 From Primedia Publications |
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All That Glitters (cont.)
Hollywood with all the trimmings.
The Warner Brothers studio in Burbank may be outside geographic Hollywood but it's deep in the heart of the other one. The first stop on my tour was the studio museum, a medium-sized room with a treasure trove of Hollywood memorabilia. Among the items on display were Dooley Wilson's piano and other artifacts from Casablanca, the "black bird" from The Maltese Falcon and a saddle John Wayne used in a number of films. There were costumes galore: Errol Flynn's tunic from The Adventures of Robin Hood, the flying suit James Stewart wore as Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis, costumes from My Fair Lady. It was a dazzling collection and I wished we had longer to linger and take it all in.
I also enjoyed reading letters that Warner stars and filmmakers wrote to the studio heads, usually to complain. From the location set of Operation Burma, Errol Flynn wrote an irritated note about his dressing room situation, pointing out that Bette Davis had a portable dressing room she could bring with her on location. Director Elia Kazan wrote to criticize cuts the studio made in A Streetcar Named Desire. One from a Warner Brothers contract actor named Ronald Reagan applied subtle pressure on studio head Jack Warner to keep his promise about giving the actor a plum role.
Before long we were shooed out to resume the tour. Like Paramount, Warner is a working studio, and I got to see another TV show in production. This time it was the popular medical drama ER and a scene featuring Anthony Edwards, a young girl, and a horse. "Quiet around the horse," cautioned a crew member. The cameras rolled. Edwards helped the girl down from the animal. "We've got to get you home before it gets dark," he said. She hugged him. "Cut!" yelled the director.
We reboarded our tour trolley and tooled around the lot, past sets familiar from dozens of films and television shows. Here were the courthouse steps where Frank Sinatra sang "Chicago" in Robin and the Seven Hoods; there was the hall of justice from The Public Enemy, the film in which James Cagney shoves a grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face.
Though stars like Cagney, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and Paul Muni helped create the Warner Brothers style of hard-edged, tough-talking filmmaking, during the 1920s the studio's biggest star was a dog named Rin Tin Tin, who made his film debut in 1923 and starred in 19 films. "Rinty's salary was $1,000 a week, and his perks included a small orchestra for mood music, a diamond-studded collar and, at mealtimes a Chateau-briand steak with all the trimmings," wrote Clive Hirschhorn in a history of the studio.
Of course, everything comes to an end eventually, a point driven home when I visited Hollywood Memorial Cemetery. I drove through the gates just before closing time on a beautiful Los Angeles afternoon. Except for a few groundskeepers, I had the place almost completely to myself, with only the sput-sput-sput of sprinklers, the chirping of birds, and the soft hum of traffic from Santa Monica Boulevard breaking the silence.
It was eerie to find the final resting places of people who are eternally alive on film or in the endless supply of Hollywood stories. I found Cecil B. DeMille's grave, just a stone's throw from the Paramount lot he helped create. Tyrone Power was resting beneath a bench-like marker near a green pond. And I found probably the most famous grave here, a simple niche on a marble wall inside one of the large chapels. "Rudolfo Guglielmi Valentino 1895-1925," read the inscription. Even 73 years after Rudolph Valentino's death, someone had placed fresh flowers in the holders on each side of his niche.
But not all was gloom. Mel Blanc, "the man of 1000 voices" behind many of Warner Brothers' greatest cartoon characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig, is also buried here. His tombstone provided some comic relief. "That's All Folks," it read.
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