THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY SOUND OF MUSIC PRODUCTION TOUR

“In The Last Golden Days of the Studio System” (1960–1965)

THAT’S OUR MIRACLE PICTURE.

DARRYL ZANUCK

Seven months after Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s last Broadway musical, The Sound of Music, opened on November 16, 1959, Spyros Skouras approved the lease of screen rights for 15 years at $1.25 million, the largest amount yet spent on a literary property. He is a firm believer in bringing such stories of faith, hope, and family—in this case a true one of the von Trapp family—to the screen.

When Darryl Zanuck takes back control of the beleaguered studio and Bldg. 88 he announces on December 10, 1962, that the The Sound of Music is finally under way with his signing of Ernest Lehman to prepare the screenplay and a budget of $5.5 million. It is a brave declaration that Twentieth Century Fox is not through, and in fact capable of producing a major musical. Lehman writes the screenplay in his suite in Bldg. 80. It is completed by March 20, 1964.

Child star Angela Cartwright tests for the role of Brigitta. Fox would be her home for the next few years as one of the stars of Lost in Space (1965-68) which was filmed on the lot.

Rehearsing the choreography for “So Long, Farewell” by Dee Dee Wood (in white, back to camera) and Marc Breaux (at piano), with stand-ins for Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.

Rehearsing the choreography for the mountaintop portion of “Do-Re-Mi.”

When he is assigned as director and producer in October of 1963, Robert Wise joins a production team already assembled in Bldg. 78, including supervising, including supervising production designer Boris Leven; Roger Edens, who blocks out the musical numbers, including the spectacular opening sequence; and Irwin Kostal (music director) and Saul Chaplin (associate producer), attending to the music. Although Darryl Zanuck champions Doris Day for the role of Maria von Trapp, director Robert Wise and screenwriter Ernest Lehman choose Julie Andrews in November of 1963, and sign her to a two-picture deal. Christopher Plummer is cast as Captain von Trapp, Eleanor Parker as the Baroness, and Richard Haydn as Uncle Max.

The cast practices their bicycling on the lot for the “Do-Re-Me” sequence. From left to right: Angela Cartwright, Nicholas Hammond, Charmian Carr, Marc Breaux, Duane Chase, and Debbie Turner. The Century City condominiums rising in the background are at the corner of the Avenue of the Stars and Pico Boulevard.

Art director Boris Leven’s team includes assistant art director Harry Kemm, L. B. Abbott, and Emil Kosa Jr. in charge of visual effects, and set decorators Ruby Levitt and Walter M. Scott. Maurice “Zuby” Zuberano is employed by Robert Wise to create the film’s storyboards in ten weeks that can be used for reference throughout production.

On Wednesday, December 11, 1963, Julie Andrews makes her first appearance on the lot as the star of the picture when she is invited by Robert Wise and studio executives to lunch in the commissary.

On February 10, 1964, Charmian Carr (Liesl), the last of the seven von Trapp children to be cast, meets her screen siblings: Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich), Heather Menzies (Louisa), Duane Chase (Kurt), Angela Cartwright (Brigitta), Debbie Turner (Marta), and Kym Karath (Gretl) for the first time on Maria’s bedroom set on Stage Fifteen. for a regimen of photo tests and rehearsals, including dance lessons and biking around the lot in preparation for the “Do-Re-Mi” sequence.

The seven children’s voices are augmented by others on Stage One.

Irwin Kostal directs the scoring on Stage One.

View of Stage One during music rehearsals. The large brass bed on the left was used for practicing “My Favorite Things.”

One of the costume fittings on stage. Angela Cartwright remembers “the amazing seamstresses that flitted around us shortening and adjusting each outfit like the fairy godmothers in Cinderella.”

Costume designer Dorothy Jeakins, left, has a wardrobe conference with Christopher Plummer, middle, and director Robert Wise, right, in Plummer’s dressing room in Bldg. 86.

The children (except Carr and Karath) are schooled in Bldg. 80 for three hours a day by Frances Klamt, followed by shooting for no more than five hours a day.

Julie Andrews went in for hair and makeup tests in Bldg. 38, and remembers coming out with orange hair when efforts to heighten her natural blonde highlights went awry. Instead it was completely bleached blonde. Dan Truhitte (Rolfe) and Nicholas Hammond both had their hair dyed blond and had similar bad experiences. Hammond remembers what a painful process it was, while Truhitte claims his hair never grew back correctly.

Rehearsing the dining room sequence where Liesl sneaks out. Director Robert Wise is at the end of the table with his back to the camera.

Helping the actors is dialect coach Pamela Danova (training each with a mid-Atlantic accent), vocal supervisor Bobby Tucker, and choreographers Dee Dee Wood and Marc Breaux, whom Julie Andrews recommends after her happy experience with them on Mary Poppins (1964, Disney).

Even pajamas have to look perfect! Another costume test for “My Favorite Things.”

Marni Nixon, who dubbed other actresses for years, is finally cast onscreen as a singing nun. To strengthen the sound of the seven actors portraying the von Trapp children, four additional voices are used during the recordings on Stage One, including Charmian’s little sister Darleen. Margery MacKay, wife of the rehearsal pianist, performs the singing on the soundtrack for Peggy Wood (Mother Abbess). The scoring is supervised by Saul Chaplin and Irwin Kostal, and Kostal conducts the studio orchestra here the first week of November. Whether Christopher Plummer’s voice was going to be used on the soundtrack is debated.

The filming of “My Favorite Things.” Choreographer Marc Breaux stands at the foot of the bed.

Charmian Carr is wetted down for her entrance into Maria’s (Julie Andrews) bedroom set. An amused director, Robert Wise, stands behind her.

The nuns rehearse with Julie Andrews’ stand-in on the Nonnburg Abbey set..

The nuns, in their street clothes, trying to figure out how to solve a problem like Maria.

The extraordinary graveyard set of Nonnburg Abbey during the final confrontation between Captain von Trapp and Rolfe.

The blueprints for the von Trapp villa interior set built on Stage Fifteen.

Principal photography is green-lit in Bldg. 88 for Thursday, March 26, 1964. Richard Zanuck wires Robert Wise:

“Dear Bobby: Today we launch Sound of Music, which is the most important picture on our production schedule . . . I couldn’t have more confidence in the team of technicians and actors that we have assembled on Stage Fifteen for this picture, but my greatest satisfaction is that you are at the helm, and I am secure in knowing that we will have a great and monumental achievement.”

The von Trapp children prepare to introduce themselves to Fraulein Maria on Stage Fifteen.

Taking a lunch break. (From L-R) Duane Chase, Nicholas Hammond, Heather Menzies, Angela Cartwright, and Debbie Turner.

Principal photography begins at 10:36 a.m. on March 26, with Julie Andrews, Charmian Carr, and Norma Varden (Frau Schmidt) assembled here. The first scene shot was between Andrews and Varden. Then Carr made her film debut in the scene in which she climbs up to Maria’s room in a rainstorm. “My Favorite Things” is shot the following day, marking the acting debut of many of the children.

The wardrobe is designed by studio veteran Dorothy Jeakins. This is her favorite picture.

Since the Mother Abbess of the actual Nonnberg Abbey had refused to let the film company shoot inside, its exterior courtyard and interior room off the cloister are are recreated on Stage Sixteen. Filming begins in the Abbey cloister on April 2 with the nuns walking to chapel, chanting “Dixit Dominus.” Then “Maria” is filmed April 3–8, and the sequence where Julie Andrews and the nuns prepare for Maria’s wedding, on April 9.

Filming in the Abbey entrance room, Maria’s room, and outside hallway is done on April 9 on Stage Five, and in the graveyard set on Five on April 13–17.

Richard Zanuck writes Robert Wise on April 9, 1964:

“Dear Bobby: I can’t tell you how absolutely thrilled I’ve been by the footage you have been getting. As you know, we have four pictures shooting on the lot, and I run approximately forty minutes of dailies each day. Please don’t tell the other producers or directors, but I can hardly wait each day to get to your film, which I always run at the end. Each day it makes me more happy.”

The von Trapp entry hall on Stage Fifteen.

Cast and crew depart for a planned six and a half weeks in Salzburg, Austria, for location filming that summer. Due to various problems—particularly the rainy weather—it takes eleven weeks. Meanwhile, Saul Chaplin and script supervisor Betty Levin fall in love and marry four years later. The real Maria von Trapp gets into the act, appearing in the background while Julie Andrews sings “I Have Confidence.” The sequence required thirty-seven takes, prompting her to declare: “Mr. Wise, I have just abandoned a lifelong ambition to work in the movies.”

Blueprints of elevations of the entry hall.

Art director Boris Leven stands in front of one of the most famous sets he ever designed in his long career in Hollywood.

Richard Haydn, as Max, stands in front of the gilt wall paneling during the party scene.

Blueprint of elevation of paneling in ballroom.

The ballroom and terrace of the von Trapp home set were on Stage Fifteen.

There is always a lot of standing around and waiting on a movie set!

Light check on the elegant Eleanor Parker as the Baroness.

Filming on the lot begins again on Stage Fifteen on July 6, with the von Trapp family in the dining room of the new von Trapp villa sets, including the foyer and grand staircase set, and the ballroom, courtyard, terrace, dining room, and parlor. The party, “So Long, Farewell,” and “Laendler” musical sequences are filmed from July 15–24. On July 27 Eleanor Parker and Christopher Plummer have their final scene in the terrace set. On July 30 work begins on “The Lonely Goatherd” puppet show. After work here with the cast, the real puppeteers Bil and Cora Baird go to work on Stage Three with a second unit.

“So Long, Farewell” is performed on Stage Fifteen.

On August 6–7 the children sing “The Sound of Music” to their father, and the intimate family version of “Edelweiss” is performed in the parlor. On August 10 the last piece of the emotional sequence in which the von Trapp children sing “The Sound of Music” for their father is filmed, marking the last day the children all work together. They receive their own wrap party with cider-filled champagne glasses. The children are reunited on the lot on March 10, 1965, to dress for the Los Angeles premiere in their party clothes from the movie.

Angela Cartwright remained on the lot to make Lost in Space (1966–68), and later appeared in Room 222 (1969–74). Heather Menzies returned to guest star in S.W.A.T. (1975–76), starring Robert Urich. They dated for a year before Urich took her to a nearby restaurant and proposed. They were married until Urich’s death from cancer in 2002.

Look for the von Trapp grand hall in Do Not Disturb (1964), What a Way to Go! (1964), Way . . . Way Out (1966), Caprice (1967), The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967), and Valley of the Dolls (1968).

Filming “The Lonely Goatherd.”

Shooting resumes on Stage Eight on August 11–13 for Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer on a “green” set, re-creating the von Trapps’ garden and gazebo, shot at an estate in Salzburg called Schloss Leopoldskron, for the “Something Good” musical sequence. Robert Wise resorts to shooting them in silhouette when the couple cannot stop laughing over a noisy arc lamp.

The “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” musical sequence is filmed on Stage Eight on August 14–19. Cast and crew hold their breath when Charmian Carr goes crashing through a plate-glass wall of the gazebo during the dance because the wardrobe department failed to put rubber skids on the soles of her new shoes. She completes the sequence with a bandaged ankle. It is the last major scene filmed for the movie.

A publicity event on the steps of the Commissary to show off the marionettes created by Bill Baird (seen at far right). In true publicity style, the audience was contrived and consisted of the kids’ parents and Fox publicists!

When Liesl (Charmian Carr) ran out to the garden to meet Rolfe (Dan Truhitte) she had a long way to go—from Austria to Stage Eight where the “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” sequence was filmed.

Julie Andrews completes the “I Have Confidence” sequence filmed on location on a bus in front of a process screen on Stage Six on August 13. Principal photography ends, with more process work with Richard Haydn, Eleanor Parker, and Christopher Plummer in the Captain’s car, through September 1.

Liesl (Charmian Carr) meets up with Rolfe (Dan Truhitte) on Stage Eight for “Sixteen Going On Seventeen.”

Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR) takes place here in the basement of Bldg. 226 from August 25 to September 8, when post-sync dubbing begins. “You always hope to use the original track,” said Wise, “but if there are interferences, you go back into the studio and you take a section, and you run it and run it, and then you redo the dialogue. It’s very time-consuming, and you have to be careful about the sync.” Christopher Plummer is allowed to sing his songs over two days after production-long efforts with voice coach Bobby Tucker. Everyone agrees his singing needs to be replaced, and Bill Lee is hired on October 1, 1964.

William Reynolds edits the film in Bldg. 32. The first major musical number to be completed is the “Do-Re-Mi” sequence that thrills cast and crew when they see it for the first time at a screening on the lot in August. The “rough cut” up to the “Do-Re-Mi” sequence is screened on September 18 for Richard Rodgers and his wife. The final rough cut of the picture is ready by October 2, 1964. Final edits take place on January 21, 1965. The final “answer print” from Technicolor and soundtrack is approved for release on February 5, 1965, at two hours and fifty-six minutes.

Filming “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.”

Christopher Plummer takes a break from a photo shoot outside of the Portrait Studio. The windows of the Commissary are seen on the left. The brick planter box still surrounds this tree in 2016.

One of the photos from the shoot.

On August 25–26, 1964, Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker, and the children had their formal portraits taken in Bldg. 58.

Nicholas Hammond, left, and Duane Chase, right, try skate-boarding in front of Stage Eleven.

The entry hall remained on Stage Fifteen for many years, and was used again in films like Do Not Disturb (1965) as a Paris hotel lobby.

As a Russian Embassy in Way...Way Out (1966).

As Sir Jason’s mansion in Caprice (1967).

As Al Capone’s home in The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967).

As the main hall in the opening sequence of What a Way to Go! (1964).

As a fancy restaurant in Valley of the Dolls (1967).

Saul Chaplin and Irwin Kostal view the completed cut on October 5, 1964, and then prepare and supervise the scoring on Stage One. For two weeks—beginning October 16—Irwin Kostal arranges and orchestrates the background score. On November 2 scoring sessions begin. Veteran Buddy Cole passes away the day after completing his performance of the organ pieces for the score. Music editor Robert Mayer cuts and mixes the recordings. Murray Spivack is in charge of finalizing the six-track stereo magnetic master soundtrack, including sound effects. Chaplin supervised the creation of the soundtrack album. Released March 20, 1965, it reached Gold Record status and remains on the best-selling charts for 233 weeks. Combined with the sales and popularity of the original 1959 Broadway cast album, The Sound of Music remains the most popular musical score of all time.

In charge of the film’s publicity in Bldg. 88 is Mike Kaplan, who readies the advertising campaign for The Sound of Music beginning in February 1964, coming up with “The Happiest Sound in All the World” as its slogan. From its inception, the film is planned as one of the studio’s “road show” productions, treated like the opening of a major Broadway show. He also spearheads a campaign to win Academy Award recognition. The studio was free to release the film after the Broadway show ended its run after 1,443 performances, on June 15, 1963. The final print is readied for two previews in mid-January 1965.

The Sound of Music, at a final cost of $8.2 million, premiered on March 2, 1965, in New York, and then in 131 American theaters and 261 theaters overseas, becoming a now-legendary smash hit. Domestic rentals for 1965 neared the $115 million level, a new record for the company.

Three years later the Zanucks proudly declare that the studio is debt-free from the dark days of Cleopatra (1963). Ultimately the film runs for nearly five years in its first run—a record still never equaled. Its enormous profits encourage a third expansion of the Westwood lot in the southwest corner and along the eastern boundary of the studio east of Avenues B and C, including four new soundstages in 1965, two more in 1966, and the building of a number of sets, including a new $250,000 Western Street for Stagecoach, and Dolly Street for Hello, Dolly! (1969). The movie continues to inspire. After numerous theatrical reissues, Fox got $21.5 million in July of 1978 for a phenomenal twenty-two-year run for the film on NBC. It has since been released, and never out of print, in all the various home video formats. Critic Charles Champlin wrote: “The Sound of Music works because we still, more often than not, ask the movies to give shape to our dreams rather than our nightmares, to spell out our wishes and fancies instead of our fears, and The Sound of Music says with a towering clarity that there is still innocence in the world, that love conquers all and right will prevail.”

Kym Karath celebrates her sixth birthday in the schoolroom in Building 80 with the other cast members. Their teacher, Frances Klamt, and publicist Mike Kaplan also attend.

Besides the five Academy Awards and five nominations bestowed upon The Sound of Music in 1966, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences saluted the film’s fiftieth anniversary at their 2015 Oscar show. Of the film’s legacy Agathe, the eldest daughter of the von Trapp family, wrote in her 2004 memoir:

“The creators of The Sound of Music were true to the spirit of our family’s story. After meeting so many people over the years who told me how they had derived such great enjoyment and inspiration from the musical and the movie…is it not easy to see the hand of God in all this?”

Alice Faye exits the Portrait Studio in 1945.

BLDG. 58: THE PORTRAIT STUDIO (1929)

First in operation at the Western Avenue lot, the portrait studio was transferred here, where it remained until 1971. Almost every major star in Hollywood sat for portrait sittings here, since for most of the twentieth century the motion picture industry relied on print media for advertising its films. Glamour portraits, candids, and amusing novelty, holiday-themed art were standard fare. Actors and actresses on contract at Fox received special attention, with a portrait file (called a “Star-head”) dedicated solely to them.

Linda Darnell, with golden tresses for her role in Forever Amber (1947), get ready for a photo shoot with Gene Kornman (at right with glasses).

Take Gene Tierney, for example: When she arrived on the lot she was introduced to publicist Peggy McNaught, who, in short order, had photographers like Gene Kornman and Frank Powolny taking pictures of her everywhere, both on and off the lot, while promoting her for fashion layouts in magazines and newspapers. Each photo would then be marked with her own studio publicity number to keep track of the voluminous photography. Tierney’s Starhead file would ultimately reach 1,550 photographs—and that did not include any stills from her films.

Jeanne Crain strikes a glamorous pose in 1944.

June Haver steadies herself for some campy Halloween photos, 1944.

Kornman, one of the leading still photographers in Hollywood, spent most of his career at Fox. He once estimated that he had taken over half a million photographs in the first twenty years of his career. Among his favorites was Shirley Temple, who came to Fox about the same time he did. She was primarily photographed (well over 7,500 portraits!) by Anthony Ugrin. Of course, the most famous photograph to originate from this lot, and this studio, was Betty Grable’s pinup shot, taken here in early 1943.

“We were making a picture called Sweet Rosie O’Grady at the time,” Grable recalled, “and in one scene an artist was to draw me for a cover on Police Gazette. He wanted the measurements and the figure just right, so I climbed into the tight bathing suit and posed for a bunch of pictures. Frank, as usual, wasn’t quite satisfied. Then he got the idea for the pose with me looking back over my shoulder. It never was really intended for publication, but when the boys in the publicity department saw it they had a few thousand prints made. Thanks to the servicemen overseas it turned out to be a pinup sensation, and it did a lot for me. But back of the picture was Mr. Powolny and his camera genius.”

