The LOT Studio, West Hollywood, CA

Address
Phone:

East < GO > West

This movie studio was built in 1919 by silent-movie maker Jesse Hampton. Not long after that he sold the studio to screen stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. It then became the Pickford-Fairbanks Studio. Later Pickford and Fairbanks along with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith joined forces to form United Artists, and so the United Artists Studio came to be. As time went on and ownership changed hands it became the Samuel Goldwyn Studio, the Warner Hollywood Studio and finally "the LOT". In the process of all those changes the studio shrunk from 18 to 11-acres

Besides Pickford, Fairbanks and Chaplin other Hollywood stars that worked their magic for the big screen or behind the scenes at the studio included the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Errol Flynn, Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, Howard Hughes and who knows how many others.

The block-long row of production offices that line Santa Monica Boulevard and part of Formosa Avenue stand in front of a new multistory building that has none of the character of the building shielding it.

Eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who kept an office at the studio during his movie-making days, had a secret garage he could wheel into from Santa Monica Boulevard and park without anybody noticing.

Photo(s): 2015