Wow...Nobody even at this video for years. Thanks for your car cruse on Culver. Culver was where the original MGM studios main gate was but there is no trace of it now. Not even a tree.
Thank you that was wonderful to watch, I’m an old guy from England, who loved all the old MGM movies as a child To see that tour of the studio was magic to me.
Thanks for shooting this footage of the old MGM studios. I'm glad the name Metro Goldwyn Mayer hasn't faded into history. I'm even a fan of the current studio because it's hard not to expect big things from Leo the Lion and Co. I especially enjoyed your narration. You clearly appreciate the source material. Me too. I love nostalgia and film history, and MGM has both! Again, thank you for posting.
Thank you for this video, you were careful not to get into an accident with all that traffic. I loved the MGM studios, they were the best and they had the best staff, craftsmen, best clothes designers (Edit Head), and a lot of stars! Louis Mayer, gambled to much, and he was a sick man. Divorced his wife, and his life went down hill from there! MGM lost money more then it made, television was the new game in town and he didn't go for it. His bosses in NY thought otherwise, and eventually he was removed as the head of the studio. By the 1970's, MGM was washed up, pieces of it went for sale, and thank god for Debbie Reynolds who bought up thousands of clothes, and some artifacts from the movies made there, and TCM help save the films from MGM and other studios that were decaying in their metal boxes. Those days of from the Golden Age, are gone forever. Few have memories and appreciation. New generation has no idea how these movies were made from start to finish. The stars weren't stuck up like they are now. They didn't live in million dollar homes with cameras inside and out of their homes. The studios protected them, some were innocent and others were not, but the studio back their stars up. Not today, your on your own defense!
Well, freedom has its price but also it's advantages. I don't think I could have been a young woman under the studio system and had my life directed as well as my movies. The movies are fine; direct me! But stay out of my personal life.
Hollywood today is not the same. So much of the magic is now gone... Strictly "corporate" with NO imagination. I pulled a work gig at the MGM, now "Sony Studios" in the early 2000s. In High School that would have been a "dream", but by then it felt like nothing to me, due to the current culture. The "old" Hollywood is still fascinating nonetheless. Thanks for the narrative. Read the Wikipedia on *Irving Thalberg.* It's fascinating. So sad he died at such a young age...
Also in 1959 I was a paper boy for the Loas Angeles Herald Examiner. MY route mainly was on Arizona Ave. I also went up to Wilshire Blvd. WEll, this was something my lasr customer of the day on Ocean Park BLVD was the great MR. Stan Laurel. That was the only customer my mom asked if she could come with me to collect... MR laurel said od course she can,the night before I came over he asked me her first name I told him Maxine and so he called her miss. Maxine. He was a true gentleman. My mom told him she worked the uptown Theatre in Kansascity...well they ended up talking for some time!!
Aw, that's so lovely. I imagine Stan Laurel appreciated talking to your mom, a regular person about regular things and regular places. Laurel and Hardy were my favorite as a kid and I never ever liked the three stooges because they were so mean to each other
The area just beyond the gate on Overland (and Washington) is where one of the King Kong (1976) sets was built. This set was used for walled village where Dwan was "sacrificed" to Kong and the NYC scene where Kong is caged and on display before he breaks loose from his cage. I remember seeing the Kong's head and shoulders over the wall for a few weeks. It's fun stuff when you're a kid. Great memories.
Thank you so much for sharing. Hollywood must have been such a glamorous and magical place in its heyday. So sad to see that much isn't left from the original MGM studios.
In my past life, I worked at MGM in the 1930s for Fox Movietone News doing newsreels, also in the Publicity Dept & maybe in the Orchestra. I may have been a sound technician & a musician. I believe that a lot of us who love MGM probably worked there in past lives. I wish I could take a trip out there to see it one more time. I watched every MGM film I could as a kid. That studio was so classy & glamourous.
Thank you for posting that! There really isn't much left of MGM - just the gates and the Thalberg building. It's really sad what happened in the 1970s.