At least ten million copies of the photo are estimated to have been distributed during World War II, and it remains the most reproduced movie still in history.

Powolny, who came to work at Fox in 1923, became a still photographer while working on John Ford’s The Three Bad Men (1926), and then moved into the portrait gallery due to the insistence of much-impressed Loretta Young. In 1956, after the Labor Day holiday weekend, Powolny received Elvis Presley here for his first photo session for the movies, and was impressed enough to note: “If I’m any judge, he’ll stay up there as long as Sinatra and Crosby have done.”

Joan Crawford poses in Henry Fonda’s arms for Daisy Kenyona (1947).

Instead of a staffed portrait studio, photographers are now hired on a per-picture contract basis. This building currently houses special effects and dry-cleaning services for employees. Look for the exterior and doorway to the portrait studio in Holiday for Lovers (1959) and Shock Treatment (1964).

This was apparently a tiresome photo session for Maureen O’Hara, Clifton Webb, and Robert Young, stars of Sitting Pretty (1948).

This is the earliest known print of the Betty Grable pin-up, the stamp on the back indicates that it was approved by the MPAA on February 17, 1943. Note the garter belt that has been retouched on Betty’s left leg. The photo was taken on a whim by Frank Powolny as part of a photo shoot to create props for Sweet Rosie O’Grady (1943).

Some of the photos from the photo shoot that produced the famous pin-up and the resulting illustrated props for the film.

Frank Powolny poses with an altered version of his most famous photograph at this retirement party in the Portrait Studio, 1966.

Sophia Loren made her English-speaking film debut in Boy on a Dolphin (1957) as a treasure-hunting sea diver. This photo got a lot of attention, and became one of the most popular pin-ups of the 1950s.

Similarly, Raquel Welch’s career got a huge boost after she appeared as Loana in this scrap leather bikini in One Million Years B.C. (1966).

Terry Moore’s infamous ermine swimsuit ensemble designed by Edith Head.

Just a few of the many thousands of faces that were photographed in the Portrait Studio: (top row, L-R) Myrna Loy, Marguerite Churchill, Una Merkel. Neil Hamilton and Elissa Landi, taken for The Woman in Room 13 (1932). (bottom row) Tyrone Power and Loretta Young, taken for Love is News (1937). Basil Rathbone, taken for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), and Cesar Romero.

(Top row, L-R) Lena Horne, taken for Stormy Weather (1943), Laird Cregar, taken for Heaven Can Wait (1943), Anne Baxter, (bottom row) Dana Andrews, Carmen Miranda, taken for Week-End in Havana (1941),Bette Davis, taken for All About Eve (1950), and James Mason.

(Top row, L-R) Marilyn Monroe, Deborah Kerr, taken for The King and I (1956), Gregory Peck, taken for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), (bottom row) Suzanne Pleshette, taken for Fate is the Hunter (1964), Diane Baker, Jeffrey Hunter, and Elvis Presley, taken for Flaming Star (1960).

Themed holiday photography was standard fare for decades. Here are a few examples from kitschy to lovely. (Top row, L-R) Natalie Wood, Janet Gaynor, John Wayne, Joan ollins,(bottom row) Shirley Jones, cast of The Sound of Music.

(Top row, L-R) Jayne Mansfield, Ann-Margret, Shirley Temple, Rita Moreno, (bottom row) Doris Day, Mitzi Gaynor, Debra Paget

BLDG. 58: MEN’S WARDROBE (1929)

Building 58 with the Commissary lawn in front. Building 59 is at the right. The rising staircase is part of the Galaxy Way parking structure

Rossano Brazzi gets measured for a suit for his role in South Pacific (1958).

“Does this hat go with this suit and shoes?” Men’s Wardrobe was a one-stop-shop for all sartorial needs. Note the rows of police and military badges on the wall, 1949.

Boots, boots, and more boots in Bldg. 58, 1950.

Marine, Army, Navy—you name it Fox had a uniform for it, 1949.

Interior of Bldg. 58 when it was the Men’s Wardrobe Department, 1936. When the building was converted to office space, the mezzanine was extended to create a full second floor, and the large windows on the left were replaced by smaller ones.

One challenging aspect of the wardrobe department is ensuring that the correct medals, badges, and insignias of anyone in uniform—from hotel bellhops to army generals—are correct.

Building 59 in 2007.

Original 1932 caption: “Alfred San-tell, himself, accompanied Marian Nixon to the large wardrobe at Movietone City where they spent all afternoon selecting the simple costumes Marian will wear in her forthcoming sound version of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1932).

Building 59 circa 1937.

BLDG. 59: WOMEN’S WARDROBE (1929)

This was another of the departments during the years of the studio system that was part of the assembly line, and an assembly line in and of itself. There were salons where costume designers’ work was discussed, the back room constantly abuzz with sewing machines where the costumes were made, fitting rooms where the stars were dressed, and storage where costumes were carefully cataloged for reuse.

From the beginning Movietone City had the best under Rita Kaufman, including Earl Luick, Herschel McCoy, Rene Hubert, and Lewis Royer Hastings (“Royer”). The talented Sophie Wachner could create costumes from the most mundane, such as Irish peasants for Song O’ My Heart (1930), to the fantastic, for Just Imagine (1930).

CharlesLeMaire goes over sketches and fabric in his office, circa 1946.

After the merger Royer became head of the wardrobe department, and Gwen Wakeling, from Twentieth Century Pictures, was the studio’s head costume designer until 1942. Travis Banton succeeded as head of the department in 1940. Charles LeMaire, a veteran of the Broadway shows of Florenz Ziegfeld and George White, as well as the circus of John Ringling North, first showed up here at White’s request to design the costumes for George White’s Scandals (1934).

William Travilla stands with the mannequins for Sharon Tate, Judy Garland, Barbara Parkins, and Patty Duke for whom he created the wardrobe for Valley of the Dolls (1967).

Royer displays one of the studio’s creations for One in a Million (1936) in his office that also served as a fitting room. When facing the building on the outside, the windows in the picture are on the right of the main entrance.

Betty Grable tries out a new costume for Tin Pan Alley (1940) while costume designer Travis Banton sees how it compares to his original sketch.

LeMaire took over the department in 1943 upon his discharge from the army, agreeing to handle the additional work of designing for some of the studio’s pictures each year. He began with Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe (1945), when producer Bill Perlberg heard he had worked with Rose. During his dazzling tenure he had Yvonne Wood and Helen Rose to design the trademark looks of Carmen Miranda; Bonnie Cashin, whose remarkable work began with Laura (1944); and Rene Hubert, for Forever Amber (1947), all of which showcased the department at its height.

Gene Tierney’s husband, designer Oleg Cassini, made a name for himself here (The Razor’s Edge, 1946, and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1947), appearing as himself in Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950). In the 1950s—after Gregory Peck startled everyone by collapsing with a coronary during fittings for David and Bathsheba (1951)—LeMaire hired Edith Head to do All About Eve (1950). The notorious ermine bikini that got the Korean War’s number-one pinup Terry Moore sent home amid a blaze of publicity was also Head’s.

Rene Hubert discusses the costumes for Music in the Air (1934) with star Gloria Swanson who is wearing one of his creations for the film

Dorothy Jeakins, who designed costumes for everything from Niagara (1953) and Titanic (1953) to South Pacific (1958) and Young Frankenstein (1974), had a particular gift for making rich-looking wardrobe out of inexpensive materials.

Although LeMaire’s studio contract ended in March of 1959, he stayed on until the early 1960s, freelancing three features annually. A key campaigner to have the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognize costume designers, his department won the first time they were nominated for All About Eve (1950). Another win for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) created his greatest worldwide fashion stir: the Chinese-style sheath dress. His last work here was for David O. Selznick’s Tender Is the Night (1961).

Jayne Mansfield gets fitted for The Girl Can’t Help It (1956).

Each movie star would have a mannequin with her measurements: at the far right is Gene Tierney’s, followed by Vera Ellen’s, and the sixth one down belonged to Lynn Bari, 1946.

What an extraordinary curtain call this department had in those wild 1960s as the studio system drew to a close. Credit Edith Head for What a Way to Go! (1964) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Ray Aghayan for the Flint films (1966-67), Caprice (1967), and Doctor Dolittle (1967), and Irene Sharaff for Cleopatra (1963) and Hello, Dolly! (1969). Not surprisingly Cleopatra set a new record, with 26,000 costumes utilized. Vittorio Nino Novarese designed for the men, and Renie Conley designed for the other actresses and extras.

The work-room on the south side of the building, circa 1936.

Each rack contains costumes pulled for separate productions.

The workroom circa 1965.

“I used to disappear into the wardrobe department,” recalled Darryl Zanuck’s daughter, Darrylin. “When I got home, I’d draw clothes designs and show them to my father. He’d write on them ‘great’ or ‘it stinks.’ ”

Darrylin later operated a dress shop in the Acapulco Hilton, where she designed the clothes sold and the fabrics they were made of, and ran a wholesale business.

Gwen Wakeling racked up an impressive resume working on over 85 films for Fox in the 1930s and 1940s including The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941). She was also responsible for dressing Shirley Temple for many of her films. Here she is seen going over some sketches in the Women’s Wardrobe building.

The wardrobe department closed in October of 1977, and its glittering collection merged with Western Costume. The department reopened in the late 1980s and now resides on the fifth floor of Bldg. 99. This building currently houses Twentieth Century Fox’s feature-film production offices. Head of production Emma Watts and her creative team are located in Bldg. 88. Meanwhile, a vestige of the building’s glamorous past remains: Running along the east exterior wall you can still see the opening where wardrobe could be distributed.

Costume designer Bonnie Cashin displays the sketches she created for Unfaithfully Yours (1948) in one of the fitting rooms turned workroom on the north side of the building. The quote above the mirror reads “He who spits against the wind, Spits in his own face . . .”

The Women’s Wardrobe department shows you how to make a Carmen Miranda hat!

And the resulting hat worn by Carmen Miranda on the set of Something for the Boys (1944).

Beau Bridges, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Jeff Bridges in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989).

The entrance to Stage Twenty-two.

STAGE TWENTY-TWO (1966)

The prolific Bridges family has all appeared in Fox films and television shows. Beau Bridges, who starred in Norma Rae (1979) and Max Payne (2008), began making The Goodwin Games here in 2013. Beau’s father’s Lloyd appeared in A Walk in the Sun (1946), The Loner (1965–66), and the Hot Shots! films (1991-1993). Beau and younger brother Jeff appeared together in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). Jeff also composed some of the music for Fox’s John and Mary (1969), starring Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow.

STAGE TWENTY-ONE (1966)

Peyton Place for the 1990s? Certainly David E. Kelley’s Rome, Wisconsin, re-created on stages such as this one for the surreal Picket Fences (1992–96), was, in the creator’s words, “about community, family, the workplace, and the town integrated into this community.” Tom Skerritt (Alien), Kathy Baker (Edward Scissorhands), and South Pacific’s (1958) own Ray Walston were among its inhabitants.

Painted on its south wall, the stage has a mural depicting the light-saber battle between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker from Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), completed in the spring of 1996. The film’s director Irvin Kirshner once said of film-making: “You guess at everything. You guess the script will be good, and that the actors you chose will be right. You guess that you’ll have enough money to finish the picture, and after every scene you guess that this will be the scene that will work. It’s a helluva way to spend millions of dollars!”

The mural of the climactic lightsaber duel between Luke Sky-walker and Darth Vader for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) adorns the south exterior wall of Stage Twenty One. All six Star Wars films distributed by Fox were not made here, but various places overseas, including the Fox Studios Sydney.

STAGE TWENTY (1966)

Who would have thought that when Rex Harrison was let go in disgrace in the 1940s, he would return in such triumph in the 1960s. It was impossible to ignore talent like his, as evidenced here on the set of Doctor Dolittle’s (1967) elegant study, where he performed “Reluctant Vegetarian” and “Talk to the Animals.” Although the film’s fans continue to consider it, in the words of one of its most memorable performers, Anthony Newley, “altogether marvelous,” Harrison found the film more difficult than Cleopatra (1963). The bad weather in England, and, later, in the Caribbean, proved to be a secondary problem to working with so many animals that—in the case of a chimp, Pomeranian puppy, and duck—bit him. There was also the goat that ate Fleischer’s script, and the parrot who yelled “Cut!” at inopportune moments.

A star on the rise when Joel Schumacher made Dying Young (1991) here, Julia Roberts got her start at Fox in Aaron Spelling’s Satisfaction (1988). That same year she appeared in studio’s sleeper hit, Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), and remains a major star at the company’s century mark. Most recently she returned to work in Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s Mirror Mirror (2012, Relativity Media).

This is the set on Stage Twenty for Dr. Dolittle (1967) with Rex Harrison amongst the animals. That is the back of Anthony Newley’s head.

Julia Roberts had one of her best early roles in Dying Young (1991). Some of the interior shots were made on this stage. This photo from the opening scene was filmed on New York Street when it doubled for Oakland, California.

The east side of the Camera Building. Among the department’s breakthroughs was a camera that did not have to be immobilized inside a booth when sound motion pictures were introduced.

BLDG. 31: THE CAMERA BUILDING (1936)/BLDGS. 16-19 (1928)

As part of Darryl Zanuck’s expansion of the lot, Building 31 was built to house the camera department on the first floor, the script department on the second floor, and the studio switchboard on the third floor. Adjoining it were earlier facilities for the studio generator (publicized as big enough for a city of fifty thousand) and camera repair and maintenance. As of 2015, one of these original Westinghouse generators is still providing the power to Stage Nine. For years the studio offered a shoeshine and repair service at the east end of Bldg. 19 that made regular rounds.

“According to Dad, the most important man on the lot, the one you wanted on your side, was not Darryl Zanuck but Henry the Bootblack,” recalled Tom Mankiewicz. “He shined the shoes of every executive on a daily basis. They were constantly on the phone and talked freely in front of him while he worked. As a result, he knew everything that was going on at Fox: whose contract was being dropped, what project was going to get a green light or be canceled, and who was currently in or out of favor.”

Northeast entrance sign, circa late 1940s.

Loading dock for cameras on the west side of the building, 1940s.

Workers from the script department exit the southeast entrance.

It became “Joe’s [Quattrochi] Shoppe” for the same service in 1982. The shoeshine service and barbershop exist still today in the basement of Bldg. 88. Bldg. 31 is the one that had “Think 20th” painted on the south side during the Richard Zanuck era, and was the first building restored under the studio’s lot-wide preservation program, beginning in the spring of 1994. In 1998 the walk-way from this building to the commissary was refurbished and landscaped at a cost that caused employees to dub it “the million-dollar walkway.”

Avenue D as it appeared before the installation of “the Million Dollar Walkway” transforming it from a car thoroughfare to a pedestrian walkway, circa 1962.

Studio head Richard Zanuck stands in front of Bldg 31 hoping everyone will “Think 20^th” the studio’s marketing campaign in the mid-1960s.

STAGE NINE (1928)

The oldest stage on the Fox lot, it once contained one of the most famous sets and key props in Fox history: Gene Tierney’s elegant apartment and portrait for Laura (1944). In June of 1943 Otto Preminger convinced the studio to purchase Vera Caspary’s popular novel, chose Rouben Mamoulian as director and his wife Azadia to paint the title character’s portrait for this set, and cast Jennifer Jones as star. Jones turned him down because mentor David O. Selznick did not like the project, and Mamoulian and Azadia were fired when he saw their initial efforts. Preminger ended up taking a photo of Tierney by Frank Powolny and having it enlarged and lightly brushed with paint to create the effect he wanted.

John Hodiak was considered for the role of the detective who falls for Laura, until Dana Andrews convinced Virginia Zanuck that he was right for the role on the aircraft carrier set on the backlot while he was filming Wing and a Prayer (1944). Although Laird Cregar was considered for the acid-tongued critic, Waldo Lydecker, who becomes fatally obsessed with Laura while transforming her into a sophisticate, Broadway musical-comedy star Clifton Webb was cast instead. Preminger wanted to use Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” as the theme song, but Alfred Newman had other ideas, providing David Raksin to write the music.

“We were a mixture of second choices—me, Clifton, Dana, the song, the portrait,” recalled Gene Tierney. “Otto held us together, pushed and lifted what might have been a good movie into one that became something special.”

The east exterior wall has a mural depicting William Wellman directing The Ox-Bow Incident (1943).

Set still from Laura (1944) showing her elegant apartment as it appeared with the original portrait.

Tierney was back for The Razor’s Edge (1946) and a justly famous romantic scene with Tyrone Power on a sweeping staircase here, reputedly involving eighty-one technicians. Costar Anne Baxter attributed their sizzling onscreen chemistry to an off-screen romance, but Tierney was actually involved in a short-lived romance with a naval hero named John F. Kennedy, whom she had met when he toured the lot and her farmhouse set for Dragonwyck, on Stage Five.

It can safely be said that Celeste Holm earned her Academy Award for Gentleman’s Agreement (1948) on this stage. It contained the set of her character’s apartment for the key sequences toward the end of the film with Gregory Peck. She was certainly under pressure to do her best, because Darryl Zanuck—knowing her only as musical-comedy star Ado Annie, in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!—doubted she was up to the part. So he tested her by having her perform these most important scenes first. It had been a rough first year for the star, who remembered having the unfortunate timing of coming to Fox after another Broadway star, Tallulah Bankhead, arrived, and caused plenty of trouble. Of course she passed the mogul’s test, and went on to enhance a number of Fox films, as much for her warm sense of humor as that impressive dramatic talent.

The world-famous Laura (1944) portrait that appeared in the film. Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), fatigued during his investigation, takes a rest in Laura’s apartment.

Here, Richard Todd as Scottish minister Peter Marshall delivered those stirring sermons in the recreated interiors of the Church of the Presidents in Washington, D.C. For the rest of his life Todd was proud to note that A Man Called Peter (1955), his Fox debut, surpassed the three most expensive Fox productions of the year: Untamed, The Tall Men, and The Racers at the box office. It is a reminder for us of Fox’s unique legacy for releasing many of the most inspiring pictures about faith and hope from The Song of Bernadette (1943), and those extraordinary companion pieces The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), to I’d Climb the Highest Mountain (1951), The Robe (1953), Francis of Assisi (1961), The Gospel Road (1973), and Son of God (2014).

The lab where an experiment goes awry in the sci-fi classic The Fly (1958). Helene DeLambre (Patricia Owens) is about to find out what really happened to her husband Andre (Al Hedison).

Anne Dettrey (Celeste Holm) consoles Philip Green (Gregory Peck) in Gentleman’s Agreement (1947).

