Let's go over some themes before moving on. Things in the movies grew really fast. From small New York based companies in the early 1910s. Then moving out to Los Angeles in the late 1910s. Then establishing Hollywood Studios in the early 1920s, and building centralized studio owned movie palaces in the late 1920s. In the early 1930s, building suburban movie palaces. Of course, all of that is bracketed by two World Wars. Then after WWII, LA gets another boom industry, aerospace.
Paramount came up briefly in my Hollywood history overview, as their lot ended up housing Cecil B. Demille's barn. When Demille came out to Los Angeles to film The Squaw Man in 1914, he ended up renting that barn on Vine St. and using it as a studio. At that time he was under the control of Lasky pictures, who ended up establishing a studio on Western blvd. up the street from Fox and FBO.
The other partner in Paramount was Adolph Zukor's Famous Players, who built a studio at 5300 Melrose. When the two companies merged into Famous Players - Lasky, all operations moved to the Lasky studio. The Melrose studio was occupied, starting in the 20s, by Clune Studios, and then a whole series of also rans.
In 1926, Famous-Lasky bought the lot next to the old Famous Players lot, and in 1927 the company was reincorporated as Paramount Studios, later Paramount Pictures. The company still operates out of that studio at 5500 Melrose, the last remaining studio in Hollywood proper.
That's the corporate history, now to ground it in LA landmarks : ) Of course, the most recognizable Paramount landmark is the wrought iron gate:
Paramount Studios Bronson Gate (1933)
It's most famous role is in the movie Sunset Blvd, but it's made several cinematic appearances. That photo was taken in 1933, during an NRA strike. That's the banner on the gate, the National Recovery Administration created by FDR as a New Deal initiative. After the National Industrial Recovery Act gave workers protection to do so, the country saw a wave of organized demonstrations. Those are film technicians and extras waiting to go back to work.
So Paramount has the production facility. We know it's had stars under contract, from Cecil B. Demille to Mary Pickford and DW Griffith (who would go on to found United Artists). All it needs is a movie palace to hold premieres (and later some movie houses to control distribution) and they're one of the Big 5. Well:
Parmaount Theater, downtown LA (1939)
The Paramount was originally one of Sid Grauman's theaters. Grauman is responsible for the infamous Chinese and Egyptian theaters on Hollywood blvd. However, he built his Metropolitan theater near his Million Dollar Theater in downtown LA. I've posted the picture I took of the Million Dollar theater (across from the very cool farmer's market), now here's the old Met on Sixth and Hill Streets, across from Pershing Square.
Paramount bought the theater district movie palace in 1929 by their exhibition arm. You can see on the marquee, the movie that night was Gulliver's Travels a feature length cartoon. It's a film that gets compared to Snow White and the like, but it was produced by Fleischer Studios who had a production and distribution deal with Paramount.
When it was released in 1939, it was just the second cel animated feature length ever released, after Disney's Snow White. Both Disney and Fleischer had experience with cel animated shorts, with Fleisher responsible for Popeye and Betty Boop. It was common for studios to run animation shorts and/or newsreels before their feature length films (Warner Bros had the Looney Tunes, and I'm sure I'm gonna find more as I keep digging). Obviously Disney, concentrating solely on animated features, ended up dominating the family film market and branching into theme parks (which we'll have to cover here), but in the 1930s, the field was wide open.
There's a Paramount Theater in Oakland, built in 1931, which still operates today. On Friday's they show old movies, with a newsreel and a cartoon. I didn't realize until today that Betty Boop was a Paramount controlled character, but one of her cartoons was shown the night I went to see It Happened One Night.
Paramount Theater, in Oakland (1975)
So that should give you a good idea about Paramount Picture's history, it's place in the golden age of Hollywood, and just a taste of the scene. Later the LA Paramount became known as the Paramount Downtown, to distinguish it from the newly acquired Paramount Hollywood.
Paramount Theater marquee (1942)
That's the marquee for the Paramount Hollywood box office, which may look both familiar and strange. It was originally opened in 1926 (and later reopened in 1991) as the El Capitan. And yes, it's another Sid Grauman theater. It was remodeled in a more modern style in 1942, and that's a photo from the opening, featuring Cecil B DeMille's Reap the Wild Wind (featuring John Wayne!). Having two centralized theaters led to ads like this one in the LA Times:
Frankenstein meets The Wolf Man and Captive Wild Woman LA Times ad (1943)
Captive Wild Woman, I love it! Frankenstein meets The Wolf Man and Captive Wild Woman were both Universal properties, but we'll learn later than Universal didn't own a distribution wing (making it one of the Little Three). Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is one of the other movies I saw at the Paramount Theater.
One of the other recurring topics on this blog as I've talked about Hollywood is how much the studios panicked when Television came out, going to widescreen, cinerama, smell-o-vision, and of course, the one that has cropped up again now that TV's have gone widescreen:
The world's first three dimensional picture, Bwana Devil! Now we're in 1952, and in direct response to television we get this film about killer lions. The marquee reads "The most important event since pictures learned to talk". It really should have read "the technology isn't really ready yet, but we'll release a bunch of B-movies and it'll be a fad and hipsters will wear 3D glasses around town. But just wait until it takes off in the next century!"
By the by, you'll notice the marquee looks different. Before the release of Bwana Devil, the Paramount underwent a modernization in June of 1952. The Marigold Cafe at 329 6th st. confirms where we are. Bwana Devil came out in the fall of 52. The premiere screening of Bwana Devil at the Oakland Paramount Theater is where the Life Magazine picture of the audience wearing 3D glasses all staring at the screen.
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