Lunch with Lucy

The other day, Kimi and I got to hang out with the Lone Ranger, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Mae West, Harold Lloyd, Hopalong Cassidy, Ozzie and Harriet, Mae West, Jed Clampett, George and Gracie Allen, and Mr. Ed.

Actually, we got to be at a place where these stars (and hundreds more), used to be found. It’s called Hollywood Center Studios, which, as its name implies, is located smack in the middle of the old studio district, just off of Santa Monica Boulevard.

We were there as a guest of our friend Jeff, who is a cameraman working for a Comedy Central show starring Norm Macdonald.

During breaks from taping, Jeff led us around the studio, which dates back to 1919 and became the home of comedian Harold Lloyd a few years later.

It was here that Howard Hughes made his big budget flop Hell’s Angels that same decade after the place was wired for sound.

During the 30s, Mae West and Hopalong Cassidy made their films here, and in the 1940s, the Marx Brothers made A Night In Casablanca on the lot, and for a time Jimmy Cagney was part owner of the studio.

In the 1950s, new owners made the lot available for television production – something the big studios initially refused to do – and it became the television home of The Lone Ranger, Ozzie and Harriet and Burns and Allen.

In 1951, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz came to Studio 2 to film the pilot episode of I Love Lucy and ended up staying for their first two seasons.

Some of the best loved shows of the 1960s were filmed on the lot, including Green Acres, Mr. Ed, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Perry Mason, and The Addams Family.

Since then, it has appeared in dozens of television shows and films, like The Player and When Harry Met Sally, and was often seen in music videos for stars like Jackson Browne, Prince, and Michael Jackson.

After visiting the sets of Wizards of Waverly Place and So Random!, we met Jeff back on Studio 2.

It was here that Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel first filmed in front of a live studio audience, creating the then revolutionary three-camera filming technique.

On this day it was empty except for the tables set up by craft services to feed the Norm Macdonald crew and guests (meaning us).

While we ate, we could see from pictures on the wall that if we turned the clock back 60 years, we would be dining in the Ricardo’s living room.

It was a place we had been invited to dozens of times over the years. We’d finally made it.

Film’s Forgotten Four-footers

(Today’s post is by Deadwrite’s Dailies guest writer, Steve Goldstein.)

Back in July, 2007, I had the unique experience of being the featured guest on California’s Gold with Huell Howser. It turned out that Huell was a fan of my Beneath Los Angeles website and wanted to do a show about animal actors. Dead animal actors.

Huell asked me to lead him on a tour of the graves of these deceased four-footers, especially the ones who aren’t in cemeteries, since many were buried in backyards and studio lots that are now paved over and lost to history.

I met Huell and his cameraman, Cameron Tucker (yes, Cameron the cameraman) at 8:30 in the morning in Hollywood. Huell, who has been on the air for about 25 years, used to have a cameraman named Louie who he would frequently speak to on camera, saying things like “Louie, get a shot of this,” or “Louie, zoom in on that.” Throughout the day passersby wanted to know if Cameron was the famous Louie, which annoyed the cameraman. At one point he said to me, “Louie has been gone five years now. You’d think people would have figured that out by now.”

Huell began the show at Hollywood Forever Cemetery talking about how people come from near and far to visit celebrity graves. He then explained the twist of how we would be finding the graves of animal stars that day. After that he introduced me, and led into the segment with his catchphrase, “Our adventure begins … right now!”

Huell likes to shoot the show in sequence, even if it means crisscrossing the city many times.

Our first stop was the bank parking lot in Glendale where the Western studio town of Mixville once stood back in 1914. It was here that cowboy star Tom Mix made many of his early films with his trusted horse, Old Blue. When Old Blue died, he was buried on the studio lot. Years later the entire set was leveled and a shopping center was put up in its place. A branch of East-West Bank stands at the south end of the former property and today the bank’s parking lot rests right over the grave of the horse.   

Then it was on to Studio City to find the grave of Terry, the dog who played Toto in 1939’s family classic The Wizard of Oz. The site of Terry’s grave was formerly the ranch of his trainer, Carl Spitz. This property is also now a parking lot and apartment complex resting adjacent to the Ventura Freeway. Every day, thousands of commuters drive over the grave of Toto, who is buried under the freeway.

Our next stop was Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, near Burbank. Forest Lawn is historically cagey with celebrity seekers, and not surprisingly, they wouldn’t allow us to film there. Instead, we stood across the street and talked about Frank Inn, the animal actor trainer who is buried in the cemetery along with the ashes of three of his most famous actors, Benji, Arnold the Pig, and Tramp, the dog from My Three Sons.

We ended our day at the LA Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas, where we could see the actual graves of some celebrity animals. Unlike Forest Lawn, this place was very cooperative (as was Hollywood Forever), and very happy to have Huell Howser on the premises. Here, we filmed the graves of Kabar Valentino (faithful pet Doberman of Rudolph), Topper (Hopalong Cassidy’s horse), Petey (the Our Gang dog), and Tawney, the lion who roars at the start of all MGM Films.

The show we filmed that day is called Pet Cemetery and is replayed three or four times a year, so set your TiVo’s and DVR’s! 

Huell, by the way, was a hoot during the entire day. He truly loves doing what he does.

Steve Goldstein is the author of LA’s Graveside Companion: Where the V.I.P.s R.I.P. Schiffer Books, 2009.

Black and White and Red All Over

Southern California is blessed with spots where the storied events of the Old West actually took place, and where those same events were later portrayed to the outside world in old black-and-white Western films. We recently visited one of these places in the Mojave Desert called Red Rock Canyon.

Red Rock Canyon is a 27,000 acre state park situated at the southern tip of the Sierra Nevada Range. It lies halfway between the towns of Mojave and Ridgecrest, 120 miles north of Los Angeles on California 14.

Watch out for the camels. They spit!

Destructive, yet beautiful, forces of nature created Red Rock Canyon. Tectonic tears caused by the nearby Garlock Fault raised what was once a lake hundreds of feet into the sky, revealing the sedimentary layers beneath. Some of these layers contain high contents of iron which rusted in the open air, giving the rocks its dark red color. Wind and rain have gouged the layers into stone curtains cascading down in accordion-like folds.

The canyons of Red Rock have seen their share of folks pass by, starting with the Kawaiisu Indians, who had a trade route through the area. During the nineteenth century, prospectors, twenty-mule teams, and even a party of lost Death Valley survivors creeped through the canyons.

"Tombstone Canyon" (1932)

With the majestic otherworldly vistas of the area, it was inevitable that Hollywood filmmakers would eventually find the place. According to Richard J. Schmidt of redrockcanyonmovies.com, the first film made here was Wild Horse Canyon in 1925. Since then, over 130 movies, television episodes, commercials, and music videos have been shot here. Many of Hollywood’s biggest Western stars have worked in the canyons, including John Wayne, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Gabby Hayes, and Gary Cooper. The area has appeared in classic horror and science fiction films as well, like Boris Karloff’s The Mummy, and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.

Despite all of these attempts to capture the beauty of Red Rock Canyon on film, pictures just don’t do the place justice. You have to see if for yourself.

The same site today.