Mack Sennett, silent film producer and director

by Tina Stern

Did you know, Mack Sennett 0pened his new movie studio at the current Radford Studios location in Studio City?  It was renamed Republic Studios and specialized in B-movies, including many Westerns starring the likes of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and John Wayne, all of whom get their first breaks with Republic.

In the 1950s  many early television series were filmed on the lot including early episodes of Leave It To Beaver.  In 1963, CBS Television came into the picture, where it signed a lease with Republic to become the primary lessee of the studio lot, and almost immediately began to place their network-produced filmed shows such as the long running Gunsmoke and Rawhide in production there, and later, the classic comedy, Gilligan’s Island. The piece of land at the northwestern edge of the lot where the lagoon scenes were filmed for Gilligan’s Island were paved over in the mid-1990s to make room for a new parking structure. 

The studio lot was renamed the CBS Studio Center. CBS purchased the studio lot outright in April 1967, nearly 39 years to the day after it first opened. CBS invested money to build new soundstages, office buildings, and technical facilities. To make up for these investments, CBS began to rent out its studio lot for independent producers, and the newly-created MTM Enterprises (headed by actress Mary Tyler Moore and her then-husband, Grant Tinker) became the Studio Center’s primary tenant, beginning in 1971.

Moore’s television show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, began filming here in 1971, along with its spinoffs, Rhoda, Phyllis, and Lou Grant.