The Bel-Air Circuit

 

“The Bel-Air Circuit” was once among the most inside-y of showbiz insider terms. Technically, it exists in no Hollywood rule book, but it’s one of the most important invisible, little known social networks of the film industry. For a century, the Bel Air Circuit (with or without the dash) has referred informally to envied members of the Los Angeles-based film industry so elite that they have professional projection facilities in their own homes, tiny but fully equipped 35mm movie theaters, to screen their own films as well as those of competitors. This was once incredibly rare.

Even today, these charming, oversized 1920s-to-’50s houses, these fake English manors and Versailles chateaus, keep coming up on the real estate market. They are worth far more because four discreet projection view ports cut high into the living room wall are silent testimony of the long-ago presence of glamour: Barbara Stanwyck, Irving Thalberg, Humphrey Bogart, or Ava Gardner.

It’s hard for us to imagine a time, less than 50 years ago, when no matter who you were, you basically couldn’t have a movie of your choice each night, to see in your home at a time of your choosing. You flat out couldn’t buy a copy of a feature film no matter how much money you offered. Even wealthy people in America’s other great cities and industries—Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, you name it, even haughty New York—didn’t have that privilege. By contrast, in Hollywood, once you were “in”—part of the so-called Bel Air circuit, you just placed a phone call, and a studio delivery man would bring you whatever current film you wanted for home viewing, no charge. This was elite privilege at its most rarefied.

Top actors and directors imitated their bosses and built their own home screening rooms once they had the money, or could bludgeon the studio into it. No matter what branch of show business you were tops in, the elite of five and ten and 15 years before were still clawing for influence, and sometimes regaining it. They’ve all got home screening rooms, too, a status symbol that nobody wants to surrender voluntarily.

On the negative side, it was also a pitiless mark of status, or the lack thereof: the week after you got sacked by Warners, you humbly learned what it was like to wait on the phone line on endless hold—you!—as if you were just some ordinary schmuck!, merely to find out whether or not Disney will still let your kids see Cinderella on Saturday. After all, it takes to become part of the Bel-Air circuit, it was tough, usually socially painful being nudged back out of it.

Let’s say: Harry Cohn at Columbia wants to see Metro’s Singin’ in the Rain Wednesday night. He’s on the list; he gets the movie. (Which, BTW, has a key scene in the home theater of a studio boss in Bel Air, the fictional first screening of a sound film.) Frank Sinatra wants to see The Best Years of Our Lives this weekend. Sam Goldwyn initials an OK and two heavy metal cans of film are dropped off at the kitchen entrance of Sinatra’s house.

No charge for the movie, anyway: actually screening it for family and friends cost a pretty penny. This was extremely expensive, so building home theaters and paying the projectionist who ran the machines was written into executive and star contracts. Few of the big shots complained, because few of the big shots paid for the screening room out of their own pockets. The studio picked up the tab. It was considered work, not fun.

For the top dozen executives at each of seven major studios and the entertainment divisions of each of the (then) three major networks, besides those prestigious evening screenings, it meant a daily hour of catching up on raw footage of yesterday’s filming, usually at 6 a.m. each workday morning. From roughly 1920 through the end of the century, this meant a projectionist had to come out to the house and run the machinery, often in two odd shifts: early morning and evening.

As noted, New York and other cities had plenty of exalted rich people too, but relatively few of them had this particular perk. New York screening rooms tend towards small and utilitarian, not sumptuous and in people’s living rooms. Because extremely few individuals owned 35mm copying or film laboratory equipment, and their work was so easily traceable, studios could operate on a trust system, lending films among themselves freely, with the certainty that bootleg copies would not be made.

Smart Hollywood social climbers like Sammy Davis, Jr., and young TV actors like “Rawhide” star Clint Eastwood learned to fake it a little, creating less formal home theaters in garages or other outbuildings, using 16mm projectors (no union operators, easy to use, reasonably pro-looking on a small enough screen) for an entertainment effect that impressed friends and girlfriends.

