“They were building the administration building, the commissary, and the stages to film the silents.”īy the 1920s, a Monte Carlo set was built for Erich Von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives (1922) and a cathedral façade was constructed for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) starring Lon Chaney. The studio was constantly growing from the start says Jeff Pirtle, the director of archives and collections for NBCUniversal. The studio had its grand opening on Monday, Maas the chief of the Universal City police handed Laemmle a golden key to his studio in front of a crowd of 10,000 people. The open expanse of land was ideal for one-reel Westerns-a staple of Universal at the time-Biblical epics, American Revolution reenactments, and Greek dramas including the first film shot on the lot, Damon and Pythias (1914). Universal City was a working movie studio from day one when, in 1914, legendary movie mogul Carl Laemmle purchased 230 acres in the south San Fernando Valley along El Camino Real, which encompassed the Cahuenga Pass. Much like the actual ‘burbs, Colonial Street has evolved with the American cultural landscape. Released in February of ’89, the Joe Dante comedy is a culmination of the movies and TV shows that made decades-long use of the studio’s archetypal suburban set. Our tour guide announced on the PA system that behind those walls was a suburban neighborhood set and that a movie called The ‘Burbs, starring Tom Hanks, was filming there. At the entrance to a street set against the hillside, wooden flats blocked the tram’s access to that location. once before and Universal-the world-famous studio tour in particular-had easily been my favorite part of the trip.ĭuring this visit, our tour tram snaked up a hill, passing by the Chicken Ranch from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and a log cabin from The Great Outdoors. As an eager 7-year-old movie fan whose internal clock was set to East Coast time, I woke up much too early and asked my mom and dad when we were going to Universal Studios.
In the summer of 1988, my family went on a vacation to Los Angeles.
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