio at 4500 Sunset Blvd. in Los Feliz (which is next to Hollywood), where
Sunset Blvd. and Hollywood Blvd. meet. Kinemacolor was a very early two-
color process (although not the first color process), which used only red and
green. Although the Kinemacolor process never took off, quite a few films
were made using the process in the teens, including the very first color feature
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film, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, produced in 1914.
In 1910 the New York-based company, Vitagraph Pictures, one of the
largest film companies of the early silent era, founded in 1896 by two British
Vaudevillians, opened a studio in downtown Santa Monica on 2nd St. Vitagraph
had such early film stars as: Florence Turner (known as “The Vitagraph Girl),”
Norma Talmadge, Rudolph Valentino (at the very beginning of his career),
Maurice Costello, and the very young Adolphe Menjou. The Vitagraph
building in Santa Monica is still there with a plaque on the wall commemorating
that it was once Vitagraph Pictures.
The very first movie studio to open in Hollywood itself, in 1911, was the
Christie-Nestor Studio, at 6100 Sunset Blvd., on the corner of Sunset Blvd and
Gower St. Every week Christie-Nestor
produced three, one- and two-reel films (a reel of 35mm film is ten minutes
long): one comedy, one drama, and one western. Soon, there were so many
actors dressed as cowboys and Indians loitering around on that corner waiting for film work that
it became known as “Gower Gulch.” Today there is a shopping center there called “Gower
Gulch.” Today the site of Christie-Nestor Studios is occupied by KCBS TV.
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Vitagraph Building,
present-day
That same year, 1911, directly next door to Christie-Nestor Studio, at 6101 Sunset Blvd.
opened IMP Studio, or Independent Motion Pictures, another New York-based company, which
was owned by the diminutive German immigrant, Carl Laemmle, one of the early pioneers of
film
production. Laemmle sent out from New York a former actor named Thomas
H. Ince to direct pictures at the new little Hollywood Studio.
After a year with IMP, Ince saw the incredible possibilities just waiting
to be had in Los Angeles in the motion picture business. He quit IMP and
became partners with New York Motion Pictures in their Los Angeles studio,
called Bison Pictures (at 1719 Alessandro [now known as Glendale Blvd] in
Glendale, which is near Pasadena). Thomas Ince immediately purchased the
101 Ranch and Wild West Show from the Miller Brothers, located in Santa
Monica at Sunset Blvd. and the Pacific Coast Highway, which then quickly
became
known as “Inceville.” The company was then renamed the Bison 101
Company, and specialized in making westerns. This is the
present-day location of the Maharishi Center.
In 1912 Mack Sennett opened Keystone Studio in
Glendale, (at 1712 Alessandro) in the neighborhood called Edendale, which is
now Glendale. Sennett released his first Keystone Kop
short film, Hoffmeyer’s Legacy, in late 1912. Mack Sennett also started the real
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Thomas H. Ince
estate development called Hollywoodland, and built a big sign in the Hollywood Hills. This is
the present-day Hollywood sign, minus the L-A-N-D.
Also in 1912, Thomas Ince left Bison 101, formed Thomas H. Ince Pictures, and built a
studio at 9336 Washington Blvd in Culver City. This 40-acre lot (known as “The Forty
Acres”), would later become (among other short-lived things): Cecil B. DeMille Studios, Pathè
Studio, RKO-Pathè Studio, Selznick International, Howard Hughes, Desilu, Laird International
Studios, Tinker & Gannett, Culver City Studios, and is now owned by Sony. The main street of
the lot is Ince Blvd.
And in 1912, another early pioneer of motion pictures, Sigmund “Pop” Lubin, opened a
studio, the Lubin Film Company, at 1725-1735 Fleming St. (now Hoover St.) in East
Hollywood.
Lubin went out of business in 1917. This facility was subsequently owned or
rented by: Essanay (which was really S & A, for George K. Spoor and Gilbert
“Broncho Billy” Anderson), Kalem, Willis & Ingles, Hampton, Charles Ray
Productions, Jean Neville, Ralph M. Like, Monogram, Allied Artists,
Colorvision TV, and is now the Los Angeles PBS affiliate, KCET.
