In Queens, a Pioneering Studio

Jack Mathews | Staff Writer

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From Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson to Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, from D.W. Griffith to Woody Allen, the Queens complex originally known as Astoria Studios has a history burnished by some of the greatest stars and film directors in the first century of American movies.

The studio, built by Famous Players-Lasky (soon to become Paramount) on a quiet block on 36th Street in Astoria, opened on Sept. 20, 1920, and immediately added to the movie traffic heading east out of Manhattan. Vitagraph had been filming at its own studio in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn since 1906.

Hundreds of silent films were made on the six sound stages of Astoria, including the three movies that D.W. Griffith made for Paramount in the mid-'20s, and portions of ``The Sheik,`` the Valentino movie that had women fainting in theaters. Later, the Marx Brothers would make ``The Cocoanuts'' and ``Animal Crackers'' there. Though Warner Bros. led the way in sound technology, premiering the first ``talkie'' (``The Jazz Singer'') in 1927, Paramount and Astoria hosted the first great talkie innovation with Rouben Mamoulian's 1929 ``Applause.'' Because the cameras were contained in immobile soundproof booths, and actors couldn't venture away from stationary mikes, the early talking movies had a lot of talk and not much movement. Mamoulian devised ways to get the camera moving again, while still recording sound.

But the advent of sound and the growth of Hollywood as the hub of the film business hastened the exodus of East Coast production to the West. There was more money to be made out there, and with movies suddenly demanding actors with voices and scripts with dialogue, New York's theater community packed for warm weather and left.

Independent productions still rented space at Astoria during the '30s. In fact, a young radio star named Bob Hope made his film debut there in ``The Big Broadcast of 1938.'' But when World War II came along, Astoria was converted into the U.S. Army Pictorial Center.

The federal government continued making military training films at Astoria until 1970, when it was turned over to the city. A portion of the studio was used briefly for a community college, and the producers of ``Sesame Street'' set up shop there.

But it was a complex headed for the scrap heap of cultural history when the nonprofit Astoria Motion Picture and Television Center Foundation took control in 1970. The Interior Department designated the studio a national landmark, and with Sidney Lumet's ``The Wiz'' and John Berry's ``Thieves,'' the first commercial features shot there in nearly three decades, the studio was back in the movie business.

Since then, dozens of pictures have been made at Kaufman Astoria Studios, renamed in 1982 for developer George Kaufman, who expanded and renovated the facility. Among the modern Astoria productions: ``The Cotton Club,'' ``Arthur,'' ``Presumed Innocent,'' ``Marvin's Room, ``Scent of a Woman,'' ``The Age of Innocence,'' ``The Verdict'' and ``Devil's Own.'' Veteran New York filmmakers Sidney Lumet and Woody Allen have been regular customers.

Besides films, Kaufman Astoria has been a thriving center for television production, home to both ``Sesame Street,'' which spent a quarter-century in Astoria, and ``The Cosby Show.'' In addition, Astoria houses radio station WFAN, the Lifetime cable channel and the American Museum of the Moving Image, the only facility in the country devoted to the technology and art history of film, television, video and digital media. Astoria itself is a large part of that history.

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