1352nd personnel will be there to get it all on film
The neighbors were suspicious because the lights were on all night long
By 2012, it suffered a most Los Angeles of fates: converted into a high-end rehab facility. The One80Center reportedly charged residents up to $50,000 a month for what an industry publication glibly deemed the “Addiction Alps.” The spot’s cofounder offered an equally acerbic response, noting, “We have three billionaires with us right now, and no one’s complaining.”
It was a short-lived endeavor. Three years later, it would change hands again. A $5 million purchase converted the 100,000-square-foot facility into private home belonging to a resident by the name of Jared Leto.
Like many of its neighbors, the 1352nd Motion Picture Squadron fled Laurel Canyon before the end of the 60s. The 250 occupants were transferred to San Bernardino, some 70 miles away. In its wake, the building’s owners left little evidence of the work that had gone on for the past 22 years, though maps remained painted on the floors, and a subsequent occupant may have suggested its sound stage had been used as a backup for the moon landing.
That the building’s activities had been classified for most of its existence only served to fuel such conspiracies. However, Stanley Kubrick’s only documented connection to the space appears to newsreel footage set to Vera Lynn’s “We'll Meet Again” in the closing moments of Dr. Strangelove.
The parade of mushroom clouds were precisely the reason the United States Air Force established Lookout Mountain Laboratory in the wake of the second World War. The powers that be determined that filming and photographing on-going nuclear tests in the Pacific Proving Grounds were important to better understanding the hell such weapons unleashed.
The military notes in a since declassified document,
Their mission is to provide in-service production of classified motion pictures and still photographs for the Department of the Air Force in support of the Atomic Energy program and to provide such additional production of motion picture and still photography as directed by the Commanding General, Air Pictorial Service.
A small facility constructed on two acres of land located off Laurel Canyon’s Wonderland Blvd. in 1947 was expanded dramatically early the following decade. From 1950 to 1953, the Air Force built its own massive film studio, featuring rooms for screening and editing, humidity-controlled film vaults and a large sound stage. There was a helipad, and below ground a pair of parking lots built into the mountain served as a reinforced bomb shelter.
“The neighbors were suspicious because the lights were on all night long,” George Yoshitake recalled in 2010. At the time of the interview, the filmmaker was one of the last remaining nuclear photographers, as most of his colleagues had succumbed to cancer. Five years later, he, too, would be gone.
The precise number of films produced by the studio in its two decades of existence has never been revealed, though most estimates put the number between 600 and 900 – a remarkable figure for a top secret operation. In addition to its relative proximity to the Proving Grounds, however, Lookout Mountain’s location also afforded it access to Hollywood’s top talent.
A mix of military and civilian personnel, the studio employed top talent, from editors to animators, while experimenting with early versions of Cinemascope, 3D imagery and high-speed photography. It also attracted big names. Marilyn Monroe, Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan were said to have toured the facility, while Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart, James Garner, Gregory Peck, Kim Novak and Lee Marvin are among the names who starred in the Air Force films.
To date, most of the output remains unreleased to the public. “Lookout Mountain,” a since declassified 1967 film, offers the best contemporary insight. Designed to inform fellow Air Force members about the studio, the 20-minute document highlights the 1352nd Motion Picture Squadron’s work.
“Whether it be the plains of our own Midwestern States or the Himalayan mountains of Asia, the 1352nd personnel will be there to get it all on film,” the narrator explains over a parade of title cards, with names like “Worldwide Fallout From Nuclear Weapons,” “Catch A Falling Star” and “Exercise Desert Strike.”
Another film, “Operation Ivy,” showcases the 1952 test of “Mike,” the first successful detonation of a hydrogen bomb. Only 177 people were authorized to see the original hour-plus version of the film, including an enthusiastic Eisenhower, who insisted that every American ought to view it. The President declared the importance of the film’s role in national security at a screening for mayors of major U.S. cities. By 1954, an edited version of the pieces would be made available to the public.
A reporter for The New York Times decried the overproduced work.
“The use of commercial television's theatrical tricks to explain matters of vital public consequence went a step too far in ‘Operation Ivy,’ the official Government film showing the explosion of the first full-scale hydrogen bomb,” wrote reporter Jack Gould. He concluded, “The Washington specialists in public opinion should leave show business to show people. A moment when civilization’s future is at stake would seen an opportune time to treat the public as grown-ups.”
Sources:
The Sensibility of the State: Lookout Mountain Laboratory’s Operation Ivy and the Image of the Cold War “Super” https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0001
New book tells story of secret Hollywood studio that shaped the nuclear age https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/739553
Government Film of H-Bomb Blast Suffers From Theatrical Tricks https://www.nytimes.com/1954/04/02/archives/television-in-review-government-film-of-hbomb-blast-suffers-from.html
The $90,000 a Month Sobriety Plan: Inside Hollywood’s Swankiest Rehabs https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/celebrity-rehab-inside-hollywoods-swankiest-444698/