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Originally Posted by Martin Pal
The NBC Studios on Sunset & Vine, as well as the Sunset & Vine area, has been featured in many posts on NLA.
I know this photo of the lobby mural has been posted before:
 LAPL
I have also mentioned before that I’ve been looking for a color photo of the mural and, so far, no luck. It was painted by Ed Trumbull, while in his fifties, and it appears he painted many other murals in public buildings in San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia, among others, including the mural on the ceiling of the iconic Chrysler Building in New York City. (It was painted on canvas and cemented to the ceiling!) There’s also many photos of the murals, in color, too. That’s probably due to the fact that they are all still around. But, in my opinion, in the twenty-five year existence of the NBC Building, someone must have taken a photograph of this mural in color!
It dawned on me the other day that I have seen very few photos of this mural at all besides the one above. There’s more photos of Elizabeth Short, even one posted by E_R in front of this building! (Perhaps tourists or visitors were not allowed to take photos in the lobby?) I also have not discovered much at all written about this mural. (Does it have a name/title?) His other murals all have names and I haven’t even come across that bit of information about this one. I’ve even begun to wonder if the mural was painted in color at all, which might be why no one thought of taking a color photo of it. Perhaps?
Does anyone have any ideas where I could research this further, as I seem to run into a lot of brick walls while doing so. I admit feeling like I must be doing something wrong to keep being thwarted in this endeavor. Maybe NBC feels guilty for having destroyed this beautiful building and it’s lobby mural and has tried erasing it’s legacy, heh! |
The demolition on NBC Radio City at Sunset and Vine was one of the most horrible things ever done in Los Angeles/Hollywood. Radio City was only about 26 years old when it was demolished! Had it survived, it would certainly have been preserved and restored, much as CBS Columbia Square is now, right down the street.
The building was the victim of the end of the Golden Age of Radio, the beginnings of TV, and the fact that NBC did not own a radio station in Los Angeles. It's been speculated that had NBC of owned a station in Los Angeles, the building might have survived.
NBC opted to move to Burbank and construct facilities dedicated to television and to focus on TV operations there, as the era of color television required more elaborate facilites than what Radio City could provide.
With reference to the mural once located in the lobby of NBC, it is my understanding that it survived after the building's demise. Apparently it was removed prior to the demolition of the building. I heard this many years ago. I have no clue if it still exists to this day, or if it does, where it might be. Perhaps an organization like Hollywood Heritage might shed further light on this. At least there's a glimmer of hope it still exists.
I've also never been able to confirm if it was done on canvas, or another material that allowed it to be removed from the building. Nor do I know if it was truly in color, but judging by the intricacy of the mural, I would say it was.
This fantastic mural was meant to portray the power of radio, the signals traveling to the far corners of the earth, communication between aircraft and ships at sea, and to the remotest places on earth. It also portrays the world of entertainment that radio provided, music, comedy, drama, sports, and news.