The real disintegration of MGM started in the late 1940s. The studio had been at the top of the heap until the Supreme Court ruled against the big studios and thus, broke up theater chains. When that happened, Metro, and to a certain extent, Warners, Fox and Paramount, also started to decline because all of their stars whether it was Gable, Tyrone Power, Bogie, etc., all became independent. If anything, the smaller studios like Columbia and United Artists flourished in the 1950s and '60s because they didn't own theaters or have too many stars under long-term contracts. Check the lists of Best Picture Oscar winners between 1950 and 1970, In that time, UA released 7 Best Pics while Columbia released 6. Meanwhile, MGM had its last 3 Oscar winners., Fox had two and Paramount and Warners one each. The perfect example was Humphrey Bogart, a big Warner Bros. star. He made one great war picture on loanout for Columbia ("Sahara") and he liked the way Columbia was run. When his contract with Warners ran out, he formed his own production company (Santana Productions) and released most of his last films through Columbia. Meanwhile, MGM seemed behind the times. When Mayer still ran the studio, he rarely made anything daring and when he did (in the case of films like "Intruder in the Dust" and "The Asphalt Jungle:), he fought against havng them made.When I was a kid in the 1950s, I liked a lot of the MGM output, so I was shocked in looking at different Wikipedia articles on many of the films and found how many of them lost money. It's ironic that now Sony/ Columbia now is the owner of the Culver City studios because in the 1930s when stars misbehaved, Mayer threatened to send them on loanout to Columbia. According to Frank Capra, Gable referred to Columbia as "Siberia." Now, the tables have been turned..
@@williamsnyder5616 I'm glad the actors were given independence and we feel sentimental about MGM but they were kind of a dinosaur that refused to evolve. Arrogance, I guess.
I was born in Culver City, my first job was in a coffee shop across from the gates. When they scheduled the back lots for demolition we would sneak in at night, and run around. I was still in High School, so it was in the early seventies. I went to their auction, but couldn't afford to bid on anything. I've always been proud to say I'm from the home of MGM.
I appreciate this. I've always been a huge fan of Hollywood and Showbiz history but never knew about the viewing tower you showed here. I also was a messenger in the late 70's/80's and would sneak onto all the movie lots under that cover. Met or saw quite a few celebs that way
finawest2014 - Wow, sad to see the "plastic" changes. My dad had worked around that studio over a summer back in the 1920's with his friend Joe S. and he would always tell my brother and myself what an amazing place it was! Like working around a royal palace or something of that nature. This is the first time I've ever seen what's left of MGM. Thank you so much for the updated video. I think of my father when he was very young.
I the summer of 1959 I actually went up to the guard shack at MGM. The security man said if I could wait unil 5:30 p,m. he would take me on back to the back lot. I was ten yrs old. the guard took me to the street used in the tvshow THE UNTOUCHABLES STARRING Robert sTACK.tHE SHOW FOr TELEVISION THE REAL mC coys WERE WRAPPING fOR THE DAY. tHE HAD BEEN SHOOTING EXTERIORS ALL DAY OF THE FRONT Of THEIR HOUSE. I REMEMBER SEEING Richard cREENA, Kathy Nolan, gRANDPA PLAYED BY walter breenen. They all got into separate black limos and up the small hill back to wardrobe where they changed into their street clothes. I saw Ron Howard get into a Limo as well as they were finished for the day on the Andy GRiffith show. most of these shows were a DESI LOU production. The guard told me he was in line to get into the camera dept. Today,i am a member of The Screen ACtors Guild,so something rubbed off on me.I guess today that guard is a well known Camera man.
Richard Scott that is so wonderful! I really hope one day I can move to California. My dad lived in LA for 35 years and was a stuntman for a few years. He also worked at an automobile repair shop in Hollywood.
Thank you for this, its brings alive those golden days of the "old" studios. I am an actor myself and have always had a huge love affair with the Hollywood of this period.....I often watch this film of yours, its magic....
They stood on the yellow brick road and auctioned off the greatest film studio in human history. It was an affront to history. MGM and WB played a role in shaping the Western World. At least WB has maintained theirs. What we see here is a facade. MGM was upwards of 70 acres at its peak. It had its own zoo, fire and police dept, etc. It should have been a landmark. For a city built on entertainment, they sure don't want to keep any of its history once it no longer makes money. This is like the dying off of WW2 vets. Every year there is less of Old Hollywood. Incredibly sad.
you appreciate the old star system so i'm going to recommend a gem of a book that David Niven wrote. "Bring on The Empty Horses". covers his friendship and outrageous happenings, parties with every star you're mentioned here. He was, of course with MGM for years. the book covers the "studio system" 1930- 1950'ish. it's absolutely filled with humour and some tragic tales but told in a truthful way deliverd with the humour that only Mr. Niven could pull off. enjoy!! find it, read it please let me know what you think.