The latest films currently in theaters were exclusively in 35mm, but by the late ’50s, studios were making 16mm reduction copies for the armed forces and television. It required fewer and lesser studio connections to borrow these merely semi-pro film copies. Seeing any film at home that was in theaters only months ago was still impressive in an era decades before home video. Watching Never on Sunday in the cabana next to Sammy’s swimming pool might not have had quite the cachet of seeing Gone With the Wind in Clark Gable’s living room, but it still meant you were a member of the insiders club.

In the ’80s and ’90s, my wife worked for Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., and saw both sides of the Bel-Air circuit; the exclusive home theater that his father had built, and Goldwyn’s endless line of show business contacts who exchanged films with each other. Every Christmas, our household was blessed with veritable mountains of gifts from various celebs who appreciated the access my wife granted to Goldwyn films. Robes, gift cards, bottles of champagne, blankets, and other hundred-dollar trinkets, most of them no doubt also showing up in the offices of VIP handlers at every other studio in town. All part of the intangible goodwill that kept the Bel Air circuit going.

Gradually, the mystique of having a home screening room faded as cheaper technology made it available to more people. In the ’70s, audio manufacturer Advent marketed a novel projection TV for the home. (Some of the following history was covered in TV History: HDTV) The idea of a home theater for the masses—i.e., you and me—took hold. But classic TV wasn’t high definition, and without special technical tricks, those video screens didn’t even pretend to match film quality.

The Bel-Air circuit exists today, though vastly less even of elite Hollywood’s life revolves around 35mm film, the gorgeous but aged prima donna of the moving image. It no longer requires a union projectionist entering through the kitchen at 6 a.m. while a maid makes breakfast. On the other hand, there’s a much higher concern about illicit copying than there was in Hollywood’s golden era. In 2020, anybody with wall space and a thousand bucks can enjoy home screenings technically equal to anything a mogul had back in the day. That’s the change wrought by the blessings of better and cheaper technology.

But the ancient Hollywood sense of privilege, of power over the images to shape the emotions and minds of hundreds of millions of people; that hasn’t changed. Studio executives still rise at 5:30 to see all of the previous day’s filming and begin their round of browbeating phone calls.

The final decisions of what you see on screen will always be in the hands of a mere handful of people who guard their exclusive status carefully. And they’ll often be exerting that power at dawn, sitting in their bathrobes, sipping coffee, frowning, and making notes in the flickering light: Who to hire that day. Who to stroke. Who to badger and snipe at threateningly. And who to fire.

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There are 34 comments.

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  1. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    Songwriter (View Comment):

    Always enjoy these glimpses behind the Hollywood curtains. Thanks.

    I enjoy behind the scenes stories on most industries, but Hollywood is particularly interesting because the contrast is so stark between what goes on in front of the curtains and behind the curtains.

    Although @roblong and @garymcvey work in different areas (television and movies), I think having the two of them together on a podcast episode to discuss the business aspects of what we see on the screen would be fun (hint-hint to @blueyeti ).

    • #31
  2. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    Full Size Tabby (View Comment):

    Songwriter (View Comment):

    Always enjoy these glimpses behind the Hollywood curtains. Thanks.

    I enjoy behind the scenes stories on most industries, but Hollywood is particularly interesting because the contrast is so stark between what goes on in front of the curtains and behind the curtains.

    Although @roblong and @garymcvey work in different areas (television and movies), I think having the two of them together on a podcast episode to discuss the business aspects of what we see on the screen would be fun (hint-hint to @blueyeti ).

    That is a fabulous idea.

    • #32
  3. Clavius Thatcher
    Clavius
    @Clavius

    Thanks Gary, as usual, an Illumination of Hollywood history.

    We IT people still send people to fix things in Execs’ homes.

    • #33
  4. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Clavius (View Comment):

    Thanks Gary, as usual, an Illumination of Hollywood history.

    We IT people still send people to fix things in Execs’ homes.

    That really is the modern day equivalent.

    When RCA dropped a bundle in the computer business, circa 1966, one of the recurrent rueful stories told by RCA computer execs and salesmen was getting an imperious phone call at home from a major Spectra/70 customer demanding help with a color TV on the blink. Cursing silently, they’d load a color picture tube in the family station wagon and drive from Long Island to Westchester for a midnight installation.

    • #34
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