Thursday, May 20, 2021 – Many sites that were Hollywood before Hollywood
THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2021
The
368th Edition
Hollywood of the East:
Astoria
Stephen Blank
Film buffs know that the movie industry began in New York City, and many know that Fort Lee was the next center of film-making. During the 1910s, D.W. Griffith shot nearly 100 pictures there. This is where Mary Pickford made her film debut and where Theda Bara, “Fatty” Arbuckle, and Douglas Fairbanks all worked in the rows of great greenhouse studios that sprang up in this film boomtown and where tax revenues from studios and laboratories filled municipal bank accounts.
And then there was Astoria.
Hopefully you have visited the Museum of the Moving Image at the Kaufman Astoria Studios. This is where many important films of the 1920s were made, where stars met and deals done. So find a comfy seat, open the popcorn, relax and enjoy the story.
First thing. The industry didn’t come to Astoria from New York or Fort Lee. It migrated back east from Hollywood. The film industry began to move to California before World War I. The Fort Lee phase of the industry ended in the winter of 1918-1919 with terrible cold, coal rationing and the rising specter of the flu pandemic. In sunny California, you could shoot outdoors year-round, where land and labor were cheaper and where film companies were further away from Edison’s toughs chasing down patent infringements.
But not everyone wanted to go west. Richard Koszarski in his The Astoria Studio and Its Fabulous Films, writes “Reaction against Hollywood as a cultural wasteland and factory town began in earnest right after the war… Many who had the clout simply refused exile to California, and others did their best to escape back East.” As Louise Brooks wrote, “There was no theater, no opera, no concerts – just those god-damned movies.”
Moreover, Hollywood was a long way from Broadway, and many film stars couldn’t manage the stretch. Broadway actors starring in films needed to be close enough to the Great White Way so that after a day of filming they could make it to the theaters for their evening performances.
With the end of wartime restrictions on building, studio construction in the New York region boomed. D. W. Griffith moved back east to escape studio control. He settled on Mamaroneck, paying $375,000 for Satan’s Toe, land that jutted into Long Island Sound (the former estate of oil baron Henry Flagler, who lent John D. Rockefeller start-up funds for Standard Oil in exchange for a piece of the profits). Mamaroneck obviously inspired Griffith, who directed such silent classics there as Broken Blossoms, Way Down East (both starring Lillian Gish), and Orphans of the Storm (starring Lillian and Dorothy Gish).
Griffith studio, Satan’s Toehttp://wikimapia.org/36453975/D-W-Griffith-Studio
William Randolph Hearst transformed Sulzer’s Harlem River Park and Casino into the Cosmopolitan Studios, and Vitograph, Goldwyn, Metro and Fox all returned to the City. Some commentators said that California was “all filmed out”. At this moment, critics said, New York was the center of the fledgling film industry. And Astoria was the Mecca of the Silent Era.
Astoria was the home of the Famous-Players Studio, the most important eastern studio, which opened in September 1920, at 36th Street between 34th and 35th Avenues.
The construction of Famous Players-Lasky Studios (Paramount Pictures) as seen in 1919. https://www.qgazette.com/articles/lights-camera-astoria-highlights-filmmaking-in-queens/
The construction of Famous Players-Lasky Studios (Paramount Pictures) as seen in 1919. https://www.qgazette.com/articles/lights-camera-astoria-highlights-filmmaking-in-queens/
William Randolph Hearst transformed Sulzer’s Harlem River Park and Casino into the Cosmopolitan Studios, and Vitograph, Goldwyn, Metro and Fox all returned to the City. Some commentators said that California was “all filmed out”. At this moment, critics said, New York was the center of the fledgling film industry. And Astoria was the Mecca of the Silent Era.
Astoria was the home of the Famous-Players Studio, the most important eastern studio, which opened in September 1920, at 36th Street between 34th and 35th Avenues.
The Astoria story began with a Hungarian-born Jewish immigrant named Adolph Zukor. Working as a successful furrier, he invested in a penny arcade theater, or nickelodeon, on 14th Street in Manhattan. By 1908, 550 nickelodeons and movie houses operated in Manhattan. And on Christmas Day, they were all closed down. Progressives felt that this new entertainment undermined efforts to “uplift” the working class and immigrants who were the major consumers. Still, the new industry rolled on – the answer was not to eliminate but rather to regulate and censor films. And, of course, so begins another story.