The rainbow probably signifies WIZARD OF OZ. A friend got me into MGM some years ago when it was Columbia. There were really no references to MGM left but I had studied the sound stage numbers at one of the MGM university collections in LA so I knew where some of my favorite films had been shot. The only "pure" MGM artifact I saw was a glimpse of an old MGM fan with "MGM" printed in the standard MGM yellow and black color scheme. A tiny discovery but memorable to this day........
Great clip Clyde !. I did a tour through here in 2010 on a stopover in L.A when i was travelling from New Zealand to Denmark. It's a very interesting place.
I was in the National Guard in the early 70s and we went there for riot training in and around many of the old sets. Outside many of the buildings there were rows of props with auction tags on the thousands of items. It was a real treat to see many of the sets from TV and movies, but sad to know a lot of it would be gone in a few years. Our tour guides were our Sergeants. Better then nothing I guess.
In the film Elvis - That's The Way It Is (1970), there are some aerial scenes showing the entrance gate of the studios, as well as scenes of an internal street and access to one of the studios where Elvis and his band rehearsed. Very interesting! Does it all still exist?
It is a bit ironic that the studio called "Siberia" by Louis B Mayer back in the 30's now owns that studio. Columbia was a "B" studio, and worse, until Frank Capra came in and made "It Happened One NIght", which swept the major Academy Awards in 1934. Kirk Kerkorian was the man who dissected MGM; after buying the studio for it's name in 1969, he sold it off, piece by piece. The backlots went first, then the outlots, most everything inside it; props, sets, equipment. Finally, he sold the main studio plant to Lorimar-Telepictures in 1986; that's when Leo came down. When L-T failed in the early 90's, Sony, which had just purchased Columbia, bought the studios in Culver City. Some movies are still made there, but it's used mostly for television production these days. MGM is an office complex in Los Angeles; being purchased by Amazon gives them money they didn't have for many years.
It's all so sad when you think about it, this was the studio that one was suppose to have a job forever and that the studio would last forever. LBMayer must be turning over in his grave what they did to this studio, allegedly in the'70s at Kerkorian's bungling. Now all that's left are the films and perhaps Dorothy's ruby shoes. Thanks for posting. *PS: any tour footage of the Ambassador Hotel before they demolished? It should have been on NRHP or National Register of Historic Places.
OOOH YEAAAAA !!!!!! PICS & VIDEO'S W/ SOUND'S IN SIDE THE GATE'S & WALL'S OF THE PLACE & ALSO GOING ALL THE WAY AROUND THE OUTSIDE LIKE THIS GUY DID SHOWING & TALKING ABOUT IT ALLL.... BEING A NON DRIVER I HOPE THIS TIME........... LOL LOL
One more story I was working on a small film in RENO,Nev called MATLDA.i was just an extra back then. WEll as my friend and I were going a small distance away for lunch MR. BOB MITCHEM asked two of us if we minded he going to lunch with us. That's the kind of guy he was he would rather go to lunchth us two backgroung actors than eat with the principal actors in the film. He told us both some very interesting storys!! write me at scott24ric@gmail and I will tell you more.
u ever thought of doing u-tube style stuff......??? we all love to hear your short but very very very intrigging real life actor to actor said & done stuff........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IF U EVER DO LET US ALL KNOW SOME HOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1st time reading about all the 1st's of the mgm studio's here i really noticed every where thomas's last name is spelled sooooooo many differnt way's by sooooo many differnt ppl,. so far 1 lil quirk i found so far digging into the studio stuff...... but very very very intrigging !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for that merry go round tour. Reminded me of Ben Hur for some reason… At 3:03, you really believe the huge rainbow is due to the MGM motto about ‘more stars than in the heavens’? You don’t think it’s because of “Wizard Of Oz” / “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” filming on that spot? Just curious.
No. Their most recent acquisitions were 20th Century-Fox and associated motion pictures entities in 2020. What remains of MGM, mostly a production company and distributor these days, now belongs to Amazon.
