One sub-niche of 1960s and 1970s television is the show that demonstrates the studio backlot for what it is. It’s a fascinating snapshot into the state of the backlot at that moment, with little embellishment.
The Brady Bunch ends up at a mysterious ghost town with a menacing prospector. Tumbleweeds tumble. But it’s patently obvious that it’s the studio backlot. Paramount Stage 5 nearly bordered the Western street. While scripts and planning happened well in advance, it’s tempting to imagine a discussion on the order of: “Hey, let’s film on the street today, kids.” These photos are from the “Mission: Impossible” TV series, Season 6, Episode 2, “Encore.” MI was a heavy user of the Paramount backlot and surrounding areas. This episode shows McFadden Street, the (real) guardhouse just outside of the Western street fence, a gate that I believe fronts (the real) Gower Street, and the Western street itself.
Paramount Studios, Mission: Impossible, Season 6, Episode 2 “Encore”Facing Van Ness – Paramount Studios, Mission: Impossible, Season 6, Episode 2 “Encore”Paramount Studios, Mission: Impossible “Encore” Season 6, Episode 2
Paramount Studios, Mission: Impossible “Encore” Season 6, Episode 2Majestic Studios, Mission: Impossible “Encore” Season 6, Episode 2
4 Aces, located in Palmdale, California, is every Highway Patrol with Broderick Crawford and B-Minus-film noir from 1949 to 1960 wrapped up into one, big, delightful fake.
The Diner
This is where you take the woman hitchhiking in heels with a suitcase and a shady story about her father, in Chicago, kicking her out of the house, when you know it’s really something about a boyfriend or husband. The boyfriend or husband robbed a bank in Indiana, and the woman has the dough in that Samsonite.
You listen to her story all evening—before you do what you’re about to do with her during the rest of the night. The next morning, she’s dead.
4 Aces Motel
Jan-Peter Flack created a movie ranch that specializes in just one look, one slice of Americana that still seems to be hanging on. It’s Atomic Age America but with the door open and the sand beginning to sift inside and the decay starting to happen.
Even though it looks like a refurbished motel and diner, 4 Aces was apparently built in 1997, from scratch, and was first used for the Lenny Kravitz video for “American Woman.”
At one time, it was assumed that New York City was the world and the world was New York City.
So, films of the 20th century over-represented New York City in their depictions of ordinary, and often extraordinary, life. This meant that film studios always had to have a New York Street: a collection of four or five intersecting short streets with brownstones and Lower East Side-type cast iron-facade buildings with fire escapes.
Much of that idea remains. Several Los Angeles-based film studios with backlots still have a New York Street, including Paramount.
Off to one side at Paramount is a tiny open-air area called Murder Alley. It’s where characters murder and get murdered. Fights break out. Corpses are dumped. Back-alley deals are literally made in this back alley.
Contributing to the down-trodden look is the haphazard brickwork in Murder Alley. The bricks are unevenly laid. Extensive over-mortaring adds to the sense that this was thrown together with little care for aesthetics.
This brick isn’t made of masonry at all. Rather it’s vacuum-formed plastic that uses real brick as a mold, and it comes in sheets that are 8 1/2 feet wide by 4 feet high.
The truly interesting detail is its name: Murder Your Wife. It’s identified as PPS-11 in the Paramount Studios catalog. Warner Bros., too, offers Murder Your Wife brick.
An article in the November 4, 1997, Los Angeles Times says:
The effect comes largely from his use of murder-your-wife brick, which gets its name from the 1965 Jack Lemmon movie How to Murder Your Wife.
It continues with a quote from set designer Neil Peter Jampolis:
They took castings of the brick walls of a Greenwich Village building for that film and made a plastic form out of it. You can buy the casting from Warner Bros. But it has to be skillfully painted, because it only comes in gray. The scenic artist here, Chris Holmes, painted what you see. He’s very talented.
In Twilight Zone’s second season show, “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim” (1961), Christian Horn, the leader of a wagon train from 1847, leaves the party to help his ill son. What he finds is present-day, early 1960s New Mexico. The center of the action is the Airflite Cafe. Recently, I was amazed to learn that the Airflite Cafe is still standing.
Begin with the scene from the show.
