Hollywood
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{Hollywood} Clark Was Here
Let’s follow Clark around Los Angeles… Culver Studios. Formerly Selznick International Studios, this is where Gone with the Wind was filmed. The white house and manicured gardens are well-remembered as the opening shot of GWTW, then with a white sign in front that said, “A Selznick International Picture.” The scene where Mammy, Prissy and Pork stand in front of Scarlett and Rhett’s enormous Atlanta mansion and exclaim over its size (“Lordy, she sure is rich now!”) was filmed right here, in front of this building, with a matte painting standing in for Scarlett and Rhett’s mansion. Carole Lombard made Nothing Sacred and Made for Each Other here. It was later home…
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{Hollywood} Calvary Cemetery
Calvary is a beautiful Roman Catholic cemetery located in East Los Angeles. It dates back to the late 1800’s and that is evident. Unlike most of the cemeteries which were usually all flat headstones with the occaisonal elaborate memorial, this cemetery was filled with gorgeous tall monuments. My main reason for venturing here was to find Clark’s first wife, drama coach Josephine Dillon. When we arrived, we located the name of the lawn she was buried in and the area was huge. We set ourselves for another long search, but it turned out to only take about two minutes; we had no trouble finding it because the headstone is HUGE. I am…
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{Hollywood} The Academy Library Clears Up a Clark and Carole–Gone with the Wind Mystery
People sure did look at me funny when I said that one of the things I was most looking forward to on my Los Angeles trip was a visit to the library. Sounds strange, but this is not just any library, it’s the Margaret Herrick Library, the library for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscars). If you’ve read a bio on a classic star (a reputable one, anyway) bet your bottom dollar they did their research here. They house thousands of original scripts, screenplays, correspondence, you name it. Many, many people have left their personal papers to the library, including Katharine Hepburn, Steve McQueen, Billy Wilder, Esther Williams, …
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{Hollywood} Warner Brothers Studios
All the major studios offer tours: Sony (formerly MGM), Warner Brothers, Universal, Paramount. We of course knew we wanted to do MGM (blog post forthcoming), since that was home to Clark and so many other of the “brightest stars”. We wanted to do one other one and it was a toss-up between Warner Brothers and Paramount. We ultimately picked Warner Brothers because it was the highest rated studio tour. We weren’t disappointed. It is a tram tour, but our guide was very knowledgable and I felt he mixed the old with the new quite well. We saw the set of Friends’ Central Perk, the outside set of ER, and heard…
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{Hollywood} Clark Lived Here
Clark didn’t bounce around as much as many of the other celebrities of his day. So many Hollywood stars of his time period moved around so often it is hard to keep track. For example,the friend who accompanied me on this trip is a big Katharine Hepburn fan and we learned early in the planning stages that visiting each of her houses would be virtually impossible! Clark’s residences aren’t as numerous but unfortunately they’re not all still standing either. When Ria followed him to California after he made The Painted Desert, she rented them two apartments at Ravenswood Apartments, one for her and Clark and one for her two children, George…
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{Hollywood} Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Since there is no real “starting point” so to speak for my trip, and we visited five cemeteries, I figured best to start with one of them…. I like graveyards. My husband says that’s weird. I don’t think it is–and thankfully I brought a friend along to Los Angeles who feels the same way.There is something peaceful about visiting them, something about seeing that even though they are gone, people still have a small space on this planet. And, besides, this is the closest I will ever get to all the classic film stars! Hollywood Forever, originally titled Hollywood Memorial, was founded in 1899. It is typically the cemetery that people think of…
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{Hollywood} I’m back!
Well I am back from La-La Land and I saw so much I hardly know where to begin. Unlike many people, whom we saw crowded on tour buses snapping photos of Ashton Kutcher’s house, we were looking for history. In our rented Kia, with Garmin as our usually-cooperative guide, we drove all over Los Angeles, to Brentwood, to Bel Air, to Beverly Hills, to Culver City, to Studio City, to Encino, to Glendale, to Santa Monica, to Hollywood. We drove up long, twisted, tiny roads just to peer over the fence of houses previously owned by Clark, Carole, Jean Harlow, Lana Turner and many more. We snuck around legendary hotels, snapping…