Happy New Year to Disney’s Hollywood Studios
As the New Year begins, Disney-MGM Studios in Florida has magically transformed overnight into Disney’s Hollywood Studios. There won’t be much of a physical change for awhile except for replacing the familiar logo and losing even more of the theme of the “Hollywood That Never Was But Always Will Be” that has been slowly chipped away over the last 18 years.
The original Disney-MGM Studios was always one of my favorite Disney theme parks. It has roughly the same acreage as Disneyland in California and the layout design was very similar. The Main Street was Hollywood Boulevard, going to the “castle” of Grauman’s Chinese Theater that was behind a hub that was cleverly designed to be one of the best “hidden Mickeys” ever when seen from overhead. Of course, that clever design was ruined by the installation of the Sorcerer Hat.
Disney-MGM Studios was originally an intimate experience rather than the overwhelming one of the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. Having grown up about 25 minutes from the real Hollywood and loving the classic old movies that I saw on a black-and-white television set, the park really punched my emotional buttons with its re-creation of historical architecture and all the live entertainment from the stage shows to Streetmosphere (extras in the old movies were called “atmosphere” so when you put those folks on the street, then they became “Street-atmosphere” performers) to the Screen Test theater.
It truly was the “Hollywood That Never Was” that most people remember from fan magazines, postcards and films about Hollywood. I spent many a Saturday morning roaming the real Hollywood Boulevard visiting books stores, Hollywood Magic and Hollywood Toy store and that huge newsstand on Cahuenga Boulevard, but I tried to stay clear of Hollywood Boulevard at night. As many tourists have discovered, Hollywood and Vine was not a place of magic but was dirty, smelly and inhabited by colorful characters that you didn’t want to make eye contact with or you might suffer unknown but horrible consequences.
Disney’s re-creation of it in Florida was truly the Hollywood of the imagination and what many of us really wanted the real Hollywood to be. There is so much to love about the design of the park in its homage to Hollywood landmarks.
The entrance architecture was inspired by the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles, built in 1935. The Pan Pacific burned down in 1989, the same year the Disney-MGM Studios opened. So like many things re-created in the park, it is the only representation of that historical architecture that is left to enjoy by many of us who had a chance to see the real thing.
As you go through the entrance you are confronted by a structure reminiscent of the entrance to the Crossroads of the World from Sunset Boulevard. Originally it was an area of several unique retail shops with international facades. Today, that area in the real Hollywood is merely uninspired office buildings.
Disney sculptor Perry Russ designed the 6-foot diameter globe of spun aluminum, topped by a 5-foot, 3-inch silvery sculpture of Mickey Mouse. It stands almost 44 feet above Hollywood Boulevard.
Incidentally, Mickey Mouse’s right ear is made of copper, so that it acts as a lightning rod. Because of the frequent lightning strikes in Florida, most everything in the parks has some sort of lightning protection. But it would not have looked good to have a lightning rod sticking up above Mickey, so they made one ear copper and grounded it.
The buildings on Hollywood Boulevard are interpretations of actual buildings in California in the 1940s, from a Newberry’s to Frederick’s of Hollywood to the Darkroom. Many of those buildings still exist in real Hollywood but their functions are completely different from the Hollywood of the 1940s.
How many have noticed that Oscar’s Super Service carries Mojave Oil products? The tanker truck in Catastrophe Canyon is a Mojave Oil truck. It is that wonderful foreshadowing at the entrance of the park that helps tie the whole story together. Billboards advertise the Pacific Electric Trolley and the Hollywoodland real estate development. Again, amazing touches of detail not consciously effecting most of the guests.
And what about the Sunset Ranch Market that was inspired by the real Farmer’s Market on Third Street and Fairfax Boulevard? That’s why that one stall is called “Fairfax Fries.” In the February 1953 issue of McCall’s magazine, Lillian Disney said that Walt “likes to wander almost anyplace like the Farmer’s Market in Hollywood without being recognized.”
This truly was the Hollywood where Walt Disney lived and worked and created Mickey Mouse and all those classic animated films. Walt had a connection with almost everything that was originally re-created in the park.
For instance, in the Echo Lake area where Gertie the Dinosaur towers over the landscaping, there is a doorway near Peevy’s (the mechanic character from the film Rocketeer that took place in 1938 Los Angeles) labeled for the Holly-Vermont Realty Office that was Walt’s first studio.
In 1923 when the Disney Brothers Studio started with the “Alice Comedies,” Walt inquired about the office rentals at a real estate office, declaring he could only pay $10 a month. The only place at that price was a room at the back of the real-estate office. The Disney Brothers moved to the more famous Kingswell Studio location in February 1924, but the very first Disney cartoons in Hollywood were made at the Holly-Vermont location.
Speaking of Gertie… Winsor McCay animated Gertie in 1914 in one of the first examples of what is known as “personality” animation, where the humor comes from the personality of the character and not just a series of interchangeable gags that could be done by any funny looking character.
It impressed a young Ub Iwerks who tried to get Walt to see the film when it played a local theater. Why is Gertie an ice cream stand? Well in the 1940s, it was generally believed that it was the Ice Age that killed the dinosaurs. That is why it is the “ice cream of extinction,” a clever play of words on the phrase “ice cream of distinction.” I wonder how many guests miss the footprints in the sidewalk not far from Gertie showing how she walked to her current location, cracking the sidewalk as a result?
The park is filled with this wonderful sense of history and detail that unfortunately goes unappreciated by today’s guests eager for thrill attractions and the need for “FastPasses” to speed their brief visit through the park so they can hop over to another park. As a result, I suspect much of this nostalgic and calming atmosphere will be sacrificed piece by piece as the park transforms to focus more on modern Hollywood.
