S3 E6: Fantasyland

is it more than a cliche to call la the Dream Factory a place where fantasy comes alive for over a century the images and stories created here have been enjoyed on screens around the world but here in LA the storytelling lept from the screen long ago it became part of our built environment Southern California practically invented the theme park and perfected the themed restaurant it became a land of fanciful architecture of fairytale houses and rum-soaked tiki bars how did Los Angeles become a place where you can imagine anything and actually build it why do we create fantasy lands what happens when fantasy and reality collide la is an idea as much as a city a set of hopes and beliefs that inspired millions to move here but behind the idea of la are the stories of people dreamers who realize their vision for Southern California and others who failed so let's look back and uncover some clues to a forgotten past in the archives Lost la explores the untold history behind the fantasy of California I was recently browsing through an archive of sorts my family's home movie collection and was struck by how often I visited theme parks as a child growing up in Anaheim from Knott's Berry Farm to Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom Disneyland in fact served as a second backyard for my family with our season passes we spent countless weekends inhabiting the parks carefully constructed fantasy worlds it's something most Southern Californians experienced including those who didn't grow up down the road from Disneyland our region's most successful shopping malls places like the Grove at the farmers market or the Americana brand transport shoppers young and old to someplace or somewhere else I wanted to get into the mind of someone who brings these types of worlds to life so I visited the man behind the Grove in the Americana developer Rick Caruso and his most recent retail Center in Pacific Palisades so there's a really long tradition of in Los Angeles of Angelenos wanting to go to places that transport them to a different time in place and that you could date that back to the arrival of the film industry I mean the film industry is interesting to me but the studio lots been so fascinated by there's a life there's an energy there's you know it just it's very unique and I always thought to myself they haven't an office on a studio lot would be so cool in an actuality what I've done in my own life is we have our corporate offices at the Grove we have our own studio a lot right right and now we have an office here at the Palisades it's our own studio lot but there's just something so magical about living in this world that you've created yeah and that's the way the studios are yeah absolutely yeah I think that's even true of downtown LA which today is experiencing the resurgence of sorts but but many of the buildings are leased in the historic core we're both right around 1910 1920 right they're all in a similar style of argot suppose arts architectural style spectacular buildings they are spectacular brains LA at the time was trying to present an image of itself that was different than what had already been right mimicking what was going on in Chicago in New York right there is some artifice you know that - yeah of course of course and what happens though I think also which is interesting is some of that artifice then becomes historical in and of itself right you know we have an opportunity to do something that creates its own history you know because I build these projects with the attitude that they're here forever right long after I'm gone or whatever the cases the people are still enjoying this and if I want people to still enjoy it for generations we have to build something that lasts just like the building's you were talking about on spring and Broadway those beautiful buildings the architecture how has the film industry informed you know the design of places like Palisades village or the Grove Americana the film industry has had a lot of influence in probably ways that they would never expect it to but I think the main thing that I really took away from movies is this concept that everybody has whatever stress struggles friction in their life right and if you can take them to a place that they really do feel they've just been transported there's an emotional connection that you create [Music] what we also did is we hired in the past in one of our projects out of Calabasas actually a set designer because we were struggling with the architects getting exactly what I wanted and so there's a book that lists every set designer and I started calling and by bringing a gentleman named Richard Sawyer by bringing Richard in and teaming him up with the architects richer by definition had an eye of making things look real and the right scale what he also did for us is he allowed us to tap into the library of the studios because Studios have incredible architectural libraries because they have to build these sets that have to look real Rick's not alone in his fascination with movie studios studio tours of production lots are among the most popular tourist activities in LA and the tradition goes way back I was curious how the allure of these dream factories might have influenced other fantasy makers like Walt Disney so I consulted one of the leading experts on early Hollywood history Marc Wanamaker of the Bison archives it turns out his offices are located appropriately enough on one of Hollywood's oldest studio Lots so today studio tours are a really popular thing to do if you're visiting in LA or even if you live here really like Paramount has a popular tour Universal turn that into a theme park yes but that that dates way back at the very beginning when they were here in 1909 they usually kept their sets to themselves in other words on their own studio lot the tours actually start with the Edison film company packed about I'd say around 1910 1911 when he built proper studios the studios themselves were thinking they would advertise their films utilizing this kind of fantasy aspect to the public so for example they have full-page stories in the in the different newspapers and magazines whole photographic essays showing the sets and saying Los Angeles is the world you can come here and see our sets and this is how we make our films and