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5515 Melrose Facility

D

doublecashkgb

Guest
Anyone know what's going on with the 5515 Melrose building since KRTH moved out.
Besides KHJ AM FM TV of course, it was the home of Capitol Records, (where Sinatra
recoded many of his classic 50's work) & the home of NBC radio I believe in the 30's
before the Sunset & Vine facility.
 
doublecashkgb said:
Anyone know what's going on with the 5515 Melrose building since KRTH moved out.
Besides KHJ AM FM TV of course, it was the home of Capitol Records, (where Sinatra
recoded many of his classic 50's work) & the home of NBC radio I believe in the 30's
before the Sunset & Vine facility.
Click to expand...

Doublecash: I was wondering the same thing. When I heard CBS was building Leykis a studio "on the Paramount lot" I thought it might be 5515...but it's the basement of the Mae West building instead.

You're right about the history of the building. It was originally constructed for NBC Radio. When the network moved to Sunset & Vine, KHJ took over for a few years, then moved to the Don Lee Building at 1313 Vine. Capitol was there from '46 or '47 until the Capitol Tower was ready in '56, at which point KHJ returned.

I was in the building about 15 years ago, and it had been converted almost entirely to office space for KCAL, Channel 9 (the newsroom, studios and news editing facilities were in the soundstage that sits on the corner of Melrose and Gower).

With the crossownership of CBS and Paramount, it wouldn't be a surprise if 5515 was once again converted to pure office space for the movie studio (not unlike what's happened to the old KMPC at 5858 Sunset under Tribune).

---Michael Hagerty
 
5515 Melrose was turned over by CBS Radio to Paramount Pictures. Paramount currently leases out space in the building to film production companies that are working on the lot.
 
Hi! Very interesting discussion, since I love L.A. radio history and the history of Southern California in general, including Hollywood.

Actually, the building at 5515 Melrose was originally built to house the Consolidated Film Laboratories, before the National Broadcasting Company turned it into audience studios and production facilities to broadcast NBC radio shows from Hollywood for coast-to-coast entertainment shows, mostly. I think this was mostly between 1935 and 1938, but I'm not certain when the building was first used for NBC radio. As more and more NBC shows began moving from New York City to Hollywood, NBC wanted to expand studio space, so they built their new Radio City offices and studios at Sunset and Vine, which opened in 1938. Then, 5515 Melrose was vacant for more than a year, until KHJ and the Don Lee-Mutual Network moved from the Don Lee Building at 7th and Bixel to 5515 Melrose in late-1940.

Since KHJ-930 turned 85 years-old this year, I thought I'd run down the locations of the KHJ studios over the years, from the FCC license files:

April 13, 1922 100 North Broadway, L.A.; Los Angeles Times Building

November 10, 1927 Don Lee, Inc. new owner, 1st and Broadway

January 31, 1929 1076 West 7th Street, L.A. (Don Lee Building, 7th and Bixel)

December 1, 1940 5515 Melrose Ave. L.A./Hollywood

July 1, 1948 1313 N. Vine Street Hollywood

December 22, 1961 5515 Melrose

I'm lucky to have a photocopy of an article from Radio Life magazine from August of 1948 on KHJ and the Don Lee-Mutual network moving into its "new $3,000,000 studio and executive building at 1313 N. Vine St.

Of course, we all know that later, the owners at the time changed the historic KHJ call letters to KRTH-AM on February 1, 1986, and then again to KKHJ on April 1, 1990. In an effort spearheaded by then-CE Jerry Lewine, the FCC returned the KHJ call letters to L.A.'s 930-AM on March 15, 2000.

Now, I've lost track of when 930-AM finally moved from the 5515 Melrose studio site. Maybe one of the readers can give me that information.

Thanks.

Jim Hilliker
Monterey, CA
 
Jim Hilliker said:
Now, I've lost track of when 930-AM finally moved from the 5515 Melrose studio site. Maybe one of the readers can give me that information.

Thanks.

Jim Hilliker
Monterey, CA
Click to expand...

