Building Century City Lusk Seminar Paper

DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR CITE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S PERMISSION Creating Century City: Twentieth Century Fox and Urban Development in West Los Angeles, 1920-1975 Stephanie Frank Ph.D. Candidate, School of Policy, Planning, and Development, USC [email protected] INTRODUCTION The Fox Film Corporation, which later merged with Twentieth Century Pictures, purchased land in the undeveloped urban fringe of Los Angeles now known as West Los Angeles in 1923 in order to expand its operations from its plant in Hollywood. While there was virtually no other development in the vicinity, real estate companies, primarily the Janss Investment Company who sold Fox its land, subdivided the area surrounding the studio for single-family homes. No Sanborn Fire Insurance Map was created for the area until 1932, four years after Fox had built its studio. Other maps indicate the area remained relatively sparsely developed until the postwar period. By the time Fox decided to redevelop, and eventually to sell for redevelopment, its 280- acre property in the late 1950s, the surrounding area was completely developed. On Fox’s former backlot rose Century City, a master-planned Corbusian-inspired node of commercial, residential, and cultural activities in large-tower superblocks. This “city within a city” was a paradigm of 1960s planning that reinforced Los Angeles’s polycentric structure and remains an important economic center today. In the age of federally-funded urban renewal projects that wiped out the inner cores of cities across the country, including Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill, Century City was the largest privately-financed urban development in the country to that point in time. Most histories of urban developments in the middle of the twentieth century are analyzed through the lens of urban renewal and narratives of decline.1 However, this story of Century City departs 1 See for example: Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1961); R. Scott Fosler and Renee A. Berger, Eds, Public-Private Partnership in American Cities: Seven Case Studies Creating Century City Stephanie Frank 1 DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR CITE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S PERMISSION from such well-treaded territory by following the motives and desires of the large landowner, Twentieth Century-Fox, whose economic difficulties were not completely unrelated to the changes in postwar American urban life that contributed to the radical restructuring of American cities at mid-century. The physically changing landscape (such as mass suburbanization) contributed to the changing entertainment landscape (such as the rise of television) that challenged the business model and profitability of the American film industry. Century City was not an attempt to revitalize that portion of Los Angeles, even if it did provide an important center of economic activity, but instead Fox’s response to losing money through its studio operations. It would not have been possible to create such a place had it not been for Fox’s land-use decisions—chiefly to acquire the land and relinquish it when it did. Urban legend informs that the disastrous budget-busting production Cleopatra (1963) forced the sell-off of Fox’s land. This notion, propagated by the press, serves as Century City’s creation myth. Even an undated press release from the Century City Chamber of Commerce cites the film’s role in bankrupting the company to the point requiring the sale of the land to rescue it from ruin.2 However, the timeline and financial facts contradict this story. The film industry was changing; more location shooting meant sound stages sat empty. One analyst examined Fox’s financial records and determined that nothing was as expensive as operating a studio.3 Fox President Spyrous Skouras publicly announced the studio’s intention to develop Century City in 1957. Meanwhile, Cleopatra was on budget and on schedule until mid-1960.4 (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1982); Jon C. Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940-1985 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). 2 Century City Chamber of Commerce, “The Century City Story,” undated press release, Century City California Vertical File, Los Angeles Public Library. 3 Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century-Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (Lanham, Md.: The Scarecrow Press, 2002), 137. 