Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Past chats with our guests.
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Lzcutter
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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by Lzcutter »

Steven,

Wow, I am loving your posts! Did you get a chance to view the 60 Minutes piece? Does CBS or the Museum of Broadcasting have a viewing copy? The Dream Factory is another documentary that includes footage of the backlot and the auction. It used to air fairly regularly on TCM.

The original MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas (now Bally's) used to sell lobby cards, posters, props, costumes and other mementos from the studio in their Studio Memorabilia shop downstairs from the casino. It was a great store located across from the movie theater that showed studio prints of MGM classic films (and some modern ones like 2001, Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter).

Back in 1977, there was a flower shop on La Brea (just north of Wilshire) called "Cedric's Flowers". The story was that Gibbons had quite the green thumb and the flower shop was started by him back in the day as a place to sell his overflow of orchids and such from his garden.

Any idea if that story is true?
Lynn in Lake Balboa

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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by Steven Bingen »

Dear Moira,

1) It’s interesting you caught the implication in the Gibbons vs. Minnelli battle. Now, of course, an art director who wanted to keep his job could never refuse to do what his director ordered. I don’t think Gibbons objected to building the set that Minnelli wanted so much as he was surprised by a director needing to have any input in the process at all. I remember reading a story about Samuel Goldwyn refusing to give a director final cut because “If I did that why would anyone need me.” So its surprising that Mayer was willing to give away a privilege that had traditionally belonged only to management (Gibbons). Although, of course, Mayer was right. Can you imagine if the film had been made on “Andy Hardy Street” as Gibbons wanted? I always had the feeling that Mayer resented Gibbons a bit, even before this battle, and yet the two of them worked together for 30 years.

2) I’ve addressed some of this above. I don’t know how many people were in the Research Department, but I suspect it wasn’t as many as you might think. One item that intrigues me in that collection is a huge shelf of hand bound albums, hundreds and hundreds of them probably, with each page in each book containing 8x10 black and white photos of a certain place; India, or China, or a New York nightclub, which would be used to reproduce that location on the lot. I always wondered who got to take these trips to these fabulous places to take these photos. One clue was in a collection taken for “The Barretts of Wimpole Street.” On the top page someone had typed “taken by Mr. Gibbons and Mr. Thalberg.”

3) Hollywood has always had people who can build anything out of anything. These people probably think of themselves as craftsman but they are artists, really. They have a union which is very hard to get into. And so these dynasties of Hollywood workers sometimes extend back for generations. People working in studio shops now often inherited their jobs and their skills from their grandparents, who probably learned the secrets of their craft from someone else who perhaps worked in a studio in the earliest days of the movies. It’s really a remarkable story. And I don’t know if other industries have anything quite like it. I wish we could have covered this aspect of the business more in the book, actually.

4) Steve Sylvester, one of my coauthors is working very hard to make a documentary based on the book. He insisted that many of our interviews be videotaped, so we have some amazing footage waiting in the wings. I’ll keep you posted.

5) Warner Bros. Really is the gold standard among the studios for preservation of their assets. I was/am a very movie struck kid at heart, so getting to play in a big studio’s “attic” is really very special. The trouble is that when history is being made, people seldom realize it at the time. So sometimes, we haven’t saved what we would have with the benefit of hindsight. Sometimes people assume that everything is just kept through the decades, which isn’t possible or practical. You know Warner Bros. doesn’t own an actual Maltese Falcon statue? Which for practical reasons makes perfect sense. Think about it. The Maltese falcon, after 1941, would make for a pretty useless prop. If it was used as a set dressing in any other film people would recognize it. So why such would a piece be kept by the property department if they couldn’t use it? The things the studios, historically, are most interested in keeping are the ones they can use again.
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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by Lzcutter »

Steven,

Sorry if I seem to be posting so much, it's just that each time I read a question and your answer, I think of another question!

From my days at SC (where I knew both Ned Comstock and Leith Adams- sorry for the name dropping, it's been years since I thought of them. :oops: ), I know that part of Warner's archive is at Doheny Library's Special Collections (the archive had arrived a short time before I did and they had just begun to process it). And, I know from your book, that Warner's has a Corporate Archive on the lot.

What's the difference between the two archives?
Lynn in Lake Balboa

"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."

"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese

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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by Moraldo Rubini »

Just want to thank you again for joining us. I'm really enjoying this thread!

