Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/629850
54 P E R S P E C T I V E | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 6 Above: Universal Pictures, founded in 1912, the oldest surviving motion picture company in America. When it opened Universal City Studios in 1915 on a 230-acre ranch in the Cahuenga Pass, that facility became the largest motion picture studio in the world. Carl Laemmle, who was the founder and managed and operated Universal Pictures. He said, "This is your first week or two here. You're going to be an Art Director?" I said, "Yes, that's what I'm going to be, I just love to get into this sketching and drawing and all that." He said, "Well John, I'm just about ready for retirement, but I'd like to give you a little thing. Now the thing I'm going to give you is money. You see, we make very reasonable pictures here, all very small. We don't take sets down, we leave them stand and we rework them—not too much paint. And if you can get that straight, everything is going to be fine. You just go right ahead and you're going to be a fine Art Director." So I thanked him, and we finished lunch. But it kind of hung in my stomach. The Art Department at that time was a kind of comical place. Universal, as you know, at one time had all outdoor stages, back in 1905 and '10 and under the grandstand the old space had been partitioned off into little cubicles. Those were the offices of the Art Directors. We all had those little sloped ceilings. I fell heir to a little space right between the fan mail department and Martin Obzina and John Ewing. John Ewing had architectural experience. We've always had lots of architects around. John Ewing and Martin Obzina were on one side and later, [Willy] Pogany. I don't know if you know Pogany, but he was one of the great designers of Baroque European style. In fact, he was a professor of architecture at Budapest University, and had come out to Hollywood. So I had these boys all around, old-timers—old-timers to me, anyway: I was a young chap then. I read the first script there and started to think about it. Now I'm not trying to fool you, I wasn't an Art Director, I was just one of the sketch boys; I was going to do some sketches. But they were very nice to me and very gracious. They had seen the one-man show I'd had in town. So I read this first script and it was really terrible. It was a terribly weak story. It didn't have much of anything, and the first thing we needed was a saloon. We needed a saloon for this Western town, but at that time, Universal didn't have anything that you could really call a Western street. So I thought, "Gee, that's going to be exciting. We're going to build a great Western street and we can go up to the saloon and those doors are going to open and that great long bar is going to be there with all the mirrors and all the Victoriana around it." I thought, "This is keen." I got out a big board and I started making a couple of lines on it, and I'll never forget Obzina came in and he took one look and he said, "You're fantasizing, are you here, John?" I said, "No, this is the barroom, this is going to be this marvelous bar that we're going to do." He said, "John, now come on, we've got three bars in the studio, and if you take a little walk, I'll show you the three bars. There's a black Empire bar, there's the Eastlake job and then there's one we can't tell what it is. You have your pick." So we went and got the stills out of the book, and there were three bars that I thought were awful.