Warner Bros.: Hollywood's Ultimate Backlot by Steven Bingen with assistance by Marc Wanamaker a photo editor at Bison Archives with a Foreword by Doris Day is a coffee table size book illustrated with maps laying out the studio complex, black & white and color photos that is structured as a fun and engaging tour with an experienced in-the-know guide. The book opens with a brief reminisce by former Warner Bros. star and Hollywood icon Doris Day as she recalls the unexpected chain of events that first brought her to the studio for her screen test and the start of the acting career she never expected. Day recalls how the studio was a place of work with long days and a stream of picture assignments that kept her so busy she never really appreciated the wonders being created all around her on the stages and backlot. She closes by saying "With this book we will all have a better appreciation of the studio lot and what went on there." One could not ask for a better tour guide than Steven Bingen who previously co-authored MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot and is a former studio executive who spent the majority of his career working on the lot at Warner Bros. where he tells us he often acted as guide for visiting VIP guests. He puts that experience, plus his clear enthusiasm for the task, to good use welcoming readers on the tour as we go through the gates with his promise to share with us the history the studio lot's development, growth, expansion, boom and bust times that remarkably have left it today as one of the few intact Hollywood backlots. We learn the story of the brothers Warner who gave the studio in Burbank their name although we find out they were not the ones who actually built it! Instead in a classic story of boom and bust while the striving brothers Warners bet their company on a new system to bring sound to the movies the long established First National was breaking ground in Burbank on a new studio lot building four stages to expand production to feed their nationwide chain of movie theaters. Within a year Warner Bros. had changed Hollywood forever with their smash hit as the worlds first talking picture The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson with his immortal line "You ain't seen nothing yet!" (a spontaneous ad lib!). Soon after the Warners snapped up a cash strapped First National taking control of their new studio in Burbank and national theater chain. Bingen then guides us through the various departments explaining their functions along with commenting on their current or former locations including the Cartoon Department where we learn it was not in Burbank until the 50's and that the famous Termite Terrace where the Warner Bros. cartoons with their iconic characters including Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck was actually at their Sunset lot in Hollywood. Next Bingen tells the story of each Stage in numerical order on the lot including it's cost, size, location, and its original number and current number if it changed and its former location if it no longer exists plus some of the famous movies that used a particular Stage. Some highlights include the original six stages built by First National which had to be expensively retrofitted for sound production. The word "soundstage" was first used for a new Scoring Stage with the first rooms designated Soundstages 1 & 2. Then when silent film production was abandoned these rooms where renamed as Stages 9 and 10 in the original number sequence, so no actual buildings were ever designated Stage 9 or 10. After a lull in construction due to the Great Depression a studio fire burned a significant part of the lot and resulted in a building boom between 1935-39 that totaled 14 new stages! Two stages were purpose built with unusual dimensions for the Errol Flynn pictures "The Sea Hawk" where Stage 21 was a massive building used for shooting the sea battles between the British and Spanish ships and "The Prince and The Pauper" where Stage 22 was narrow and long for the vast cathedral set. Despite the wonderful initial pictures shot on these stages with Errol Flynn both were underused as Warner Bros. plans for more swashbuckling epics starring Flynn went on pause due to World War II and Stage 21 sadly burned down in a studio fire in early 1952 just before the boom in epic filming making for which its massive dimensions would have been well-suited and Stage 22 went from being awkwardly long to awkwardly small after being sub-divided into smaller stages designated 22, 23, & 24 which did not find their true purpose until the mid-70s when Alice became the first of hundreds of sitcoms and talk shows shot on those stages. Then our guide Bingen takes us out to the backlot which includes the famous New York Street location of the many gangster shoot-outs involving Cagney, Bogey, and Edward G. Robinson a set still being used today for film, TV, and commercials. Some of the interesting details Bingen tells us is a very recognizable white church set that stands at the intersection between Midwestern Street and Western Street easily fitting into any time period on either set. One of the more usual buildings was the Train Shed with working track & full size trains which could be pulled up to urban train stations sets shot inside for films like Casablanca or roll out the doors to an outdoor rural train station used for western films and TV shows like F-Troop. Out in the farthest reaches of the backlot our guide says welcome to The Jungle the heavily wooded area which includes a large water feature that can double for ponds, lakes, rivers, and swamps. The Jungle was also the location for Walton Mountain with exterior set of the Walton home originally built with no back. The last large permanent exterior set was the Camelot Castle for built the 1967 musical flop and probably seen by more people when it was redressed and repurposed as the Shaolin Temple for seventies hit Kung Fu. The seventies were an interesting for the backlot this challenging period led to Warner Bros. and Columbia sharing it in a joint tenancy that saw the property renamed The Burbank Studios. The odd situation required Mel Brooks to hang a temporary Warner Bros. sign at the gate for a scene in his film Silent Movie! Bingen tells us his career started during this period which saw the property deteriorate as neither Studio wanted to pay for the upkeep. Then in 90s when Sony purchased Columbia and wanted to hire the producers Guber & Peters who had made Warner Bros.' recent smash hit Batman a swap of studio properties was arranged allowing Warner Bros. to return their name and shield to the property with it emblazoned at front gate on the iconic water tower. The tour concludes with a survey of shadow lots including Warner ranches and former facilities in New York and London. Today the Warner Bros. Studio Backlot sparkles under an investment mandate that any part of the studio must be built and available to the use and requirements of future productions. Bingen finishes optimistically giving the feeling that even as the Warner Bros. Studio continues to evolve and change to meet the needs of digital production methods movie fans seem to need to have a tangible connection to the studio backlot as a physical manifestation of the Hollywood dream factory. I mean this as a compliment when I say that you finish the tour (and the book) wishing for even more details and photos from Warner Bros. Hollywood's Ultimate Backlot. ( )

I was VERY excited about this book, as I loved [b:MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot|8385757|MGM Hollywood's Greatest Backlot|Steven Bingen|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389828081s/8385757.jpg|13242997] so much that I bought a copy. I'm sad to say that this doesn't come close to it for me, as the formatting and tone feel much less polished and more personal (in a way that I don't enjoy). Also, fewer pictures than the MGM book. It's exhaustively researched, but not as exhaustively edited. I do get irritated feeling like a proof reader.

Things that annoyed me:

Using less instead of fewer (WRONG! p. I can't find it now, but it's early on.)
P. 77: Calling Errol Flynn "besotted" instead of a less archaic term for drunk.
P. 92: "Dick Mason, who we met earlier.." WHOM! WHOM!
P. 170: "Marion the Librarians' house..." She is just one librarian. Librarian's.
P. 175: this is probably my own preference, but "burg" meaning town, not "berg."
P. 216: Murder at Monte Carlo was 1935, not 1937 as written. DUH, as Errol Flynn was well known to Americans by 37, thanks to 35's Captain Blood, among other things.
P. 66: I know it's hyperbole, but I don't think WB's library was ever "something approaching the sum total of the world's knowledge." Just write what you mean. Language that might impress tour groups sounds amateurish in a book.
P. 56: "If I may speak personally for a moment..." No, please don't. This is a book. We're not having a chat.

There is also an egregious overuse of the passive voice and a tendency to identify movie stars as "superstars" or something like that (e.g "superstar Clint Eastwood"). I think the target audience for this book already knows who names like that are without the descriptor.

These are mostly just whines, but really, once I notice this many actual errors, I'm too irritated to enjoy the book anymore. ( )