Can you feel the energy from this picture? This was an amazing time in broadcast entertainment. (circa 1938).
NBC’s Hollywood Radio City (West Coast Radio City), at the northeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street, opened in October 1938 as the network’s major West Coast headquarters and production center. It is the facility associated with broadcasts of shows such as The Jack Benny Program around that time.
The complex was built on roughly 4½ acres of the former Famous Players-Lasky (early Paramount) lot. Architect John C. Austin designed it in the Streamline Moderne style: a three-story office building linked to eight broadcasting studios. Four of the studios were large auditorium-style spaces seating about 350 each (some with areas around 3,000 square feet), constructed somewhat like linked sound stages with floating construction for sound isolation. The building was painted a greenish-blue to reduce glare, featured illuminated NBC signage, a prominent lobby with tall glass-brick panels and a large mural, and visible master-control facilities. The total investment was reported around $2 million. It replaced the smaller, outgrown NBC studios at 5515 Melrose Avenue (in use from late 1935).
The plant officially opened for business on October 17, 1938, in a relatively low-key manner without a big public dedication, though some programs had already originated there shortly before. Contemporary accounts described it as one of the most modern and practical broadcasting plants of its day, part of NBC’s coast-to-coast network of facilities, and a response to the growing shift of entertainment production to Hollywood so that movie stars and West Coast talent could appear more readily on radio.
The Jack Benny Program (then sponsored by Jell-O and featuring Mary Livingstone, Don Wilson, Phil Harris, Kenny Baker, and others) had been based in Hollywood permanently since about 1935. On the October 16, 1938, broadcast—explicitly noted as the last from the old NBC studio—Benny told the audience that the show would move the following week to the new NBC studios on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Subsequent episodes originated from the new Radio City complex. The facility hosted many other NBC programs as well, including later Bob Hope shows, audience-participation and quiz programs, and various variety and dramatic series; it became a popular tourist stop where fans lined up for live broadcasts.
Radio City Hollywood remained NBC’s primary West Coast radio (and later early television) base for decades. Local television station KNBH (later KNBC) launched from there in 1949. As television production expanded, NBC eventually built facilities in Burbank; the Hollywood complex was demolished in 1964. The site is now occupied by a bank building that incorporates historical murals and markers acknowledging the earlier radio studios.
In short, around 1938 Radio City Hollywood was the sleek new NBC nerve center that brought major network shows—including the long-running Jack Benny program—into modern, purpose-built West Coast studios and helped cement Hollywood as a national radio production capital alongside its film industry.
(ArchiveYouTube, WorldRadioHistory.com)