Two sci-fi films shot here include The Fly, (1958) with its iconic lab set, and Jerry Lewis’s Way . . . Way Out (1966), set in faraway 1994, in which he plays a space weatherman married to Connie Stevens.

The stage here was transformed by Walter Scott and interior designer Ted Graber into a royal garden party for noted film buff, Queen Elizabeth II, on February 27, 1983, with five hundred celebrities, business leaders, and government officials in attendance.

A record was set in American television history the very next day, when 106 million people tuned in to watch the two-and-a-half-hour series finale to M*A*S*H, made here. It was ironic that the studio’s most popular attraction at the time was shot on one of its least-desirable stages, since no one at the time had expected it to be such a hit. Not only was it one of the oldest sets, but it was also not invested with the same quality materials as the others. Cast and crew remember the stage as hot in summer, cold in winter, and infested with fleas and mice. With the end of the series’ eleven-year run, the studio donated two boxcar loads of memorabilia to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The cast of the hit TV show M*A*S*H (1972-83).

All in the Family: the television show Bones, shot here, stars Emily Deschanel, daughter of cinema-tographer Caleb Deschanel (Hope Floats, 1998; Anna and the King, 1999; Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 2012) and sister of Emily—Zooey Deschanel (FOX’s New Girl, 2011–, [500] Days of Summer, 2009).

A mural of the making of The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) is painted on the east side of the stage, as viewed from over the shoulder of director William Wellman.

The TV cast of M*A*S*H on the historic last day of filming.

The April 1983 issue of the company’s newsletter Focus on Fox covering the royal visit of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The party was hosted by Nancy Reagan.

Tom Mix.

The dedication of the Tom Mix Barn with producer Sol Wurtzel on the left of the plaque and Pauline Moore and Cesar Romero on the right.

The exterior of the Barn circa 1929.

BLDG. 41: TOM MIX BARN (1920s)

Tom Mix housed Tony the Wonder Horse here, a sorrel he purchased in 1917 and rode throughout his career. His heyday was over when he departed the lot in 1928 to make films elsewhere, before retiring in 1934. When Mix was killed in an automobile crash in 1940, a plaque was dedicated to him here:

Tom Mix

1880–1940

Thru You Posterity Shall Glimpse the Glory of the West that Was.

Until Bldg. 89 was built, the property department was housed here, and then the mechanical effects and arsenal department, founded in 1923 by Louis J. Witte, moved in from the Western Avenue Studio’s west lot. A graduate from the University in Washington in engineering and a former employee of the DuPont Chemical Company, Witte was in charge of movie explosions, fires, fogs and smokes, sound effects, and the operation of practically every kind of gimmick imaginable for thirty years. The arsenal’s collection of weapons, ranging from pistols and rifles to crossbows and machine guns (valued at $135,000 in 1950) was considered one of the largest in the country.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor was bombed Witte received a call from Fort MacArthur, then Los Angeles’s main military base, requesting the loan of studio guns. By nightfall Witte and a studio crew had gathered fifteen Vickers, Thompson, Lewis, and Browning guns and four thousand rounds of ammunition. For a surprisingly long period of time this arsenal was the principal armament defending the city’s main airport.

The studio’s armory was located here for many years.

The building shows up as a train station in the first episode of Peyton Place and in Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), utilizing the corbels of the one that had been torn down, from Midwestern Street. Note that the studio street behind the building is named “Peyton Place Street.” By then office services was housed within. More recently, the Barn housed the production offices for David Friendly Productions, Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps Entertainment, and Fox Digital Studios.

Betty Grable poses with some of the armaments for Footlight Serenade (1942).

For many years the Sound Effects department was also located in the Barn.

The exterior of the Barn in 2007.

Bldg. 42 as it appeared in the 1930s as an Irish cottage with a thatched roof.

The original occupant of Bldg. 42, Irish tenor John McCormack, stands at right beside Charles Farrell.

Bldg. 42 as it appeared in 2007.

BLDG. 42: THE JANET GAYNOR BUNGALOW (1929)/BLDG. 44: THE WILL ROGERS BUNGALOW (1929)

California, it’s a great old state. We furnish the amusement to the world. Sometimes consciously. Sometimes unconsciously. Sometimes by our films. Sometimes by our politicians.

—Will Rogers

Among the monuments built and institutions named for that great American, Will Rogers, Bldg. 44, custom-built for the star, is entirely unique. It once faced the now-vanished formally landscaped Tennessee Park with its two World War I field guns at opposite corners. By the time he occupied it, the Oklahoma-born, part-Cherokee high school dropout had risen from Wild West trick roper and Ziegfeld Follies star to become the most popular draw in every form of media—newspaper, radio, and motion pictures—as a folksy humorist and a beloved humanitarian.

Appearing in films since 1918, Rogers signed his first contract with Fox on March 22, 1929, and then another in January 1935, making twenty films and becoming the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. Rogers’s daily routine included waking in time to ride his horse from his ranch in the Santa Monica hills to the beach to watch the sunrise, return for breakfast, and then arrive on the lot earlier than anyone else for his latest film. After riding home for lunch or dining at the Café de Paris, Rogers would use the bungalow to type his articles, which he then read to the delight of the cast and crew of his pictures.

Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor, Hollywood’s most popular movie couple in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Others recall that he used his car more often than the bungalow, parked near whatever stage or backlot set he was working on. Jane Withers, who worked with him in Doubting Thomas (1935), looked forward to his phone call during her tutoring session. “Is it time for recess?” he would ask. She would put on her roller skates and skate over to his bungalow, where she knew he kept the key over the door. There he taught her to play chess.

Upon his death John Ford, who directed three of his best films, hosted a memorial. During Rogers’s funeral at Forest Lawn, as fifty thousand mourners passed by the closed coffin, every studio in Hollywood stopped production. That evening the Hollywood Bowl was filled for another tribute. In movie theaters across the country two minutes of silence were observed.

“A smile has disappeared from the lips of America,” said John McCormack, “and her eyes are now suffused with tears. He was a man, take this for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.”

McCormack’s neighboring bungalow (Bldg. 42) resembled the thatched-roof Irish cottages of his Fox film debut, Song O’ My Heart (1930), complete with shamrocks in the garden. When McCormack departed the lot, it was given to Janet Gaynor. She added a piano—when “talkies” came along and she began making musicals—and rose bushes along the fence. Winfield Sheehan made sure fresh flowers were delivered to her every day.

The sitting room of Bldg. 42 looking east, as decorated for Janet Gaynor.

“Janet Gaynor was a gracious and lovely lady,” recalled costar Ginger Rogers, “and Charlie Farrell was the handsome boyfriend every young girl coveted. I was surprised they weren’t in love with each other. I got the feeling they might have had a thing for each other at one time, though now they were just friends.”

“Janet and I were always receiving wedding anniversary presents in the mail care of the studio,” said Farrell. “The fans didn’t know what date our anniversary fell on, which is logical since we were never married.”

This cozy fire-place nook was original to Bldg. 42, and is still extant.

When Gaynor departed in the fall of 1936, the studio loaned the bungalow out to visiting stars. Warner Baxter was known to use the Rogers bungalow and cook his famous chili con carne, to the delight of coworkers. Myrna Loy remembered staying in the Gaynor bungalow while she made The Rains Came (1939). Steve McQueen got to use it while making The Sand Pebbles (1966).

Joseph Mankiewicz occupied Will Rogers’s bungalow during his studio tenure. In 1960 the bungalows were joined for the offices of Jerry Wald Productions. After his misadventures with The Girl in Pink Tights (1955)—a project Marilyn Monroe refused to make—and Carousel (1956)—that he refused to make—Frank Sinatra finally made a movie on the lot and settled the lawsuit against him for Carousel by starring in Can-Can (1960). He used this bungalow while appearing in Von Ryan’s Express (1965), Tony Rome (1967), The Detective (1968), and Lady in Cement (1968).

Janet Gaynor’s dressing room.

Roderick Thorp, author of The Detective, wrote a sequel titled Nothing Lasts Forever in 1979, partially inspired by seeing The Towering Inferno (1974). Producer Lawrence Gordon saw no more than the cover of the book, with its fiery building and a helicopter, and impulsively purchased it and adapted it into Die Hard (1988). Interestingly, its star Bruce Willis had once passed Sinatra as an extra in The First Deadly Sin (Filmways, 1980).

Janet Gaynor poses by the north window in the front room of her bungalow.

Front room in the Janet Gaynor bungalow.

The bungalow later served Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg during their reign as the best television producers in Hollywood, utilizing eight of the studio’s soundstages for their shows.

Although there are decorative bushes sculpted in various shapes throughout the lot, the one here of Bart Simpson—not to mention the Homer Simpson statue of his hand holding a doughnut—identifies the current residents. On the Rogers side is James L. Brooks. In the Gaynor side are The Simpsons writers. A worthy successor to the pioneering Paul Terry, Matt Groening’s self-proclaimed “celebration of the American family at its wildest” is the longest-running prime-time comedy series (animated or otherwise) in US television history. The show and movie have fun with its Fox connections, containing such town shops as The French Confection and Valley of the Dolls toy store, and guest appearances by Fox veterans Pat Boone, Donald Sutherland, Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Sarandon, Mark Hamill, Ben Stiller, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Anne Hathaway, and Rupert Murdoch. Groening’s Futurama (presented by “30th Century Fox”) likewise contains numerous spoofs on the studio’s product over the years.

View looking east of the bungalow as it appeared in 2015. It’s not hard to tell which production company now inhabits the space with a topiary of Bart at left and the standee of Homer’s hand reaching for a donut. The Tom Mix Barn can be seen behind Bart.

Will Rogers on the lot writing his famous newspaper column in his car.

Photo presumably submitted (and rejected—as the torn corner indicates) to Will Rogers with the publicist’s comments at the bottom.

Will Rogers’ bungalow dressing room at the time he occupied it. The exterior was specially designed in a desert style with a garden of rare cacti, century plants, mesquite and grease-wood. The stone on the exterior is the same that was used on his home in what is now the Will Rogers State Park.

Interior of Will Rogers’ bungalow looking north.

Interior of Will Rogers’ bungalow looking south. The large fireplace was still extant in 2015.

The second room in Will Rogers’ bungalow.

The spacious three room bungalow most likely built for Buddy DeSylva.

BLDG. 49: BUNGALOW 7 (1929)

This three-room bungalow was probably built for Buddy G. DeSylva, the prolific Broadway composer who joined up with Lew Brown and Ray Henderson in 1925 to form a songwriting and music publishing team, and then broke away in 1929 to produce films under contract to Fox for eight years. Years later Henry Ephron produced a Fox musical based on DeSylva’s life called The Best Things in Life Are Free (1956).

In later years writer/producer Chris Carter had his office here. He developed two projects for Twentieth Century Fox Television, The X-Files (1993– 2002) and Millenium. The X-Files, which inspired two feature films and a brief reboot in 2016.

Building 69 in the 1930s.

BLDG. 69: THE SHIRLEY TEMPLE BUNGALOW (1930)

There is no country in the world, both civilized and uncivilized, where at some time or another her pictures have not been shown. In the Orient she is called ‘Scharey,’ in Central Europe it is ‘Schirley,’ but throughout the English-speaking world, ‘Shirley Temple’ stands as a universal symbol of childhood. No child in history has been so well known or universally beloved.

—Hollywood trade paper Cavalcade, 1939

This cottage was built—painted blue and white—with a white picket fence for the arrival of European songbird Lilian Harvey in 1933. Her film My Lips Betray (1933) is notable for an early feature-film appearance by Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse. The following year Disney provided Janet Gaynor’s nightmare sequence for Frank Lloyd’s Servants’ Entrance (1934).

Shirley enjoyed this gift from frequent co-star Bill Robinson.

When Harvey walked off the set of George White Scandals (1934), costar Rudy Vallee launched a new star by replacing her with protégée Alice Faye. Glamorous Gloria Swanson inherited Lilian’s bungalow, “La Maison des Rêves” (House of Dreams), when she made Music in the Air (1934).

That December Gertrude Temple drove to the studio for an audition for her five-year-old daughter, who remembered that they were refused entry. Gertrude explained that Fox songwriter Jay Gorney (composer of the Depression-era classic, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”) had seen one of little Shirley’s Frolics of Youth films, and had invited them to the studio to meet producer Lew Brown about a role in Stand Up and Cheer!.

Actress Lilian Harvey stands in front of the bungalow. Part of the Berkeley Square set can be seen in the distance.

Glamour portrait of Gloria Swanson taken during the filming of Music in the Air (1934) when she inhabited the bungalow.

Shirley Temple on the swing in the front yard of the bungalow. The Tom Mix Barn, Bldg. 54 Dressing Rooms A, and the back of Stages Three and Four can be seen behind her.

They were eventually granted access to the lot, and Shirley Temple’s subsequent success earned her this bungalow. From 1935 to 1938, she was the world’s most popular movie star, receiving an all-time record of 60,000 fan letters monthly. There were 384 Shirley Temple fan clubs nationwide, with 3,800,000 members. At her seventh birthday party twenty thousand fans in Bali met to pray for her. She rivaled President Franklin Roosevelt and Edward VIII as the world’s most photographed person at the time. The exceptionally popular doll fashioned in her image by the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company in 1934 (the most popular to date) saved them from bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Shirley worked six days a week on the lot for three hours a day, took her meals here, and then was tutored an additional three hours. She often made four films a year, requiring six or seven weeks each. Frances Klamt came to the studio as her private tutor in 1936. Fluent in several languages, Klamt served as the studio translator, and in 1939 became dean of education, teaching all of the lot’s children in the Old Writers’ Building for decades.

Original 1930s caption: “Shirley Temple, imitating her favorite comedian Harold Lloyd, reads to her pet Chihuahua in her bungalow.”

Shirley studying at her desk in the bedroom of her bungalow.

Shirley’s bedroom in the bungalow.

As a goodwill ambassador herself, Shirley received President Roosevelt (twice), the Chilean Navy’s chief of staff, the Australian prime minister, the son of Benito Mussolini, Prince Purachatra Jayakara of Siam, Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, H. G. Wells, and General John J. Pershing. In 1937 pilots of the first nonstop flight from Russia to the United States landed near the studio in order to meet Temple. Buddy DeSylva introduced her to Bill Robinson and his wife Fannie here before production on The Little Colonel (1935) commenced. One gift from “Uncle Billy” was a pint-sized, red-leather-seat racing car that she could gleefully buzz around the lot in, “once getting the knack of turning corners, pumping the clutch, and ignoring the brake!” Such antics and the unmuffled engine noise eventually relegated the car to her own driveway.

The living room of Shirley’s bungalow.

Shirley’s dressing table in the bedroom of her bungalow.

Despite the famous names that dwelled here after her departure, including John Barrymore, Ginger Rogers, George Cukor, Peggy Ann Garner, and Orson Welles, and its use as the studio dentists’ office and dispensary in 1955 (run by the physician brother of murdered mobster, Bugsy Siegel), until it moved into the craft services building, the bungalow remains unique because of Shirley Temple Black.

In 1934—a career high-water mark, with nine phenomenally popular features completed—Temple received a special miniature Academy Award statuette. Presenter Irwin S. Cobb said, “When Santa Claus brought you down Creation’s chimney, he brought the loveliest Christmas present that has ever been given to the world.”

Shirley got a small-scale piano in her bungalow.

The bungalow came equipped with a full kitchen. Here she is practicing with her dance coach Jack Donohue.

Shirley at her kitchen table in the bungalow with Nick Janios who is checking on whether she likes the food the Commissary is providing.

Child star Peggy Ann Garner inherits the bungalow in 1944.

Peggy Ann Garner enters the gate of the bungalow. The Janet Gaynor bungalow can be seen behind her.

Building 69 in 2015.

This building also served as the studio’s hospital until it moved to Building 99 in 1997. This is how it appeared in circa 1967.

Building 80 as it appeared in 2015.

BLDG. 80: OLD WRITERS’ BUILDING (1932)

When Sidney Kent and Will Rogers dedicated this building on December 9, 1932, with a cornerstone that still reads: “To the motion picture writers, the supreme storytellers of the 20th Century,” it represented the importance of screenwriting with the advent of sound motion pictures. The thirty writers that could be housed within rose to further prominence—in fact, to a level of respect achieved at no other Hollywood studio—upon the arrival of Darryl Zanuck. By 1941, fifty-three writers were under contract to him. He set a tough standard—scripts were expected to be completed within ten weeks, and weekly reports were issued to check on their progress—but he allowed them more responsibility, and preferred to develop producers from within their ranks.

“The Old Writers’ Building is something of a misnomer,” recalled Elia Kazan, “an old building where Fox housed young writers whose tenure was of uncertain duration.”

Dudley Nichols.

Indeed, the three-room writers’ bungalows with bathrooms that originally nearly encircled the building were preferred to the offices within its forty rooms. Look for the now-vanished ones to the east torn down in 1975 (where Bldg. 310 is) in The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1956).

Wherever they were housed, many of Hollywood’s greatest have worked for Fox over the years, including Zanuck’s “Big Three”: Philip Dunne, a twenty-five-year veteran first hired in the spring of 1930 as a reader, who later wrote speeches for Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy; Nunnally Johnson, known on the lot as “Robert Benchley with a Georgia accent,” who quipped that he wrote scripts for CinemaScope by putting the paper in the typewriter sideways; and Lamar Trotti, who came to Fox in 1934 when his boss Colonel Jason Joy became head of the story department, and excelled in producing Americana for the next twenty years.

Philip Dunne sits in a pensive mood in his office.

Nunnally Johnson appears to be having “writer’s block” in his office.

Other Fox writers included F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose difficulties during his Hollywood period are dramatized in Beloved Infidel (1959); Aldous Huxley, who adapted Jane Eyre (1944); Dudley Nichols, who weathered the Sheehan and Zanuck eras by sheer talent, a non-exclusive contract, and the support of John Ford (fifteen screenplays); Fritz Lang (Man Hunt, 1941); Jean Renoir (Swamp Water, 1941); and Elia Kazan (Pinky, 1949).

The lot’s feel-good writer, Valentine Davies, got the idea for his Academy Award–winning Miracle on 34th Street (1947) while he was in the army during World War II and went into Macy’s to buy a present for his wife. When Somerset Maugham refused to write a sequel to The Razor’s Edge (1946), the property lay dormant until the screen rights were signed over to Columbia for their 1984 remake as a trade for those of Romancing the Stone. Zanuck also consulted with—and produced the works of—John Steinbeck, and produced more films from eating, drinking, and storytelling companion Ernest Hemingway than any other studio.

Lamar Trotti.

The south side of the Old Writers’ Building. The large windows on the left of the first floor is where the studio’s school was housed.

Frances Klamt in her classroom with photos of her famous students on the wall, mid-1960s.

