MPAA Plans Move From N.Y. to L.A.

The film industry’s chief lobbying organization, the Motion Picture Assn. of America, will move its headquarters from New York City to Los Angeles within the next year--a change that acknowledges the historical shift of movie business power from the East Coast to Southern California.

“We are confronting a realistic fact of life,” said MPAA President Jack Valenti on Wednesday. “The entire movie industry is now located in Los Angeles.”

In the industry’s early days, the major film companies maintained headquarters in New York to be close to banks and Wall Street, while producing movies in the year-round mild California climate.

Valenti noted that with the exception of the parent companies of Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, both of which have their production offices in Southern California, the home base for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Sony Pictures (Columbia and TriStar), Walt Disney, MCA/Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox are all in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

“Beyond that, I don’t know any companies that have anything but outposts in New York. . . . I just thought we could be leaner and more effective if we were just a few minutes away from each other.”

Valenti said he has been contemplating a move for several years. The MPAA already has a Los Angeles office with about 60 persons in the Sherman Oaks area. The move of 50 to 60 jobs from New York will mean the need for larger offices, which Valenti said will be “somewhere in the San Fernando Valley.” Valenti himself, will continue operating out of Washington, where he represents the industry on Capitol Hill.

Already the offices of Motion Picture Export Assn. of America (an international arm of the MPAA) and the Classification and Ratings Administration (the jointly operated movie ratings of the MPAA and the National Assn. of Theater Owners) are in the same building in Sherman Oaks.

Valenti said the 70-member Assn. of Motion Picture & Television Producers, which is currently in the same Sherman Oaks building, will also move to the new offices.