MAMMOTH STUDIOS
Location
: Once a fourteen-acre industrial plant southeast of Beverly Hills in 1919, Mammoth Studios is located between La Cienga Boulevard and the Santa Monica Parkway down from Culver Studios. The main gate is at 1386 La Cienga, but on-site tours are arranged at the Mammoth Studios Administration Building at 1243 La Brea Avenue. Tours are best obtained three months in advance.Description of Place: Mammoth Studios is a very active television production company with eighteen soundstages, a commissary, a three-story office building, eight exterior sets and outlying structures on twenty-acres of property. The property is patrolled by a full staff of security guards. Many of the staff and employees use motorized carts to traverse the grounds.
Ghostly Manifestations: "Actors are an insecure species; we demand acceptance and we will go to great ends to try and get it." Author unknown, but the quote has been often attributed to Lionel Barrymore, but if a demand for attention was any more apparent, no one has to go any more further than the numerous haunted locations in the Hollywood Hills. Ghosts of celebrities frequent their old homes, favorite hotels and preferred restaurants. In Hollywood, the need to continue a life that was cut short seems to be a common theme for ghosts. The local spirits seem to give meaning to the classic theater ghost.... a former actor or director who never was able to complete that final “big show” during their lifetime and for this reason remains behind to haunt the place where they knew the most happiness. Or the other classic theater specter... the stage hand who was killed in an accident and stayed behind at the place.
Working during the night at some of Hollywood’s older movie studios can be an interesting experience. According to reports from security guards and technicians, it can also be a hair-raising one. In the words of one long-time employee, “I’ve seen some things here that I wouldn’t want to try and explain to anyone!” Universal Studios is famous for its celebrity ghosts, and Culver Studios is haunted by a few stars from yesteryear. Although not as famous as the others, Mammoth Studios seems to be able to hold it's own share of haunting stories.
"You want to hear about the ghosts..." Security guard Joey Fatone looks around a bit then turns back. "I'm probably the only one around here willing to talk about them" Fatone gives the tours to outsiders that the tour guides don't give. He will show you where Chad Dylan Cooper sneaks girls on dates, and where Dash Riprock once slept off an eighteen hour bender before filming "The Cowboy From Dusty Ridge." He knows where Zora Lancaster once went crashing twelve feet to the studio floor while trying to sneak food to Tawni Hart on a hunger strike and where Milo Booth passed out during the filming of "Ape Man Of Forgotten Mountain."
"You have to understand," Fatone adds. "That over the years the lot has been rebuilt, refurbished and renovated several times. Temperamental stars get dressing rooms redone, other actors get theirs made smaller or eliminated completely. Sets are expanded, storage rooms get moved, stairways and access ways get lost or redone. Some of these buildings have had more facelifts than Joan Rivers!" He ambles down a long walkway to an unused wing off the soundstage where the sets of "McKenzie Falls" rest during hiatus. "One of the first casualties was the dressing room of Spatzy Carbuncle, the old Burlesque Silent Film star. His dressing room was closed off and forgotten about till recent. Since the Forties, people have seen his apparition pacing and smoking a cigarette outside the McKenzie soundstage, but no one knew why he was always wandering in that spot until two of the So Randoms broke through the wall of that storage room in trying to turn it into a dressing room."
Originally born Salvatore Carlucci, Carbuncle taped a hundred and eighteen comedy shorts and three motion pictures in Stage 18 where "So Random" and "McKenzie Falls" are both taped. People still smell his cigarette smoke in the building after all these years and hear sounds of a spectral poker game in his old dressing room, but he's not the only ghost here.
"The Catacombs are the network of tunnels under the property where all the old silver nitrate films are stored." Fatone remarks. "There are dozens of corridors down there with huge rooms full of shelves two stories tall, and only two and a half feet of space between the shelves. It gets freezing cold down there even in the summer, and several people have remarked hearing sounds of voices and people running down there. Through the shelves you can see shadows of people rushing through the other side of the room, turn a corner and then vanish. I heard a story about some film students running and screaming back up the stairs because they had their pants scared off by something down there."
