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… Continue reading Fake Americana With a Topping of Grit: 4 Aces Movie Ranch, Palmdale
Category: Movie Sets (Interior)
Movie sets typically built on a movie studio’s soundstage.
Bars, Nightclubs, and Casinos from Ocean’s 11 (1960)
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… Continue reading Bars, Nightclubs, and Casinos from Ocean’s 11 (1960)
27 Giant Props From Land of the Giants
The Land of the Giants television show from 1969 was pure visual candy. It had to be, since the plots were thin and often ridiculous, even by the standards of this outlandish world. Episodes each cost a reported $250,000 to produce. Giant props were built that simulated an oversized world that the travelers in the… Continue reading 27 Giant Props From Land of the Giants
Tour I Love Lucy’s Fictional Beverly Palms Hotel
It’s the part of the I Love Lucy TV series that stands out in so many viewers’ minds: Hollywood and the Beverly Palms Hotel. For three seasons, Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel lived in Manhattan. There were location changes between apartments, Ricky’s Tropicana Club, various stores, but mainly they stayed within the New York area. Then… Continue reading Tour I Love Lucy’s Fictional Beverly Palms Hotel
Universal Studios 1972: Scenes from a Studio on a Verge of a Boom
With these photos of Universal Studios in 1972, understand the context: this was the studio at one of its lowest points. Its big, bustling period of huge stars and directors was well in the past. Its next boom, the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls period detailed by author Peter Biskind–Jaws, The Sting, American Graffiti–had not yet happened,… Continue reading Universal Studios 1972: Scenes from a Studio on a Verge of a Boom