"This is a sacrilege - do the greedy people threatening this not have any pride in the history of Hollywood? Do they not have any respect and pride for the founders of motion pictures, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford? The Save Pickford-Fairbanks studios must stop this from happening - it is obliterating history and the legacy that Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford left." - Daphne Fairbanks, first daughter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Granddaughter or Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
In 1919 Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks formed the first major independent film studio, United Artist, which still exists today. All four of these historic and revolutionary filmmakers spent the remainder of their careers (with a brief exception for Chaplin) making their films with UA.
To accommodate their filmmaking, they built the Pickford-Fairbanks Studio at an existing studio that had been there since 1920. This studio, located at Formosa and Santa Monica on the border of West Hollywood, CA stands...but apparently for not much longer.
The Pickfair Studio saw the likes of not only those greats but stars including Rudolph Valentino, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Myrna Loy, Natalie Wood, Marlon Brando, Susan Hayward, Greer Garson, Jack Lemmon, Danny Kaye, Eddie Cantor and Laurence Olivier making some of their most memorable films on the historic lot.
In the early 50s, against Pickford's will (Griffith and Fairbanks were by then deceased) the studio and company was sold. It passed hands various times before ending up in the hands of Sky Partners in 1999. They renamed it the lot.
Ever since then Sky Partners has been drooling over the possibility of demolishing the historic studio and putting up ugly glass cube sculptures. Hollywood Heritage managed to get some peace though they were still pushing such ideas in 2008. As of March 2012 Skye has sold to CIM Group who plans to raze all historic buildings, with the approval of West Hollywood.
This is OUR history LA! This is OUR history film lovers! Let us stand up and tell them we will not take this quietly...they will not destroy our history and get away with it!
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