this is what got people to go to see the films they also wanted to see where they made them this goes oh we got nineteen fifteen and interestingly enough the the Studios started to to experiment with this as a publicity tool the biggest sets of all really I guess the epic sets which became classic is DW Griffith's sets for intolerance right which in 1916 and it's done I think was one hundred and thirty feet high this is all at the intersection of Sunset in Hollywood yeah well you know where the Vista theater is yes a Sunset Boulevard Hillhurst Hollywood Boulevard Virgil that whole intersection yes well where the Vista theatre is is where the intolerance that stood and these sets stood for about four years so it was standing out there for four years section became an international tourist landmark so DW Griffith essentially reconstructed ancient Babylon here in Los Angeles and then Angelenos were welcome to stroll through yes they couldn't help it you'd ride by and their hundred and thirty foot says so people were surrounded by these really sort of surreal themed environments and he fast-forward 40 years or so and a man named Walt Disney opens opens his Magic Kingdom in Anaheim where you're essentially walking into a movie right that's the his name okay when he came out here in the early 20s he went to his uncle's house on King's well Avenue which is about one or two blocks away from the vitae graft studio in East Hollywood he used to go just like everybody else did climb up on the fence and look at the sets really he's inspired from this to build something much grander and so Hollywood the fake Hollywood there between the real the fantasy inspired many people like him in today's Hollywood a young Walt Disney probably couldn't get away with climbing all over movie sets and the studio tours mark described seemed a far cry from full-fledged amusement parks like Universal Studios Hollywood to learn more about how an industrial plant like a film studio could spawn a massive tourist operation I knew I needed to speak with a head of NBC Universal archives Jeff Pirtle so Universal Studios it's a you know fully functional production facility it's a working facility but people also know it as a theme park it's an amusement park yeah when did that when did the modern Universal Studios open as a theme park the modern Universal Studios opened as a theme park in July 1964 the official grand opening of Universal City was held on March 15 1915 the general public was invited to come see how movies were made and about 10 to 15 thousand people showed up Wow these are the bleachers that were constructed for visitors to Universal City to see how productions were made and in these areas below the bleachers you can see all these different doors these were each dressing rooms so the players and all the films could go in here and change clothes for each theme so you buy a ticket for the studio tour you could accidentally bump into a movie star oh absolutely it was a frequent occurrence I'm sure and so how long did this go on for it was obviously very popular at the beginning and how long did it survive so in the beginning people were invited to cheer the heroes to boo the villains they were invited to be interactive in all of these productions because it was during the silent era and it didn't matter you didn't have a boom mic in front of you and you didn't have to worry about all the success of noise in the background so the crowds could be as loud as they wanted however at that had vent of sound in the late 1920s there was a need for quiet sense and so it's with that advent of sound that the studio had to cease inviting the general public to see how movies were made so Universal went a few decades without a studio tour that's right and then Lew Wasserman saw these photos right Lew Wasserman and his executive vice-president aldor skin' were trying to think of new ways to generate revenue at the studio studio legend has it that they saw these photographs and thought why don't we start inviting the public back to the studio to see how movies were made and so that was the genesis of the idea for the modern studio tour that story speaks to the enduring value of archival collections imagine how many millions those photographs made for a Lew Wasserman and Universal more importantly the photos wonderfully document how the film industry has been transporting Angelenos to different times and places for more than a century and not just through tours Once Upon a Time outpost of unreality we're popping up all over Los Angeles well for anybody who's been for instance the Hollywood Highland you've got a full-size replica of the intolerance set that was WD Griffith right and that was originally where the Vista theater is which I forget what the two streets are but that was a set that was out in the middle of nowhere in fact a lot of Hollywood designers a lot of Hollywood set designers also worked as architects designing homes and a lot of Architects worked in the Hollywood business and designing sets so there was a real cross-pollination in the physical environment you couldn't go too far through the city without somebody filming something or some set somewhere so we kind of grew up in Los Angeles that this was a sort of an ordinary thing it wasn't really weird and I think that's one of their inspirations for a lot of the people who wanted to do these tours is the fact that you could finally get backstage and see how the films were being made that would be great all over Los Angeles there were a lot of the sets especially as you came out into the San Fernando Valley here's a good example you're driving down and you're passing what is now the the Jim Henson Studios which was AM records which before that was Charlie Chaplin's studio and he built what looks like a residential facade the same architect who designed the studio also built houses for Charlie Chaplin just down the street you had a lot of that you had a lot of once again a lot of the architects we're working is in the movie studio is in a lot of the movie studio people were working as architects as well too so there was such a cross that's why you had these kind of funky little restaurants you had like pig and whistle you had the Tam O'Shanter you had quite a few of these you had the Clifton's Clifton's i think is probably one of the