Keystone Studios
Keystone Studios was an early movie studio founded in Glendale, California in 1912 by Mack Sennett and Adam Kessel as the Keystone Pictures Studio. The company shot in and around Glendale and Silverlake for many years. Mack Sennett was active in several real-estate development syndicates, including the Hollywoodland project (which was advertised by the now-legendary Hollywood sign on the side of Mt. Lee.) Sennett's real-estate and motion-picture interests came together in 1928 when he and his backers built the Keystone studio as the heart of the new San Fernando Valley community of Studio City, California.
Charlie Chaplin got his start at Keystone, when Sennett hired him fresh from his vaudeville career to make silent films. Charlie Chaplin at Keystone Studios is a 1993 compilation of some of the most notable films Chaplin made at Keystone, documenting his transition from vaudeville player to true comic film actor to director.
Many other important actors also began their career at Keystone, including Harold Lloyd, Gloria Swanson, Raymond Griffith, Ford Sterling, Fatty Arbuckle, Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, Ben Turpin, Harry Langdon, and Chester Conklin.
The studio is perhaps best remembered now for the slapstick antics of the Keystone Kops.
Sennett, by then a major star, left the studio in 1917 to produce his own independent films (eventually distributed through Paramount). Keystone faded away after his departure, and was finally dissolved after bankruptcy in 1935.
The Keystone lot
After the bankruptcy, the movie lot in Studio City was sold to Mascot Studios, then Monogram Studios, which eventually became Republic Pictures. The lot was taken over in 1963 by CBS Television (which filmed Gunsmoke and The Wild Wild West there), and from 1985 to 1992 was owned jointly by CBS and Mary Tyler Moore's MTM Enterprises, which produced numerous other successful TV shows. In 1992 CBS bought back MTM's share and the lot was renamed CBS Studio Center. It is still home to numerous television and feature film shoots (including American Gladiators from 1991-1997). It was itself used as the fictional film studio "Sunrise Studios" in the horror film Scream 3.
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