I was born & raised in L.A., and grew up about 15 minutes from the studio. I spent my childhood in the 70's watching it both literally and figuratively fall apart (two neighborhood theaters, the Culver and the Meralta, were very close by, so we were in the area every week). I watched production stop, the backlots deteriorate, and the glorious MGM sign eventually replaced by a Sony Pictures one. Especially heart-breaking is the film "That's Entertainment" (1974), where the introductory vignettes with past stars shows just how run-down and deteriorated the lot was.
My childhood home was a few blocks away from MGM. I also attended St. Augustine's school too from K-8 grade. I have so many great memories of seeing celebrities and actors around Culver City, climbing through the fence and playing around backlot #2 until we got chased away, and many on-location filming sites. My family moved away from the area in 1981 so seeing the changes to the studio are surprising. I remember going to the Culver theater before it was converted to a tri-plex and the Merelta and Palms theaters too.
MGM Stands For Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/UA Stands For United Artists Studios Is Going To Buy For The History of MGM Stands For Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/UA Stands For United Artists Studios Is Universal Studios
1ST TIME READING ALL THIS COOL INTRIGGING STUFF HERE & REALLY STARTING TO DIG INTO MGM STUDIO'S STUFF.... I 1ST noticed that very very lil is said about the 3 original mgm guy's & the thomas guy his real last name is spelled 9 billions differant way's i been reading........ & also noticed no one knows much about the studio place before it was called mgm........................ ????? hummmmmmm another thing that really grab's me !!!!! we all know that film has been around 4 ever but no one really filmed the area all 4 sides of the mgm now sony place of Magic here like every yr., pr month the studio sold off old lot's like across the street or took down building's on or off or even really close by the place here HOW EVER OFTEN THAT WAS ALL DONE IN ALL HONESTY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that would be super cool to see local's & their small brief's or point's of real life view's on or of all 4 sides of the studio place here...................................................................................................
It was “More stars than there are in the heavens”, NOT “more stars than the Gates of heaven.” Meaning celestial, not religion related. Louis B. Mayer was a very family oriented, religious man. NO WAY, would he have had a slogan that mocked God. Because it doesn’t.
Wow...Nobody even at this video for years. Thanks for your car cruse on Culver. Culver was where the original MGM studios main gate was but there is no trace of it now. Not even a tree.
Thank you that was wonderful to watch, I’m an old guy from England, who loved all the old MGM movies as a child
To see that tour of the studio was magic to me.
Thanks for shooting this footage of the old MGM studios. I'm glad the name Metro Goldwyn Mayer hasn't faded into history. I'm even a fan of the current studio because it's hard not to expect big things from Leo the Lion and Co. I especially enjoyed your narration. You clearly appreciate the source material. Me too. I love nostalgia and film history, and MGM has both! Again, thank you for posting.
Thank you for this video, you were careful not to get into an accident with all that traffic. I loved the MGM studios, they were the best and they had the best staff, craftsmen, best clothes designers (Edit Head), and a lot of stars! Louis Mayer, gambled to much, and he was a sick man. Divorced his wife, and his life went down hill from there! MGM lost money more then it made, television was the new game in town and he didn't go for it. His bosses in NY thought otherwise, and eventually he was removed as the head of the studio. By the 1970's, MGM was washed up, pieces of it went for sale, and thank god for Debbie Reynolds who bought up thousands of clothes, and some artifacts from the movies made there, and TCM help save the films from MGM and other studios that were decaying in their metal boxes. Those days of from the Golden Age, are gone forever. Few have memories and appreciation. New generation has no idea how these movies were made from start to finish. The stars weren't stuck up like they are now. They didn't live in million dollar homes with cameras inside and out of their homes. The studios protected them, some were innocent and others were not, but the studio back their stars up. Not today, your on your own defense!
Well, freedom has its price but also it's advantages. I don't think I could have been a young woman under the studio system and had my life directed as well as my movies. The movies are fine; direct me! But stay out of my personal life.
Debbie's museum was advertised on a billboard at the Hollywood & Highland site some years ago but it never happened.
Hollywood today is not the same. So much of the magic is now gone... Strictly "corporate" with NO imagination. I pulled a work gig at the MGM, now "Sony Studios" in the early 2000s. In High School that would have been a "dream", but by then it felt like nothing to me, due to the current culture. The "old" Hollywood is still fascinating nonetheless. Thanks for the narrative. Read the Wikipedia on *Irving Thalberg.* It's fascinating. So sad he died at such a young age...
GREAT tour! Keep up the good work! LOVE old Hollywood history.