best examples a lot of people don't realize that Los Angeles prior to World War two manufactured more tires than any other city in the United States other than Akron and so you don't just build a tire factory you build the Babylon tire factory which is the thing that's the thing that's in the city of Commerce the old Goodrich thing that's the facade look like as a Babylonian temple so even industrial buildings had to be a little bit more showy just to take advantage of it coca-cola is housed in what looks like a steamship from the 30s so because this was a showbizzy kind of town you could you could get away with those sort of things la is just full of themed buildings we have a lot of these things in this city and it's just because the weather allows you to do it and the people are dreamers and you're not as concerned about the weather you can design kind of whatever you want we started off very differently than any other American city we were govern it differently than any other American city we have an image that's different than any other American city and we've lived up to it it's a weird it's a weird city and that's one of the reasons why things like the Universal Studios tour could exist and why Disneyland could be invented only really in Los Angeles could that be when it first opened in 1955 Disneyland was the ultimate Fantasyland its creator Walt Disney envisioned it as a place where his pen-and-ink movies would take physical form where families could experience his timeless stories as three-dimensional worlds there is three parts about Walt Disney that fascinated me his core expertise was a cartoonist right and if a man that's what he was doing and if Walt Disney what had just stayed as a cartoonist and it was a great cartoonist probably none of us would remember Walt Disney his other talent was as he transitioned and formed the Walt Disney Company he ended up being a really smart businessperson and a manager right so we had this incredible creative side you have this incredible other side of his brain there was a business side right but even those two together we probably wouldn't remember him the third component that really made Walt Disney Walt Disney is he had vision he had this ability to see around corners to understand what people wanted to tap into their lives and to make that emotional connection and then the courage and the strength and the determination to make it happen against all odds really at the time against all odds so to have the combination of the creativity the business mind of the vision I think he's a great example of an American phenomenon who changed the world in ways that nobody would have ever predicted Walt Disney was always looking over the horizon of success for his next golden opportunity I wanted to learn more about how the producer of groundbreaking and wildly popular animated films made the leap into an entirely new kind of business so I visited the Walt Disney Archives in Burbank and sat down with their director Rebecca Klein children and presumably adults to wanted to see where the magic was made by them fortunately for logistical reasons Disney never offered tours of its of its studio unlike like other studios the original Disney Studios the first one was in Hollywood it was just a little storefront over on near Vermont in Hollywood and then there was a studio that was built at the Culver pipe Irian studio which was on Hyperion in Griffith Park Boulevard it's a Gelson's now exactly and that one is where Snow White was was first you know animated and also Mickey Mouse when and Donald Duck were both born there that studio we outgrew it almost immediately in and so in 1939 with the profits from Snow White we were able to build this studio here in Burbank and so when we when we built this studio almost immediately you know people were reading about the brand-new Burbank studio and the Disney Studios over the hill and people started writing to the studio and writing to Walt and saying you know we want to come see where Snow White lives and where Mickey Mouse lives he knew that it would be really hard on the staff to have visitors coming through while they were working in the cramped quarters that that even here they had and it would be really hard for that you know them to do that and so he started thinking how can I you know share this with the public how we make this magic and that's actually what gave all the inspiration originally to start thinking about what he termed a kiddie park it eventually morphed into something bigger and they announced plans to make a park and by that time they realized that that's that plot was much too small so they started looking south and ended up in Orange County and found the land in Anaheim so they never did do tours of the studio so this is a really special piece this is here in the archives one of our documents is the prospectus that they used to get investors for Disneyland Wow and so what this is is a this aerial schematic this is a print of what Disneyland looked like in their imagination Walton and herb Ryman but Disney didn't draw this himself no herb Ryman one of his Imagineers one of the artists here at the studio did it was Walt standing over his shoulder they built it in a year one year it's amazing yeah it couldn't do that today no way but but they did it and so they didn't have so they had artwork so the animators here at the studio the illustrators here drew what they envisioned each each land would look like so the very first guidebook doesn't have any photographs in it it just has has illustrations so in order to create Disneyland Walt Disney had in a sense invent a new profession the imagine year right how do how did this come about he took some of his animators and people that were already working on animated films very famous Imagineers like John hench and Ken Anderson and Mark Davis they were all working on animated films previously but well knew they had this vision that they could make this happen and so it was it was the vision of an art director who was used to creating scenic elements to give you that that dimensional feel that you were walking into a movie was the idea its architecture that tells the story exactly it's storytelling through architecture and so a traditional architect didn't really get that but he had these wonderful art directors who