The Desilu Years – 1- Camp Henderson, Gomer Pyle USMC. 2- Atlanta Railroad Depot, Gone With The Wind. 3- Stalog 13 Hogan’s Heroes. 4- Skull Island Village, King Kong 5- Daily Planet Loading Dock, The Adventures of Superman. 6- Superman takeoff alley. 7- Floyd’s barber shop, The Andy Griffith Show. 8- Sheriff Andy’s house. 9- The Standish Arms, Clark Kent’s apartment. 10- The town of Mayberry, The Andy Griffith show, and numerous Star Trek episodes.
Built in the 1930s, the 40 Acres backlot is one of those historic slices of Hollywood that’s long gone. For many of us, this lot was the crossroads of television while growing up. By 1957, RKO Studios and the 40 Acres backlot had already changed ownership several times, including ownership by Howard Hughes from 1948 to 1955. The studio and backlot acreage changed hands again in 1957 when it was purchased by Desilu Productions, the studio formed in 1951 by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. For the next eleven years, 40 Acres would provide exterior locations for the company’s television productions, including The Untouchables, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse and Westward Ho!. Other production companies also regularly leased or occasionally rented the backlot for exterior filming in television series such as The Andy Griffith Show, Adventures of Superman, The Real McCoys, My Three Sons, Gomer Pyle, USMC, Hogan’s Heroes, Miami Undercover, Batman, Bonanza, Land of the Giants, That Girl, Mayberry R.F.D and The Green Hornet. The backlot would also continue to see occasional use in films during this period, including in 1963 for the production of The Greatest Story Ever Told, whose set for the city of Jerusalem had to be reconstructed at 40 Acres after a series of freak snowstorms halted on-location production in Arizona. One of the last films to use the backlot was the 1975 mob drama Lepke, starring Tony Curtis.
Click here for a ton of fun-
A great find Doug, thanks!
I was just working at the Culver Studios lot that once was Desilu, nearby where “40 Acres” used to stand — I believe stages 15 & 16 were used to film “The Cage” before production shifted to the Melrose lot for the series. The castle-like sets near #4 on the photo seem to be the courtyard where scenes from “The Cage” was filmed, as well as “Errand of Mercy”.
Very nice piece of history, having watched a majority of the shows mentioned. It is good to see where they are in relation to one another.
super article, really enjoyed that
A.
Lucille Ball was the first (only?) woman to own a Hollywood studio (not merely a production company).
Her first big break was being under contract to RKO in the 30s; Lucy later bought the place lock, stock, and barrel including the film vault (she owned King Kong AND Citizen Kane!). She later sold to to Paramount under the same condition.
Lucy is an icon, but still doesn’t get all the recognition she deserves.
Of course, as time went on, she became less and less interested in the day-to-day operations so executives like Herb Solow deserve credit for buying and shepherding shows through production. Still, without Lucy, there would probably be no Star Trek.
Wow neat stuff
Great to see where all those classic TV shows were filmed.
You really shouldn’t have posted this picture. This will only inspire Jörg to write a 30 page article about it!
But jokes aside I find it amazing how realistic these small cities looked in the movies and shows and different each time.
Miri was shot in Mayberry? That is too cool!
It’s amazing to me how many shows were brought to life on that lot. It’s like a sampling of my childhood. Great stuff, Doug.
Wow…
Bernd,
Off-topic, how have you kept yourself motivated to continue to update your web site after so many years? I just made a few small updates to my Trekplace web site, and I was shocked to discover that it had been nearly a year since the previous update. Ack!
Greg
I may be a little unclear as to what was where, but I have a notion that this was around a little earlier than the 30s… or perhaps just at the beginning, because some of the brownstone streets are very recognizable in Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” Comedies which were shot starting in 1930 (the sound ones, anyway)… and his studio was off of Washington Blvd. in Culver City. (The actual Culver Studios started as Ince Studios in 1919, I think…) But it’s conceivable that Roach made use of the 40 acre backlot…
Anyway… I love seeing this stuff. Makes me wish I was around in the heyday of Hollywood.
My first big visit to the ever genius blog page of Mr.Doug Drexler!!! Well done pages full of tid bits and nuggets of great movie knowledge!!! I love the 40 acre backlot and have a huge disc full of images and shoots from the day,,, be sure to call me about it and I will bring it with your stuff that’s in my car!!!! Haaa! I am done as of next week so we can get together after.
