It was hard to miss RKO movie studios at the corner of Melrose Ave and Gower St in Hollywood. Atop their corner soundstage they had the iconic globe and radio tower that appeared at the start of each of their movies. I always assumed that the letter lit up at night, but until I found this photo, it hadn’t occurred to me that the sparks at the top lit up too! On the billboards, we can see posters for “Blame it on the Band” and “The Rainmaker” both of which came out in 1935.

This glimpse is taken from an old documentary. Fortunately it’s in color so we can see the “RKO” was in red:

This image of the Melrose/Gower corner is from January 2018. The old RKO lot now belongs to Paramount. The globe is still there but the tower is long gone.

This is the a partial view of a different version of the billboard artwork we can see in the far right of the 1935 image for Wheeler and Woolsey in The Rainmaker:

And is this, of course, the iconic RKO logo: