Events - Paramount Pictures studios tour : the VIP experience a must do thing to do in Los Angeles

By Mulder, Los Angeles, Paramount Pictures studios, 18 july 2022

This year again I was able to take the VIP tour of Paramount Pictures Studios in Los Angeles. It is interesting to see the many differences between the one I did in 2019 and this one. In three years the effect of the Covid 19 pandemic has reshaped the cards and this new tour seems to have been scaled back. Indeed several parts of the Paramount studios are not included in this VIP tour that it is the visit of the famous Paramount theatre but also the archive room containing many film reels but also many and old cameras. In the same way the classy meal which took place outside in the form of a buffet was moved in the dining room of the studios and the proposed meal was definitely better even if the proposed portions were rather small.

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production and distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth oldest film studio in the world,the second oldest film studio in the United States (behind Universal Pictures), and the sole member of the "Big Five" film studios located within the city limits of Los Angeles.

In 1916, film producer Adolph Zukor put 24 actors and actresses under contract and honored each with a star on the logo.In 1967, the number of stars was reduced to 22 and their hidden meaning was dropped. In 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital form only.The company's headquarters and studios are located at 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, California. Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving film studio in the world; after the French studios Gaumont Film Company (1895) and Pathé (1896), Titanus (1904), followed by the Nordisk Film company (1906), and Universal Studios (1912). It is the last major film studio still headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.

Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the Famous Players Film Company. Hungarian-born founder Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time (leading to the slogan "Famous Players in Famous Plays"). By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success. Its first film was Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, which starred Sarah Bernhardt.

That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature Play Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, later known as Samuel Goldwyn. The Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a suitable site in Hollywood. This place was a rented old horse barn converted into a production facility with an enlarged open-air stage located between Vine Street, Selma Avenue, Argyle Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. It was later known as the Lasky-DeMille Barn. In 1914, their first feature film, The Squaw Man was released.

Paramount Pictures' first logo, based on a design by its co-founder William Wadsworth Hodkinson, used from 1914 to 1967. On May 8, 1914, Paramount Pictures Corporation (previously known as Progressive Pictures) was founded by a Utah theatre owner, W. W. Hodkinson, who had bought and merged five smaller firms. On May 15, 1914, Hodkinson signed a five-year contract with the Famous Players Film Company, the Lasky Company and Bosworth, Inc. to distribute their films.Actor, director and producer Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of Jack London movies. Paramount was the first successful nationwide distributor; until this time, films were sold on a statewide or regional basis which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation.

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Photos : Boris Colletier / Mulderville