could work with the structural you know engineers and architects and there's some amazingly talented men and women that worked with with Walt's in the beginning on Disneyland cuz most of Disneyland was constructed here on the lot and trucked down to Disneyland really well not really realize that huh who were these fabled Imagineers who turned two-dimensional sketches into three-dimensional living stories I wanted to meet one for myself so I visited Disney Legend Bob Kerr the man behind the monorail and many of the ride vehicles of the Disney theme parks to learn how he and his fellow Imagineers made a magic world feel real how did you become an Imagineer they needed somebody to do a body for a little car they had a little chassis in the back lot need a car body the way he finds people is usually asking other people I he he asked had several guys in the studio that were movie directors and animators and they were car guys and they knew who I was so I come in as the car guy and that immediately led to Walt has ideas for more stuff including cars it was one thing after another for all those years to go Walt won a number one Autopia main street vehicle is omnibus and then in 1959 he won at the monorail the Matterhorn the submarine a motorboat and a new Autopia car all fire was probably done in the same year and I worked at Disneyland and I actually drove some of the very vehicles that I believe you designed I drove the fire engine I drove the horseless carriage which I believe is nicknamed the ger Moby oh that's if I'm right about that yes yeah and you designed those yes all the main street vehicles we had the red car the yellow car we had to omnibuses and then I talked Walt Disney into the doing the fire engine because I secretly wanted a fire engine I remember I we were always told that it was such a privilege to drive that because it was Walt Disney's favorite vehicle yes it is yeah and those cars are still in service today 60 years later yes it's impressive well let's we got a mint remember it's because it's standard store-bought parts now the rest of the radiator the engine fly away fly allowed transmission driveshaft rear axle out to the brakes the stock parts it just looks old so so why was it so important to make it look you know antique ok first off it's Disneyland Main Street is roughly 1900 to 1905 right in that area remember Walt's telling stories and when you do stories you need to do it right it needs to be historically correct look at all the architects all the set designers look what they did with Main Street so when I was asked to design the vehicles I could see automatically what are the things you need to do as far as a vehicle design that is authentic to anybody who really understands and story cars it might take a little more time cost a little bit more but I just couldn't see doing any other way than doing it just like Walt said just get it right so Main Street USA sort of creates this you walk down Main Street you you get the sense that you're in well sort of a nostalgic reimagining of a turn-of-the-century small town yeah you got to remember Oh what went from cartoons movies television now we're in a literally 3d walk around in that Park so every detail the storefronts the colors the decorations all of that has to be completely correct and then when you put vehicles that are modern equipment they have to look exactly to fit that architecture in that theme design that's the primary job of an Imagineer yes yes he only collected people that were curious I mean it's absurd to ask somebody to do something that just requires engineers but he didn't care he grabbed people who could figure out what he wanted and how they do look at all the people that it takes to make a movie you've got writers you got set designers you have costume all of these things to tell a story Walt was collecting people from all over in 1954-55 we're going to design literally a movie story but it's going to be a tangible movie story that the guests can go in and not so much walk around - guests can be part of that story a lot of people missed that point there are important differences between both places but whenever I visit Rick Russo's Grove I'm reminded of my childhood strolls down Disneyland's Main Street USA Southern California's fascination with fantasy lands is alive and well today so as a real estate developer you could build your your centers really any way you want and yet you invest them with with so much story and so much imagination why do you do that I am so passionate about architecture and about the history of architecture and trying to get architecture to be really real and so studying what Disney did on their Main Street studying what Studios do in building sets I want to design things that give you a signal that you're in a better place and you can relax so you can have fun or you can just be with your family like the trolley trolley at the Grove was the most outrageous idea you're gonna build a trolley in the middle of a shopping center and it actually doesn't go anywhere right I mean think about it have you heard from people who say you know I'm surprised by how much I like the oh yeah yeah the people that enjoy using it enjoy the fact that it creates this space that is almost protected and it creates a space that is a little bit of fantasy it makes you feel good the more real I can make it the more relevant it becomes more emotional it becomes for somebody and it creates this attachment and that's really what we're looking to do LA's fantasy lands wouldn't exist without movie magic but they're also the product of shrewd business people who capitalized on the public's appetite for stories if la is The Dream Factory its products include more than film the artfully constructed elaborately themed fantasy lands it manufactures now belong to the rest of the world [Music] [Music] Union Bank is proud to support lost la additional funding for lost la made possible in part by the Ralph M Parsons foundation California State Library and Ray foundation and California Humanities

Channel: KCET

Views: 66,070

Rating: 4.903564 out of 5

Keywords: kcet, southern california, Lost L.A., Disneyland, Los Angeles, Anaheim, film, filmmakers, Imagineers, Walt Disney

Id: ZK7GRiUhhB8

Length: 26min 40sec (1600 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 27 2018