Bingen Steven - Warner Bros.: Hollywoods Ultimate Backlot

Warner Bros.

Hollywoods Ultimate Backlot

STEVE BINGEN

with Marc Wanamaker, Bison Archives

TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Taylor Trade Publishing

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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www.rowman.com

16 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BT, United Kingdom

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2014 by Steven Bingen

All photographs and maps courtesy of Marc Wanamaker, Bison Archives, unless otherwise noted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bingen, Steven.

Warner Bros. : Hollywoods ultimate backlot / Steven Bingen ; with Marc Wanamaker, Bison Archives.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58979-961-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58979-962-2 (electronic) 1. Warner BrosHistory. 2. Warner Bros. Pictures (19231967)History. 3. Warner Bros.-Seven ArtsHistory. 4. Warner Bros. Pictures (1969 )History. 5. Motion picture studiosCaliforniaLos AngelesHistory. I. Wanamaker, Marc. II. Title.

PN1999.W3B56 2014

384'.80979494dc23 2014007142

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

W hen I was working at Warner Bros., I was so busy I didnt realize what a fascinating place the studio itself really was. When I was invited to make a screen test in 1948, I wasnt really interested in being an actress at all, and working in film had never so much as crossed my mind. Romance on the High Seas had been written for Judy Garland, but the deal had fallen through. Betty Hutton was the next choice but had gotten pregnant. I was in Hollywood at the time, and my agent, Al Levy, talked me into performing a song at a party in Beverly Hillswhich somehow led to an invitation to come to Warner Bros. for a screen test. I didnt know at the time that my life was about to change forever, that I would be on the lot for the next seven years, make seventeen pictures on its sets and backlots, record dozens of songs, and spend hundreds of hours working very hard in virtually every corner of the studio.

I learned much during my days at Warner Bros. When they first took me onto the Romance on the High Seas soundstage, I navely asked when wed be leaving for the boat. Everyone laughed at me. But as I explored that films intricate ocean liner settings, I realized that this soundstage and its dozens of sisters on the lot had actually been the place where hundreds of the movies I had watched growing up in Cincinnati had really been made. It astonished me that every location imaginable, from the high seas to tropical jungles could all be created , seemingly from scratch, in this remarkable place. Eventually it occurred to me that because most of what I thought I knew about ships or jungles, or about a thousand other places Id never actually visited, actually came not from real life but from seeing these films. To this day I cant decide if Hollywood takes its visual cues from the real world, or if it is in fact, the other way around.

Im afraid I took most of this for granted at the time, of course. But Im proud to be able to say that I did learn very quickly to appreciate the very real talents of those I was fortunate enough to be able to work with. I was absolutely thrilled to be working with people like director Michael Curtiz and composer Ray Heindorf. It was great fun!

With this book we will all have a better appreciation of the studio lot and what went on there.

Doris Day

Acknowledgments

A book, like a movie, or like a movie studio, is a collaborative project. The list of people who fed me anecdotes, information, or conjecture in putting together the story of this studio is a long one indeed. Although it occurs to me now, with some puzzlement, that the list of names included here is not so formidable as that for other books that I have been involved with. This puzzled me for a few minutes. After all, the book you now hold in your hands was at least as much work as anything Ive ever attempted, and yet, when looking over the acknowledgments, it appears that I annoyed less people with my impertinent questions than I have in the past. How could this be?

The answer finally came to me. Warner Bros. Studios has been my backyard and my personal obsession for close to two decades. This is the story I was born to tell and have been writing, if only inside my head, for the last twenty years.

When I came to Hollywood, one of the first things I did was drive out to the Warner Bros. lot. I remember parking the car and just standing, transfixed, outside those tall walls. Because, like most tourists, I couldnt go inside, I had to settle for circling the fence line instead, peeking through the cracks in the walls, wanting to be on the other side.

Well, since then I have been on the other side. Ive walked those same fence lines hundreds of times, only from the inside. Ive shimmied up into the rafters above the soundstages. Ive crawled through tunnels and underground passages. Ive wandered through the vast warehouses of props and costumes, stood on the sets while the cameras were rolling, and marveled at postproduction wizardry. Ive explored the backlots by moonlight and by flashlight. Ive spent lonely hours in badly lit basements poring over studio records or trying to make sense of crumbling, curling blueprint rolls. I think its safe for me to say that I know Warner Bros. Studios as well as anyone alive. Truth be told, much of the material between these covers I obtained, absorbed , on my own before I ever even knew I was writing a book.

That said, Ive tried very hard not to make this story all about me. Certainly some sort of personal viewpoint is necessary in any endeavor. But Ive tried very hard to let the story tell itself without slipping into first person. On occasion, however, I havent been able to avoid telling the tale from my own perspective as an observer or a participant. I hope that the reader will forgive me these lapsesand blame me for any mistakes or omissions in the text and not the good people, alive and dead, whose names appear below.

Leith Adams, Angela Aleiss, Ron Barbagallo, Billy Blackburn, Eddie Bockser, Tina Brausam, Ned Comstock, Ben Cowitt, John Cox, Robby Cress, Linda Cummings-Whelen, Doris Day, Bill Elliott, Earl Hamner Jr., James Hampton, Amy Hilker, Yoko Honda, Janet Hoffmann, Sandra Joy Lee, Joan Leslie, Dick Mason, Geoff Murillo, Joe Musso, Camille OLeary, Tom Ray, Ronald Charles Reeves, Dean Ricca, Lara Scheunemann, Nina Smith, David L. Snyder, Jim Stathacos, E. J. Stephens, Stan Taffel, Clint and Susan Walker, Cass Warner Sperling, and Fredd Wayne. Thank you, one and all.

Id like to express my appreciation to Ben Burtt and Craig Barron for at least trying to explain the intricacies of old-school special effects and rear screen projection processes to me one afternoon in the Warner Bros. Research Library. Any mistakes in that chapter therefore indicate that they failed.