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OFFICE FRONTS AS SETS 247
Sometimes the boss's managerial decisions were curious, nearly always they were fraught with sensation. One executive visiting the Universal stages made bitter complaints of poor photography. The cameramen protested that the directors made them shoot regardless of poor light simply to keep up to their schedules. The chief then ruled that the cameramen were to be the final arbiters of the actinic quality of the light, and, to this end, they were given a flagpole and a flag, the latter bearing the one word " Shoot". When this was hoisted the directors could go ahead, but, until such time as the cameramen had decided that all was as it should be with the sunshine and their flag broke at the masthead, not a camera turned on the lot.
Of all the Hollywood lots, Universal was then the most colourful.
It called itself Universal City although it was two hundred and thirty acres of open land situated on the Val Providencia ranch at Edendale a few miles north of Los Angeles. The road to it was rutted and unmade. Two years went to its building and, when it was finished, it gave the unsuspecting wayfarer who chanced upon it the surprise of his life, for, in the valley in the shadow of the wild hills he first came upon a dazzling stucco and plaster triumphal arch such as marks the entrance to a fun fair. Behind this sprawled buildings in every known style of architecture, from Scottish croft to Japanese tea house. Many buildings had different styles of architecture on each of their four elevations ; one side of an administration block would represent a New York tenement, its right-hand side the entrance to a temple and its other end a hotel in Paris, while, from the back, it appeared to be The Last Chance Saloon in a Wild West town.
The purpose of all these diverse styles of architecture was, of course, to provide as many settings as possible for use in film plays.
Even the bridges over the streams and gullies were given characteristic atmosphere, from old English cobbles to modern American cantilevers. Every road was made in a different style and the widths of no two were alike.
Its main street was more than six miles long, dotted with log cabins, English country cottages and even a modern motor racing track. When it threw open its doors in the early summer of 19 15, it was considered the eighth wonder of the film world.
Its main stage was an open-air one, four hundred feet long and one hundred and fifty feet wide. On this gigantic platform scores of directors and their players, in line, made films simultaneously ;