Studio Tour Gives Top Billing to Lot’s Past

The out-of-town visitors who lined up Tuesday for one movie studio tour weren’t looking for the newest show business attraction in Los Angeles. They were looking for one of the oldest ones.

That’s why they took a sightseeing bus to the film production lot in Century City instead of the one at Universal City.

The huge sliding sound stage doors at the 72-year-old 20th Century Fox Studios were opened to conservationists from across the country who are in town this week attending a National Trust for Historic Preservation conference.

The theme of the five-day Los Angeles convention is “Saving America’s Treasures in the 21st Century.” And the rare peek behind the studio walls illustrated the extent to which those running a company named after a past century are doing it.

“No, we’ve decided not to change the studio name to make it current,” Eugene D. Straub, senior vice president for studio operations, told conservationists. “The name’s historic.”

Plenty of things at the West Pico Boulevard film lot are that way, curious preservationists discovered.

“This is a place [where] you can actually see layers of history. It’s a very easy place to read the history of the movies in the buildings,” said Christy McAvoy, a Hollywood historic resources expert whose firm has been a preservation consultant to Fox studios for the last decade.

McAvoy is also president of the Los Angeles Conservancy and is an organizer of the National Trust conference, which has attracted about 2,800 preservationists.

The conference officially gets underway today, with Gov. Gray Davis, Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera and futurist Stewart Brand, author of the “Whole Earth Catalog,” scheduled as speakers.

Along with 70 educational sessions, the conference will include about 40 field trips and tours to old neighborhoods, West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip and the Watts Towers. Visits to San Juan Capistrano and downtown Pasadena are also planned.

On Saturday’s final day of the conference, visitors will tour post-World War II development sites in the San Fernando Valley and several Cold War defense sites now owned by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Some preservationists got a head start Tuesday with the Fox visit and by touring South Pasadena neighborhoods where a controversial extension of the Long Beach Freeway is proposed. The 40-person Fox tour was a quick sellout.

The movie lot’s blend of Spanish Colonial Revival, Moderne and ultramodern offices and film stages--coupled with the commissary’s Art Deco furnishings--were an eyeful for visitors such as Eugenio Deanzorena, who heads a preservation-education foundation in Alexandria, Va.

The visitors made it clear that their personal conservation interests are wide-ranging. Palm Beach, Fla., conservationist Polly Earl questioned Fox officials about steps being taken to preserve old nitrate-based films from the studio’s past.

McAvoy explained that a 1990 architectural survey of the film lot revealed that 68 buildings contribute to the historical significance of the studio--buildings originally constructed for Fox’s old “Movietone City” talkie pictures and now used for high-tech film production.

National Trust leaders say this week’s conference will include sessions exploring blending the old with the new--topics such as the integration of cellular phone tower and satellite television dishes into historic neighborhoods and the conversion of old buildings for what organizers call “the digital revolution.”

The convention will end with an analysis of Art Deco in Los Angeles, preservation issues in diverse neighborhoods and the growing trend of building so-called monster houses in older neighborhoods--topics that conference organizers hope will attract local residents.

Outsiders will be allowed to register on a one-day fee basis for seminars and educational programs. Sign-ups are at the Biltmore Hotel conference headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, officials said.

Some of those attending Tuesday’s studio tour may have come to the conclusion that the historical nature of Hollywood has a lot to do with illusion.

How else, suggested Lynne Brown, a Gulfport, Fla., city councilwoman, could a futuristic such as “The X-Files” come to life from a 10-foot by 30-foot wood-frame production building that was constructed in 1916?