Ready For My Close Up....
Actually, my job in the 1970s was to promote
Universal Studios.
Well, the
Tour portion of the studio.
It was decided to allow people inside the gates to peek behind the scenes and my job was to publicize the fact that tours were fun and showed
"how movies were made."Publicity is tricky.
The
Los Angeles Times was a serious publication and I needed a reason for it to help me promote the tour.
I suggested the
European streets on the
Back Lot as a place for a Fashion Shoot. The paper agreed.
The LAT photographer was on time and I was there as escort. The model was late. Very late.
I was asked to slip on a fancy cable knit sweater, brush my hair and strike a pose in
"Italy."Wish we had pushed the fake lamp post electric plug out of sight.
Labels: Back Lot, behind-the-scenes, LAT, Los Angeles Times, models, The Tour, Universal City, Universal Studios
Don't Touch That Dial...
One of the great parts of being in the Publicity Department for the tour at
Universal Studios in the late 1960s was the fun weekends you could have with your kids.
Stand in line with all the other people at Disneyland? Not hardly when you could drive them around the Back Lot on a Saturday for a private excursion and let them mess with the props!
This giant phone eventually ended up at the Tour Center where thousands and thousands of kids gathered... to look at the signs that said
"Keep Off." Hey that thing had a huge rotary dial and someone could get hurt. And sue the big old studio.
"
The Incredible Shrinking Man" was the film that created the phone, a light plug and socket more than 6 feet high and a mammoth-sized 35mm camera.
A few months ago I returned to tour Universal Studios in the San Fernando Valley and it looked VERY different. Nothing was the same except they still had a tour of the lower lot using 3-car trams similar to what I remembered from my days there.
But now, each tram had tv monitors that showed
Whoopie Goldberg telling you about all the sights and short clips from movies filmed on The
Old West streets and the
New York Brownstones or the
Psycho house/Bates Motel outdoor sets.
Back when I was there as a publicist, I wrote scripts with awful puns for the tour guides to use as they roamed the Back Lot, talking on the mike while riding backwards in the trams loaded with 90 camera-toting tourists.
I remember some REALLY bad jokes. ("...and the road up past the Bates Motel is called the
Psycho Path." Groan.)
Labels: Back Lot, kids on weekends, movie studio tour, trams, Whoopie Goldberg