In 1913 a new company, The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company,
formed by Jesse Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille and Samuel Goldfish, in NYC, sent a
crew to Hollywood to shootThe Squaw Man, starring Dustin Farnum. As their studio they
rented a barn at 6284 Selma Ave., on the corner
of Selma Ave. and Vine St. This was the very first feature film shot in Hollywood or Los
Angeles. Soon thereafter they built more permanent stages on that corner,
stretching from Selma to Sunset Blvd. The “Lasky Barn,” as it became known,
is a Los Angeles landmark, and has been moved around town many times. It
sat for many years on the Paramount lot. It is now located in a parking lot on
Highland Ave., across from the Hollywood Bowl.
In 1913 D. W. Griffith took over the Kinemacolor Studio at 4500 Sunset Blvd. and began
D. W. Griffith – Fine Arts Studio. This is where Birth of a Nation was shot. Griffith’s films
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were financed by Mutual Pictures, although Mutual’s west coast studios were in La Mesa and
Santa Barbara.
In 1915 IMP and several other companies, including their neighbor, Christie-Nestor
Studios, and Thomas Ince’s old company, Bison 101, merged and became Universal Pictures,
run by Carl Laemmle. Universal bought 230 acres of land in the San Fernando Valley from
David Burbank and opened Universal City at 3900 Lankershim Blvd., which is
still there in the same place.
Also in 1915, D.W. Griffith, Mack Sennett and Thomas Ince formed
Triangle Pictures, and began building a very big studio in Culver City at 10202
W. Washington Blvd., directly next to Thomas Ince Pictures. This is the present-day site of
Sony Studios. But first, before their new studio was finished being built, Triangle started off
renting space at the Griffith - Fine Arts lot.
And also in 1915, Hal Roach opened his studio in Culver City, at 8822
Washington Blvd., and National Blvd. Hal Roach Studios, where many of the
Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, and Our Gang movies were shot, was known as
“The Lot of Fun.” The studio was bulldozed in 1963.
In 1916 Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players merged with Jesse Lasky’s
company and became Famous Players-Lasky, which opened another studio in
Hollywood at 5823 Santa Monica Blvd. (on
the NW corner of Gower St.). The first thing Zukor and Lasky did was to fire
Sam Goldfish (who was also Jesse Lasky’s brother-in-law). The name of the
distribution company handling their films was called Paramount Pictures
Releasing Corp. Soon thereafter they purchased another studio, this one on 201
N. Occidental Blvd. in downtown L.A., formerly the Oliver Morosco Photoplay Co. This studio
was then known as Famous Players – Lasky – Morosco.
In 1916 D.W. Griffith shot his epic film, Intolerance, at his Griffith –
Fine Arts Studio. The rotting Babylon set with its enormous seated elephants
remained standing on that corner for over the next 20 years.
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In 1917 Triangle Pictures folded. Griffith went back to his studio on Sunset Blvd.,
Thomas Ince went back to his own studio next door to Triangle, and Mack Sennett dropped the
Keystone name and continued making comedies in his Glendale studio under the name Mack
Sennett Motion Picture Comedies.
In 1917 First National Pictures opened a big studio facility in Burbank, in the Cahuenga
Pass. First National was the largest film company in the world at that point, having just secured
the services of Charlie Chaplin, and already having the biggest star in the world, Mary Pickford,
who had recently defected to them from Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players. Mary Pickford,
meanwhile, had her own production company which was located at the Robert Brunton Studio
on Melrose Ave. between Gower Ave. and Van Ness St., at 5451 Marathon St. (the little side
street that runs into the front gate).
Also in 1917 Sam Goldfish and Edgar Selwyn formed Goldwyn Pictures. Goldfish liked
the
name so much he took it as his own, then Selwyn sued him and lost. In 1918
Goldwyn Pictures purchased the old Triangle lot in Culver City. Goldwyn
Pictures adopted Leo the Lion as their logo (with the Latin slogan, “Ars Gratia
Artis” meaning “Art for Art’s Sake”). When shooting the film opening of the
logo, the Goldwyn company rented a lion from the Selig Zoo.