Back to this one: Zukor teamed up with David Frohman, and became big names in the penny arcade business. They formed the Famous Players Film Company to produce and distribute full-length films. Their first success was The Count of Monte Cristo, released in 1913. Zukor merged with another successful film company, the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Picture Play Company, which had made the first Hollywood movie, Squaw Man, directed by Cecil B. DeMille.
Lasky began his entertainment career in vaudeville after an Alaska adventure which yielded no gold. He became a booking agent – and rich. Lasky wasn’t always a success (he lost $110,000 producing the stage musical Folies Bergère) but he soon found his way to the motion picture industry where he thrived. In 1913 he, his brother-in-law Samuel Goldwyn, and Cecil B. DeMille became partners and founded the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.
The new company, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, was launched in 1916. In no time, they had eight film production companies under their wing, including a distribution company called Paramount Pictures, and were now the biggest players in the silent film business.
In 1920, they built their studio complex in the cheaper and roomier confines of Astoria. A few years earlier a Queens location would have been isolated and rural, but thanks to the Queensboro Bridge, which opened in 1909, the new complex was now only a short distance from the city’s theater district.
Astoria Studios produced over 100 films during the twenties. With its main stage and basement stages, it could support up to six feature films in production at the same time. Astoria Studios was where the moving picture industry actually developed; and was home to talented actors such as Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning American actress Gloria Swanson, sisters Dorothy and Lillian Gish, and Rudolph Valentino. Essentially, it was where many breakout stars had the opportunity to develop and display their talent.
Gloria Swanson said of making movies in Queens in her autobiography, Swanson On Swanson, “Every day we drove across the Queensboro Bridge to the new studio in Astoria in the borough of Queens. It was certainly not another Hollywood. The place was full of free spirits, defectors, refugees, who were all trying to get away from Hollywood and its restrictions. There was a wonderful sense of revolution and innovation in the studio in Queens.” And Louise Brooks noted, “When work was finished, we dressed in evening clothes, dined at the Colony or ‘21’ and went to the theater.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_Players-Lasky#/media/File:The_Famous_Players_Lasky.jpg
The first all talking feature film shot at the studio, The Letter, received an Oscar nomination for actress Jeanne Eagels. The talking film debuts of Claudette Colbert, Edward G. Robinson and Tallulah Bankhead were filmed here. The Marx Brothers moved from Broadway to the silver screen in Astoria to produce their first two films, The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930). In fact, they shot “Cocoanuts” while simultaneously starring in the Broadway production of “Animal Crackers.” It is said that major stars like Charlie Chaplin, Eddie Cantor, Groucho Marx and Gloria Swanson rented or owned houses in Queens.
For those interested in the film industry (as well as movies themselves), recall that Famous Players-Lasky, under the direction of Zukor, is important for creating the vertical integration of the film industry and block booking practices – practices that shaped the Hollywood industry in its greatest mid-20th century years.
In 1942, during the start of World War II, the United States Army Signal Corps took over the studio to make Army training and indoctrination films. In 1970 the Studio Army declared it surplus property turned the studio over to the Federal Government. In 1982 the title to the Studio was transferred to the City of New York, and in 1982 real estate developer George S. Kaufman in partnership with Alan King, Johnny Carson and others, obtained the lease from the City. Kaufman renovated and expanded it into a comprehensive studio capable of handling any type, size and style of production.
Kaufman Studios today Wikipedia
Kaufman Astoria Studios has had a long track record of success, and has been the location for major motion pictures including: The Wiz, The Warriors, All That Jazz, Arthur, Ragtime, Hair, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Radio Days, Money Pit, Ishtar, Fletch Lives, Glengarry Glen Ross, Scent of a Woman, Age of Innocence, and Carlito’s Way.
Stephen Blank
RIHS
May 4, 2021
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THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
FORMER STERN’S DEPARTMENT STORE ON WEST 23RD STREET
THOM HEYER, RICHARD MEYER, ALEXIS VILLEFANE, GLORIA HERMAN, VICKI FEINMEL, ARON EISENPREISS
ALL GOT IT RIGHT…SEE THE STORY BELOW!!!
