In an industry—and a metropolis—not always synonymous with permanence and longevity, Paramount Studios has been a continuous home for film production in Hollywood, both the neighborhood and the industry, for over one hundred years.
In 1926, Paramount Pictures purchased from United Studios the core of the property they’ve had ever since. Back then, the lot was 26 acres. Paramount spent $1 million building four sound stages and other structures on the land—that’s about $16.8 million in today’s currency.
Those figures sound quaint today. Paramount Studios now covers 65 acres and has 30 sound stages. Buildings come in a host of architectural styles, including Mediterranean Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, Streamline Moderne, and Tudor Revival. There’s a five-acre backlot stand-in for New York City; a 900,000+ gallon water tank for aquatic scenes; and a 145-foot-tall water tower with the Paramount logo.
The expansion over the years came via acquisitions. In 1967, Paramount bought RKO, a former major studio located in the building next door, which featured a rooftop globe used as part of the RKO logo. In 1988, the studio added more adjacent land where Western Costume Company long stood.
According to IMDb, at the time of this writing, 12,425 movies and television programs have been filmed on the Paramount lot. To name some highlights: 1927’s Wings (the only silent film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931); parts of Cecil B. De Mille’s epic Cleopatra (1934); films with the Marx Brothers, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West; films by director Ernst Lubitsch like The Love Parade (1929) and The Merry Widow (1934); later road trip buddy comedies with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope; Psycho (1960); Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961); The Godfather (1972) within a powerful 1970s slate, on and on through present day.
Paramount Pictures’ roots go back to 1912 New York, under the name Famous Players Film Company. This was the brainchild of Adolph Zukor, an impoverished orphan from Hungary who went on to become a 20th Century titan in the world of business and entertainment. After immigrating, he was first a furrier, then a penny arcade and nickelodeon entrepreneur, then the pioneer who brought the first feature-length film to the United States.
Paramount was a distributor at the time, both for Famous Players and for the Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company. Zukor orchestrated a merger of the trio of companies, staying in New York while Lasky ran production in Los Angeles. The combined enterprise initially operated in Feature Play’s converted horse barn in Hollywood on Selma Avenue and Vine Street, a mile or so from the future Paramount lot.
Differentiating themselves from rivals, the films that Paramount would produce, “purred with the smooth hum of sophistication,” Neal Gabler wrote in his seminal book, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. During the late 1920s and early ‘30s, Gabler noted, “the studio basked in its own daring, discrimination, taste, and elan,” and described Paramount’s audience as, “whisked away to a world of sheen and sex where people spoke in innuendo, acted with abandon, and doubted the rewards of vice.”
It’s no wonder, then, that Zukor and Lasky also gave studio visitors something to behold. When Paramount Studios opened, among its most striking features was the stylish Bronson Gates, arguably Hollywood’s Arc de Triomphe. When Paramount expanded, the Gates remained on the property’s interior, and a similarly impressive ingress was added at 5555 Melrose Avenue.