Saturday, January 1, 2022

Something more than a train set

Pyramid Pictures boasted a logo to equal Paramount or Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer - a disembodied eye above a pyramid, the Masonic symbol on the dollar bill. But the lot, occupying a stretch of the Estate, was equivalent to the follies on with eighteenth-century English nobility squandered pocket money. The studio was a backyard train set for a grown boy who wanted to wear a driver's hat and toot a whistle.

A fictional Raymond Chandler describing the backlot at a fictional Pyramid Pictures in Kim Newman's book, Something More Than Night.

This is the biggest electric train set a boy ever had!

The real Orson Welles surveying the backlot at the real RKO Pictures.

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