And also in 1917, Technicolor Corporation, which had started in Boston in 1915, opened
a lab and factory in Hollywood.
Also in 1917, William Fox opened a facility at 1401 N. Western Ave. called the Fox Film
Corporation.
And finally in 1917 Charlie Chaplin, having signed a million dollar deal
with First National, built his own studio, Charlie Chaplin Studio, at 1416 N. La
Brea Ave, at the corner of DeLongpre
St., in Hollywood (Chaplin had previously been under contract to Mutual, and
had a studio at 1025 Lillian Way, called Chaplin-Mutual, which, for a short
time, was Buster Keaton’s studio). Chaplin’s La Brea studio would eventually
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become A&M Records, and is now Jim Henson Productions.
In 1918, directly across the street from Robert Brunton Studio, at 5300 Melrose Ave.,
William “Billy” Clune, who owned one of the largest movie theaters in downtown L.A.,
Clune’s Palace (later the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra for many years),
built Clune Studio. In the following 90 years this studio has been: United, Tee-Art, Prudential,
California Pictures (Preston Sturgis and Howard Hughes’ company), Enterprise, Producer’s
Studio, and it’s now Raleigh Studios.
In 1919 Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and D.W.
Griffith formed United Artists, and moved into the Pickford-Fairbanks Studio
at 7200 Santa Monica Blvd., at Formosa Ave., which had previously been
owned by the director, King Vidor. The studio’s name changed to United
Artists in 1921, then changed to the Samuel Goldwyn Studio in 1939, and
remained Samuel Goldwyn Studio until 1980, when it was purchased by
Warner Bros. and became the present-day site of the Warner Hollywood
Studio.
In 1923 Walt Disney and his brother Roy opened their first studio in Los Angeles in the
back of the Holly-Vermont Realty office, called Disney Bros. Studio. They soon took over the
whole building, as well as the building next door.
Also in 1923, Goldwyn Pictures merged with Metro Pictures, owned by the theater-chain
Loew’s, Inc., and soon thereafter they fired Sam Goldwyn. That same year Sam Goldwyn
formed his own company, without any partners, and called it Samuel Goldwyn Pictures. He
located his new company on the United Artists lot.
In 1923 brothers Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner (whose last name was actually
Eichelbaum) officially incorporated Warner Brothers Pictures, although they
had been making films under various other names since 1918 in their own
facility at 5800 Sunset Blvd., which was called Warner Brothers Studio. The
president of the company was the oldest brother, Harry, and the head of
production was the youngest brother, Jack.
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In 1924 Metro-Goldwyn merged with Louis B. Mayer Pictures and became Metro-
Goldwyn-
Mayer, with Mayer as the president. Louis Mayer left his headquarters at the
old Selig Polyscope lot on Mission Rd. (next to the zoo), and moved onto the
Goldwyn lot (formerly Triangle), which now became the Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer lot, and stayed that way for the next 50 years.
In 1924 CBC Pictures, run by brothers, Harry and Jack
Cohen, and Joseph Brandt (and had been around since 1920), became Columbia
Pictures and opened at 1432-1440 Gower Ave. (which is now Sunset-Gower
Studios) and across the street from the very first Hollywood studio, Christie-Nestor Studios.
In 1924 Rayart Pictures took over the old Selig Polyscope Studio in Echo Park, next to
the zoo. Rayart became Monogram Pictures in 1930, then it became Republic Pictures in 1935.
Also in 1924, on November 19, Thomas Ince died onboard William Randolph Hearst’s
yacht. It has always been suspected, though never proven, that Hearst shot Ince believing that
he was Charlie Chaplin, whom Hearst suspected of having an affair with his paramour, Marion
Davies. Ince’s body was immediately cremated, and there was never any
investigation or inquest. This brought an abrupt and inglorious end to Thomas
H. Ince Pictures. Cecil B. DeMille left Paramount Pictures, started the Cecil B.
DeMille Studio, and moved onto the Ince lot. This is where DeMille
made King of Kings (an obvious extra in the film was author Ayn Rand, who
had just immigrated to America).
