A Cinephile’s Dream: The New TCM Classic Films Tour at Warner Bros.
Script Magazine entered the Golden Age of Cinema by taking an abridged version of the TCM Classic Films tour.
Last year, Warner Bros. celebrated its centennial. Birthed on April 4, 1923 by brothers Harry, Samuel, Albert, and Jack, with Jack being the most colorful of the four, the studio has produced some of the world’s most beloved movie favorites. Their motto was “Educate, Enlighten, Entertain.” They went on to do this in spades with The Sea Hawk, Knute Rockne, All American, The Glass Menagerie, Ocean’s 11, Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, My Fair Lady, and Klute, and a vast array of other contributions to cinema’s illustrious history.
TCM, Turner Classic Movies, jump starts its 15th Annual TCM Film Festival this week on April 18. Its prelude was the launch on April 16 of the TCM Classic Films Tour, which is a collaboration between Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood and Turner Classic Movies and which Script Magazine was fortunate enough to attend. The celebration started with a panel comprised of Hollywood film lovers Danny Kahn (VP & GM WB Studio Tour Hollywood), TCM hosts Ben Mankiewicz and Dave Karger, WBD Librarian Historian George Feltenstein, and special guest Burton Gilliam, a gifted actor who’s had roles in Paper Moon and Blazing Saddles. Each shared a bit about their history with Warner Bros. and TCM, noting the importance of this new tour in the cinema history landscape.
A band opened for the panel, playing five notable movie and television themes, including those from Superman and Friends. Kahn started out as a security guard at the studio and mentioned that he came up with the idea for the tour collaboration. Mankiewicz joked about having to prove himself because of being born into a famous film family and noted that he couldn’t “escape” his DNA.” He didn’t quite know what he wanted to do in the business but when he joined TCM in 2003, he knew he’d found his home.
Script Magazine entered the Golden Age of Cinema by taking an abridged version of the TCM Classic Films tour. The guide was a walking encyclopedia of Warner Bros. knowledge. We toured Brownstone Street, passed various stages with deep histories, visited the prop stage, learned intriguing nuggets about actors’ histories, including seeing where James Dean lived, and saw the fountain from Friends, which wasn’t its only gig!
This was a particularly gorgeous day for the tour. Riding through the lot and hearing its backstory really makes its legendary past come alive.
Information on the tour can be found at TCM CLASSIC FILMS TOUR.
Sonya Alexander started off her career training to be a talent agent. She eventually realized she was meant to be on the creative end and has been writing ever since. As a freelance writer she’s written screenplays, covered film, television, music and video games and done academic writing. She’s also been a script reader for over twenty years. She's a member of the African American Film Critics Association and currently resides in Los Angeles.