One oft seen ghost is that of Jennifer Farrell, who when she isn't haunting her old house in Beverly Hills, has been seen wandering the halls of Stage 11 where she filmed thirteen of the films in her twenty-two film career. First seen in 1980, some of the younger stars confuse her with Marilyn Monroe or an unidentified extra. She's been seen several times walking the alley way she took on her way home in the Sixties and some of the time in Soundstage 16 where she filmed "Men Are Pigs." According to rumor, actress Ginger Grant reportedly saw Jennifer enter the building anyone had heard the news was dead. Grant was a protégé to Jennifer, and they were friends, but for years, Ginger claimed she had seen Jennifer several times in the weeks after her reported death.
She has not been the only one to report seeing Jennifer's ghost. In 1987, a security guard walking his beat through the alley reported he had seen a blonde woman in a long green dress crossing the property and heading toward Stage 11. He searched for her, but never found her. Employees have heard a woman's voice talking in the backstage area when it is supposed to be empty.
"Last year," Fatone reports. "I and several guards were in the side entry area sitting and talking, and we suddenly became aware of the sounds of another discussion going on. We got up, looked around and tried to figure out where it was coming from, but as best as we could figure out, it seemed to be coming everywhere at once. While it was going on, we heard a phone start ringing and then suddenly stop in mid-ring as if someone had answered it. We checked the offices, but they were empty. We never figured out which phone it was."
Over the years, the studio has seen several child actors. The "Billy Sagebrush" series was filmed here in 1924 as the studio's counterpart to the "Our Gang" series. After that was cancelled, they tried again with the "Sally Shine" series which was cut short when the studio's young star was tragically killed in an elevator accident in 1939. Mostly reported at the Hollywood Tower where she met her demise, her eerie visage has been seen running through Soundstage 8. Witnesses have seen and heard her running through the prop department there and through the basement corridors. However, not everyone is convinced she's Sally Shine.
"When you think about it, the apparition of the small blonde girl did not start appearing until the Seventies." John Timberlake is a film historian and amateur ghost hunter who hosts the "Haunted Hollywood" tour line for guests to Hollywood. "Sally only did around twenty comedy shorts for Mammoth Studios in the Thirties, but Mary Newman was was another child star who once worked on the lot here during the Twenties and Early Thirties. Back then, this was known as West Coast Studios, and she played an extra in almost fifty pictures until she got too old at the age of eleven. From what I hear, she went to college, became a teacher in Greenpoint and passed away in 1973. I think its very likely she returns here to relive the fun she had here as an actress in her youth."
Despite this speculation, it is possible she's not Mary either. In October 2009, a group of third-graders won tickets to attend a taping of the series, "That's So Random." The event was that they had won the tickets by collecting enough money for the St. Jude Children's Hospital, and it was photographed and covered by the studio's own PR Department. All the sounds of those children must have attracted the spirit of that time-lost child star because three photos each taken a few minutes apart show a mysterious young girl set apart by the rest by her period clothing and Shirley Temple curls. A few of the kids remembered seeing her as well, and in one of the images, she looks uncannily like a real girl, albeit one in an ethereal state, but she doesn't resemble Sally or Mary.
Regardless of her identity, people have heard sounds of a phantom little girl singing in Soundstage 8. When anyone goes looking for her, they can never find her, but then a few days later, someone heading upstairs suddenly scares her on the landing and she runs screaming up the stairs to her mother who also doesn't exist.