The schoolroom in 1945 with (L-R) unidentified girl, June Haver, Peggy Ann Garner, Barbara Lawrence, Roddy McDowall, and Barbara Whiting.

When Lamar Trotti died unexpectedly while writing There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954), Broadway imports Henry and Phoebe Ephron took over. Henry wrote and produced Carousel (1956) and Desk Set (1957), and hoped to make a movie about Elvis and manager Colonel Parker (with Orson Welles as Parker), but Spyros Skouras nixed it. Their Broadway-turned-film-hit Take Her, She’s Mine (1963) was based on letters their daughter Nora wrote from college.

W. Somerset Maugham holding his novel The Razor’s Edge that was turned into a Fox classic.

Nora Ephron—writer (Silkwood, 1983; This is My Life, 1992) and director (Sleepless in Seattle, Tristar Pictures, 1993)—never forgot attending the studio screening of An Affair to Remember in 1957. When her music editor Nick Meyers sought out and made a copy of the original recording of the score for Sleepless, she found Newman’s original far superior to a modern recording when they tried to replicate it.

The quill pen finial that was recently restored to the top of the building.

Truman Capote contributed to The Innocents (1961), the definitive screen adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Husband-and-wife team Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna uniquely developed an autobiographical screenplay (Made For Each Other, 1971) and starred in it. Loyal to Ring Lardner Jr. for his work at Fox (Laura, Forever Amber, The Forbidden Street), Darryl Zanuck boldly signed him to a new picture after the writer testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He was ordered to fire him and complied. Zanuck was more successful in protecting directors like Lewis Milestone and Jules Dassin—who he sent overseas and was rewarded with the classic Night and the City (1950). Lardner was invited back to write the Oscar-winning script for M*A*S*H (1970).

“It was a real privilege to work at Fox in that [Zanuck] period,” said Francis Ford Coppola. “I remember going to the [commissary] and seeing Ryan O’Neal and Mia Farrow, who were working on Peyton Place. It was a big traumatic moment when, allegedly in a huff, she cut off all her hair—and there she was in the lunchroom with no hair. And on my way back to my office to work on Patton, I’d pass the set for the television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and I’d go sit all by myself in the submarine. All of a sudden I’d stand up and say, ‘Dive! Dive! Dive!’ Patton had any number of stylized touches that made the screenplay unpopular ten years before and very popular years later. I believe to this day that if I hadn’t won the Oscar for Patton I would have been fired off The Godfather.”

John Steinbeck prepares to introduce the collection of filmed short stories of O. Henry’s Full House. (1952). Director Henry Hathaway is at the left.

Lonne Elder III was the first African American to win an Oscar for the screenplay for Sounder (1972). Among Neil Simon’s works at Fox I Ought to Be in Pictures (1982) provides a memorable snapshot of Hollywood, and even a brief glimpse of the lot (with Ann-Margret as a hairdresser!) in the early 1980s.

Henry and Phoebe Ephron.

The original sign above the building’s entrance.

The stock film library, one of the studio’s oldest departments, is still in operation here. Established to supply stock footage for studio productions, its now-extensive library has been open to outside filmmakers since 1953. The script vault in the basement, the “steno pool” of twenty-five women, the fan mail department, and the studio schoolroom on the first floor on the southwest side of the building are gone. Frances Klamt’s schoolroom had two rows of wooden desks with the names of the famous children who studied there carved into them. She dedicated one wall to autographed photographs of all her famous pupils. Angela Cartwright recalled that minors only went to school here when they were not working on the set. In either case, twenty minutes of study were required before they could be pulled out of class for moviemaking.

“Imagine studying and then being called to the makeup department,” said Linda Darnell. “Next I will shoot a scene and then, with a few minutes to spare, rush back to class to split an infinitive. I would be kissing Tyrone Power and the school teacher would come and tell me it was time for my history lesson. I never before or since have been so embarrassed.”

“I always felt guilty when the crew sat around waiting and I hadn’t finished my three hours of schooling,” said Natalie Wood. “I always remember running to the set when I was called.”

“I finished high school here,” recalled Fabian. “I was there when all the contract players were let go in 1964 except for Stuart Whitman, Carol Lynley, and myself. The [studio] system crumbled, and the roles you needed to build a career just weren’t there.”

The building has since housed production offices for film (director Richard Fleischer) and television (writer/producer David E. Kelley). Kelley lived the Hollywood dream. More interested in screenwriting than in being a lawyer, he came to Fox at the invitation of Steven Bochco, who was looking for writers who knew about law for L.A. Law (1986–94). Rising through the ranks, he helped Bochco develop Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989–93), starring Neil Patrick Harris, before leaving the show to create Picket Fences (1992–96). He enjoyed success with Chicago Hope (1994–2000), The Practice (1997–2004), Ally McBeal (1997–2002), Boston Public (2000–04), Boston Legal (2004–08), and The Crazy Ones (2013). He even married a movie star, Michelle Pfeiffer.

Although the words over the front archway (“A play ought to be an image of human nature for the delight and instruction of mankind”) are long gone the original finial on the top of the building (a quill pen in an inkwell) was re-created by the studio’s metal shop and restored there recently.

BLDG. 79: JESSE L. LASKY BUILDING (1932)

After being ousted from Paramount during the Great Depression, Lasky, one of Hollywood’s true pioneers, set up offices here in 1932 as an independent producer. He made fifteen films for the studio over three years, with a fifty-fifty split of profits. He had his own projection room that was torn down when the large satellites were installed next door. Today the building is used for postproduction.

Filming the musical Redheads on Parade (1935) produced by Jesse L. Lasky.

The exterior of the Jesse L. Lasky Building in 2015.

Director Dorothy Arzner and screenwriter Sonya Levien (left), confer with Jesse L. Lasky about The Captive Bride that went unproduced. Levien wrote the screenplay for Cavalcade (1933) and State Fair (1933).

The massive canvas room.

Grip equipment.

South entrance of Grip Department.

BLDG. 310: GRIP DEPARTMENT/PRODUCTION OFFICES (2007):

One of the newest buildings on the lot, the first floor contains the current offices of the grip department and storage for all of the grip and lighting equipment, including a huge canvas-cutting room. The upper three floors house offices of various production companies, thereby removing many of the trailers that used to clog the lot. Look for the old grip and canvas department building—in its original location, in the northeast corner of the lot—in the Jeanne Crain/Jean Peters film Vicki (1953) as the repair shop.

Mel Brooks attributes his making of History of the World: Part I (1981) to a studio grip who asked him what his next picture was going to be. Brooks answered that it would be his biggest yet . . . called “History of the World!”

Northeast corner of Building 310.

Entrance to Stage Sixteen.

STAGE SIXTEEN (1937)

Darryl Zanuck permitted John Ford, a member of the Naval Reserve since 1934, to use his sound-stages to train filmmakers for World War II reconnaissance, training, and combat films for the Office of Strategic Services. Of course, escapist fare continued to flourish, including Ernst Lubitsch’s A Royal Scandal (1945). The elaborate private quarters of Russia’s Catherine the Great, played by Tallulah Bankhead, were built here.

“Grandfather [Frank Lloyd Wright] visited me on the set,” costar Anne Baxter recalled, “and watched Tallulah Bankhead working. He said quite loudly, ‘Not bad for an old dame,’ and Tallulah, who was uneasy about her age, visibly bristled. The next take required her to lightly tap me, but she responded with an uppercut that sent me reeling. Then she smiled sweetly and retired to her dressing room.”

William Eythe, standing next to Tallulah Bankhead, receives direction from Otto Preminger (hand in pocket by camera) during the filming of A Royal Scandal (1945).

Recovering from a heart attack, director Lubitsch asked Otto Preminger to finish the film. Preminger had special reason to be kind to Tallulah. She had enlisted the aid of her father (the Speaker of the House of Representatives) and uncle (a senator) to get his family, fleeing the Nazis, out of Europe.

The climactic courtroom scene in Peyton Place (1957), filmed here, reflects star Lana Turner’s own family tragedy when, less than five months after the film’s release, her fourteen-year-old daughter Cheryl stabbed Turner’s abusive lover Johnny Stompanato to death. That courtroom drama resulted in Cheryl’s acquittal and a 32 percent jump in ticket sales. Turner always had difficulty watching the film after that, since she is wearing jewelry Stompanato gave her.

Director Martin Ritt directs James Earl Jones in The Great White Hope (1970). Interiors for the film were shot on Stage Sixteen though it appears that this picture was taken during rehearsals on Stage Five or Six.

James Earl Jones knew all about prizefighting when he made The Great White Hope (1970) here because of his prizefighter-turned-actor father Despite the Tony he earned on Broadway and the acclaim for this film his most famous work for Fox was yet to come, as the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars films.

After making his debut at the studio in the Fox 2000 romantic comedy One Fine Day (1996), which used this stage, George Clooney was featured in a cameo in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998), and received praise for his performances in Fox Searchlight’s The Descendants (2011) and Fox 2000’s The Monuments Men (2014).

The studio added a permanent 500,000-gallon water tank for the flooded-kitchen set for the first sequences shot underwater here for Alien Resurrection (1997). It was the first Alien movie shot on the lot, at Sigourney Weaver’s request. The tank was later used for reshoots for Titanic (1997), a tragic story the studio perpetuated like no other. Besides its role in Cavalcade (1933), the 1953 Titanic, and in a 1966 episode of Irwin Allen’s Time Tunnel, there is The Poseidon Adventure (1972), inspired by the disaster, and references to it in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Author! Author! (1982).

The set tank built for Alien Resurrection (1997) on Stage Sixteen. More horror: by 2015 FX’s American Horror Story (2011 -) was being produced on the lot, and the extraordinary Art Deco Hotel Cortez lobby and mezzanine set was built here for Season Five.

For many, Brad Pitt’s performance in Fight Club (1999) is his best. The interior scenes of Edward Norton / Brad Pitt’s home were shot here. Rising to stardom from television shows like Fox’s own 21 Jump Street, Brad Pitt married Jennifer Aniston, who sparkled in She’s the One (1996), Picture Perfect (1997), The Object of My Affection (1998), The Good Girl (2002), and Marley and Me (2008). Although he liked the script enough to send it to director Doug Liman, Pitt was initially not interested in starring in Regency’s stylish spy-vs.-spy action film, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005). He changed his mind and ultimately fell in love with costar Angelina Jolie here on the lot, and on this stage. He also appeared in Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life (2011), and made possible, as coproducer, Steve McQueen’s Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave (2013).

Edward Norton and Brad Pitt in Fight Club (1998).

The spaceship Serenity in Joss Whedon’s cult hit Firefly (2002) was built on two stages, to accommodate its two levels. With a CGI-generated exterior, the cargo area and sleeping quarters were here. The cockpit, galley, and engine were on Stage Fifteen. Star Nathan Fillion never forgot his first day on this stage: “The big cargo bay door was open, and I walked up into the cargo bay up this ramp. Someone [called out] ‘Captain on deck!’ And everybody turned and stopped and did, like, a little mock salute. A couple of people applauded. And I thought, ‘Oh, my God. I just got on a spaceship.’ The moment was not lost on me. Every kid wants it.”

CLEOPATRA AND THE LOT

Twentieth Century Fox’s Jane Eyre (1944) featured an eleven-year-old World War II evacuee from England named Elizabeth Taylor. By 1958, when the studio wanted her again, she had rocketed to international fame. “She knocks Khrushchev off the front page!” observed Richard Burton. Spyros Skouras, Buddy Adler, and independent producer Walter Wanger were preparing a film they hoped would be a major cinematic event. They wanted a big important cast, and the best artisans for an epic to rival such recent blockbusters as Paramount’s The Ten Commandments (1956) and MGM’s Ben-Hur (1959). They wanted Alex North to compose a score that would be a masterpiece of the art form.

“We got what we wanted,” admitted David Brown. All this, and the most notorious production history the company has ever known, and the only film to close down the lot.

CLEOPATRA TIMELINE

JANUARY 1958: Spyros Skouras announces that the Westwood studio backlot will be redeveloped. Legend has it that it was the crippling cost of Cleopatra that forced the company to sell off the backlot. Not true. In fact, Cleopatra had yet to be initiated when this announcement was made. Far more pressing was the fact that the company’s filmmaking plant was not turning out moneymakers, and the expansion of Greater Los Angeles was making the property extremely valuable and driving up taxes.

Elizabeth Taylor signs that famous contract flanked by Buddy Adler at left and Walter Wanger at right.

SEPTEMBER 30, 1958: Walter Wanger is invited to meet with Skouras about remaking Cleopatra (1918). Wanger is enthusiastic. Buddy Adler green-lights the production with a $2 million budget, including a sixty-four-day shooting schedule and Wanger’s choice of contract stars.

OCTOBER 22, 1958: Adler meets at the Café de Paris with Wanger proposing Joan Collins, Joanne Woodward, or Suzy Parker for the title role. Joan Collins was the first to test. Her loss of the part was particularly bitter, since during these years on the lot she never reached the first tier of stardom. Instead, she referred to herself as a “utility infielder” who got the parts Gene Tierney and Susan Hayward did not want, and even wore their old costumes. Susan Hayward was in fact the earliest strong contender for the role. She even had the vote of corporate headquarters in New York. But Wanger always wanted Elizabeth Taylor. He makes a transatlantic telephone call while she honeymoons with Eddie Fisher in Europe and offers her the part. She jokingly asks for $1 million, and gets it. Prior to that the studio had only considered paying that amount to Ingrid Bergman to be under contract in the late 1950s. She had turned it down.

Rex Harrison, left, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton on set between takes.

OCTOBER 15, 1959: Elizabeth Taylor is “cast” before newsreel cameras in Buddy Adler’s office, but does not actually sign until June 28, 1960, after months of negotiation. Director Rouben Mamoulian is signed that month for the picture, now budgeted for up to $4 million. He assigns five different writers to the script and is still unsatisfied. Wanger hires John DeCuir as art director. Skouras orders lavish sets to be built at London’s Pinewood Studio. Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd are cast as Caesar and Marc Antony. The production leaves Los Angeles.

APRIL 4, 1961: Word reaches the lot that the English cold and damp is ruining the sets and making Taylor seriously ill. After an emergency tracheotomy and hospitalization, she requires a three-month recovery period. Marilyn Monroe is briefly considered to replace her, as production is moved back to the Westwood lot.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton share a quiet moment on the set of Cleopatra (1963) in Rome.

SPRING 1961: For six weeks surveyors and bulldozers prepare and grade a site for sets on the back-lot, incorporating the Slave Market and Sligon Castle, as well as the huge columns from The Big Fisherman (1959), rented from Universal. The company returns with a new director and screenwriter, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who brings along his sons Tom and Chris to help. Mankiewicz wants a new Antony. His first choice was Marlon Brando, who had played the part brilliantly for him at MGM in 1950. When he proved unavailable, second choice Richard Burton was very expensively extricated from the Lerner & Loewe Broadway hit, Camelot. Although Mankiewicz tried to get Laurence Oliver or Trevor Howard for Caesar, he is happy to work with Rex Harrison again.

Richard Burton, left, Elizabeth Taylor and director Joseph Mankiewicz on the set of Cleopatra (1963) in Rome.

Elizabeth Taylor is distracted by Richard Burton while the hair and makeup team gets her ready.

SUMMER 1961: Forced to shoot by day and write by night—with assistance from Sidney Buchman and Ranald MacDougall, not to mention William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, whose texts the scholarly Mankiewicz frequently referred to, and Wanger himself—Mankiewicz finally produces a 220-page script. “Most of the stage space here is taken up with television,” complained Walter Wanger, “and what is left is needed for George Stevens’s Greatest Story Ever Told, so it was suddenly decided to get us off the lot.” Stevens’s project, another costly Spyros Skouras effort, is canceled by the board of directors in August of 1961 when preproduction costs spiral to $2 million. Cleopatra will commence in Rome (at Benito Mussolini’s famed Cinecitta studio), with location work in Egypt in the fall. While building Alexandria near Anzio, still-active land mines explode, killing a workman and injuring others. The extraordinary amount of construction materials needed for the Roman sets at Cinecitta cause a national shortage. Meanwhile, the incomplete backlot sets, including the Palace of Alexandria, would tower over Olympic Boulevard until they were destroyed with the rest of the backlot in 1961.

The most famous love affair in Fox, if not Hollywood, history.

SEPTEMBER 1961: Spyros Skouras is pleased to hear from Mankiewicz that principal photography has begun. Then he looks at the costs and is horrified. “We didn’t make an Italian picture. We made an American picture in Italy,” Skouras said. “Ninety technicians we sent by jet, with hotel accommodations and living expenses for all of them.” Walter Wanger recalled, “There was a continuing problem brought on by the fact that the studio had lost more than $60,000,000 in the past few years. Consequently, the jockeying for power among the incumbent board of directors and minority stockholders resulted in conflicting, expensive, on-again, off-again decisions from on-again, off-again groups in power.”

NOVEMBER 16, 1961: Spyros Skouras and Peter Levathes leave the lot to fly to Italy for a six-hour conference regarding the budget. Skouras tells frustrated stockholders that Cleopatra will now cost $8 million, while Levathes is approving its rise to $15 million. Retaining the stubborn belief that the picture would save his studio, Skouras could not have imagined that by the time principal photography wrapped that summer, Cleopatra would cost more than twice that amount.

JANUARY 1962: News comes to Bldg. 88 that production has resumed after Christmas, and that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are performing for the first time together. A love affair is sparked that resounds around the world unlike any in Hollywood history, and places the spotlight more than ever on the troubled production, creating the paparazzi phenomenon. The couple is denounced on the floor of Congress and in Rome, by the Vatican. Spyros Skouras sends the order that Walter Wanger is to be fired mid-year for the continued mismanagement. “The making of the film was more dramatic than the movie itself,” observed David Brown. “There was no way of separating the corporate drama from the on-screen drama . . . Forests must have been cut down to make paper for the scripts that followed . . . the production wandered all over the world . . . Only the Romans left more ruins in Europe. Rome’s paparazzi have never recovered from what writer Brenda Maddox called ‘the most public adultery in the world.’ ” writer Jess Walter noted, “This is where modern celebrity began—the Kardashians and the Lohans—you can trace it to this moment where a kind of Hollywood decadence reached a peak. It destroyed in one fell swoop the old studio system and brought in its place the kind of celebrity which doesn’t distinguish between good and bad.”