Nice article. Thanks for posting the site and I love that behind-the-scenes image from “Miri”
John Eaves: I have a quick question — do you recall your exact intended lengths for the two Dominion battleships you did? We especially aren’t quite sure about the bigger one.
Anyway, it’s great to finally run into you somewhere; the Enterprise-E has always been one of my favorite Trek designs, along with the Defiant and the TMP Enterprise.
Howdy Boris, the two sizes are as follows the smaller vessel is approx 650 meters and the larger vessel is approx 1600 meters
Thanks. The Ex Astris Scientia website has 650m and 1500m, so Bernd is pretty close again (of course, the first number was measured from the Encyclopedia IIRC). I’ve seen a lot of your sketches and size comparison charts for the movie ships, but very few for those on DS9.
Yeah, I found that site about a year or so ago while during ref gather for my ENTERPRISE. Very cool eh. A time like no other. Gotta love the Internet, that someone would take the time to put a website like that together. Otherwise it might all just mostly be lost to time. Gotta love The Information Age we live in, eh.
O… O… Oh Andddddy… (Floyd voice)
LLP,
deg
Nothing like a tasty dose of Hollywood history to start a bleery-eyed Tuesday off on the right foot.
I assume my favorite Val Lewton RKO horror pictures were shot somewhere on 40 acre, which would mean the mysterious isle of San Sebastian wasn’t too far from Mayberry RFD!
Greg: I think my main motivation is that the new ideas are coming in all the time. Not only from various contributors and from the general Trek (movie) news, I also have a growing backlog full of things that I always wanted to do but never dared to take on. Just in case you have time to do something new and don’t know what, there’s always a guy called Jörg who will reverse that situation.
I did some research over the years to find just where this location was. I remember while shooting motion control miniatures on Armageddon, discussing just where this place was with AJ Raitano, our camera assistant extraordinaire and formerly from Image G and Star trek. We were shooting in an industrial warehouse in Culver City near The Culver Studios in 1997.
Well years later, while looking around on the internet I found some sites about the old Batman and Bonanza TV shows and that led to some shots of the old 40 acres backlot. Now the industrial warehouse area where we had been shooting on Armageddon.
Every time I now go by there and drive through, just trying to imagine what it would have been like . . . .
In 1968, November, MGM-TV under Herb Solow, filmed at least one set of scenes of the pilot movie for Then Came Bronson. It was in “Lot 6″. It was the evening, night and morning scenes of the first camping scene, with Michael Parks and Bonnie Bedelia. I would love to find images of that location. It was rustic, rural, trees, a dirt road, and I think a small pond. Bud Ekins, the famous motorcyclist and the stunt coordinator for TCB, was the one who identified the place where it was shot. Please contact me if you can help, or even if you are a fan. By the way, the movie was just released by WB Video.
My friends and I (all younger than 10 ears old) used to play in the RKO backlot. Wish I had a camera then. I’d love to have a photo of me holding up a boulder as big as I was (paper mache – it was amazing how real those things looked) or a picture of us messing around the various facades here and there. Our other favorite place to play was in the Hal Roach lot. We’d climb over a big green fence at the end of Carson Street then run around the inside walkways of various building facades. Then we’d climb around movie apparatus storage areas and just hang out. We used to find tightly wound rolls of exposed 35mm film maybe 3 or 4 inches in diameter just lying around in an adjoining lot. What did we do with them you ask? We wrapped them in newspaper and lit them on fire. We referred to them as stink bombs (and they did indeed stink). Sure would like to have some of those rolls of film now. For all I know they were old Laurel & Hardy or Our Gang comedy throwaway scenes. In reality though, they were probably throwaways from WW2 military training films that had recently been filmed there.
you are incorrect on the location of Andy’s house,his house was second to last on the street next to the Haunted house.
just before the two story house.
My parents bought a house on Wesley St just up from Higuera St. in 1947 and yes it was fun
playing around in the old sets. So many memories! Our back fence was on the Hal Roach Studios
property line,that also turned out to be a lot of fun.I recall world war ii scenes being shot at night and
it did get pretty loud.All in all it was a great time to be growing up and being around in those early years.