Most of the ghosts, however, though scary, seem a bit on the mild side, but one reported specter that terrifies almost everyone is that of TV producer Harold Hecuba who was found slumped over his desk from drinking too much in 1985. Although he was generally animated and eccentric in public, he was mostly known as a tyrant and a bully to those who knew him in life. Married seven times in life to various starlets, he loved smoking, gambling and drinking and was know for using complex contracts to bilk writers and creators out of royalties to their scripts. Since his death, his old office has been used and converted into a records room. No one wants to be in there for very long. The sensation of being watched has been reported several times, and some people feel as if they have been touched. Some people have even remarked that it feels as if there is a presence in there. Since 1985, no one has wanted to use it as an office.
"Story has it that a few days after anyone tried moving into it, a voice out of no where starts screaming, "Get Out!" " Timberlake tells the story. "A few other witnesses have reported a dark shadow that paces past the windows at night or sounds of angry stomping sounds across the floor. Today, no one stays in there for very long, but last year, actress Sonny Munroe came in and said she passed a figured that looked like Harold coming up the stairs and going in his office. She didn't even know what the man looked like, and yet, she described him perfectly with the glasses, loud jacket, old hat and rotten scowl on his face."
History: Mammoth Studios was established on the site of an old import/export facility near Culver City in 1919. Mostly rented and subsidized by the local Silent Film studios, its early main talents were Silent Film stars, such as comic contortionist Spatzy Carbuncle and outlaw Western hero, Deadhead Fred, neither of which were successful in its day, but yet still garner small cults of fans. It was last to convert from Silent Films to Talkies in 1933, and while struggling to make movies that could go to par with the motion pictures of the bigger studios, it was first to become the first studio to go to the sole creation of syndicated TV Shows. The studio was acquired by oil tycoon and philanthropist J. D. Clampett in 1964 who saved it from bankruptcy and then sold to television producer, Robert T. Ebsen, who merged it with his own Starlight Films after Clampett's fortunes were embezzled by bank president Millburn Drysdale in 1975. Ebsen's son-in-law, Edward Condor, now has custody of the studio, and has had a hands-on control in the television productions now filmed there. Some of the most popular syndicated TV shows released through the studio are Astro-Quest (1970 to 1973), Psycho Dad (1979 to 1989), Galaxy Quest (1980 to 1983 - reusing the old Astro-Quest sets), McKenzie Falls (2007 to Recent), Zombie High (2007 to 2010), That's So Random (2008 to Recent), Malibu High (2008 to 2010) and Sinister Sites (2006 to 2010).
Identity of Ghosts: In addition to the most popular spirits, people have reported figures of phantom crewmen in the rafters and balconies who appear and disappear. In the 1989 movie, "Three Girls And An Apartment," a figure believed to be one of these ghosts was caught in the background of a scene with actress Alex Lambert, but later turned out to be a cardboard cut-out left over from a deleted scene. It is rumored that some of these men could be ghosts left over from when the property was still an import/export business.
Apparitions in period attire have been seen walking down Broadway, the center thoroughfare of the studio. Back in the Early Twenties, this was still open to city traffic, and pedestrians used to walk through here, but no one knows who they are. It is speculated that some of the ghosts might be connected to property and objects brought on to the lot. Relics have been acquired from old ghost towns, and outdated Army vehicles have been purchased from the military to use in movies, but most of them have been painted over for studio use. Several of the tanks left over from "Blood and Guts" (1963) are left parked on the north end of the lot which is known as the Boneyard for unused vehicles. Images of soldiers wandering around the old tanks have been reported, and employees feel watched in the studio prop house. Voices have been heard, and obscure shadows flit between shadows, but no one knows who they are.
"It's believed there could be over a hundred ghosts here." Fatone remarks. "I believe it could be twice that."
Source/Comments: The Beverly Hillbillies (Episode: "Jed The Movie Mogul") / Sonny With A Chance (Episode: "Sonny With a Kiss") / Our Gang (Short: "Tale Of A Dog") - Activity and history based on Universal Studios, Paramount Studios, Desilu Studios and Occidental Studios in Los Angeles, California, Astoria Studio in New York City and GMT Studios in Culver City, California.