This statue of Rameses stood by the Pico Gate guardhouse to advertise the film in 1963

MAY 8, 1962: The day of days—Cleopatra’s triumphant procession into Rome atop a twenty-eight-foot Sphinx is shot. “The only analogous situations I can think of would be staging a presidential inauguration combined with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade,” said star Hume Cronyn. “Once this huge procession got in motion, it had the forward momentum of a 200,000-ton oil tanker. The logistics were mind-boggling.” The scene had been scheduled to be shot six months earlier, but when cinematographer Leon Shamroy saw the Roman forum set—more massive than the original—he declared, “There are not enough lights in Europe to light this!,” and insisted the production wait until the sun could properly fill it with light to his satisfaction. Elizabeth Taylor never forgot that day: “During the take . . . I found there were no arms to the throne. There was nothing to hold onto except that little child. I thought I would tear his hair out I was so terrified of heights. There were ten thousand extras, and my life had been threatened because of the scandal, and all throughout the crowds were the equivalent of FBI guys packing guns! We came through the arch and the crowd broke loose—they broke through the barriers—and rushed toward me, and I thought, this is it. My children are up there watching all this. Good-bye, God, thank you. Then the crowds started yelling, ‘Baci [Kisses], Liz! Baci, Liz!” I burst out crying, saying ‘Thank you! Thank you!’ ”

JUNE 12, 1962: When Skouras and Levathes shut down Something’s Got to Give (1962) with a $3 million loss, Cleopatra becomes the only Fox film in production. “Since Fox was shooting only Cleopatra and nothing else, the entire worldwide expense of running the company was added to the film’s budget,” said Tom Mankiewicz. “If two Fox employees went out to lunch in, say, Paris, the cost of that meal was charged to Cleopatra. This meant that the announced budget was perceived as not only unforgivably profligate, but obscene.” When his wedding in Rome goes awry, Mike Nichols befriends Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who later appear in his film debut as a director, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966, Warner Bros.). His Fox milestones are Silkwood (1983) and Working Girl (1988).

JULY 1962: Darryl Zanuck is back on the lot and closes it down to save expenses, all the while trying to salvage Cleopatra by canceling shooting on July 24, so that he could review the existing footage, reputedly over ninety hours of film shot over the past ten months.

During the fall and winter of 1962, a new battle rages, this time on the lot, over the final edit of the picture. Mankiewicz and his editor Dorothy Spencer cut a five-hour-and-twenty-minute version that he believes should be released as two pictures, like Shakespeare’s Caesar and Cleopatra, and then Antony and Cleopatra. Darryl Zanuck had other ideas: cutting the picture by nearly two hours, approving a further $2 million to complete it, with additional sequences to piece the remaining fragments together written by Mankiewicz, including the spectacular opening scene shot in Spain.

MARCH 4, 1963: Ironically the Pico gate is reopened on the day Cleopatra completes production and is prepared for a summer release. The $44 million final cost—adjusted for inflation to $400 million today—surpasses the cost of Titanic (1997). Mankiewicz disowns the Zanuck cut of four hours and six minutes.

JUNE 12, 1963: Sold out four months in advance, the most publicized picture of the year premieres in New York at the Rivoli Theatre., The film played as first-run for a year in Hollywood. Andy Warhol called it the most influential film of the 1960s where fashion was concerned. In 1981 Joan Collins returned to the lot to play Alexis Carrington Colby in Aaron Spelling’s Dynasty (1981–89). She would be Queen of the Lot after all. In the 1990s the cut footage is restored, but Roddy McDowall, Martin Landau, and Tom Mankiewicz’s attempts to restore the director’s original vision—even with the help of Bill Mechanic—are unsuccessful. The film enjoys a fiftieth anniversary screening at the Croisette, as a Cannes Film Festival selection on May 21, 2013. “There will always be movies, of course,” said Cleopatra publicist Nathan Weiss, “and presumably better ones than there ever were before; and yet they won’t quite be as grand, as foolish, as they used to be. How marvelous that Cleopatra, the last of them, transcends them all!”

Composer Alex North supervises the synching of the sound to the picture.

Exterior of Stage Fifteen in 2015.

STAGE FIFTEEN (1936)

Although the studio produced a very good Sherlock Holmes in 1932 with Clive Brook, Basil Rathbone made the role forever his own when he starred here in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), on loan from MGM. To his coworkers he admitted that to play the hero of his childhood meant as much to him as playing “ten Hamlets.” Decades later, David Shore’s House M.D. (2004-12) continued this stage tradition with many Sherlock Holmes references.

If this stage were to be dedicated, however, certainly it would be to Sonja Henie. Her first Fox film was titled One in a Million (1936), and she truly was. The young Norwegian danced at the age of four and began ice-skating at six, won Norway’s skating championship at fourteen, and became world champion at fifteen. She became the World Champion Women’s Figure Skater ten times, and won gold medals and set world marks in three successive Winter Olympics—the first female athlete to do so—in 1928 (setting the record as the youngest athlete ever to do so for seventy years), 1932, and 1936.

In March 1936, she turned professional, toured with an ice show, and got what she wanted once again: a studio contract and an ice rink, on this stage. The underground facilities that produced it for her extraordinary musical fantasies were later copied nationwide for ice shows (that she popularized) and hockey rinks. The rink measured 100 by 150 feet in length, and a special camera platform with metal sled runners attached to a metal stake in the center of the rink allowed cameramen to follow her onto the ice.

Shooting The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes (in light coat) and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson.

The daily job of ice scraping was part of the job to prepare Sonja Henie’s ice rink within Stage Fifteen.

Sonja Henie, with outstretched arms, stands ready to perform on the set of Everything Happens at Night (1939).

Publicized as the athlete who won more championships than any other in history, and certainly the first great sports celebrity in North America, by 1938 she was rated the third-biggest moneymaking star, and received the Cross of the Order of St. Olaf by the Norwegian government. Her uniqueness as the most dominant personality in the history of skating—particularly in Hollywood—remains unchallenged sixty years after she retired from the lot.

Star Dust (1940), shot here, loosely traced Linda Darnell’s own success story: under contract as the fifteen-year-old winner of the Jesse L. Lasky Gateway to Hollywood contest, and introduced to the Fox star-making machine—Miss Enright, who worked to erase her Texas accent; hairdresser Gladys Witten, who developed her hairstyles; Olive Hughes, who fitted her for costumes in the wardrobe department; and Frances Klamt, who was her teacher at the studio school.

Jeanne Crain made two of her best films here. This was “The Midway” for State Fair (1945), where Darryl Zanuck successfully launched the nineteen-year-old as a new “Janet Gaynor type” in her best-remembered role, as Margy Frake. Margy’s bedroom set, where Crain performed the Oscar-winning “It Might as Well Be Spring” (voice-doubled by LouAnn Hogan), was also filmed here.

Phil Brown, playing her boyfriend, was later featured as Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen, in Star Wars Episode IV. Costar Dana Andrews said he could not sing and was dubbed. In fact, he was a wonderful singer, something he never let the studio know for fear he would be typecast in musicals. Fair barker Henry (“Harry”) Morgan later gained fame for his role in the M*A*S*H television series. The colorful carnival wagons were stored for years in the southwest corner of the lot. Margie, like many of her films, was in Technicolor as a sign of her box office stature. Cast and crew of “the sweetheart of 1946” fondly remember drinking cocoa for a month while they shot the ice-skating sequence here.

Linda Darnell as Carolyn Sayres takes instruction from her drama coach (Charlotte Greenwood) in Star Dust (1940).

The Oscar winning Rodgers and Hammerstein song “It Might as Well be Spring” from State Fair (1945) was introduced here by Jeanne Crain.

“Jeanne was very much like she was in Margie,” remembered screen boyfriend Alan Young, “wide-eyed but very intelligent, maybe a little sharper than she appeared. And she was so beautiful: you could dip a spoon into her skin like ice cream.”

After appearing in Otto Preminger’s elegant treat The Fan (1949), hitting a career high point with Pinky (1949), and being recognized as the biggest box-office draw of the year, she lost the role of Eve in All About Eve (1950) to Anne Baxter, due to pregnancy. She was unhappy to return to the role of another teenager in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950).

“Well, I accepted the role and the whole thing turned out to be a very joyful association,” she recalled of the studio’s number one hit that year. “I played Myrna Loy’s daughter three times. It amuses me because Myrna, who never had children, was so perfect as a mother, while I, the mother of seven, was never considered the motherly type.”

The ice-skating sequence from Margie (1946) with Jeanne Crain.

Ironically, Anne Baxter’s pregnancy allowed Crain to get another memorable part in People Will Talk (1951). She also appeared in another of Darryl Zanuck’s social conscience pictures, Take Care of My Little Girl (1951), about sororities. Her Fox career ended with Vicki (1953), co-starring best friend Jean Peters.

Twentieth Century Fox has produced Hollywood’s two greatest ghost stories: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) and The Innocents (1961). When Darryl Zanuck set about to make Muir, he hoped to have John Ford direct it and Katharine Hepburn to star in it. But by the time the key sets were completed here, Joseph Mankiewicz was director and Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison were its stars. With them was eight-year-old Natalie Wood, at the zenith of her childhood career, working in Muir and Miracle on 34th Street (1947) simultaneously.

Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison during the filming of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).

“When I first met her, I asked her if she could read the script,” said Mankiewicz, “and when she said ‘Yes’ with great authority, I then asked, ‘Can you spell?’ She nodded again. Then I really threw her a curve and asked her to spell Mankiewicz. She did, and I was converted to Natalie on the spot.”

June Haver proved what a trouper she was during rehearsals here for the exhilarating title tune sequence with Dan Dailey for The Girl Next Door (1953). An accident put her in the hospital for months. She returned and completed the film, making it her best, and last. Like her character in the film she was ready for something more—ultimately, a successful marriage to her Where Do We Go from Here? (1945) costar, Fred MacMurray.

Hope Lange as the aspiring assistant to demanding Joan Crawford in The Best of Everything (1959).

Office politics were never so glamorous or entertainingly melodramatic as in The Best of Everything (1959). The title could easily have referred to the film’s cast and lavish production values, including the huge “Fabian Offices” set, located here. Featured star Suzy Parker did not share her character’s tragic fate. She married her Circle of Deception (1961) co-star Bradford Dillman and retired soon after.

After making Rhinestone (1984) here with Sylvester Stallone, Dolly Parton had better luck when her production company Sandollar optioned Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), to be produced by Kaz Kuzui and Howard Rosenman, and directed by Kaz’s wife, Fran Rubel Kuzui. It was submitted to Fox, and with the recommendation of script reader Jorge Saralegui, it was financed and distributed by the studio, starring Kristy Swanson (Hot Shots!, 1991), Donald Sutherland, and future stars Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry, 1999) and David Arquette.

Life would imitate art when June Haver gave up her film successful film career just like her character did in the opening sequence of The Girl Next Door (1953).

When Saralegui became vice president of production, he had Joss work on the script for Speed (1994) and Alien: Resurrection (1997). Then Gail Berman of Sandollar proposed that Whedon make a television series out of Buffy that would be closer to his vision of the character. While Twentieth Century Fox Television would make it, the FOX network turned it down, deeming it too close to Party of Five (1994–2000, Columbia Television). The WB picked it up instead, launching a phenomenon in 1997 that was later picked up by FOX. The series starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz, who played the 240-year-old vampire Angel, who eventually earned his own series, Angel (1999– 2004), and came to the lot for Bones (2005–). Two young actors not cast in Buffy (Ryan Reynolds and Nathan Fillion) ended up in Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place (1998–2001), shot on Stage Twenty. It was Gail Berman again, now running FOX, who green-lit and then cancelled Whedon’s cult hit Firefly in 2001, starring Fillion.

June Haver is helped up by Dan Dailey from her fall during “The Girl Next Door” dance sequence.

Joss Whedon directs Nathan Fillion and cast on the set of Firefly (2002-03).

BLDG. 99: CRAFT SERVICES BUILDING (1996)

Talk about a historic site: this was once was the elegant London neighborhood of Noel Coward’s Marryot family for the company’s first Best Picture Academy Award-winner Cavalcade (1933). The set was also used in, among others, Jesse Lasky’s Berkeley Square (1933), Darryl Zanuck’s The House of Rothschild (1934), and The Lottery Lover (1935). After it was demolished to make way for Stages Ten and Eleven in the 1937–38 expansion project, sets for Hollywood Cavalcade (1939) were built here, including a prison set seen in Within These Walls (1945).

The area was transformed into a Western street for Stagecoach (1966), and later used for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and Myra Breckinridge (1970). A young Cloris Leachman, who appeared in the whorehouse sequence filmed here for Cassidy, later became a veteran of Fox films and television. Cassidy screenwriter William Goldman later wrote the script for The Princess Bride from his book of the same name. His efforts to get his favorite project off the ground as a film are legendary; even Cassidy star Robert Redford tried to get it made. Although Fox optioned the book when it was published in the early 1970s, it took a partnership with Rob Reiner to finally get the film made in 1987.

(L-R) Pete (Richard Ruccolo), Berg (Ryan Reynolds), and Johnny (Nathan Fillion) in the episode “Halloween 2: Mind Over Body” from the series Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place (1998-2001). Fifteen years later Reynolds would star in Fox’s highest grossing R-rated picture, Dead-pool (2016). The studio also helped distribute the top grossing R-rated film of all time: The Passion of the Christ (2004).

With the selling of the final piece of the back-lot in 1978, and the demolition of its buildings and sets in June of 1979, the studio needed a new site for the services that had been located there. To this site temporarily came the electrical machine shop, sheet-metal shop, corporate records, and the carpet department, with the fixtures and grip departments established further to the west. A “Crafts Center” (Bldg. 631) was built in 1979 on the current site of Bldg. 103. It housed the mill, mechanical effects, the paint department, sign shop, prop and miniature departments, and stores and receiving. All of these buildings were torn down when they were consolidated here in Bldg. 99, which opened in April of 1996.

The exterior of Bldg. 99 in 2007.

The Berkeley Square set. The tall townhouses in the center are actually the back of Bldg. 12. The upper stories are trompe l’oeil paintings.

The back of Bldg. 12 where the Berkeley Square town-houses once stood.

The east side of Berkeley Square looking south.

Una O’Connor and Herbert Mundin, right, meet on the set in this scene from Cavalcade (1933). The east side of Berkeley Square can be seen in the background.

Looking southwest across Berkeley Square. This is now the site of Bldg. 99.

The “lower” London set built for Cavalcade (1933).

Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, and Victor McLaglen, stars of This is My Affair (1937) walk in front of Stage Fourteen while preparations for Stages Ten and Eleven are underway. The Berkeley Square set can be seen in the distance. Taylor made his film debut at Fox in Will Rogers’ Handy Andy (1934).

The first floor of the Craft Services Building contains library services (handling the motion picture library), the film preservation department, and the archives of the studio. In eight humidity-and-temperature-controlled vaults, motion picture film, photographs, posters, and props are kept, as well as a vault for digital storage. The origin of the Fox studio archive dates back to 1992, when studio archivists began to collect significant props, including “Wilson” from Cast Away (2000), the golden tablet from Night at the Museum (2006), and a life-size robot from I, Robot (2004). The studio’s historic photograph collection has had quite a journey, beginning in Bldg. 1, moving to the basement of Bldg. 88 in the Zanuck era, and then to UCLA in in the 1970s, before all 6,500 boxes found a home in the photo archive here in 2003. The second floor contains the medical department, fire and safety department, staff shop, sign shop, paint shop, set lighting, and the film shipping and receiving dock.

Art Frantz, former head of the set lighting and grip department who retired in 2010, set up a display of historic photos and maps on the wall. The third floor is the studio’s latest mill and studio supply. The fourth floor contains the security and production offices. The fifth floor contains the facilities department, which handles the maintenance of the studio’s physical facilities, and the design, planning, and construction department.

This set for Hollywood Cavalcade (1939) was built where the Berkeley Square set once stood. Building 22 is in the center, and Stage Sixteen can be seen at the left.

The wardrobe department, where thousands of costumes (petticoats, overcoats, evening formals, etc.) used in Titanic (1997) are stored, contains the largest collection of early-twentieth-century clothing in America. Even though most of the company’s vintage costumes were sold off in the 1970s, under Mike Voght the department continues to reclaim historic pieces. Key costumes worn by major stars are kept in a separate vault. There are also workshops for custom-made costumes and fitting rooms. Employees recount that it was during their fittings for Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005) that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie got to know each other by going up to the roof to smoke. There is also a small display room with a rotating exhibit of current and past costumes from Fox films, including a stained undershirt and denim pants that Bruce Willis wore in Die Hard 2 (1990), Mrs. Doubtfire’s sweater with a prosthetic bosom, and Wolverine’s jacket.

Filming another scene for Hollywood Cavalcade (1939). The Old Writers’ Building can be seen in the center.

The Western street built for Stagecoach (1966), with Stage Sixteen and Bldg. 22 rising above it.

The cast of Stagecoach (1966).

The eastern side of Western Street looking north. The Tom Mix Barn can be seen in the distance.

Paul Newman stands on the balcony of the bordello on western street for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

Remnants of the western street lasted until the 1990s. This photo was taken in 1984.

Samples of posters in the studio’s permanent archive collection: Cleopatra (1918), 4 Devils (1929), and a rare pre-release poster for Revenge of the Jedi (Return of the Jedi, 1983).

Film cans in Vault 8 of Building 99.

The south entrance where the Medical Department is currently located.

Props preserved in the studio’s permanent collection include: Cerebro’s helmet from X-Men 2 (2003), a “pup” from Prometheus (2012), a pair of eyeballs from Minority Report (2002), Wilson from Cast Away (2000), pistols and concept art from William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), Elektra’s special effects sai from Daredevil (2003), and the golden tablet of Ahkmenrah from Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009). One of the spacesuits from The Martian (2015) stands crated in the background.

Set lighting.

The massive mill.

The Staff Shop.

The Sign Shop.

Wardrobe Department.

Dressing Room A in the Wardrobe Dept. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, 2005) are among the many stars who have had their costume fittings here.

A costume from Planet of the Apes (1968) on the left, and another made for a more recent film in the franchise on the right.

A suit of armor from Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014).

Bruce Willis’s costume from Die Hard 2 (1989).

Since only one side of the ship was built for Titanic (1997), actors had to wear sweaters with “White Star Line” printed backwards which, once the film was flopped, could be read.

One of Kate Winslet’s dresses from Titanic (1997).

An extraordinary amount of Fox history converges in this display case. Tyrone Power’s top hat from Lloyd’s of London (1937) (top right), Betty Grable’s dance outfit from When My Baby Smiles at Me (1948), Hugh Jackman’s claws from X-Men (2001), Lana Turner’s hat from Peyton Place (1957), and Klinger’s hat from the M*A*S*H television series.

In the same case is Mrs. Doubtfire’s (1991) sweater and Drew Barrymore’s slippers from Ever After (1996).

One of Hugh Jackman’s jackets from the X-Men franchise.

More costumes from the vintage collection: (L-R) Dress worn by Maureen O’Hara in The Black Swan (1942), coat worn by Tyrone Power in Pony Soldier (1953), and a dress worn by Anne Baxter in A Royal Scandal (1945).

