The Culver Studios is a historic Colonial-styled movie studio located at 9336 W. Washington Blvd., in Culver City, California. It was the site of filming for Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane and other classics from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Over the years, this film lot has been home to such names as Pathé RKO, Laird, Howard Hughes, and Desilu studios.
In addition to film classics, Culver Studios was the birthplace of such TV favorites as The Andy Griffith Show, Hogan's Heroes, Batman and Hallmark. Previous owners of Culver Studios have included Cecil B. DeMille, and eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.
Culver Studios has also been home to well-known TV shows over the years, including Lassie, Batman and The Andy Griffith Show along with such recent hits as The Nanny, Deal Or No Deal (both the 2005-09 network version and the first season of the syndicated version, Las Vegas and Mad About You. It's the current home of the new daytime talkshow, The Bonnie Hunt Show, for Telepictures. It is also the shooting location for the ninth season of Scrubs.
After Thomas Ince's alliance with D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett went sour, he entered into a five-year lease agreement with Harry Culver for a new 14-acre (57,000 m2) studio fronting on Washington Blvd. It took two years to build the Thomas H. Ince Studio, and on December 1, 1918 a Los Angeles newspaper called it a motion picture plant that looks like a beautiful Southern estate. The studio was planned by Meyer & Holler of the Milwaukee Building Company.
Ince, a visionary in the industry, promoted the glamour of moviemaking with a reverence. He entertained the King and Queen of Belgium, and President Woodrow Wilson. The administration building became a well-known landmark, and Ince was rapidly expanding his successful facility. In the early days, the studio fire chief also acted as the city fire chief. But in November 1924, amidst clouded circumstances, Thomas Harper Ince fell ill on William Randolph Hearst's yacht, and reportedly died of a heart attack. His wife Elinor K. Ince, once a talent agent, took the reins until the next year, when it became De Mille Studios.
Harry Culver spoke at the rededication, and Cecil B. De Mille became famous for his big budget movies, like King of Kings. De Mille worked out a deal with Producers Distributing Corp. and Cinema Corp. of America was formed as a holding company for PDC and De Mille Pictures Corp. Keith-Albee-Orpheum purchased half interest in PDC and Radio Corp. of America bought in. Pathe Exchange Inc. merged with PDC/K-A-O/DeMille to become RKO in 1928, RKO-Pathe in 1930. Backlot area was added just south of the studio in 1931. Joseph Kennedy, who attempted to raise movies to an art form, had a financial interest in the studio during the Pathe years. Some of the stars working in those early years were Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Robert Mitchum, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Carole Lombard, Ann Miller, Dolores del Río, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. King Kong was released in 1933, and those sets were later torched to film the burning of Atlanta for Gone with the Wind. By 1935, the studio was known as Selznick International. David O. Selznick was the son-in-law of MGM studio chief, Louis B. Mayer, which allowed him to give MGM distribution rights for Gone with the Wind in exchange for Clark Gable. A Star is Born, Nothing Sacred, Intermezzo, Rebecca and Citizen Kane also contributed to the studio's fame. Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed great success on the lot. In the early 1950s, even with Howard Hughes' backing, RKO went downhill.
The Desilu name appeared on the lawn about 1956, and for the next 15 years, television was most important. The back lot provided locals with peeks at series like The Untouchables, Hogan's Heroes, The Lucy Show, The Real McCoys, and Lassie. The studio was sold in 1968 to Perfect Film and Chemical, which unloaded the back lot, then to OSF Industries in 1969, and become Culver City Studios in 1970.
In 1977, the studio became Laird International Studios, a rental facility. When Laird filed Chapter 11 in 1986, Grant Tinker and Gannett Company paired to purchase the lot as GTG Entertainment. Land in the next block was acquired, but construction was held in abeyance as the partnership was dissolved to leave Gannett a long distance owner. The famed lot where Steven Spielberg filmed E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was up for sale, and in 1991 it became a part of the Sony Pictures Entertainment family. During that decade, Sony also completed their plans for a new structure in the block east of the studio. Sony sold the studio to Pacific Coast Capital Partners, Studio City Los Angeles in 2004.
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