[If Mr. Sylvester has a Kickstarter campaign for the documentary, I hope you'll let me know. You can send me a private message, if it would be gauche to mention said campaign in this venue. It's probably gauche of me to bring it up at all. :oops: ]
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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by Gagman 66 »

Mr. Bingen.

:o I'm catching this a bit late. Very interesting and informative to be sure. I'm someone what surprised to learn that THE BIG PARADE one of my all time favorite films, was one of the very first pictures produced on the lot. I did not know this. I guess since I think of MGM beginning in 1924, rather than '25. I don't really have any questions to speak of at this time, but it certainly is a fascinating thread. Thank you so much for gracing us with your presence here. You are so very knowledgeable. It would be great if you could be a guest host on TCM time in the near future. Is that something that you might consider doing at some point?
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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by CineMaven »

Hi there Steven,

I'm Theresa. I don't have any questions b'cuz my esteemed colleagues here at the SSO are covering ALL the bases and I'm getting all the answers to my questions. :) You're providing so much detail and wealth of information...IT's GREAT!! I've attended the TCM Classic Film Festival for the last two out of three years and in that time I've heard a couple of lectures I've loved including my favorites: Donald Bogle and Kevin Brownlow. It'd be a fantastic idea if TCM would contact you and your partners ( or you them...don't be shy ) and you presented a slide show based on the fotos in your book during next year's festival.

I can see you now in "Club TCM" with an enthusiastic audience hanging on ev'ry slide...and a long line of pass holders waiting to buy your book. Something to consider? ( Psst!!! Perhaps you can get in that "fly on the wall stuff" that your editor vetoed for the book?? )

Thank you again for stopping by this Oasis and sharing your love of this topic. Quite a cottage industry the Studio created with its soundstages and back lots, providing steady employment for many trades, tapping into the creativity of many artists, and giving lots of enjoyment for us sitting in darkened movie palaces across the decades.

Thank you, Sir.
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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by Sue Sue Applegate »

Theresa, this would be a fantastic panel discussion for the festival!

Great idea! :lol:
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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by Steven Bingen »

Hi Lynn,

I wrote to CBS asking for a copy of the "60 minutes piece." They turned me down, but did sell me a written transcript, which I quoted from in the book. Really surprising that in Hollywood there was little nostalgia for what was going on, but out in the real world, even among hard-nosed network news people, it was realized what a shamefull desecration of our culture this was.

I hadn’t heard about Gibbons green thumb, but it kind of fits with his apparent need to “design” a setting.
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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by Steven Bingen »

RE: the archives. Well, therein lies a story. Many years ago, Warner Bros. as a donation-tax write-off gave much of their paperwork (up to 1967) to USC, where the collection is housed today as the “Warner Bros. Archive” This archive is open to students and researchers and is not associated with the “Warner Bros. Corporate Archive” – which is part of the studio and collects records, props, costumes and documents associated with the company. The Corporate archive is where I work and is managed by Leith Adams, who originally worked at the USC archive. Ned Comstock, is still at USC. I know them both, great guys, Leith is my boss, and in all honestly The MGM book would never have happened without his blessing and assistance.
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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by Steven Bingen »

This is for Gagman 66
Thank you for the compliment! “Big Parade” wasn’t one of the first films shot on the lot, it was one of the first films shot on the new Lot 2 BACKlot. Sorry about the confusion.

“Quality Street” was another of the inaugural titles for that lot, and I found it kind of interesting that decades later King Vidor was interviewed on lot 2 talking about “The Big Parade” and they shot his footage on the European set built there, not for ‘big Parade” which would have made sense, but on the set used in “Quality Street” instead. I guess after all those years, no one, not even Vidor, could remember what was shot where.
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Re: Welcome to Steven Bingen, July 20th-22nd

Post by Steven Bingen »

Dear Theresa (and anyone else regarding a potential TCM shindig).

TCM has been really supportive of our efforts, we were the “book of the month” at one point and I feel like the good folk over there are my friends (and indeed, the friends of movie lovers everywhere). We’ve got a slide show prepared based on the book which we‘ve already presented both at Hollywood Heritage and at Cinecon. In September we are scheduled to present the same show for the Art Director’s Guild. So we’d love to participate. But I suspect that this is something that one needs to be invited to. Fan support might play a factor though.
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