A little over 40 years ago in '78 the graveyard security supervisor position opened up at the ABC Television Center and I could get away from the leather boys at the BOA Computer building. The title sounded impressive, but we were not employees of ABC. We were just contracted rent-a-cops from a private security outfit. The pay was shitty, but the job could be interesting and the ABC lot was rich in early Hollywood history. And being supervisor was an easy gig on the graveyard shift. I could pretty much just run around the whole lot all night. I had worked at ABC a couple of years before, so I knew the lot. If you could make fog on a mirror you could pretty much move up the ladder in contract guard companies.

The ABC studios were on Prospect Ave, which was really just a continuation of Hollywood Blvd. after if turned south in East Hollywood. They were tucked in right at the base of when it started to get hilly again.

The 23 acre site was originally Vitagraph Studios, one of the very first motion picture companies. They came from Flatbush in NYC to escape the weather and bought the whole parcel for 20k in 1912. At the time it was the largest movie studio in the world. Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks, etc. all worked for Vitagraph early on. Cecil B. Demille, D.W. Griffith, and a host of other classic directors worked for them too. Many of the silent classics were filmed there.

Vitagraph fell upon hard times, mainly because they did not own any movie theaters and other studios were wooing their stable of stars away with bigger paychecks. Warner Brothers eventually bought them out in 1925 for one million bucks. It was where the first talkie, Al Jolson in 'The Jazz Singer' was filmed, along with 'Public Enemy', 'Captain Blood' and many more Hollywood classics. The Beatles and Rolling Stones both played there on Shindig and Jerry Lewis hosted his first Telethon in these studios. And of course it was the home of the soap 'General Hospital' for many years.

When I was there it was producing the majority of the game shows, 'Family Fued', 'Tic Tac Dough' and a bunch more. We also had 'Welcome Back Kotter', 'Barney Miller' and many TV specials. ABC was riding high and the #1 network right then with 'Happy Days', 'Laverne and Shirley', etc. In '96 Disney bought ABC and the lot became the Prospect Studios.

As I said, as supervisor I was pretty free to run all over, and I did. I would always smoke a joint on the roof of one of the studios with a spectacular view of Hollywood about halfway through the shift and then take a nap in this nook I found way up in the old studio 55 rafters. You could still see some of the artwork painted on the walls from the original silent version of 'Phantom from the Opera' with Lon Chaney. You could hear the ghosts in that studio when you were all alone at 3 am. I even did the shift on acid one night and that was truly a grade A trip. Shows how undemanding the job really was.

To my brothers in arms I literally met on the lot in 1976, David and Kenneth. To the ones I got jobs there during my 3rd tour of duty in 81, David, Kirk, and Chuck, though I believe Chuck came in after I left. And to Graeme, who actually had a real job there producing stuff. The 3 pics are of the front gate when it was Vitagraph, ABC when I worked there, and Prospect Studios today. My very first gig there in '76 was working the front gate in the swing shift.....