The Home Depot Building
Centered above the main entrance of The Home Depot, the giant home improvement store on West 23rd Street, there is a carving of a lion’s head just beneath a cartouche framing the letters “SB,” a monogram that provides a mute but eloquent clue to the building’s original purpose.
SB stands for Stern Brothers, and more than a century ago, when the area just south of Madison Square was New York’s golden shopping district, Stern’s was one of its grandest department stores. On the northern edge of what became known as Ladies’ Mile, it was for a time the largest department store in New York and one of the earliest to take advantage of a new invention called plate glass, installing huge street-level windows that allowed passersby to see inside, to “window shop,” as it were.
Originally on Sixth Avenue near 23rd Street, Stern’s was founded in 1867 by the brothers Louis, Isaac, Bernard and Benjamin. In 1878, in need of additional space, it opened at 32 West 23rd Street in a six-story cast-iron Renaissance Revival structure designed by Henry Fernbach, a German-born architect better known for his work on such houses of worship as the Moorish-influenced Central Synagogue at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street. Five years later, Fernbach died at his desk, so when the Stern brothers desired to expand further, they called upon another German émigré, W. M. Schickel.
By 1892, Schickel had tripled Stern’s footprint, expanding westward to 40 West 23rd Street. Fernbach’s design was duplicated on the western wing and a central section with a new arched entrance united both wings. Together, the sections formed what still might be New York’s largest cast-iron facade. Painted white and stretching across eight city lots, the building dazzled onlookers on sunny days and was sometimes called “the big wedding cake on 23rd Street.”
Stern’s flourished, as did other retailers on the block, including Teller & Co. (the future Bonwit Teller) and Best & Co. The four Stern brothers were always on hand, at least one of them greeting customers and all of them decked out in cutaway tailcoats. Pianists perched on every floor provided music to shop by, a harbinger of sounds to come. By 1913, however, the city — and its top retailers — was heading uptown. Stern’s did too, moving to 42nd Street, opposite Bryant Park. It continued growing, opened two dozen branches in three states and eventually became part of Federated Department Stores. In 2001, its remaining locations were converted into units of Bloomingdales or Macy’s and Stern Brothers disappeared.
The building, however, did not, even though it was neglected for a while and its once-resplendent facade suffered the temporary indignity of a coating of pink. For most of the 1900s, with 23rd Street abandoned by prestigious stores, the structure housed manufacturing and shipping facilities for a variety of tenants. In 1968, its fortunes began to change. The property was acquired by Jerome M. Cohen, chairman of Williams Real Estate Co., and his partners, who launched a full restoration of the cast-iron facade. Soon, showrooms and offices filled the building.
In 1986, Hasbro, Inc., the multinational toy and board game company, moved in, conducted toy fairs and even inspired a scene filmed there for the Tom Hanks movie “Big.” Hasbro remained almost 20 years, giving way to Home Depot in 2004.
Home Depot is the building’s major tenant, but not its only one. A separate entrance at 40 West 23rd Street leads to the expansive offices and showrooms of the clothing designer Marc Ecko, a space now on the market.
Meanwhile, Home Depot has taken the building back to its original purpose: operating as a retailer with special appeal to New Yorkers. Because this is the company’s first store in Manhattan, its focus is on apartment and brownstone dwellers. Home Depot’s 108,000 square feet fill the entire street level, including space in 28 West 23rd Street, plus a mezzanine and a basement. It stocks 20,000 different products, a figure that climbs to 100,000 if special orders are included. And unlike its other units, this Home Depot has a doorman to welcome customers — a reminder of the era of the Stern brothers even though this greeter doesn’t wear a cutaway tailcoat.
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Sources
STEPHEN BLANK
https://nj.gov/state/historical/assets/pdf/it-happened-here/ihhnj-er-ft-lee-studios.pdf
http://www.warburgrealty.com/nabes/before-hollywood-there-was-astoria/Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture 1915-1928 (1990)
Richard Koszarski, The Astoria Studio and Its Fabulous Films (1983)
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