Major Fire at Universal Studios Hollywood

[Jim Warfield]

Too much money, too many toys.
Just like the kid with too many toys, the toy box can't hold them all, he doesn't care anyway.

[shawnc]

A couple of the things I remember the studios neglecting were the stars of American Grafitti - the 32 Ford and the 55 Chevy. They were left to rust on some side street and I remember hearing many years ago that some guy picked up both of them for a song.

[Matt Marich]

This set and backlot street burned completely down only about 20 years ago, so all of this was re-done anyway. The real loss was then, those were the streets from The Sting and many more. All of these sets are molded from stock items in their staff shop, and Spielberg ordered, (Amblin was there at the time), new blueprints and a full restoration. The main loss was King Kong and the video vaults, even though this stuff is duplicated elswhere, they will probably skip some titles as they often do for the bottom line.

The most historical and revered places in all of Hollywood were untouched, stage 28, were Lon Chaney Sr. shot Phantom of the Opera. The Psycho house, and some of the Court of Mircles sets from all classic Universal horror including The Wolfman were also untouched. I haven't heard anything about the Jaws set, it was part of New England, the fire did burn close to Whoville and The War of the Worlds set.

For me, these are national treasures, but the studios care less. Universal kicked immortal make-up man Jack pierce off the lot because he was to slow in their opinion. They destroyed truckloads of make-up molds in the late 70's including all the molds from Man of 1,000 faces, Galactica Cylons, to Eddie Munster's Wolf Wolf doll. Hopefully the current street from Desperate Housewives was untouched, not that I care about this show but it's the Leave it to Beaver street and home of The Munster's House, and Delta House! All of these are seen every week during this show, what a waste!

Matt

[Jim Warfield]

Doesn't the state of California collect a huge property tax on old movie stuff left over?
That's why some incredible movie cars got destroyed rather than pay those taxes, I thought.("Blade Runner")
When "Gone With The Wind" was filming the "burning of Atlanta" scene, Selznik piled numerous old movie sets together to make the fire, sets from the silent movie days from some very famous movies, just to make sure it all burnt real good gasoline was piped into the middle of it.......so nothing , no considerations along any of these lines of thought were behind the fire now?

[Motograter]

Wow that's sad news I really like Universal Studios. But we all know they will rebuild

[Greg Chrise]

I guess since Disney has temporarily lost it's competitor, it will have to spend billions to get people to their park instead of having all that free word of mouth advertising.

My prayers go out to the Disney family as well.

[icandrawem2]

the disney family?! did i miss something here?

[graystone]

I been watcing!

Looks like a mess. My thoughts go to the Universal Family and Fans. Shane

[Kevin Dells]

Wow that is sad!

[UndeadProd]

a little more information from the press conference -

no mention of the earthquake ride, but fire officials confirmed that the New York streets and facades, county courthouse square (featured so prominently in the Back to the future films), and the King Kong building have been destroyed -- and fire definitely impacted the video vault building.

About 5 buildings lost, according to Fox news -- and the fire was quite large.

The theme park will still open today at noon, and the main motion picture vault and library is still secure...which means that copies of so many classic film and tv shows appear to be secure, but so much history has been lost -- from the first King Kong attraction to the backgrounds for countless movie and tv shows over the years...

[UndeadProd]

The fire has already torn though the King Kong ride, Earthquake, multiple sets, and the video archive.


At least right now - 9:50am - you can see a live feed from Fox here:

http://media. myfoxla. com/live/2/

So much history seemingly lost forever.