Hyperion's End

For those among us who have wondered what happened to the rest of the Hyperion Avenue buildings, here is an article from an internal studio publication dated December 1966. Being the last one during Walt's lifetime, it could actually be found on the desk in his working office after his passing. Early October that year, the lot was bulldozed to make way for the grocery store that later became the Gelson's. Somehow it is interesting, in a macabre sort of way, that the Hyperion lot and Walt himself seemingly shared a destiny...
The End...< Click on it!

Comments

  1. George TaylorApril 27, 2008 at 11:24 AM

    Thanks for sharing this with us. I was able to visit Gelson's this March and it was a bittersweet moment.

    Of course, I got my picture taken in front of the historic marker.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jenny LerewApril 28, 2008 at 11:25 AM

    That's wonderful....I'd love to know more about the turtle(tortoise?)with "Traffic" painted on his shell! Maybe the Willy scrapbook would have a picture of this little guy.

    Our family lived in Los Feliz, and we went to the then-Mayfair often--I still do occasionally. I'd marvel as a teenager at the historical sign signifying that the Hyperion studio used to be there. What a rotten shame it wasn't kept-it'd be a valuable structure now, whatever it could have been made over as--shops, restaurant, etc.
    But that's par for the course in mow-it-down L.A.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hans PerkApril 30, 2008 at 1:37 PM

    There are a few structures left, though. The Annex across the street is gone (a nice photo of it is in the new Cowan book of Ingeborg Willy's scrapbook), but another building that is still there is the Trader Joe's/Video Hut/Hyperion Cleaners...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hans PerkApril 10, 2014 at 9:02 AM

    The buildings I mentioned in my previous comment were never Disney, however. But - Research has shown that there is still a building left on the original site that was owned at one time by Disney studios; a small duplex on Griffith park Blvd.

    On the Burbank lot are several buildings that used to be located on Hyperion Ave.: the Shorts building exists of two larger structures, then there is the Hyperion bungalow, and the Annex is there as Castmember Store. All of there were, however, extensively rebuilt!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prod. 2074 - Peter Pan (XVII)  - Seq. 15.0 - Voyage Home -- Ending

Image
Directed by Wilfred "JAXON" Jackson, laid out by Maclaren Stewart. Assistant director Mike Holoboff, secretary Toby (Tobelmann). This FINAL draft dated 11/3/52. Animation by Marvin Woodward (Lost Boys, John, Michael), Eric Larson (Peter), Harvey Toombs (Wendy), Don Lusk (Tink), Norm Ferguson (Nana), Jack Campbell (Father), Art Stevens, Milt Kahl (Father, Mother, Wendy), Marc Davis (Mother), Hal King (John), George Rowley (anchor chain, pixie dust, sail, ship), Josh Meador (cloud-ship). And that concludes the draft for Peter Pan, the fourteenth complete feature film draft on this blog! (Ok, you smart-alecks, we still need to see the last page of the Pink Elephant sequence...) As always, I feel the need to stress that these documents were kept to keep track of the responsible person, and as such it may not reflect precisely the specific directing animators who worked on the sequences. If e.g. an inker or checker needed to find out who animated the scene because of some question
Read more

The First Hyperion Ave. Studio

Image
I used to wonder where precisely Walt Disney's first 2719 Hyperion Ave. studio was located, and what it looked like. Since reading about it first in the 1970s in Dave Smith's article in Michael Barrier's great Funnyworld, I spent hours looking at photos, aerial photographs, maps etc, until I found I had a pretty good impression. My aim here is to pass some of that on to you, as I have found there was an interest in this since I posted this image of the staff with their new Charlotte Clark dolls on my Facebook page: Looking through Cecil Munsey's Disneyana, it appears to me that the "funny looking" Mickey with the button eyes is actually an example of the 1930 British-made pose-able Mickey by the Dean's Rag Book company of London. First, the WHERE. Here is the front of the Gelsons parking lot, with the original plot of the studio indicated in a blueish hue. We see the very small building, the back yard that has a car shed does not even reach the current Gel
Read more

Miffy the Movie in cinemas in Holland!

Image
Finally, the film I directed called " nijntje de film " ( miffy the movie ) has gone into general release in 118 cinemas in Holland today! As you can imagine, I am very proud of this film. Interestingly, the reviews are split in two: the ones where the reviewer saw the film WITH a children's audience all give the film four out of five stars, while the ones who have NOT seen the film with kids give it three out of five, and mention "I doubt if the film can keep the young audience captivated." The "four star" reviewers note that it can - that the film "works!" In the Dutch TV guide Troskompas , in the very first review published a week ago, I found a very clear view on this: the reviewer wrote that he feels he has no way of judging the film, but as his kid loved it and was entertained all the way, he could not but give the film four stars. To me, that is the only way to look at it: does our target audience like it? Are they amused and entertai
Read more