Also in 1959 I was a paper boy for the Loas Angeles Herald Examiner. MY route mainly was on Arizona Ave. I also went up to Wilshire Blvd. WEll, this was something my lasr customer of the day on Ocean Park BLVD was the great MR. Stan Laurel. That was the only customer my mom asked if she could come with me to collect... MR laurel said od course she can,the night before I came over he asked me her first name I told him Maxine and so he called her miss. Maxine. He was a true gentleman. My mom told him she worked the uptown Theatre in Kansascity...well they ended up talking for some time!!
Now THAT! is an awesome story, sadly I doubt anyone would get that kind of friendly reception from a modern celebrity.
That's so cool! The Uptown theatre in Kansas City is such a beautiful old vaudeville theatre!
Aw, that's so lovely. I imagine Stan Laurel appreciated talking to your mom, a regular person about regular things and regular places. Laurel and Hardy were my favorite as a kid and I never ever liked the three stooges because they were so mean to each other
The area just beyond the gate on Overland (and Washington) is where one of the King Kong (1976) sets was built. This set was used for walled village where Dwan was "sacrificed" to Kong and the NYC scene where Kong is caged and on display before he breaks loose from his cage. I remember seeing the Kong's head and shoulders over the wall for a few weeks. It's fun stuff when you're a kid. Great memories.
Thank you so much for sharing. Hollywood must have been such a glamorous and magical place in its heyday. So sad to see that much isn't left from the original MGM studios.
In my past life, I worked at MGM in the 1930s for Fox Movietone News doing newsreels, also in the Publicity Dept & maybe in the Orchestra. I may have been a sound technician & a musician. I believe that a lot of us who love MGM probably worked there in past lives. I wish I could take a trip out there to see it one more time. I watched every MGM film I could as a kid. That studio was so classy & glamourous.
Nice work man ... it’s really great to see the old studios like this ...
Thank you for posting that! There really isn't much left of MGM - just the gates and the Thalberg building. It's really sad what happened in the 1970s.
Reduced to RoboCop sequels and Bill & Ted movies
The real disintegration of MGM started in the late 1940s. The studio had been at the top of the heap until the Supreme Court ruled against the big studios and thus, broke up theater chains. When that happened, Metro, and to a certain extent, Warners, Fox and Paramount, also started to decline because all of their stars whether it was Gable, Tyrone Power, Bogie, etc., all became independent. If anything, the smaller studios like Columbia and United Artists flourished in the 1950s and '60s because they didn't own theaters or have too many stars under long-term contracts. Check the lists of Best Picture Oscar winners between 1950 and 1970, In that time, UA released 7 Best Pics while Columbia released 6. Meanwhile, MGM had its last 3 Oscar winners., Fox had two and Paramount and Warners one each. The perfect example was Humphrey Bogart, a big Warner Bros. star. He made one great war picture on loanout for Columbia ("Sahara") and he liked the way Columbia was run. When his contract with Warners ran out, he formed his own production company (Santana Productions) and released most of his last films through Columbia. Meanwhile, MGM seemed behind the times. When Mayer still ran the studio, he rarely made anything daring and when he did (in the case of films like "Intruder in the Dust" and "The Asphalt Jungle:), he fought against havng them made.When I was a kid in the 1950s, I liked a lot of the MGM output, so I was shocked in looking at different Wikipedia articles on many of the films and found how many of them lost money. It's ironic that now Sony/ Columbia now is the owner of the Culver City studios because in the 1930s when stars misbehaved, Mayer threatened to send them on loanout to Columbia. According to Frank Capra, Gable referred to Columbia as "Siberia." Now, the tables have been turned..
@@williamsnyder5616 Thank you for that fascinating information. Maybe you should write a book? I would read it.
@@williamsnyder5616 I'm glad the actors were given independence and we feel sentimental about MGM but they were kind of a dinosaur that refused to evolve. Arrogance, I guess.
@General Grievous The Galactic Hero wooow .... really didn't know this but very intrigging....
I was born in Culver City, my first job was in a coffee shop across from the gates. When they scheduled the back lots for demolition we would sneak in at night, and run around. I was still in High School, so it was in the early seventies. I went to their auction, but couldn't afford to bid on anything. I've always been proud to say I'm from the home of MGM.
