Debbie Reynolds claimed that idea herself in the 90's documentary 'MGM: When The Lion Roars.' In her interview, she reflects on going right up to the studio heads in the 1970s and telling them they could commercialize the lots (a'la Disneyland or Universal Studios) rather than tear them down, but they didn't listen. Wonder if that's true...
Even if it is true, the studio heads wouldn't have gone that route anyway. Culver City officials put pressure on the studio to sell off the property so they could obtain more funds in property taxes (the studio's income was very inconsistent and became unreliable), and the studio heads needed fast cash for capital on the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.
The type of capital needed to turn it into a tourist attraction was not available to the studio at that time, and they only way they could raise enough money for their hotel was to sell off the land. It's sad, though. I wish they hadn't been so short sighted back then.
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brendangcarroll
8 years ago
The short sightedness began long before the backlot was sold.
In 1969, MGM sold off its entire props and costumes - half a century of movie history - at auction, but far far worse was to come!
In 1971, the exquisite Art Deco Music Department building (4 storeys high) was emptied and torn down. Its entire contents of production files, original scores, orchestra parts and MGM's unrivalled historic sheet music library dating back to the mid 19th century, many of them priceless and irreplaceable, was not donated to a library or university archive, but simply incinerated in one of the greatest acts of cultural vandalism ever perpertrated in Hollywood ( or elsewhere for that matter).
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