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.”
Backyard dreamers are those true visionaries who build their dreams at great expense and for only personal reward. They are seized by a vision and they must realize this vision in physical form. If anybody can be called the patron saint of backyard dreamers, it would have to be Kim Pedersen of Fremont, California.
In 2001, Kim and Carol Pedersen realized a life-long dream of building a monorail in their backyard. Since do-it-yourself monorails are in short supply, Kim had to build everything from scratch. Straight rails were made from laminated beams from the lumber yard. Curved rails had to be custom-made by Kim out of
vertical 3/8″ plywood pieces with a horizontal 3/4″ plywood strip on top for a smooth running surface… Long bolts [were] driven in at the junctions at an angle to tie the beam sections together, post-tensioned
Rails were mounted to 31 pylons scattered throughout the yard. That was just the rail part of it. He also had to build the train from scratch, powering it with twin 12-volt motorcycle batteries.
Carol Pedersen Riding the Niles Monorail
The Niles Monorail garnered fame with every imaginable tech-related media outlet at the time covering it: Mike Rowe, Wired, Tech TV, and numerous local outfits. On March 2, 2013, Carol Pedersen reported on her Facebook that Kim was cutting up the monorail, with one Facebook commenter alluding to code compliance issues with the City of Fremont.
Niles Monorail Track
On January 24, 2017, Kim Pedersen died of acute myloblastic leukemia, which he had been fighting since May 2016. Kim’s son Kory wrote a heartfelt message on the Monorail Society site, saying in part:
Please reflect on the multitude of passions my father had by visiting his YouTube channel (found under Kim A Pedersen). Think about what drives you. Consider wrongs you see in the world, and how you feel they can be corrected. Recognize that the only things stopping you from making influential change in this world are your own misgivings. Let doubters be damned and fight the good fight, as unique as it may be.
How bad can a movie be yet look fantastic? Ocean’s 11 (1960) is a heist film famous for its slick Rat Pack, mid-century modern trappings, but altogether a heaping, floppy mess. It’s a movie you want to like but can’t. It has no real highs, no lows, no drama, little humor. Interminable parts of the movie happen at Spyros Acebo’s Ladera Drive house in Beverly Hills, where the boys just talk and talk forever. Even one hour into the movie, they have only talked about the heist. The only real spark of life is with Cesar Romero, as Peter Lawford’s father-in-law-to-be, an unspecified Las Vegas fixer-gangster who wises up to the boys’ heist and exposes it.
Yet the movie has a great look, as the boys progress from casino to casino: Flamingo, Sands, Desert Inn, Riviera, and Sahara. This slavish progression through the five hotels not once, but twice (first casing the joints, then later on, robbing them) is a huge drag on the movie’s storyline, but it’s a great crosscut of 1960s Las Vegas.
Flamingo Bar
Flamingo Hotel and Casino Bar from Ocean’s 11 (1960)
Sands Cashier/Guard Stand
Sands Cashier/Guard Stand from Oceans 11 (1960)
Sands Hotel and Casino Phone Area
Sands Hotel and Casino Phone Area from Oceans 11 (1960)
Sands Hotel and Casino Coffee Shop
Sands Hotel and Casino Coffee Shop from Oceans 11 (1960)
Sahara Casino Nightclub
Sahara Casino Nightclub from Oceans 11 (1960)
Flamingo Hotel and Casino Entrance
Flamingo Hotel and Casino Entrance from Oceans 11 (1960)
Talk about humble and unassuming. A man builds a painstaking recreation of some elements of Disneyland’s Fantasyland in his basement, uploads a less than two minute-long video to YouTube, and all he says is, “This is a short video about my Fantasyland basement.”
But there you have it. An as-yet-anonymous maker known only as Travis shows us his basement with “facades that recreate attractions like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride or restaurants like Pinocchio’s Village Haus,” according to The Disney Blog. Thankfully, the blog spoke briefly with Travis and found out that he’s been building out the basement according to his fantasy since 2006. Working from thousands of Disneyland photographs, many of the elements, such as copper lamps, were created entirely from scratch. For the stone-look building facades, he cut foam blocks to size, then covered the blocks with mortar for an authentic, textured stone look and feel.