I appreciate this. I've always been a huge fan of Hollywood and Showbiz history but never knew about the viewing tower you showed here. I also was a messenger in the late 70's/80's and would sneak onto all the movie lots under that cover. Met or saw quite a few celebs that way
Great video: you can feel the atmosphere, the memories, that resonate from these sound stages...
Fantastic video... thank you so much
finawest2014 - Wow, sad to see the "plastic" changes. My dad had worked around that studio over a summer back in the 1920's with his friend Joe S. and he would always tell my brother and myself what an amazing place it was! Like working around a royal palace or something of that nature. This is the first time I've ever seen what's left of MGM. Thank you so much for the updated video. I think of my father when he was very young.
I the summer of 1959 I actually went up to the guard shack at MGM. The security man said if I could wait unil 5:30 p,m. he would take me on back to the back lot. I was ten yrs old. the guard took me to the street used in the tvshow THE UNTOUCHABLES STARRING Robert sTACK.tHE SHOW FOr TELEVISION THE REAL mC coys WERE WRAPPING fOR THE DAY. tHE HAD BEEN SHOOTING EXTERIORS ALL DAY OF THE FRONT Of THEIR HOUSE. I REMEMBER SEEING Richard cREENA, Kathy Nolan, gRANDPA PLAYED BY walter breenen. They all got into separate black limos and up the small hill back to wardrobe where they changed into their street clothes. I saw Ron Howard get into a Limo as well as they were finished for the day on the Andy GRiffith show. most of these shows were a DESI LOU production. The guard told me he was in line to get into the camera dept. Today,i am a member of The Screen ACtors Guild,so something rubbed off on me.I guess today that guard is a well known Camera man.
Richard Scott that is so wonderful! I really hope one day I can move to California. My dad lived in LA for 35 years and was a stuntman for a few years. He also worked at an automobile repair shop in Hollywood.
Ric Scott Awesome experience!
Thanks for sharing! I love hearing stories like these.
Thank you for this, its brings alive those golden days of the "old" studios. I am an actor myself and have always had a huge love affair with the Hollywood of this period.....I often watch this film of yours, its magic....
Thank you for a lovely tour. You sure know a lot :)
They stood on the yellow brick road and auctioned off the greatest film studio in human history. It was an affront to history. MGM and WB played a role in shaping the Western World. At least WB has maintained theirs. What we see here is a facade. MGM was upwards of 70 acres at its peak. It had its own zoo, fire and police dept, etc. It should have been a landmark.
For a city built on entertainment, they sure don't want to keep any of its history once it no longer makes money. This is like the dying off of WW2 vets. Every year there is less of Old Hollywood. Incredibly sad.
Thank you for the tour, sir!
Thank you for such tour n insight I’m such a silent era/ golden Hollywood age fan❤️
Sad....But you can still see Leo the Lion on so many beautiful movie classics, which will continue to delight everyone....
you appreciate the old star system so i'm going to recommend a gem of a book that David Niven wrote. "Bring on The Empty Horses". covers his friendship and outrageous happenings, parties with every star you're mentioned here. He was, of course with MGM for years. the book covers the "studio system" 1930- 1950'ish. it's absolutely filled with humour and some tragic tales but told in a truthful way deliverd with the humour that only Mr. Niven could pull off. enjoy!! find it, read it please let me know what you think.
Awesome tour, I am fascinated with Hollywood history, you have another subscriber in me
You left out the first Queen of Hollywood, Greta Garbo. MGM was the only studio she was ever under contract to in America.
Thank you for sharing this with us! great video! Would I be correct in thinking that was the music from Ben-Hur?
The rainbow probably signifies WIZARD OF OZ. A friend got me into MGM some years ago when it was Columbia. There were really no references to MGM left but I had studied the sound stage numbers at one of the MGM university collections in LA so I knew where some of my favorite films had been shot. The only "pure" MGM artifact I saw was a glimpse of an old MGM fan with "MGM" printed in the standard MGM yellow and black color scheme. A tiny discovery but memorable to this day........
Every local is cursing you right now 😂
I thoroughly enjoyed your tour and your knowledge of old Hollywood. Great video. You have another subscriber.
Very interesting. Thank you!
Great job.
How sad that this studio used to create great movies. Now it's mostly mediocre claptrap. It's no longer about quality, just box office revenues.
Took the words right out of my mouth...
dumb comment!!
Thank you. Its sad though to see all the backlots gone...