4 Solomon, 141. Creating Century City Stephanie Frank 2 DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR CITE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S PERMISSION Therefore, it was a long-standing uncertain economic climate and the dramatic appreciation of the land that led to the decision to develop and sell the land. In other words, it was an escape from unprofitability and the burden of a studio’s fixed costs. Beginning around 1920 and continuing until a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court decision mandated the selling of film companies’ movie theater chains, the film industry was dominated by five major film companies that were completely vertically integrated corporations (three minor majors were partially integrated, lacking theater networks for exhibition). This period is referred to as the studio era. In the post-studio era, fewer films were made and the profits varied in an uncertain entertainment landscape with the growing challenged posed by television. However, after Fox sold its land, the studio entered an extremely productive period, operating at capacity at its own facilities and renting others in order to meet demand. More than ten years later it repurchased the remaining studio land it had been renting with the intent to redevelop it into luxury condos and commercial space. When that plan fell through, again, Fox entered another productive era, and the studio operated over capacity. The core of the Fox studio remains an active production center to this day. This cycle leads me to question Fox’s refrain that its manufacturing plants consumed land more valuable for other purposes. WILLIAM FOX AND THE FOX FILM CORPORATION Similar to fellow film moguls, William Fox was a Jewish European immigrant to New York City that, despite limited education, first found business success in the garment industry. In 1903, at the age of 24, Fox sold his cloth-shrinking business and used some of the profits to purchase a nickelodeon in Brooklyn. The following year, he founded the Greater New York Film Rental Company to distribute films to his growing chain of movie theaters. Following a foray into legitimate theater and stage production, Fox began producing his own films in 1914 and Creating Century City Stephanie Frank 3 DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR CITE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S PERMISSION incorporated the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 in New York City. Fox located his first film studio on Staten Island. In 1917, the company rented production space in Los Angeles and established a permanent facility in Hollywood at Sunset and Western a couple years later.5 Like other major film companies, Fox’s corporate headquarters remained in New York until the 1970s. Thus, all decisions, including those about land use in Los Angeles, emanated from New York City. FROM HOLLYWOOD TO THE URBAN FRINGE The historical record is mum on why and when Fox made the decision to escape from Hollywood. The likely story was a result of the maturation of the film industry and the standardization of manufacturing practices that anticipated greater land consumption. Land was cheap and plentiful on Los Angeles’s urban fringe, especially to the southwest of Hollywood, where Fox eventually settled. Around the time Fox sought more acreage, new firms were locating outside Hollywood, where film had briefly concentrated in the 1910s. The newly subdivided and incorporated Culver City became a location of choice. However, most established firms remained in Hollywood; companies, such as Warner Bros., who eventually settled larger acreage in Burbank, did so in the 1930s. Fox was an early migrant out of Hollywood, following the Universal Film Manufacturing Company’s lead. Universal, ahead of film manufacturing trends, was the first major studio to leave Hollywood for the undeveloped fringe. Universal City, announced in 1914 and opened in 1915, was a complete manufacturing plant in the San Fernando Valley, on the other side of the Cahuenga Pass from Hollywood. Film historian Mark Garrett Cooper notes that Universal was not the first to envision a film studio that resembled a town, including living quarters within its boundaries, but it was the first to propose a 5 Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System: A History (London: British Film Institute, 2005), 37-38. Creating Century City Stephanie Frank 4 DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE OR CITE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S PERMISSION city, complete with an elected government. Universal City was originally planned along the lines of a traditional company town, due in part to the location’s isolation from developed Los Angeles, but that plan did not materialize. Meanwhile the elections were more of a promotional tool than a legal reality.6 Fox Film Corporation purchased the first portion of what became the West Los Angeles plant in 1923. In March and April 1923, real estate agents and property owners notified Fox’s lawyers at the firm of Bauer, Wright & MacDonald of land they had available for sale for Fox’s studio expansion plans. Most of the offers were located in the remote farmland of the San Fernando Valley; those properties were declined as “a little too far removed from the city to be of benefit for their purposes.”7 The only property offered in the San Fernando Valley they considered was one near Universal City.8 By April 17, 1923, John C. Eisele, Treasurer of the Fox Film Corporation, based in New York City, had agreed to purchase property from the Janss Investment Company. On May 5, 1923, they executed a contract for $300,000 for just under 100 acres of land between Santa Monica and Pico Boulevards just west of the Beverly Hills city limit.9 Soon after the purchase, Fox proceeded with plans to zone the property for film manufacturing.

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