Ollie: It’s in California in a town called Culver City, which is near Los Angeles...
Culver City is a Southern California town with a rich history and the location for much of TINSEL FRONT’s first season.
The city was founded in 1917 by developer Harry Culver at the junction of several rail lines. (See post on Pacific Electric Railway Red Cars.) It’s probably because of this — and a lot of inexpensive, undeveloped land — that film companies built studios there. The first was built by Thomas Ince in 1918 for The Triangle Motion Picture Company. Silent film comedy producer Hal Roach built his in 1919. When Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) took over the Triangle studio complex in 1924. By then Thomas Ince had sold out his interest in Triangle and built a new studio down the street. Sometimes known as “The Culver Studios,” that complex was operated over the years by Cecil B. De Mille, RKO, Pathe, David Selznick and Desilu. It is now owned Amazon and is called “Amazon MGM Culver Studios.”
The city’s motto is “Heart of Screenland.” It earned this nickname in the 1930s and 1940s when it was responsible for half of the country’s film production.
From 1980 to 1986 as a MGM employee, I worked in the Irving Thalberg building, the Art Deco masterpiece built in the late 1930s and named after the studio’s wunderkind production chief who died in 1936.
In 1986 after Ted Turner bought MGM and sold the lot to Lorimar Productions (a television powerhouse at the time), my colleagues and I moved across the street into the brand new Filmland building across the street. At the time, i reflected on that move in an essay I found in a box a few years ago. You can read that here: MGM 1986 on my “Writing Down” Substack.
Leave a Reply