The graininess of this image makes me suspect that it is a frame from video footage. And if it is, I’d love to see the whole thing. Nevertheless, it gives us an idea of what it looked like when studio workers left RKO’s Gower St entrance at the end of a day making movie magic. Apparently this is from 1945 and I can’t help but wonder which movie they’d been working on. Was it RKO’s first Technicolor production, “The Spanish Main”? “The Enchanted Cottage” with Dorothy Maguire and Robert Young? Or that cinematic classic, “Zombies on Broadway”?

Sebastian T says: “Lucille Ball Building. I worked there for 4 years when it was Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner’s company. The entire second floor was C/W at one point. Paula had Lucy’s office on the other side—the gorgeous suite with bay windows, fireplace, private dining room and kitchen, wood paneling, bathroom, private stairway, etc. That office above the Paramount/RKO sign pictured here was Tom’s. Eventually, we took over the third floor which was actually two screening rooms. The bigger one was remodeled into Tom’s new office. That third floor was totally abandoned and open to the elements until I “found” it and started reading scripts up there to get away from the fray below. Paula heard I was up there and found me—then talked to the studio and took over that space. The smaller screening room was actually Sherry Lansing’s storage room! It too became part of C/W. I spent many hours reading through Sherry’s old files lol. This was from 1995-1999.”

RKO’s longtime neighbor, Paramount, now owns what used to be RKO studios. This is how that Gower St entrance looked in July 2022.