Even my cable provider refuses to include Turner Classic Movies as part of my basic package, and it is only available for a premium price since the company responded to my pleas with the logic that the demographics of the area where I live are not interested in old movies.
Regrettably, they may be right. Who but the most astute film historian today like a Leonard Maltin would be able to identify that Min and Bill’s Dockside Diner at Echo Lake is based on the 1931 film, Min and Bill, with Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler (who won a Best Actress Oscar for her peformance)?
In the film, she stars as an old harridan who owns a dockside dive while dealing with her drunk boyfriend. At the park, Min and Bill’s is the creation of Ray Wallace, who has designed boats for the Disney Company since 1957, including the Columbia for Disneyland.
Despite the fact that Beery inspired many animated characters, usually grumpy bears, I doubt anyone visiting the park today could name one film he starred in or describe what he looked like.
That’s certainly a problem at another location, the Hollywood Brown Derby Restaurant.
The first Brown Derby opened on Wilshire Boulevard across the street from the Ambassador Hotel in 1926. It was the only Brown Derby restaurant built in the shape of a hat. At the peak of its popularity, there were three other Brown Derby restaurants: one in Hollywood (on Hollywood and Vine and this is the one re-created at the park) that opened in 1929, one in Beverly Hills and another on Los Feliz.
Bob Cobb originally managed the restaurant on Hollywood and Vine and when the original owners of the Derbies died in 1934, he took over the operation of all the restaurants and brought them out of debt and made them internationally known.
The Hollywood Brown Derby was literally in the heart of Hollywood and was more popular than “The Hat” because of its close location to film and broadcasting studios so actors might arrive for lunch in full costume and makeup.
The Hollywood Brown Derby was designed by architect Carl Jules Weyl, who went on to become an art director for such films as The Adventures of Robin Hood and Casablanca. In Casblanca, Weyl created an office above the restaurant for Rick just as he had done years before with Bob Cobb’s office above the Brown Derby.
At the Hollywood Brown Derby the famous brown leather booths were designed to be low so that people could see and be seen. Table-hopping was a way of life at the Derby. The booths near the entrance and along the walls were reserved for the movie and broadcasting stars.
A young man from Poland named Eddie Vitch approached Cobb and offered to sketch the Derby’s famous patrons in exchange for something to eat. These caricatures became famous when Cobb started framing them and hanging them on the walls. Vitch produced hundreds of them before returning to Europe a few years later.
There was much jockeying for position as to where a caricature would be placed with the front wall over the entrance considered the most important. Over the years, other artists provided caricatures for the Derbies and in the one in Florida there is a photograph of Imagineer Herb Ryman doing caricatures for one of the classic Derby restaurants.
At one point, it was rumored that Michael Eisner decided they should eliminate the classic caricatures (one of whom was of Bob Clampett who created Beany and Cecil and also as a teenager came up with the design model for the first stuffed Mickey and Minnie dolls) and replace them with caricatures of modern stars like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger that people would be more likely to remember.
Walt and Lillian Disney often went to the Hollywood Brown Derby and a photo of them there exists from 1939 of them enjoying a Cobb Salad and Grapefruit Cake.
The famous Cobb Salad at the Derby was an accidental creation by Cobb himself. Supposedly, one night in 1937, Bob Cobb was awakened by a drunken Sid Grauman (of Grauman’s Chinese Theater fame) demanding something to eat so he could sober up. The kitchen had long been closed for the night.
Opening the huge refrigerator, Cobb pulled out whatever he could find including a head of lettuce, an avocado, some romaine, watercress, tomatoes, some cold breast of chicken, a hard-boiled egg, chives, cheese and some old-fashioned French dressing. He started chopping. He added some crisp bacon and the Cobb salad was born. It was so good that Grauman returned the next day and asked for a “Cobb Salad” and it was put on the menu.
Cobb’s midnight invention became an overnight sensation with Derby customers, with people like movie mogul Jack Warner who regularly dispatched his chauffeur to pick up a carton of the mouth-watering salad.
Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons loved desserts but was on a constant diet and threatened not to return to the Brown Derby unless there was a non-fattening dessert. So Cobb came up with the grapefruit cake, he said, “because everyone knows grapefruit is slimming.” No one stopped to question that the frosting contained 20 ounces of cream cheese in addition to a cup of powdered sugar with the grapefruit.
Walt and Bob Cobb were friends who also shared a love of baseball. They served together on the board of directors of the Pacific Coast League’s Hollywood Stars and on the advisory board of Gene Autry’s California Angels. On July 17, 1955, Cobb and his wife were the invited guests of Walt for the opening of Disneyland and stopped in at Walt’s apartment over the firehouse on Main Street.
The Hollywood Brown Derby continued operation until 1985 when it was closed for earthquake reconstruction. The historic building was demolished in 1994 after further earthquake damage.
However, the Hollywood Brown Derby for many of today’s guests is just a vaguely remembered name and many of them ask why the restaurant isn’t in the shape of a hat. All of that Hollywood history is pretty much forgotten and the Disney-MGM Studios that helped preserve some of those terrific stories and was a time machine to another era will soon surrender to the ignorance of people today.
The beginning of this new year signals that the Studios will be transformed into a generic representation of a Hollywood that worries more about an opening weekend box office more than the magic and myth of filmmaking. Already, many memorable touches of Hollywood detail have been lost over the years at the park. I worry that the transformation will also toss aside the early history of Walt in Hollywood even as the Disney Company tries to re-envision it in the new Disney’s Calfiornia Adventure.
I love the work of Werner Weiss and his site, Yesterland, and recommend you check out these two links if you are interested in the Disney-MGM Studios classic historical Hollywood architecture: link 1 and link 2.