But you never shot the entire entrance building. What happened to the building?
Great clip Clyde !. I did a tour through here in 2010 on a stopover in L.A when i was travelling from New Zealand to Denmark. It's a very interesting place.
great video, thanks so much for sharing
Is MGM studios still open and do they still film movies there?
Thanks for this video, man. Absolutely awesome. Do you have the MGM Backlot Book with all the pictures? It is great.
I was in the National Guard in the early 70s and we went there for riot training in and around many of the old sets. Outside many of the buildings there were rows of props with auction tags on the thousands of items. It was a real treat to see many of the sets from TV and movies, but sad to know a lot of it would be gone in a few years. Our tour guides were our Sergeants. Better then nothing I guess.
In the film Elvis - That's The Way It Is (1970), there are some aerial scenes showing the entrance gate of the studios, as well as scenes of an internal street and access to one of the studios where Elvis and his band rehearsed. Very interesting! Does it all still exist?
Is Warner Bros movie studio in Culver City too?
How many acres is MGM studios?
what a cool video!
It is a bit ironic that the studio called "Siberia" by Louis B Mayer back in the 30's now owns that studio. Columbia was a "B" studio, and worse, until Frank Capra came in and made "It Happened One NIght", which swept the major Academy Awards in 1934. Kirk Kerkorian was the man who dissected MGM; after buying the studio for it's name in 1969, he sold it off, piece by piece. The backlots went first, then the outlots, most everything inside it; props, sets, equipment. Finally, he sold the main studio plant to Lorimar-Telepictures in 1986; that's when Leo came down. When L-T failed in the early 90's, Sony, which had just purchased Columbia, bought the studios in Culver City. Some movies are still made there, but it's used mostly for television production these days. MGM is an office complex in Los Angeles; being purchased by Amazon gives them money they didn't have for many years.
Kind of fabulous.
It's all so sad when you think about it, this was the studio that one was suppose to have a job forever and that the studio would last forever. LBMayer must be turning over in his grave what they did to this studio, allegedly in the'70s at Kerkorian's bungling. Now all that's left are the films and perhaps Dorothy's ruby shoes. Thanks for posting.
*PS: any tour footage of the Ambassador Hotel before they demolished? It should have been on NRHP or National Register of Historic Places.
couldn't agree more dude.It's heartbreaking
can you do a old columbia pictures studios
OOOH YEAAAAA !!!!!! PICS & VIDEO'S W/ SOUND'S IN SIDE THE GATE'S & WALL'S OF THE PLACE & ALSO GOING ALL THE WAY AROUND THE OUTSIDE LIKE THIS GUY DID SHOWING & TALKING ABOUT IT ALLL.... BEING A NON DRIVER I HOPE THIS TIME........... LOL LOL
So so sad what happened to mum but thank you this great video
Some where near the MGM studios was the Hal Roach Studios. Torn down in the Sixties it now lies under a used car dealership.
Credric Gibbons was one of the top executives from 1925 to 1956.
Great video
cool video :)
i hope since im a little boy that i will ever seen that beautiful place...:(
nice Greetings
from Frankfurt, Germany.
just curious, isn't there a Charlie Chaplin footprint walk in a sidewalk? you can walk in? wondering where that is. thanks
I like working on that lot.
One more story I was working on a small film in RENO,Nev called MATLDA.i was just an extra back then. WEll as my friend and I were going a small distance away for lunch MR. BOB MITCHEM asked two of us if we minded he going to lunch with us. That's the kind of guy he was he would rather go to lunchth us two backgroung actors than eat with the principal actors in the film. He told us both some very interesting storys!! write me at scott24ric@gmail and I will tell you more.
u ever thought of doing u-tube style stuff......??? we all love to hear your short but very very very intrigging real life actor to actor said & done stuff........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IF U EVER DO LET US ALL KNOW SOME HOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Universal Studios Is Going To Buy For The History of Universal Studios Is The MGM Stands For Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/UA Stands For United Artists Studios
first metro studio in Romaine Street em Hollywood,
any good real pics,. or video's from any one still alive to post this cool stuff..................??????????????????
Wow! I wish I lived around cool places....here in Texas I just see the cows asses.....
Alice Wonderland 😂😂😂
Plenty of cow size asses in la too
LOL
Another good book about Hollywood is THERE REALLY WAS A HOLLYWOOD BY JANET LEIGH. A TRUE LADY, GREAT ACTRESS AND HAD CLASS.