In 1925 Walt and Roy Disney opened a new facility for Disney Bros. Studio on Hyperion
St. in downtown Los Angeles.
In 1925 Warner Brothers merged with First National, forming Warner
Bros.-First National Pictures, and took over the big First National lot in
Burbank. This is where Warner Brothers is still located, at 4000 Warner Blvd.
In 1926 Famous Players-Lasky moved to the former Robert Brunton
Studios on Melrose, and this is when it officially became known as Paramount
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Pictures. This is where Paramount is still located. Incidentally, all of the manhole covers on the
Paramount lot still all say “Robert Brunton.”
In 1928 RKO Pictures was formed by RCA (Radio Corporation of America), Keith-
Orpheum Theaters, and the FBO company, which was the Film Booker’s
Organization, owned by Joseph P. Kennedy (father of former U.S. president
John F. Kennedy), who had already purchased the remains of Mutual Pictures
(including Griffith-Fine Arts Studio) and Pathé (including the Ince/C.B.
DeMille lot), as well as the Robertson-Cole Company, located at 860 N. Gower
St. (at the corner of Gower and Melrose, with Paramount on one side and Columbia on the
other, and the Hollywood Cemetery on the other). So, RKO moved onto the Robertson-Cole
lot, and had the top corner of the building built to look like a globe, and on top of it was RKO’s
trademark radio tower. This building is still there, and the globe is still there, too, but not the
radio tower, and the stages are now part of Paramount.
Also in 1928, Fox Films bought cowboy star, Tom Mix’s, ranch in West L.A. and
renamed it the Fox Ranch. Fox Films kept their headquarters on Western Ave.
and used the Fox Ranch as their backlot.
In 1933 Darryl Zanuck, at the age of 31, left his job at Warner Brothers
as head of production, and started his own film company called 20th Century
Pictures, with Joseph Schenck, brother of Nicholas Schenck, who was the
president of Loew’s, Inc., the parent company of MGM. 20th Century Pictures
moved onto the UA lot on Formosa, which had already become the Samuel
Goldwyn Pictures lot.
In 1935 David Selznick (previously the head of production at RKO, then a producer at
MGM), at the age of 33, formed Selznick International Pictures, then moved into the old main
building of Thomas Ince Studio, which was then RKO-Pathé, in Culver City,
next to MGM (where David Selznick’s father-in-law, Louis Mayer, was
president). Selznick used the main building as not only his headquarters, but
also the company’s logo (as well as the front of the Tara plantation in Gone With The Wind).
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The rest of the lot remained the RKO-Pathè lot.
In 1935 the Fox Film Corporation merged with Darryl Zancuck’s 20th Century Pictures to
become 20th Century-Fox, with Zanuck as it’s president. They then moved the company from
Fox’s Western Blvd. headquarters to the Fox Ranch in West L.A., at 10201 W. Pico Blvd.,
which
is where 20th Century-Fox is still located (although all of what is now the
development, Century City, used to be part of it). The Fox Film Laboratory,
located a block away from their original location on Western Ave., at 1377
Serrano St., then became the 20th Century-Fox Laboratory, which then finally became Deluxe
Labs, which is still there in the same place.
In 1937, with the enormous success of the first animated feature-film, Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs, the Disney brothers relocated to a 51-acre lot in Burbank at 500 S. Buena Vista
St., and changed their name to Walt Disney Productions.
So, by 1937 every Hollywood studio had finally arrived at its proper place. This is where
they would all remain for at least the next 20 to 30 years. Some of the studios, like Paramount,
20th Century-Fox, Universal, Warner Bros. and Disney, are all still in those same places.