Racks used by wardrobe designers to pull clothing for a movie or TV show. Each rack represents a different show.

The massive Art Department building still dominates the south end of the lot in 2015. The back portion that juts up is where the rigging was for painting backdrops. Bldg. 78 is at left.

A view of the drafting tables on the first floor in the 1930s.

A view of the same room in the 1960s.

BLDG. 12: THE JOSEPH URBAN ART DEPARTMENT BUILDING (1930)

The Art Department

The south end of this building was known since the studio’s earliest days as the place where the painting of huge “backings” for films—and, later, television shows—was done, as well as their main titles and inserts. A dedication plaque to Joseph Urban is located at the western entrance to the building, denoting it as: “The Art Building designed by our friend and associate, Joseph Urban, born Vienna (1872), died New York, 1933.” Considered to be one of the most famous designers of the twentieth century, including for his productions of Broadway’s Ziegfeld Follies, Urban came west to work on East Lynne (1931) and Doctors’ Wives (1931). He pioneered art direction for color films, with the short-lived Fox Nature Color process.

Another plaque should recognize the work of painter Emil Jean Kosa Jr. Coworkers recall that he never wished to remove the “Jr.” from his name due to his great respect for his Czech father’s skill at painting. Their work together, in numerous public and private buildings, reveals a unique appreciation of the California landscape. Paris-born, and schooled at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, L’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and the California Art Institute in Los Angeles, Kosa’s work here from 1932 to 1948 earned two Academy Awards.

Of course, his greatest contribution was creating the Twentieth Century Fox logo, painted on eight layers of glass and animated frame by frame. He was but one of some seventy members of this department—including art directors, sketch artists, stock custodians, model makers, blueprinters, and draftsmen—during Hollywood’s Golden Age. At any given time, they could simultaneously be working on ten or fifteen movies, some before the cameras and some in prepreparation, with sixteen art directors and their four assistants, twenty-five set designers, seven set illustrators, six model makers, and assorted assistants.

Joseph Urban was considered the foremost authority on stage settings in the world in the early 1930s, inspiring the studio to hire and name the art department building after him. He is seen here in his office with one of his model stage sets.

William Darling, who signed a contract with Fox in 1922, headed the department until 1946. He designed key studio buildings and soundstages, as well as the Santa Monica Gate. Assisting him were supervising art director Richard Day and department manager James Basevi. With the release of each new first-draft continuity script, the department would get to work. Day and Basevi would assign an art director one to three months in advance of principal photography. On some films, however, the art department’s responsibility was so massive that work began up to a year ahead, such as for The Razor’s Edge (1946), under the personal supervision of Mr. Day, art director Nathan Jurand, and his assistant, Herman Blumenthal.

Day and Jurand would then besiege the research department with requests for photographs of the film’s locales in order to create set sketches. Keeping close tabs on rewrites and altered versions of the story, they eliminated sketches that would not appear in the final film. With final approval, four or five set illustrators then went to work translating the sketches into more-detailed “portraits of place.” Model makers went to work building miniature sets. Final consultations between the art director, director, producer, photographer, and any others vitally concerned took place before the art director signed off on the completed plans. Then thirty-five prints of the final set drawings were sent out, usually one to each department involved. Some got more—the mill, usually six—depending on the complexity of the work.

Dorothy McGuire is shown the maquette made for Claudia (1943).

(L-R) Frank Ross, George Davis, Lyle Wheeler, and Darryl Zanuck discuss sets for The Robe (1953).

A maquette for State Fair (1945).

Jack Martin Smith stands in front of the materials used to create the look of An Affair to Remember (1957). Location photos, on the wall at left, provided inspiration for the concept art and the set maquette seen behind him.

There were two secretaries inside in separate offices to greet you—one for the head of the department, who had his office on the first floor along with many of the most important art directors, with an atrium to enjoy. The second was for the department in general. Draftsmen working at long tables could be found on the first floor and in a smaller room on the second floor, along with the offices of more art directors. The first floor also featured a blueprint room, model shop, and insert stage, where the miniatures and all those inserts (like a letter held before the camera for moviegoers to read) were filmed.

This is the large room equipped with the rigging system so that the backdrop canvases could be raised or lowered for painting.

Early contributors to Fox’s reputation for top-drawer production values were Ben Carre and Duncan Cramer; Gordon Wiles, who won the department’s first Oscar for Transatlantic (1931); and set decorator Thomas Little, who worked on a record 430 productions over his eighteen-year career at Fox.

Many a movie and television show has relied on a painted backdrop to create the illusion of being set somewhere else other than on a soundstage as this cityscape demonstrates. Here grips pull the massive backdrop out of Stage Sixteen, circa the early 1950s.

Walter Scott’s fifty years with Twentieth Century Fox began in 1931, when Oliver Stratten, head of Fox’s prop department, hired him on the swing gang (laborers who work for decorators). Scott worked for four years on “B” films on the Western Avenue lot, becoming a set decorator in 1933. He moved to the Pico lot and “A” pictures in 1935 when Darryl Zanuck joined the studio, and became supervising set decorator in 1952. Ultimately, he worked on 370 feature films and 400 episodes of television series and pilots. He earned twenty-one Oscar nominations for set decoration, winning the award for The Robe, The King and I, The Diary of Anne Frank, Fantastic Voyage, and Hello, Dolly! Scott’s last credit was for The Towering Inferno. As a decorating consultant, he planned and furnished many of the offices at the studio; he also handled arrangements for receptions and special events, including the Carousel Ball, a gala benefit for the Children’s Diabetes Foundation of Denver sponsored by Marvin Davis and his wife, Barbara.

The Insert department was located in Bldg. 12.

Turning pages in a book, writing a letter, or signing one’s name are all examples of insert work.

Creating the title cards and screen credits.

Filming the title cards and credits.

In 1944 Lyle Wheeler was hired as supervising art director, and from 1947 to 1960 he was head of the art department. He received twenty-nine Oscar nominations during his career. Jack Martin Smith then took over the department.

This distinctive courtroom set was witness to several important cinematic trials including the one in The Black Swan (1942) and in Leave Her to Heaven (1945).

Credit many of those incredibly designed musical numbers, from Delicious (1931) to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), to the able Joseph Wright. He began by working closely with the dance and musical directors and then submitting a working sketch to the cinematographer to see if it was practical. Then, especially when the film was in Technicolor, he consulted the appropriate expert in the wardrobe department to ensure a harmonious blending of wardrobe and set design. The giant, foot-tapping mechanical dummy in The Dolly Sisters (1945) and backgrounds for Mother Wore Tights (1947) were Wright creations.

Career highlights for art director and production designer John DeCuir, who came to Fox in 1949, include Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), Daddy Long Legs (1955), The King and I (shared with Wheeler in 1956), Island in the Sun (1957), South Pacific (1958), Cleopatra (1963), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and The Other Side of Midnight (1977). “My father called him the city planner,” recalls Tom Mankiewicz, “because Johnny thought big. He was brilliant. For Cleopatra he built a Roman Forum that was three times the size of the original.”

This five-star hotel room with French boiserie paneling hosted many guests throughout the years including Cary Grant, Jayne Mansfield, Jane Wyman, and Clifton Webb. This is how it appeared when Tommy Sands stayed here in Sing, Boy, Sing (1958).

The elegant staircase from the Borst home in Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) was incorporated into many other movie homes.

Boris Leven, a Russian immigrant, was a student at New York’s Beaux Arts School of Design before he came to work here in 1937. Of Leven’s work on location in Taiwan for The Sand Pebbles (1966), Richard Crenna recalled, “It was amazing! As far as the eye could see Boris Leven had re-created Shanghai in 1926. I turned to ‘Dickie’ Attenborough and said, ‘Dickie, we’re in a movie!’”

Original 1930 caption: “(CONFIDENTIAL: Not to be released until Mr. Allvine receives Mr. Sheehan’s okay in New York.) The gentleman enjoying his smoke is Ralph Hammeras, head of the miniature department at Fox studios, and he built London—this London, at least. Surprisingly accurate model of the great city’s heart was constructed at an estimated cost of $200,000 for use in The Sky Hawk [1930], a William Fox epic of British aviation in the world war.“

Special Effects Department

The sign on the door of the most secret department in any Hollywood studio reads “Special Effects.” What goes on behind that door, where a corps of artists and cameramen work, is strictly hush-hush.

—Los Angeles Times, 1944

The miniature dam built for The Rains Came (1939).

For generations of Fox employees, the eastern end of this building was known as the “Sersen department” for its founder Fred Sersen, a veteran of over 225 films. From a one-man operation at Western Avenue beginning in 1918, he built the special effects department that peaked at sixty staff members over his thirty-four-year career. Among that talent were artists of matte work (Emil Kosa, Emil Kosa Jr., Clyde Scott), glass shots (Chris Von Schneidau), miniatures (Ralph Hammeras, Lee Le Blanc), camerawork (Bill Albert, Bill Abbott, Al Irving), scenic backgrounds (George Hamilton, Lee Cox, Otto Schroeter, Bill Lobberegt), trick shots (Sy Bartlett), photo finishing (J. B. Allin), and cutting (Wally White). There was also his assistant Ray Kellogg and department electrician Jack McEvoy and grip Charlie Hoffman. A key developer of glass and matte shots to replace actual locales, Sersen and E. H. Hansen won Oscars for best special effects the first year the category was introduced for The Rains Came (1939).

Not all the Art Department’s creations were necessarily beautiful.

A modern hotel lobby from Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940).

The interior of the spaceship for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

The process began with Sersen reviewing each script for necessary work, sketching it out in continuity, and then discussing it with the producer and director. If everyone agreed he set a prospective cost to be approved for the film’s budget. Then the scenes were photographed, usually a combination of the actors on set, second unit, and/or miniatures. Then this department put it all together, utilizing a combination of matte shots, double-printing, and scenic background paintings.

The Fox Art Department’s vision of hell for Dante’s Inferno (1935).

Beginning in 1957, L. B. Abbott had an extraordinary run as head of the special effects department. Joe Musso, who started here doing conceptual artwork and storyboards for The Blue Max (1966), recalled a bit of building lore that took place on the insert stage and miniature tank. In an attempt to get the iguana to “act” properly with a lizard for their scenes in Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)—when all they wanted to do was nap under the warm lights—one of the special effects men twisted its tail. The result was much more than anticipated. It jumped out of the tank, crawled through the doorway that led into the art department, and surprised the draftsmen with its hideous cinematic appendages.

And a vision of heaven from Carousel (1956).

Musso recalled that the department changed forever after their work on Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), with the end of the Zanuck era. The lot had suffered through the transfer of power before when William Fox was forced out, but this time it was fatal to many of the studio’s departments. Ed Hutson, who came into the art department in 1957 as a clerk in the scene dock section, and worked his way up to managing it in the 1970s, recalled that the special effects department was closed, and the art department—at the time, they were working on Emperor of the North (1973)—moved across Olympic Boulevard to Bldg. 38 on the North Lot, virtually demoted in stature. The department’s ancillary bungalows between the Urban Building and Stage Nine were torn down. All the beautiful conceptual paintings artists had done through the years at the studio, once carefully cataloged in a room here, were stolen. Fortunately, the painted scenic backings from decades of Fox films were given to John Cokely, who worked in that division. He formed J. C. Backings to rent them out. Fox, of course, became a regular customer. Eventually his company moved to the Sony Studios lot (the former MGM studio), where they continue to be used to this day.

The ice palace from Everything Happens at Night (1939).

The art department later moved into the fourth floor of Bldg. 99, specially designed for them, but were then demoted again to the west end of the Zanuck Theatre, and, finally, to the first floor of Bldg. 89, where it stayed until it was closed in 2006. After they left this building it was renovated into administrative offices. Then, in 2014, it was completely gutted, the backdrop rigging was finally removed, and windows were added to the south wall for new offices for the producers of Glee (2009–15). The building is also used by New Regency Productions, the feature-film arm of Regency Enterprises that, in combination with Regency Television (a joint venture with Fox Television), forms Regency Enterprises, founded by Arnon Milchan and Joseph P. Grace. Interestingly, Martin Scorcese’s only Fox film, The King of Comedy (1982), shot in New York, was Arnon Milchan’s first film as producer.

Building 78 as it appeared in 2015.

For decades, the heads of every department on the lot would meet daily in this conference room to discuss each film in production. This photo was taken during the production of Valley of the Dolls (1967). The cameraman seen at right is taking footage for a Jacqueline Susann TV special.

Ansel Elgort and Shailene Woodley recreate their on-screen kiss from The Fault in Our Stars (2014) on the bench installed behind Bldg 78 to commemorate the film.

BLDG. 78: THE PRODUCTION BUNGALOW (1920)

Few buildings on the lot are as historically important as this one. Beginning his Fox career as a clerk for the Box Office Attractions Company, Sol M. Wurtzel was promoted as stenographer to Charles Levin, secretary of Fox Theaters, and then as private secretary to William Fox in 1915. Two years later Fox entrusted him with the role of superintendent of West Coast production, headquartered at the Western Avenue Studio. He survived further company shakeups and thrived through the Twentieth Century Fox merger, for twenty-eight years. This, his original office at the Western Avenue Studio, was relocated to the lot in 1932 when he built another. The bungalow was moved here after Bldg. 88 was erected as the adjoining “production bungalow” during the Zanuck era. The heads of all studio departments (approximately thirty persons) met here to discuss current film—and, later, television—projects at 11:30 a.m. each morning, chaired by the assistant head of studio production.

The bungalow served another crucial purpose in 1962, when Richard Zanuck closed down the lot and operated from here for six months. Elizabeth Gabler, head of Fox 2000, currently has her offices here. Behind the bungalow is a trophy from one of her biggest successes, The Fault in Our Stars (2014). It is a bench, similar to the one used in Amsterdam for a key sequence with stars Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort. The actors showed up to replay that scene as part of a dedication ceremony. The plaque on the bench reads:

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities

The Fault in Our Stars

Dedicated to our Fault fanatics & their little infinities

September 16, 2014

STAGE TEN (1937)

A quick look at Bldg. 78 and the lot in its heyday can be seen as Deborah Kerr emerges from this stage as Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham for Beloved Infidel (1959).

Among the starry passenger list for The Love Boat (1977–86), filmed here and on other stages on the lot, Gavin MacLeod (Captain Stubing) remembers Tom Hanks as the most promising of the young actors featured on the show. The forty-two-year-old Pacific Princess (one of two actual ships primarily featured in the show) was decommissioned in 2008, and finally scrapped in Turkey in 2013.

The north side of Stage Ten bears a mural of Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell from The Seven Year Itch (1955). “Dolly” Street can be seen at the left and Bldg. 12 and Bldg. 78 can be seen at right.

Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd made Moonlighting here, produced by Glenn Gordon Caron. Willis turned down Die Hard (1988) the first time because of his commitment to this show. Then when his costar got pregnant, he suddenly had eleven weeks in which to make it

Stages Ten and Seventeen remain in use as versatile “swing stages” for the use of any Fox TV show. A mural celebrating The Seven Year Itch (1955) is painted on the north side of this stage. These murals from classic Fox films, by billboard experts Eller Media Co., were first commissioned beginning in 1997.

From left to right Herbert Rudley, Karin Booth, and Deborah Kerr as columnist Sheilah Graham in Beloved Infidel (1959).

Believed to be the earliest photo of Marilyn Monroe on the lot, it was approved by the MPAA on October 25, 1946 just two months after Marilyn’s contract started. Here she is eating lunch in the Café de Paris with Jean Peters who is in costume for her role in Captain from Castile (1947).

MARILYN MONROE ON THE LOT

I wanted so much to do something right in my art when so much in my life was going bad . . . My one desire is to do my best, the best that I can from the moment the camera starts until it stops. That moment I want to be perfect, as perfect as I can make it . . . Lee [Strasberg] says I have to start with myself, and I say, “With me?” Well, I’m not so important! Who does he think I am, Marilyn Monroe or something?

—Marilyn Monroe

NEW ENGLAND STREET

“I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night, ‘There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I’m not going to worry about them. I’m dreaming the hardest.” Those dreams and that drive got Norma Jeane Mortenson a six-month contract on August 24, 1946, as Marilyn Monroe—a name she put together with the studio’s director of casting, Ben Lyon—and a role in Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948). Her scene here, coming down the church steps and greeting June Haver, is all that survived the cutting-room floor.

STAGE ELEVEN

Marilyn Monroe’s first important performance in All about Eve (1950) on this stage earned her a seven-year contract.

BLDG. 58: THE PORTRAIT STUDIO

Harry Brand launched his largest publicity campaign to date to make Monroe a star by distributing more than three thousand black-and-white stills to newspapers that first year. Because the star had a special rapport with still photographers, displaying none of the anxieties that plagued her film career, this was a special haven for her.

Marilyn poses in front of the barn on the King Farm on the backlot.

BLDG. 57: THE COMMISSARY

Like all young stars proud to bring family to see the lot, Marilyn Monroe invited half sister Berniece Baker Miracle to see her screen test and eat here in 1946. Years later, on her way to the commissary, she met Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller standing by Stage Eight. When Miller, who married Monroe (1956–61), refused to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee in June 1956, Marilyn stood by him at great peril to her career. Miller returned the favor when Jerry Wald asked him to contribute to the screenplay of Let’s Make Love (1960) as a supportive measure. Miller received an Oscar nomination in 1996 for the Fox adaptation of his masterpiece, The Crucible (1996).

Marilyn on Old French Street on the backlot.

Marilyn with Chicago Lake behind her.

Marilyn walks along the scene docks on the backlot.

BLDG. 52: THE HALL OF MUSIC

The building was used as a theater in the opening sequence of As Young as You Feel (1951), marking Monroe’s first credit above the title. Studio publicists got her on the cover of Life magazine for the first time in the spring of 1952. Time dubbed her “a saucy, hip-swinging, [five-foot-five-and-a-half-inch] personality who has brought back to the movies the kind of unbridled sex appeal that has been missing since the days of Clara Bow and Jean Harlow.”

Marilyn walks along the outdoor passageway of Bldg. 38.

STAGE FIVE

The star-making scene in Niagara (1953), when Marilyn Monroe emerged from Cabin B of the Rainbow Cabins set in a hot pink dress designed by Dorothy Jeakins, was directed here by Henry Hathaway. She dazzles the crowd singing “Kiss” (recorded live on the set), written for her by Lionel Newman and Haven Gillespie. Hathaway was so impressed that he wanted to direct her in a new version of Of Human Bondage, costarring Montgomery Clift. Zanuck said no.

Marilyn performs in the Studio Club’s show “Strictly for Kicks,” 1948.

