A fellow named Tony Figueroa put this together and it's wonderful. It's a history of the Universal Cities Studio Tour and a celebration of the energetic, often talented folks who conducted it.
I have a little history with the tour. In August of 1969, I was hired to revise and update the basic script that the tour guides used. For the first decade or so that Universal offered this tour, taking people all over its backlot in trams, it was quite different from what it later became. There were no Disneyland-style elements with robot monsters or thrills. It was just a tour of the backlot, showing you buildings you might recognize from movies or TV shows, taking you through a soundstage and through what was represented as an actual star's dressing room. It was usually Lucille Ball's and I wonder if she ever set foot in it.
Since there was a lot of filming then on the lot — Universal movies, Universal TV shows, plus plenty of projects where they were renting space to non-Universal films and shows — the tour had to be constantly rerouted and changed, sometimes permanently, sometimes just until some production finished filming in a certain area. As the tour changed, the script was no longer applicable…and tour guides who often didn't know much about the lot's history had to ad-lib. At one point, the tour was going past a certain ancient house and the guides took to saying it was featured in many Laurel and Hardy comedies. Laurel and Hardy, of course, never filmed on the Universal lot.
So I got the job of revising the script to reflect what the tour (then) actually showed. Years later when I became friends with the TV writer Stanley Ralph Ross, he told me that he'd written a script for them around 1968 but I don't think what I revised had much of Stanley's handiwork in it by '71. The amount Stanley told me he'd been paid for his work was about ten times what I was paid so I figure it was at least double.
The money sucked but I did it just so I could spend a few days wandering around the Universal lot, which I did. They gave me a little go-cart but I preferred to walk…and walk I did, all over that tremendous hunk of real estate. Most interesting thing I saw? Alfred Hitchcock. I told that story back here.
I stalled handing in my script because once I did, I'd be off the lot…but finally, they demanded it. When I delivered the material, the fellow who'd hired me asked if I wanted to test it out. I asked, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, maybe go out as a tour guide for a few days and test it out." That hadn't occurred to me but I decided it might be fun. So the next day, I tag-teamed with an experienced guide and we jointly conducted three tours. The first was fun, the second was less fun and by the third time around, I was thinking that would be the last time for me. I did though make some good (I thought) revisions in the script based on those test-drives.
At the end of the tour, the tourists were deposited at a place called the Entertainment Center where they could buy refreshments and souvenirs, see a show with trained animals, see a show with stunt people and actually meet an actor. The studio would engage some TV star to hang around all day and sign autographs and chat with people. At the time I was there, it was Bob Hastings from McHale's Navy.
As I neared the end of what I knew would be my last go-round as a tour guide, I made the scripted (by someone else) pitch about the Entertainment Center. I told them they'd be able to meet an actor there and a woman in the back of the tram yelled out, "Can I meet Tony Franciosa?" I immediate said, "No, I said an actor." Big laugh…but a fellow who was on the tour I was conducting didn't think it was so funny. He was Tony Franciosa's publicist.
He headed, fuming, for the office of the fellow who'd employed me who, of course, did not tell him I was the person writing the script from which all the other tour guides would be reading. He just said, "We'll get rid of that despicable tour guide! Imagine saying such an awful thing about that great star of many Universal TV shows, Tony Franciosa!" (By the way, I had nothing against Mr. Franciosa. It was just a joke. If the lady had asked about seeing Gene Barry or David Janssen, I would have given her the same response.)
I'm not sure if I was fired as a Universal Tour Guide because I already planned to never do it again…and also, I'd never actually been hired as a Universal Tour Guide, nor was I paid for being one. But I was paid for my script and I got a bunch of free passes to take the tour. About eight months later when a friend was in from out of town, I did. The guide used most of my script, including the little joke where she pointed out the house used in the movie, Psycho, then pointed out a little walkway next to it and said, "That's called the Psycho Path." I am told that line stayed in the tour for a long, long time. Oh, the residuals some of us never get.
Here's Tony's film. You'll want to take the image full-screen and you may just find yourself watching the whole half hour…
