A decade after the inauguration of Universal City, the company produced a studio tour offering the opportunity to witness the evolution of the studio in its first decade. The City of Stars is structured as a “coming attractions” promo within the fictional framework of an Eastern editor (vaudeville actor Broderick O’Farrell, who can be seen in Skinner’s Dress Suit) arriving in Los Angeles to meet with Universal’s advertising manager. The scenic resources of the studio are showcased throughout, with a “See America First” wagon visible in one scene, and a scattering of panoramic shots of Universal City and the Universal zoo.
Director H. Bruce “Lucky” Humberstone was only 21 when Universal first hired him in 1923, in their publicity department. As historian William K. Everson observed in his note about the film for New York’s Theodore Huff Memorial Film Society in May 1959, this two-reeler “propagates the theory that at Universal all stars, directors, and executives were just one big happy happy family, under the benign leadership of Carl Laemmle, with the [sole] aim of bestowing outstanding entertainment of unsurpassed quality on the moviegoers of the world.” Uncle Carl’s paternalism and running of the studio as a metaphorical (and at times literal) family is, of course, well known, as is his self-promotion via biographies (The Life and Adventures of Carl Laemmle, 1931, by John Drinkwater) and his frequent appearances in company newsreels like the Universal Animated Weekly. Here he is beaming down from his omnipresent portrait in studio offices where O’Farrell asks to meet with an advertising manager, and later encounters Norman Kerry and Jean Hersholt. Hayden Stevenson (who can be seen in The Leather Pushers) offers to show him around Universal City, where he’s almost knocked over by the Universal Ranch Riders before encountering Harry Pollard first discussing a scene with Gertrude Olmstead for the Reginald Denny starrer California Straight Ahead and then with Marian Nixon for the Denny film I’ll Show You the Town.
O’Farrell and Stevenson chance upon stars major and minor: Bill Desmond in his cowboy outfit speeds them by car towards the studio’s “Back Ranch,” bypassing half-built sets (of which we see a great deal throughout the film) and almost crashing into Reginald Denny himself. At the ranch area, they greet Lola Todd and Jack Hoxie, rehearsing a scene for The Fighting Peacemaker, and glimpse cowgirl Josie Sedgwick in a rodeo before heading towards Larry Trimble directing My Old Dutch. A gorilla (of course a man in a gorilla suit) escapes from the Universal zoo and chases them onto William Seiter’s set for The Teaser, where they’re introduced to Laura La Plante, Pat O’Malley, and Margaret Quimby, as well as Alexander Carr, seemingly confused with his brother Nat Carr, as an intertitle mistakenly credits him with appearing in The Cohens and Kellys (then titled Two Blocks Away).
As Stevenson continues to show O’Farrell around, scene snippets are edited in as if part of the tour: The Home Maker, Peacock Feathers (believed lost), Lorraine of the Lions (working title The Nature Girl), The Phantom of the Opera, My Old Dutch, The Storm Breaker, The Goose Woman, and Siege (believed lost). There’s also a brief shot of Hoot Gibson rehearsing The Man in the Saddle, before the visitor and his guide return to the offices, where they meet boxing manager Jack Kearns, recently signed by Universal to do promotional work, together with his star pugilist Mickey Walker. Finally, O’Farrell is greeted by studio general manager Raymond L. Schrock. Even though the rapid-fire editing makes it seem as if these locations were next to one another, this is in fact a mixture of studio-backlot and on-location footage, some shot 30 miles away, as Everson points out. The films referenced here were also a mix of already completed and in-production titles.

Dimitrios Latsis