Marilyn arrived late at this cocktail party for the Fox Salesmen Convention and succeeded in upstaging every other major star in attendance. It was held at the Café de Paris on June 14, 1951.

Marilyn at the bottom of the staircase for All About Eve (1950), with George Sanders behind her, Gary Merrill on the left, and director Joseph Mankiewicz talking to Bette Davis at the top of the staircase.

The hot pink dress Marilyn wore in Niagara (1953) photographed in the Women’s Wardrobe building.

STAGE ONE

Marilyn Monroe got the career-defining role of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) because of timing—Betty Grable, the star for whom the property was purchased, had slipped out of the top-ten after a decade—and the enthusiastic support of Jule Styne, the composer of the Broadway musical with Leo Robin. Her signature performance of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” recorded here and filmed on Stage Sixteen, is a Hollywood classic. Frequent teacher, collaborator and friend Lionel Newman recalled that it took eleven takes before she was satisfied with the recording. Four days after completing the film Monroe began work on How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), offering movie buffs the rare opportunity to view Alfred Newman conducting his signature piece, “Street Scene,” with the augmented studio orchestra.

STAGE FOURTEEN

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), refashioned by Nunnally Johnson from Betty Grable’s Moon Over Miami (1941), is a great example of how much of a Fox film could be shot on one soundstage, including the penthouse set, where the characters played by Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, and Marilyn Monroe live. Grable allayed fears that she and her intended replacement would not get along by shaking Monroe’s hand that first day and saying: “Honey, I’ve had it. Go get yours. It’s your turn now.”

Monroe could certainly relate to playing a nearsighted model terrified of being seen wearing glasses. “She was so nearsighted that she could hardly see without them,” recalled sister-in-law June DiMaggio. “ ‘I only wear them when I want to see,’ she’d tell us laughingly. Her sunglasses were prescription lenses, too, so she could keep them on and maintain her image.”

THE CYCLORAMA

For River of No Return (1954), Marilyn Monroe won praise from chief of special effects Paul Wurtzel as she rocked and rolled on the raft in front of a process screen here with Robert Mitchum and young Tommy Rettig. By now Monroe was the most important star on the lot, earning more than any other actor. Taking advantage of a loophole in her contract, she left the lot to improve her acting skills at New York’s Actors Studio, and came back to the studio with new coach Paula Strasberg.

A photo shoot in the Portrait Studio (Bldg 58) for River of No Return (1954).

One of the hundreds of portraits taken of Marilyn, this one (#F999-S-364) became particularly famous when it was used by Andy Warhol for his silkscreen prints.

Jane Fonda recalled that she was inspired to become an actress when the Strasbergs moved in next door and she befriended Paula’s daughter Susan. Susan suggested that Jane enroll in her father’s classes, and she did. In turn, Meryl Streep was grateful for Jane’s support during the making of Julia (1977). “She took me by the hand into the world of movies!” she said.

A wardrobe test for the famous dress in The Seven Year Itch (1955).

BLDG. 86: STARS’ DRESSING ROOMS

Terry Moore recalled that Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell had suites here for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). She frequently heard Russell call down the hallway: “Come on, kid, let’s go, we’re late!” Monroe moved into the ground-floor suite M in the southeast corner of the building with the production of There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954), when Betty Grable moved out. Friends knew Marilyn was in by the lingering scent of Chanel No. 5—including Grable, whose equanimity and ability to roll with the punches must have been a marvel to Monroe. Ironically, when Monroe turned down Nunnally Johnson’s How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955)—a part Johnson had based on his own experiences with her—Grable came back to make that one last film for Fox.

Like most Fox stars Marilyn Monroe was prepared for public events here, as with the premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire. Hairdresser Gladys Rasmussen and makeup man Alan Snyder met her early in the afternoon for what amounted to a six-hour star treatment, with select members of the press. Two ladies from the wardrobe department arrived with her gown, shoes, and furs, and a messenger boy delivered borrowed jewelry.

When Monroe returned to the lot in 1962 to make Something’s Got to Give, she could frequently be found in dressing room M with Paula Strasberg, who coached her in her last five films.

STAGE NINE

When Monroe’s agent Charles Feldman and director Billy Wilder partnered to purchase George Axelrod’s play, The Seven Year Itch, Harry Brand unleashed one of his greatest publicity stunts. He informed the media that Marilyn Monroe was going to New York to shoot scenes for the movie in September of 1954. The Fox team shot fifteen takes of the iconic scene of Monroe’s skirt flying up over a subway vent to roars of approval from the crowd gathered at the corner of Lexington Avenue and Fifty-First Street. Billy Wilder had the street and scene re-created here for the movie. Paul Wurtzel always considered it a career highlight that he was the one who operated the fan beneath that subway grate.

Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe walk out of the movie theatre in New York for the famous skirt-blowing sequence for The Seven Year Itch (1955).

Here is a still taken in New York.

And here is a still of the recreated set on Stage Nine. Note that the Fleurette Hats store has become Fleurette Jewelry.

Axelrod utilized his experience working with Marilyn Monroe to write another Broadway hit, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?—bringing Jayne Mans-field to prominence—before writing the screenplay for Monroe’s next film, Bus Stop. The Seven Year Itch was the biggest hit of the year for Fox, ensuring that all of her demands for a new seven-year, four-picture contract were met, including recognition of her own Marilyn Monroe Productions. She signed it on December 31, 1955.

Marilyn and her co-star Don Murray at the south end of the Stars’ Dressing Rooms Building during the filming of Bus Stop (1956). The windows on the first floor belonged to Marilyn’s suite.

BLDG. 59: WOMEN’S WARDROBE

By designing Marilyn Monroe’s pink gown for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), her Western wardrobe for River of No Return (1954), and the white pleated halter dress for The Seven Year Itch (1955), William Travilla becomes another close friend of hers.

STAGE ELEVEN

On this stage Marilyn Monroe performed “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” “Incurably Romantic,” “Let’s Make Love,” and “Specialization” for Jerry Wald’s Let’s Make Love (1960), directed by George Cukor.

“When she arrived, everybody smartened up, as if her presence was the light that fell on everyone,” recalled costar Frankie Vaughan.

PICO BOULEVARD ENTRANCE:

The studio depended on the guard here to clock in stars like Marilyn Monroe as they entered the studio. In this way a record was made of her consistent tardiness. Exasperated studio lawyer Frank Ferguson complained: “[E]ach calendar year seems to end in a crisis which has been created by this girl.”

“She is not malicious,” observed Jerry Wald. “She is not temperamental. She is a star—a self-illuminating body, an original, a legend. You hire a legend and it’s going to cost you dough.”

STAGE FOURTEEN

Joshua Logan directed Marilyn Monroe’s scenes in the Blue Dragon Café here, including her performance of “That Old Black Magic,” for Bus Stop (1956).

The interior and exterior of the Arden home was built here for Monroe’s thirtieth film, Something’s Got to Give. It was her last film under contract. By the time it was set to begin, on April 23, 1962, she had become Fox’s most bankable star since Shirley Temple, having earned over $200 million for the studio.

On May 17, 1962, there was a delay when Monroe boarded the helicopter that whisked her from the lot to LAX to fly to New York’s Madison Square Garden to make a memorable appearance at President John F. Kennedy’s birthday party. Upon her return she delighted the press by modeling and swimming nude poolside here on May 23. The resulting photos appeared on more than seventy magazine covers in thirty-two countries.

Cast and crew celebrated Monroe’s thirty-sixth birthday after work on Friday, June 1. When she called out with illness for the seventeenth time on Monday, June 4, production shut down. On June 8 she was officially fired by the studio, and on June 11, the picture was officially suspended.

Monroe rallied, asked the cast back, requested that Jean Negulesco replace Cukor, and signed a new $1 million, two-picture contract on August 1.

The Something’s Got to Give set on Stage Fourteen where Marilyn did her nude bathing scene was a recreation of director George Cukor’s own home.

On August 5 she was discovered dead at home from a drug overdose.

BLDG. 38: MAKEUP AND HAIRDRESSING DEPARTMENT

During the fifteen-year period when Allan “Whitey” Snyder applied her makeup here, Monroe had exacted a promise from him: If something ever happened to her, she wanted him to make her up that final time. Snyder fulfilled his promise at the Westwood Village Mortuary on Tuesday, August 7, 1962.

Marilyn lounges in Dressing Room “M” in Building 86 with Paula Strasberg. The couch placed there when Joan Crawford used the room in the 1940s is still in evidence in 1962. The porthole window above Marilyn’s head is no longer there: it was removed when the room was split into two offices.

After her death Darryl Zanuck said, “I disagreed and fought with her on many occasions, but we were always personal friends. Hollywood suffered a genuine loss as, in spite of her temperament, which sometimes flared to conceal her basic shyness, she never let the public down.”

STAGE ELEVEN (1937)

When Alice Faye bowed out of Roxie Hart (1942), Darryl Zanuck brought old friend Ginger Rogers to Fox to make the film on various studio soundstages, including this one, initiating the first of several delightful collaborations between star and studio. The working title of the film—written and produced by Nunnally Johnson, based on Maurine Watkins’s play—was Chicago. Choreographer and director Bob Fosse borrowed it for his Broadway musical version of the story that opened in the summer of 1975. Fosse made one of its songs, “All That Jazz,” the title of his autobiographical Fox film in 1979.

A Letter to Three Wives (1948) and All About Eve (1950) remain classic examples of studio collaboration in the Zanuck era. When Mankiewicz floundered with his script for A Letter to Four Wives, Darryl Zanuck suggested he cut the fourth wife (to be played by Anne Baxter), eliminating sixty pages. Watch for the scene shot here during the summer of 1948, when Linda Darnell observes the portrait of Addie Ross (Celeste Holm) in a silver frame in Porter Hollingsway’s (Paul Douglas) library. Her disgust is genuine. She is looking at a photograph of Otto Preminger. Director Joseph Mankiewicz placed it there on purpose to get just such a reaction, well aware of her troubles with the ill-fated Forever Amber (1947).

For Eve, this was Margo Channing’s (Bette Davis) apartment, famous for the actress’s deathless line: “Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy night!” Together Zanuck and Mankiewicz gathered the cast. Mankiewicz considered Susan Hayward and Broadway star Gertrude Lawrence for Margo. Lawrence chose to pursue Rodgers and Hammerstein instead, to write a musical version of Fox’s own Anna and the King of Siam (1946) for her. They acquiesced with The King and I on Broadway. Lawrence would later be portrayed by Julie Andrews in Star! (1968). Zanuck preferred Claudette Colbert for the part and she was signed, but bowed out only a few weeks before shooting when she injured her back on the lot, making Three Came Home (1950). Bette Davis then got the part. When Jeanne Crain’s pregnancy ruled her out as Eve, Anne Baxter was chosen.

Margo (Bette Davis) and Bill (Gary Merrill) in her apartment as they prepare for that bumpy night in All About Eve (1950).

Linda Darnell and Paul Douglas in A Letter to Three Wives (1948).

Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae perform “If I Loved You” for Carousel (1956), based on Ferenc Molnar’s play Liliom. The studio produced two memorable earlier screen adaptions starring Charles Farrell (Liliom, 1930) and Charles Boyer (Liliom, 1934).

“We had so much fun,” recalled Anne Baxter of Eve. “We were supposed to be at each other’s throats. It was nothing like that, and Bette fell madly in love with [costar] Gary Merrill. On top of everything else, love was in bloom. It was marvelous.” Again Zanuck provided the editing, both to the script and in the projection room, that made a great film even better.

After meeting at the amusement park on Stage Five as Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan, Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones performed the classic “If I Loved You” for Carousel (1956) here. The musical sequences during the clambake were on Stage Fifteen, the ballet on Stage Five, and Jones and Claramae Turner sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at the harbor set on Chicago Lake. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr drew further tears for that famous final scene made here for An Affair to Remember (1957), and Bette Midler delivered her powerhouse performance for The Rose (1979) here too. The film’s title song was named one of top 100 movie songs by the American Film Institute, and earned songwriter Amanda McBroom a Golden Globe, and Midler a Grammy. Director Mark Rydell would work with Bette Midler again in their musical salute to World War II, For the Boys (1991).

Director Leo McCarey gives some final instructions to Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr as they prepare for the classic ending for An Affair to Remember (1957).

Bette Midler in The Rose (1979).

A view of Stages Fourteen, Fifteen, and Sixteen looking west down First Street, circa 1962.

STAGE FOURTEEN (1936)

At Warner Bros. Darryl Zanuck had written a screenplay for Fanny Brice, entitled My Man (1928). When he had Rose of Washington Square (1939) produced here, Brice and Nicky Arnstein, who recognized the thinly veiled biography of their romance, sued the studio and settled out of court. Zanuck, however, got what he wanted: several months of great publicity for one of Alice Faye’s best musicals.

Contributing to Darryl Zanuck’s success in surpassing all prior Hollywood disaster films with The Rains Came (1939) was a rich screenplay by Philip Dunne, a cast of the rank of Tyrone Power and Myrna Loy, and the investment of a water tank here. The tank was also used to great effect in The Black Swan (1942), Moontide (1942), The Snake Pit (1948), and Titanic (1953). Moontide star Ida Lupino was back here, playing an aging actress, in an episode of Charlie’s Angels (“I Will Be Remembered,” 1977) that offers great views of the lot.

The tank was covered over for two of the most famous Fox film sets: the courtroom to decide whether Santa Claus existed for Miracle on 34^th Street (1947) and the three-story building with its hidden attic for George Stevens’ The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). Joseph Schildkraut, Shelley Winters, Gusti Huber, Ed Wynn, Lou Jacobi, Richard Beymer—and Millie Perkins and Diane Baker in their Fox debuts—were the inhabitants of that attic. Otto Frank, the sole survivor of those hidden away from Nazi persecution, visited the studio and the set. He had been an active collaborator in bringing the play and film to life from his daughter’s diary. Nearly forty years after helping his father with the film, George Stevens Jr. returned to Fox as executive producer for The Thin Red Line (1998). The Frank home was later the setting for another Fox classic The Fault in Our Stars (2014).

The large tank as used in Moontide (1941).

Only the extraordinary box-office power of Doris Day could turn the lights of this stage back on after they were darkened over the sets of Something’s Got to Give with the tragic death of Marilyn Monroe. The re-vamped Move Over, Darling (1963) earned more than any recent Fox film save The Longest Day (1962). Interestingly, Day’s last film for the studio, Caprice (1967), was its last in CinemaScope. The studio followed the rest of the industry and began using the superior Panavision process. Leon Shamroy, who shot the first (The Robe) and the last of them makes an appearance in the film.

Fred Gailey (John Payne) defended Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) on Stage Fourteen in Miracle on 34th Street (1947).

The Hello, Dolly! (1969) company—including Barbra Streisand and Louis Armstrong (in his final film appearance)—spent a month perfecting the “Hello, Dolly” musical number on the magnificent $375,000 four-tiered Harmonia Gardens restaurant set, designed by John DeCuir, and featuring faux stained glass, marble fountains, and the grandest staircase of them all. It all went dramatically to ruin as the “cathedral interior” for Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) discovered by James Franciscus. By the time Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) was made, the apes were no longer restricted to soundstages, but roamed the lot in the opening sequence. They can be seen conquering Cenury City under the leadership of Roddy McDowall in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972).

The grandson of J. Gordon Edwards, Blake Edwards appeared on these stages first as an actor in the early 1940s and then as director of films like The Man Who Loved Women (1983, Columbia) that he made here starring his wife Julie Andrews as Burt Reynolds’s psychoanalyst.

Although the exterior and lobby of the Fox Plaza Tower was used as the Nakatomi Corporation Plaza in the opening scenes of Die Hard (1988), the enormous atrium on the thirtieth floor was a set here. The air-traffic control tower and miniature runways were also located here for the sequel, Die Hard 2 (1990).

The tank as used in Titanic (1953).

Director George Stevens, left, and Millie Perkins meet Otto Frank on the set of The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).

Sandra Bullock, who made her Fox debut in Love Potion #9 (1992), became a star in the thrilling bus ride Speed (1994) that used this stage for its opening elevator-rescue sequence. Among those involved in casting her was Jan de Bont, who called upon his own eerie experience getting stuck in an elevator on the fortieth floor of the Fox Plaza building during the making of Die Hard to direct that scene. De Bont was later crucial in bringing Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002) to Fox, originally as director, and then as producer, which also used this stage.

The studio’s tradition of showcasing action stars and their stunt work stretches all the way back to the uniquely elaborate thrills of Tom Mix’s pictures, and pioneers like Harvey Perry and John Weld and even Mrs. Buck Jones. The triumph of the memorable moments has been tempered only by the tragedies incurred, such as the death of stunt flier Lt. Ormer Locklear during the making of The Skywayman (1920). There is not likely to be a better Fox stunt man theme song summing it all up than the one in Glen A. Larson’s tongue-in-cheek tribute to The Fall Guy (1981–1986).

Ellen (Doris Day) tries to reconnect with her children in Move Over, Darling (1963).

Steve McQueen steps into his Corvette between Stages Fourteen and Fifteen, in front of his trailer, during the filming of The Sand Pebbles (1966). Many consider his performance the finest in his storied career.

Barbra Streisand sings the title song on the staircase of the Harmonia Gardens restaurant set for Hello, Dolly! (1969).

That same staircase ended up as a set for Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1971).

Clint Ritchie, left, jokes with director Roger Corman during the filming of The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967). This picture was taken on Stage Fifteen on the set of Al Capone’s home (the repurposed main foyer from The Sound of Music (1965).

Vincent Price, at left, with director Tim Burton (center) and Johnny Depp (right) during the filming of Edward Scissorhands (1990).

Robin Williams in one of his best-remembered roles as Mrs. Doubtfire (1993).

Robin Williams returned to series television after thirty-one years to make David E. Kelley’s television series The Crazy Ones (2013) here, with Sarah Michelle Gellar. It would be his last. Shortly after the show was canceled Williams took his own life in August of 2014. He left behind a legacy that includes the classic Mrs. Doubtfire (1993).

The extravaganza of “Before the Parade Passes By.” This view is looking north along Avenue of the Palms. The New Executive Building (Bldg. 100) now stands where the elevated train and station are located.

Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Katharine Ross pose on New York Street during the filming of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

Panorama view of the Fifth Avenue set built for Hello, Dolly! (1969). This street is now known as Avenue of the Palms. Bldg. 89 is at the left and Bldg. 88 became the collonade entrance to the Harmonia Gardens at right. It was one of the most lavish sets ever built in Hollywood. Only the middle section, that was Mulberry Street, still exists.

NEW YORK STREET (“DOLLY” STREET)

When you came through the gate to your office, you were in your own kingdom. You were protected by your own police, and your needs were taken care of down to your home. In fact, the studio was your home. Your secretary brought her own coffeepot when she was assigned to you, and she worked on a seniority system. Dick and I planted the seeds for others. The bones are still at Fox. The Hello, Dolly! set is still standing, being slowly replaced by office skyscrapers.

