Paramount Studio Tour

Today, Travels in Moby takes us to Paramount Studios in Hollywood, CA. This world famous studio was founded by Adolf Zukar in 1912 and originally called the Famous Players Film company after Zukar took an interest in nickelodeons and wanted to make them even better by providing feature length movies to the middle class whom the movies would most appeal too, thus opening up the movie studio. He merged with movie producer, Jesse L. Lasky, and movie director, Cecil B. Demille, and called the studio the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. Finally, after a couple of successful movies, they were looking for a way to distribute the movies and found a distribution company called Paramount corporation owned by W. W. Hodkinson of Utah. The Paramount corporation was the first successful nationwide distributor. The name, Paramount, was borrowed from an apartment building that Hodkinson passed by and thought the name was interesting. In 1916, Zukar and Lasky merged all 3 companies together and bought out Hodkinson, and after a series of reorganizations, renamed the studios to Paramount Pictures. There are 22 stars around the Paramount logo which represent the 22 actors, directors, and movie producers that were contracted to only do work with their studio. That is how the term "movie stars" came to be.

The studio tour is worth the money and we bundled it with our Go Select San Diego pass saving us a few bucks. Normal cost is $35/pp. We were able to see the Dr. Phil set, RunDadRun set, and BigTime Rush. I'm only familiar with Dr. Phil. They took us to their New York back lot which also hosts part of the Rizzoli and Isles set. Though I am not familiar with the show, we did get to see one of the TV show stars, Sasha Alexander, walking around in the studio.

Because several of the sound stages can be rented out by anyone, many shows and movies were produced here. Here were just some of the ones mentioned during the tour:

Brady Bunch
Cheers
The Lucy show
Blossom Buddies
Frasier
Dr. Phil
Community
Indiana Jones
Spider-Man 3
Clover field
Seinfeld
BigTime Rush
Rizzoli and Isles
Austin Powers
Charmed
Everybody Hates Chris
Mad Men
Castle
Lie to me
Vanilla sky
Bridesmaids
Happy Endings
Mystic River
Orange County
The Truman Show
Star Trek tv shows and old and new movies
Glee
The Ten Commandments (original)
NCIS
Titanic
American Horror Story
Rear Window
Top Gun
Grease
The New Normal
Titanic
Hitchcock
Nip/Tuck
The Godfather
Braveheart
No Country for Old Men
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Thor
Jackass movies
Mission Impossible
Forest Gump

In the attached pictures you will see Dr. Phil's set as well as the Forrest Gump bench.