Cheers mate thanks for your Video. & the interesting information you have along the way ..
Can any one out there tell me anything about actor Walter Burke
I think that Thomas Inance died at 43 of a bleeding ulcer ; from what I've heard from watching a UA-cam video on Haunted Hollywood.
1st time reading about all the 1st's of the mgm studio's here i really noticed every where thomas's last name is spelled sooooooo many differnt way's by sooooo many differnt ppl,. so far 1 lil quirk i found so far digging into the studio stuff...... but very very very intrigging !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At the original MGM studios, stage 27 was were the Munchkin set was. Later MGM or Sony put a new floor over the yellow brick road in the Munchkin set.
It's sad to see the legendary MGM studios write Sony Pictures ..
My house is built on lot 3
The Rainbow That Significed The Studio of MGM-Universal That Had More Stars Than They Are In Heaven
Thanks for that merry go round tour. Reminded me of Ben Hur for some reason…
At 3:03, you really believe the huge rainbow is due to the MGM motto about ‘more stars than in the heavens’?
You don’t think it’s because of “Wizard Of Oz” / “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” filming on that spot? Just curious.
OLD MGM 2015
It's now Sony, but Sony will never be MGM.
Sadly MGM began to sell all costumes in 1970. Then they sold the old sets and they were destroyied.
did Disney bought MGM?
Nope. They only bought the rights to use it for their Hollywood Studios park for the time.
No. Their most recent acquisitions were 20th Century-Fox and associated motion pictures entities in 2020. What remains of MGM, mostly a production company and distributor these days, now belongs to Amazon.
This is where Marilyn Monroe done her films too ?
MM was at Fox.
@General Grievous The Galactic Hero OK KOOL INFO,. WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THAT STUDIO ( S ).....????
Sad
I was born & raised in L.A., and grew up about 15 minutes from the studio. I spent my childhood in the 70's watching it both literally and figuratively fall apart (two neighborhood theaters, the Culver and the Meralta, were very close by, so we were in the area every week). I watched production stop, the backlots deteriorate, and the glorious MGM sign eventually replaced by a Sony Pictures one. Especially heart-breaking is the film "That's Entertainment" (1974), where the introductory vignettes with past stars shows just how run-down and deteriorated the lot was.
My childhood home was a few blocks away from MGM. I also attended St. Augustine's school too from K-8 grade. I have so many great memories of seeing celebrities and actors around Culver City, climbing through the fence and playing around backlot #2 until we got chased away, and many on-location filming sites. My family moved away from the area in 1981 so seeing the changes to the studio are surprising. I remember going to the Culver theater before it was converted to a tri-plex and the Merelta and Palms theaters too.
MGM Stands For Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/UA Stands For United Artists Studios Is Going To Buy For The History of MGM Stands For Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/UA Stands For United Artists Studios Is Universal Studios
1ST TIME READING ALL THIS COOL INTRIGGING STUFF HERE & REALLY STARTING TO DIG INTO MGM STUDIO'S STUFF.... I 1ST noticed that very very lil is said about the 3 original mgm guy's & the thomas guy his real last name is spelled 9 billions differant way's i been reading........ & also noticed no one knows much about the studio place before it was called mgm........................ ????? hummmmmmm another thing that really grab's me !!!!! we all know that film has been around 4 ever but no one really filmed the area all 4 sides of the mgm now sony place of Magic here like every yr., pr month the studio sold off old lot's like across the street or took down building's on or off or even really close by the place here HOW EVER OFTEN THAT WAS ALL DONE IN ALL HONESTY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that would be super cool to see local's & their small brief's or point's of real life view's on or of all 4 sides of the studio place here...................................................................................................
"More stars than the gates of heaven.' I hate when Hollywood mocks God, yet He still sits on His throne. Where are they and their gazillions stars?
It was “More stars than there are in the heavens”, NOT “more stars than the Gates of heaven.”
Meaning celestial, not religion related.
Louis B. Mayer was a very family oriented, religious man. NO WAY, would he have had a slogan that mocked God. Because it doesn’t.
How you know he didn't mock God?
Are you driving up the middle of the entire street? That's smart. smh
You really shouldn’t be filming in a turning lane the way you are doing. You’re going to cause an accident.