—David Brown, production executive

By the spring of 1968 production designer John DeCuir—and practically every set decorator at the studio—had transformed fifteen acres of the lot into an elaborate recreation of 14th Street in 1890s New York for Hello, Dolly! (1969). There were sixty buildings in all—some ingeniously disguising eleven actual ones. For example, the Administration Building and its forecourt were transformed into the Harmonia Gardens and New York Public Library. Horse-drawn trolleys ran along the streets, while a steam engine train ran along 600 feet of elevated track. This kind of never-again-to-be-replicated spectacle resulted in breathtaking musical numbers like “Dancing” and the most lavish musical number in film history, “Before the Parade Passes By.” But even as the fifth highest grossing film of the year Hello, Dolly! did not surmount its production costs, and the set was initially left standing simply because the studio could not afford to tear it down. Dennis Stanfill considered turning it into an amusement area, but it has become a much better cash cow as a rental. Eventually most of “Dolly Street” made way for studio development, and only Mulberry Street remains in use for television shows (NYPD Blue, The X-Files, Bones, House, How I Met Your Mother, Weird Loners), screen tests (The Three Stooges, 2012), promotional material (Die Hard With a Vengeance), occasional feature filming (Water for Elephants), and star-studded company celebrations.

New York and California merge at the corner of New York Street with Avenue of the Palms at the right.

A trompe l’oeil mural obscures Stage 14 at the end of the street.

In the heart of Fox’s version of the Big Apple.

The episode “Safe Home” with Rick Schroeder, left, Dennis Franz, and Austin Majors, is one of many shot here for NYPD Blue (1993-2005). The elephant door to Stage Ten can be seen at right.

The Royal Diner where Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and Bones Brennan (Emily Deschanel) regularly hang out is not really in Washington, D.C. but here on New York Street as seen in the episode “Blue Line.”

This is the townhouse where Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) lived from 2004-2012 in House.

Darryl Zanuck strikes a formal pose in 1941. He is holding Benjamin Blake a novel by Edison Marshall that he would adapt into Son of Fury (1942) starring Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney.

DARRYL ZANUCK ON THE LOT

“[Darryl Zanuck’s] Twentieth Century Fox pictures were an eloquent voice for morality—not in the narrowest sense of that word, but in the general sense that, unlike too many motion pictures today, they emphasized courage, self-reliance, honor, and integrity. These are the classic Victorian virtues, and Zanuck, in spire of the fact that he personally added the ‘Twentieth Century’ to his studio’s name, was essentially a Victorian. The anti-hero, the pimp, the drug pusher, and the cheat found no place in Zanuck’s world—or if they did, they got their comeuppance before the final fade-out.”

—Philip Dunne, screenwriter

Darryl Zanuck’s six-days-a-week schedule began with his arrival at Building 88 between 10:30am and 11am, usually speeding, in a Zanuck green Cadillac. The color, specially made by the studio, dominated his office, the building, the makeup department, studio equipment and trucks and even studio telephones. All morning he dictated studio memos to avoid unnecessary meetings. He wanted Dictaphones everywhere—at home and work—so that he could constantly let loose his creative thoughts and nervous energy. He always had an office boy stationed outside his office to carry his messages.

He took his role as supervisor of all production at Twentieth Century Fox literally. There were the studio’s selected synopses of novels, magazine articles, plays and original stories to read. Those he favored—or original ideas of his own—were sent on to Will Hays office for Production Code approval, and if he got that he sent it to a studio writer for a treatment (“never over 25 pages!”) or script outline. Critics who labeled the studio “Nineteenth Century Fox” for his penchant for period films missed the point. Moneymaking nostalgia allowed the mogul to slip in more daring fare like The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Then he assigned a producer, usually choosing a few films to make himself. He met with Lew Schreiber to ensure casting of each picture was made three months in advance so adjustments could be made to the script. The rest of the cast must be gathered and approved six weeks in advance. The production department received a final script three weeks before shooting to break down each pictures’ needs including sets, costumes, and special effects and to gather cost estimates for each to ensure it all matched the approved budget of each film. Only then was a director assigned. Zanuck’s studio system worked, despite the creative restrictions placed on his artists, by the success and sheer loyalty he engendered.“I admired him for his guts and the quality he had of grabbing a headline and generating the speed and enthusiasm all down the line to make a good picture quickly—at this, he was a master and the hardest-working little guy you have ever seen in all your life,” offered William Wellman.

A young Richard “Dickie” Zanuck at his father’s desk in 1938.

Certainly Zanuck’s workaholic way-of-life was influenced by the frugal production methods at Warner Bros. He tested his filmmakers to ensure they were competent and working equally hard, and remained confident and enthusiastic about their projects.

“Every assignment would become the greatest picture ever made,” recalled Philip Dunne, “and remain so until, in the drafty forecourt of some preview theatre, a subordinate would dejectedly remark: ‘Well, we got a great woman’s picture.’”

At 1:30pm Zanuck went to lunch at the commissary.

“Darryl swept out of his office, accompanied by the producer or director with whom he’d been conferring or a distinguished guest from ‘outside,’” recalled Elia Kazan. “Following him came staff people…it was like the movement of a flotilla of warships. He’d receive the salute of those he passed; everyone he acknowledged with a greeting was proud of it.”

“Zanuck had an aide who threw paper balls in the air for him to swing at with his polo mallet while he walked,” recalled Ernest Lehman. “One day the man was fired, and the story circulated was that he had struck Darryl out!”

After lunch were story conferences to develop treatments or scripts or further develop an unsatisfactory script.

“Armed with notepads, a troupe of us—producer, director, head of casting, head of production, and others of that ilk—would file into Zanuck’s office, a largish room with a huge desk cluttered with mementoes,” recalled Richard Fleischer.

“He’d take a script,” said Henry Hathaway, “and the first thing he’d do was put a big Z across the front. That’s his script forever. And he’d really know it. He’d know a script from lines and scenes and everything and he’d make all his marks. Molly [Mandaville] was Zanuck’s girl Friday. She sat in on every story conference that he ever had and made notes about what everybody said about everything and then typed it up. She was terrific. She knew everything.”

Director Elia Kazan, Albert Dekker, and Gregory Peck meet in Zanuck’s office to discuss the production of the controversial Gentleman’s Agreement (1947). The film was among those that Zanuck made to champion social, religious, and racial tolerance in films like The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Brigham Young (1940), and Pinky (1949).

Almost every day would end with Darryl Zanuck viewing the daily rushes.

Darryl Zanuck’s reserved parking spot on Avenue D by Bldg. 88. His office suite was just left of the entrance door on the first floor.

Zanuck was always working even when relaxing in his private spa in the basement of Bldg. 88. Here he is with Sam Silver, the studio’s barber and an assistant.

Darryl Zanuck at his desk in his office.

“He would pace up in down between the interconnecting rooms of his office talking about what he liked,” said screenwriter Ernest Lehman, “what he didn’t like, and what he wanted you to do.” “I had an assistant who complained when Zanuck got very enthusiastic when he’d think of a love scene,” recalled Nunnally Johnson. “My assistant, who happened to be rather pretty, said, ‘I wish he would stop casting me as the girl.’”

“The Zanuck story conferences are legendary, the source of anecdotes which are still told and retold,” observed Philip Dunne. “The conference notes, which reached writer and producer a day or two after the conference, were our Holy Writ. They included almost everything that had been said at the conference and underlined the firm decisions which had been reached, but nothing was meant to be taken literally.”

Darryl Zanuck enters Bldg. 88 through his private entrance to his suite. The entrance is still used by the studio’s head.

From these conferences would emerge the scripts that were sent along with many notes to the producers the next morning as well as memos to other departments about casting, the design of sets, and the final distribution of films. Known for his practical jokes Darryl once delighted in placing a trained ape into his executive chair, turning the lights down and summoning a new writer.

“Going to see Zanuck was always an experience,” recalled Maureen O’Hara. “His office was an oddly shaped room, oblong, so that you had to walk quite a distance from the door to reach him. As I entered, I could see him, at the other end of the room, seated rigidly behind his expansive desk, position squarely on a raised platform.”

At 5:00 pm, he descended to the basement to use his fully-equipped exercise room where he enjoyed four or five rounds with “Fidel,” the U.S. bantamweight champion, and then a dip in the swimming pool followed by a massage by Sam Silver. Then he took a nap. He was awake by 7:30 pm for dinner, and then headed to the “Z” screening room to sit in his leather chair and begin screenings with another Dictaphone and a telephone to talk to the cutter in the projection booth. He attributed his editing skill to two mentors: Ralph Dietrich and Ray Enright.

“Once photography was finished on a film, Zanuck maintained a hands-off policy about the editing,” recalled Richard Fleischer. “Hands off, that is, until he’d screened the version of the picture that the producer and the director felt was the best they could do. He had the uncanny knack after seeing a film for the first time, of immediately putting his finger on exactly what was wrong with it. Without hesitation he would order new scenes written and put into production. Virtually every movie made at Fox went back to the sound stages for additional scenes.”

“He cut, cut, cut,” recalled David Brown. “His film philosophy was much like Ernest Hemingway’s writing philosophy. In the best of Hemingway’s stories, the reader somehow understands what has been left out, and the stories race along with beautiful simplicity. So it was with Zanuck’s better pictures.”

“My nickname for him was ‘Czar of all the rushes,’” recalled Joseph Mankiewicz.

“The seating arrangement for these viewings was as follows: Zanuck sat in the first row with the director, in this case me…and the editor,” recalled Otto Preminger. “Behind us were about a dozen of Zanuck’s yes-men.”

Darryl Zanuck, right, goes over a script with his handpicked successor Buddy Adler.

“After a screening he would stand up and he would pace back and forth talking about the film,” recalled William Reynolds, “always with a cigar. He could go through it practically frame-by-frame after seeing it once. It was remarkable.”

Examples of his skill proliferate. Although the contentious nature of Zanuck’s relationship with John Ford is legend, the director ultimately remarked: “Darryl is a genius and I don’t use the word lightly. He was head and shoulders above all the other producers.”

Darryl Zanuck with his wife Virginia and their children Darrilyn, Richard, and Susan.

“He’d run the rushes,” recalled Henry Hathaway, “and then he’d look at rough cuts, answer prints, everything, and then when he’d say, ‘OK, that’s all,’ he’d say to me or somebody else that he was going to run a feature and did we want to stay?”

“Most things are decided around here at 3:00 am because Mr. Zanuck works so much at night,” said Jeanne Crain. “Very few stars have any say.”

“There was little need for him to be on the set,” said David Brown, “because his work was done mostly at night, and extensive notes were sent to the director each shooting day, often with comments on every ‘take.’ Zanuck’s philosophy of filmmaking can be summed up in a sentence, his, of course: ‘They call them moving pictures because they’re supposed to move!’”

“We worked a six-day week, there was no such thing as overtime,” recalled Robert Wagner, “and the large board at the studio that contained the shooting schedule for each picture on the lot was rarely altered—if Darryl wanted a movie made in forty days and you fell a little behind, then you could confidently expect to be pulling an all-nighter on that fortieth day because it would, by God, be done in the allotted time.”

“Of all the big-boss producers, Darryl was unquestionably the man with the greatest gifts,” summed up Orson Welles. “True personal, professional, and artistic gifts for the filmmaking process itself. He began as a writer and in a sense he never stopped functioning as a writer.”

Building 88 as it appeared in 2015. This building has held the main administrative offices of Twentieth Century Fox since it was built in 1936.

The site of Bldg. 88 was originally used to build a modern cean liner set for the film So This Is London (1930).

BLDG. 88: OLD EXECUTIVE BUILDING (1936)

On June 7, 1937, this three-story executive office building, commissioned by Darryl Zanuck, was officially dedicated. By then, Stages Ten, Eleven, Fourteen, Fifteen, and Sixteen and Bldgs. 31, 32, 86, and 89 were completed as well. The $2.5 million in improvements—including repaving the studio streets and installing lights along them—was a sign that the studio’s fortunes were rising from the depths of the Depression. They were paid for largely from Shirley Temple’s pictures. In fact, in its early days, fellow child star Dick Moore recalled this building became known as the Temple Building except when Zanuck was within earshot.

Original 1930 caption “NOTHING TOO BIG FOR THE FOX-MOVIETONE PRODUCTION SO THIS IS LONDON, starring Will Rogers. An exact reproduction of an ocean liner was built at Fox-Movietone City for this production. In the foreground may be seen Charles Clarke, chief cameraman and Director John G. Blystone.” Note the oil derricks that can be seen rising on the left.

Among the traditions Zanuck started here was ordering rotating gold-framed photographs of the studio’s ten key stars to be hung in the first-floor reception room. That continues into the twenty-first century, with framed posters and production stills from prominent movies on the walls. Watch for the exterior and reception area in Dancing in the Dark (1950).

Reflecting Zanuck’s more “hands-on” approach as an executive his four-room connecting office suite (including bedroom and bathroom) was on the first floor in the middle of the west side of the building. Rival studio moguls preferred to be ensconced on upper floors. Although remodeled over the years, Zanuck’s offices remain where the head of the studio resides. The private stairs are still there, but Zanuck’s basement “health club,” including a private barbershop, massage room, steam room, and swimming pool (maintained at 52 degrees) run by friend Sam “the Barber” Silver has been replaced with an executive gym. Watch for Sam as the barber to a movie mogul in You’re My Everything (1949). The 33-seat “Z” and 33-seat “S” executive screening rooms are still down there named for the two men who used them most: Zanuck and his second-in-command Lew Schreiber. Beginning as a casting director, studio manager Schreiber was well-respected on the lot for his negotiations with actors and labor unions.

Directory to the administration building, late 1930s.

The second floor held offices for the producers. Directors and the publicity and marketing departments were on the third floor. Harry Brand, Twentieth Century Fox’s first head of publicity (1935–63), was hired by Joe Schenck at United Artists and remained with him at Twentieth Century Pictures Inc., and then here. Supervising as many as seventy movies annually, Brand and his staff also handled publicity for all the Fox stars. When publicist Nathan Dyches optioned Pinky (1949), he formed Pomeroy Enterprises, Inc., with Brand to help get it made. When asked who their favorite actor was on the lot, they answered “Victor Mature,” who was named an honorary press agent. When Mature asked for his own office, his nameplate temporarily replaced the ladies’ room sign. For years afterwards the ladies using that particular facility fondly dubbed it “The Old Vic.”

In 1968 a low-flying, single-engine airplane crashed into the west side of the building, between the second and third floors, killing the pilot. No Fox employees were injured, except for producer Sy Bartlett, who received bruises from being knocked to the ground by the blast. Roland Hill of the art department recalled that the plane hit the building in front of Richard Zanuck’s parking space. Zanuck had just left the building for location shooting.

Besides regaining some financial stability for the company, Dennis Stanfill also made important upgrades to the lot, including computerizing the telephone service that had not been updated since its installation in the 1930s. Up until then eighteen female phone operators had manned the system in staggered shifts for fifteen hours a day.

At the northwest corner of the building, in front of the five old payroll windows where employees and extras could line up to get their paychecks, is a crepe myrtle tree commemorating the release of Avatar (2009), on the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, 2010. At the end of the company’s first century of filmmaking the film remains its biggest moneymaker, and re-popularized 3-D movies.

Before the Old Executive Building was built, this was the site of an enormous, full-size ocean liner set built for Will Rogers’s So This Is London (1930) and seen in Transatlantic (1932), and, spectacularly afire in Dante’s Inferno (1935).

View of Bldg. 88 soon after completion. It was part of a large expansion project that included the construction of new soundstages (note Stage Fourteen has been completed and Stage Fifteen is under construction in the background).

Closeup of one of the entrances on the east façade. This is one of the few places where the Twentieth Century Fox logo could actually be seen on the lot.

Bldg. 88 as the airport in Berlin Correspondent (1942) with Virginia Gilmore and Dana Andrews trying to escape the Nazis.

One of the job requirements of a contract player was assisting with VIP tours of the lot. Here Marilyn Monroe, exiting the north entrance on the west side of Bldg. 88, accompanies Spyros Skouras during the visit of King Paul and Queen Frederika of Greece in 1953.

The Publicity Department has always been housed in Bldg. 88 where it fulfills requests for stills from Fox movies. All of those photos stored in the filing cabinets and boxes on the wall are now part of the Photo Archive and are safely stored in a huge vault in Bldg. 99.

Former contract player Stepin Fetchit, right, is welcomed back to the lot in the lobby of Bldg. 88 on October 31, 1951. The lobby used to feature large portraits of the biggest contract players. From left to right on the wall are William Lundigan, Gene Tierney, and Gregory Peck.

Richard “Dickie” Zanuck got his start in the movie business by selling newspapers and magazines on the lot.

Bldg. 88 has served as the set of a hospital in several films including Shock Treatment (1964) where it was a mental institution. Carol Lynley, at left, looks on as a scene is filmed with co-star Stuart Whitman, (in third wheelchair from right) in the east parking lot.

Of course the building has been used frequently for films and television. Shock Treatment (1964) offers a great look at the building, as well as the original configuration of the two Pico guard shacks. In the second season of Charlie’s Angels, the Angels walk out the southwest door of this building as a police station while John Forsythe narrates, “But I took them away from all that, and now they work for me. My name is Charlie.” During the Alan Ladd Jr. regime, Leonard Goldberg and Jerry Weintraub considered remaking How to Marry a Millionaire starring the Angels.

Marlon Brando on the lot during the making of Desiree (1954). That is Bldg. 88 in the background.

The south end of Bldg. 88 as it appeared in the mid-1960s before the construction of the Hello, Dolly! (1969) street set in 1968 which now obscures this view. Stage Ten, left, can be seen with its mod color scheme. With the construction of Stages Seventeen, Eighteen, and Nineteen, seen at right, there was now enough stage space for film and television productions at the main lot which prompted the sale of the Western Avenue studio.

Lee Grant poses for a wardrobe continuity shot for Valley of the Dolls (1967) in the east parking lot.

Alan Ladd, Jr. in his office in Bldg. 88.

The main corridor on the first floor of Bldg. 88 decorated with posters and stills of Fox’s most famous films. Though updated, the first floor retains its original 1930s configuration while the upper floors have been largely altered.

The “S” and “Z” screening rooms in the basement of Bldg. 88 in 2015. The lobby features photos of Fox Best Picture winners. Starting at the far end, Cavalcade (1933), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), All About Eve (1950), The Sound of Music (1965), Patton (1970), and Chariots of Fire (1981). More recent winners are on the facing wall.

Logo on one of the main doors. Bldg. 100 can be seen in the reflection.

Interior of the “Z” screening room.