In 1948 Howard Hughes, who had been independently producing movies since 1927
(such as Hell’s Angels in 1930, and Scarface in 1932, with his production company, Howard
Hughes Productions, located on the RKO-Pathè lot, although he himself had an office at Samuel
Goldwyn Studio), bought the controlling interest in RKO Pictures for $9 million, then began
accumulating the rest of the stock cheaply. Hughes owned the studio from 1948 to 1954,
managed to lose $40 million, then sold the studio at a $10 million profit, due to the advent of
television and the value of the studio’s film library. The purchasers of the studio (MGM bought
the film library) were Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who in 1954 were in the midst of their huge
hit TV series, I Love Lucy, and they turned RKO into Desilu Studios. In this deal they also
acquired the RKO-Pathè lot.
In 1968, with the great success of his film The Dirty Dozen, Robert Aldrich purchased the
old Oliver Morosco Photoplay Studio, that had been Famous Players-Lasky-Morosco, and it
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now became The Aldrich Company. He went bankrupt in 1973.
In 1975, at the peak of his career, Francis Ford Coppola purchased Hollywood General
Studio at 1040 N. Las Palmas, smack in the center of Hollywood, and named it American
Zoetrope Studio. This facility had been there since 1919, and had existed under various names,
such as: Jasper Hollywood, Metropolitan Pictures, and Educational Pictures. After the release
of the notoriously expensive box office failure, One From the Heart, as well
asHammett and Rumble Fish, Coppola and American Zoetrope went bankrupt and vacated the
premises in 1983. Brothers Ridley and Tony Scott had their offices there in the 1980s. Francis
Coppola and American Zoetrope are still in business, but are now located in San Francisco,
where they had originally started. The studio in Hollywood on Las Palmas has become
Hollywood Center Studios.
Since 1975, most of the Hollywood studios have changed hands numerous times. The
Sony Corporation owns Sony Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and Columbia Tri-Star (and is
located on the old Triangle/MGM lot); Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. owns 20th Century-Fox;
Paramount is owned by Viacom; MGM and UA (which merged) are both owned by Kirk
Kerkorian (neither has studio facilities anymore); Warner Brothers is now part of the Time-
Warner-AOL conglomerate; Universal is now a subsidiary of the NBC Universal; the Walt
Disney Company owns Walt Disney Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, and
Miramax.
And that’s pretty much where all the Hollywood studios stand, for the time being.
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Nestor: The First of the Hollywood Studios
December 3, 2012
Hollywood’s first movie studio was opened by the Nestor Motion Picture Company, a business founded in Bayonne, New Jersey, by brothers David and William Horsley. The Horsleys turned a tidy profit on their extremely popular one-reel installments of Mutt and Jeff, a weekly serial based on Bud Fisher’s comic strip that ran in syndication for 75 years. The Nestor Company soon expanded to the West Coast and took over the site of the Blondeau Tavern on October 27, 1911, on the advice of HJ Whitley. Behind the building at the northwest corner of Sunset and Gower, they built Hollywood’s first motion picture stage. Al Christie supervised its operations while the brothers Horsley remained in New Jersey, overseeing the film lab and distribution. Taking advantage of Southern California’s perfect year-round filming weather, Christie’s team cranked out three one-reel films each week: one western, one drama, and one Mutt and Jeff serial. Many other would-be studio moguls followed suit and opened up shop in Hollywood. An ambitious maverick by the name of Carl Laemmle was one of them. Founder of New York’s Independent Moving Pictures Company, Laemmle aggressively expanded until May 20, 1912, when he became head of the newly-formed Universal Film Company—among the six companies that merged to form Universal were both Nestor and Laemmle’s IMP. Laemmle took a liking to the Nestor Ranch, a leased land just on the other side of Cahuenga Peak from Hollywood. Nestor Ranch would soon expand and become Universal Ranch, which was used to film many early movies (including D.W. Griffith’s classic early feature film, The Birth of a Nation). Laemmle subsequently purchased the surrounding land to create Universal City. The original Nestor Studios site went through various owners until the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) bought it in 1935. CBS demolished Hollywood’s historic first studio, and built a $2 million facility that set the stage for the era of Television in Hollywood.http://millenniumhollywood.net/2012/12/03/the-first-of-the-hollywood-studios/
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