Jim: If I'm not mistaken, KHJ left Melrose for the Venice Blvd. transmitter site during the "Car Radio" format of 1984-85. The last show as KHJ in January, 1986 originated from that site (which at the time was also KRTH and now houses KROQ and Jack-FM).

---Michael Hagerty
 
Right you are. KHJ and KRTH were on Venice Blvd. when the mangelers changed KHJ (car radio) to KRTH-AM.
Mike O'Neil
 
Great information, thanks to all. Oh as a side note, I believe Ron Jacobs
had an artist do a rendering of the KHJ building circa 1965.
 
You really felt a sense of Hollywood history working in the building.

When I did news at KHJ in 79-80, some very hot shows such as Happy Days were filmed in the soundstages right next to 5515 on the corner of Melrose and Gower (old RKO film studios bought by Desilu studios and later by Paramount) and going to my car after work entailed sidestepping the audiences lined up to get into the tapings. Pat Morita from Happy Days used to drink with we KHJ'ers at Nicodell's next door. I also met June Foray (voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel) and Elvira while sitting at the bar. Elvira was on KHJ TV in those days and our KHJ radio studios were really mixed in with the TV operations. Often times I'd be sitting there typing up my next newscast (there were four teletype machines going to I could not hear the doors opening) when I'd get tapped on the shoulder and some name celebrity would say "excuse my, how do I get to the greenroom (the guest waiting room for KHJ TV's morning chat show). Spread around the building were posters from old RKO movies and a few other relics I recall.

Just down the block, of course is the famous old Paramount Gate which really helped reinforce the feeling that you were for sure working in old Hollywood.
 
Seems to me, the tour office was previously located at the Gower gate. They did a nice job on the façade of 5515, making it fit with the historic main gate and the Melrose wall, because as I recall it didn't look this nice when KCAL was there. In fact I thought it looked more like a trailer than a building back then.
 
There's a 1969-70sh photo of the KHJ Melrose facility at the beginning of this YouTube exhibit of the great J. Paul Huddleston, excuse me....Jaaaaaaay Pauulllll Hudlleston...pontificating 20/20 News in 1969. Among other stories, an update on the trial of Sirhan Sirhan, the man who assassinated Robert Kennedy the previous summer. Can't pin the exact date - the regular 20/20 News sign off ("And that's what's happening today <date>") is missing, since the news is leading into The History of Rock & Roll...likely the original broadcast, which began Friday February 21, 1969.

A bit of LA radio history, that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cHZJEEi95I
 
https://vimeo.com/212430181

And here is a compilation clip of KCAL9 circa 1990-1995 inside of 5515 Melrose facilities when it was then the KCAL9 studios and Newsroom. And at the start of the clip you see Disney's logo marked in the compilation tape before Disney had to leave KCAL9 because of the merger with ABC and KABC7 later in the 1990's.
 
I see after all these years Astro Burger is still across the street!
 
RadioPatrol said:
https://vimeo.com/212430181And here is a compilation clip of KCAL9 circa 1990-1995 inside of 5515 Melrose facilities when it was then the KCAL9 studios and Newsroom. And at the start of the clip you see Disney's logo marked in the compilation tape before Disney had to leave KCAL9 because of the merger with ABC and KABC7 later in the 1990's.
Click to expand...
Minor correction---When Disney bought Channel 9, they expanded KCAL's news operation to the point that 5515 Melrose could not hold it. They kept 5515 for offices and the original studio for non-news shows and commercial production and built a newsroom and set (barn doors that could open to show the newsroom behind the anchors) on Paramount's stage 21 (the one that occupies the corner of Melrose and Gower).
 
I worked out of the new KCAL newsroom (seen under construction in the YouTube video RadioPatrol posted) on Paramount Stage 21 during the 1992 riots. I had to enter through the 5515 building, where my photographer and I were given daily passes and then escorted through the back of the ground floor of 5515, to a gate separating 5515 from Paramount, and then along Paramount's "3rd Street" and left into Stage 21.

Here's a map of the lot as it exists today: http://www.paramountstudios.com/assets/tsap_lot_map_091918_redstone.pdf

Got to meet and talk with both Jerry Dunphy and Pat Harvey during (infrequent) breaks over those five days. Both very nice people.
 
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