Hollywood as an Export

Given the present condition of Hollywood Boulevard, to say nothing of Hollywood itself, it may not be surprising that the Disney organization is trying to move both to a fresh clearing in the Florida scrub at Lake Buena Vista. The reincarnation will open its doors May 1 as Disney’s newest theme park: Disney-MGM Studios. Its tourist attractions will include a motion-picture studio with stunts that Universal Studios never thought of, and the park will have its own Hollywood Boulevard, with yet another original Brown Derby restaurant and, yes, a replica of Grauman’s Chinese Theater--including sidewalk hand prints and autographs.

“Reconstructing the ambiance of 1930s and ‘40s Los Angeles wasn’t easy,” according to a Disney statement. We can believe that. But the challenges have been surmounted, we are assured, with everything to dazzle guests from a “California Crazy” building to an ice-cream stand in the shape and scale of a real dinosaur.

Visitors will taste Hollywood’s Golden Age, a brochure proclaims. Golden Age? Curious how the pain of the Depression of the ‘30s and the war of the ‘40s takes on a different tonality a couple of generations later. That age, as we recall it, was not that much more innocent than the contemporary scene. There were fewer runaway adolescents among the prostitutes, different drugs, less reliable automobiles, not so many homeless, cleaner air. But how on Earth, or even in a magic kingdom, is it possible to re-create with any authenticity those bittersweet contradictions--or, for that matter, the real creativity and spirit that were also part of Hollywood then?

“Hollywood, it’s often said, is as much a state of mind as it is a location,” a Disney newsletter comments. Well, now we’ll see.