Airflite Cafe Today
Located on the Eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, just off of US 395, near Olancha and Grant California, its exact address is 2010 S. Hwy 395. Without a doubt, the building is the same. You can match the facade–three dormer windows above the door, two on each side, then another two–with the facade in the show. Then there is the rounded porte cochere that matches. The wood sidewalk today is likely covering the concrete walkway from the show.
The property is a large, single-story commercial building constructed in 1948 as part of John Grant’s tourism and highway service developments. Gene Christensen later acquired the building and operated the Southern Inyo Garage and Store. The building is fairly plain, but the curvature of the false front and the pylon evoke a reference to the art moderne style. By 1957, the building was remodeled and converted to the Airflight Café, and eventually became the Stagecoach Inn. The restaurant closed in 1975, after which it was remodeled to serve as a market.
It appears that by December 2022, a CalTrans project called the Olancha Cartago 4 Lane Project will move Hwy 395 a few miles west, effectively cutting off the Airflite Cafe from easy access.
With these photos of Universal Studios in 1972, understand the context: this was the studio at one of its lowest points. Its big, bustling period of huge stars and directors was well in the past. Its next boom, the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls period detailed by author Peter Biskind–Jaws, The Sting, American Graffiti–had not yet happened, though it was right around the corner. Though it was a well-established studio tour and most of it was orchestrated for tourists, a few “real studio” elements did shine through.
Universal Studios Entrance
Far quieter than it is today. Notice that you could park just a few feet away from the ticket booths.
Western Set (for Tourists)
Universal Studios 1972 – Western Set
Traditional Westerns were long dead by 1972 (replaced by the anti-Western), notably 1969’s True Grit. But the iconography of the Western still meant something to most people.
Especially the Western Stunt Show
Universal Studios 1972 – Western Show with Stunt Men
Purely for tourists, the Western stunt show, with blank guns a-firing and stuntmen a-fallin’, were a staple of many fake Western towns of that period.
Prop Plaza’s Fighter Jet
Universal Studios 1972 – USAF Fighter Jet
Prop Plaza was a place for tourists to chill. All of the props scattered around the plaza were authentic.
Above Universal Studios
Universal Studios looks nothing like this today. A fire in 2008 destroyed much of the backlot.
Top View of Universal Studios Backlot and New York Street
Universal Studios 1972 – High View of Studio
A tighter view showing the extensive New York Street backlot at Universal.
Snow-Making Machine and Snow Backdrop
Universal Studios 1972 – Snow Backdrop
Put together for tourists, this snow backdrop featured a snow-making machine (top). A wire cylinder rotated, releasing the fake snow. Almost certainly the backdrop of the snowy scene was used in Universal movies of the past.
Stuntmen Practicing on New York Street
Universal Studios 1972 – New York Street
Not a demonstration for tourists, this was a group of stuntmen practicing or rehearsing a scene for a movie or TV show.
Interior Room Set
Universal Studios 1972 – Interior Home Set
Likely this was a real interior set that was temporarily available for the studio tour.
Fake Burning House
Universal Studios 1972 – House on Fire Exterior Set
This fake burning house would catch fire every time a tram passed by. This was a real set.
Back of the Burning House
Universal Studios 1972 – House on Fire Set Back Side
Fake Rocks on Prop Plaza
Universal Studios 1972 – Hefting Fake Rocks
Oversized Telephone, Chair, and Table
Universal Studios 1972 – Giant Props
Prop Plaza: Giant Books, Scissors, Hand
Universal Studios 1972 – Giant Book Props
Titles: Play It As It Lays, by Joan Didion, Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, and a fake novel, Frenzy, referring to the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name. While it’s tempting to think that these props were used in the Land of the Giants TV show (1968 to 1969), this is unlikely, since Giants was produced by 20th Century Fox.
Fake Rain
Universal Studios 1972 – Fake Rain on Sea Port
Fake Snow Scene with Dry California Hills in Background
Universal Studios 1972 – Exterior Snow Set
Seaport and Dock
Universal Studios 1972 – Exterior Sea Port
Sea Port and Dock Set with Wave-Making Machine
Universal Studios 1972 – Exterior Sea Port with Wave Making Machine
OK, maybe not waves exactly–ripples?
Sea Port and Dock Set
Universal Studios 1972 – Exterior Sea Port and Dock
