The Newsroom
Vivienne Okafor
Industry Correspondent · With the Times since 2009
Vivienne Okafor covers the studios, the stages, and the crews who actually make the pictures. Her grandfather was a Times copy boy during the war; she says the family has been trying to get back on the masthead ever since. She succeeded in 2009.
Recent work
- The Commission Votes 4–1 to Recommend Landmark Status for Stage 7, and the Gaffer Gives His Name
Forty-seven speaker cards, a tray of Henri Baptiste's dated floor-paint chips passed along the dais, and a studio attorney who announced — in her twenty minutes — the first booking the stage has had since August. It goes to the council next. Lorne Szymanski, 61, rigging gaffer, spoke for two minutes and sat down.
September 18, 2026
- Foxglove Posts Its Second Wave of Fifteen Seats and Gets 2,100 Applications in Three Days
The studio's paid-test policy is now in every posting and has been copied by a third corridor studio. Priyanka Sundaram is assigning lunch to her leads. The umbrella shot has a sequel.
September 4, 2026
- Delbert Mackey, 91, Whose Hand Lettered the Boulevard's Windows for Half a Century
He painted gold-leaf shop names, sale banners and truck doors from 1957 until his hands told him to stop. A dozen of his windows are still on the street, and one owner has refused for twenty years to replace hers.
September 1, 2026
- A Month In, Foxglove's First Fifteen Desks Are Testing the Theory the Whole Floor Is Built On
The animation studio that hires in waves against its board's advice says the apprentice math is holding — barely, on the mentors' side of the ledger. The second wave posts next week, and the paid-test policy has started to travel.
August 25, 2026
- Four Weeks Out, the Stage 7 Hearing Gets Its Rules, Its File — and, at Last, a Name
The Cultural Heritage Commission has set the format for September 17: timed presentations, written record, no surprises. Marguerite Han's file now includes a scenic painter's private archive of the stage floor — and the speaker card of a rigging gaffer who has spent twenty years declining to be identified.
August 21, 2026
- Aurelio Renteria, 84, Who Kept Hollywood's Old Streetlights Burning for Thirty-Eight Years
He serviced the ornamental double-lantern poles by route and by name, kept a notebook the city never asked for, and held that a street you can see is a street you can love.
August 19, 2026
- Stage 7's Calendar Goes Blank After August 28, and an Idle Stage Is the One Thing Its Defenders Could Not Afford
The commercial production house that has held the 1928 stage all summer wraps in just over two weeks, with nothing booked behind it — the first gap longer than a fortnight in several years, and the first autumn in anyone's recent memory not sold out by Labor Day. The landmark hearing is five weeks away.
August 12, 2026
- Ezra Pomerantz, 88, Who Kept Half of Hollywood's Keys in a Booth Off Cahuenga
For fifty-one years he parked the neighborhood's cars in a lot that was always somehow one space bigger than it looked, and held its keys, its packages and a fair number of its arrangements.
August 9, 2026
- Gideon Pilcher, 94, Whose Prop House Furnished a Thousand Living Rooms That Never Existed
He ran a rental warehouse off Cahuenga for fifty-three years and kept, in his head, a catalog no one has ever been able to write down. Its contents went under the hammer last month.
August 6, 2026
- The Animation House That Signed a Ten-Year Lease Starts Hiring, Fifteen at a Time
Foxglove Animation took its second floor in July. Filling it has turned into an argument the studio is having with itself about whether a junior artist can still be trained at a desk.
August 5, 2026
- A Post House on Selma Adds a Night Shift to Chase Somebody Else's Morning
Twenty-two years in one building, and the mixing stages now run until four. The owner says it is the only way to compete with facilities eight time zones away — and the people working nights have opinions about the arrangement.
August 2, 2026
- The Heat Shuts Down the Exteriors, and the Day Players Absorb It
Four days of triple digits pushed exterior work to nights, moved three shoots indoors and cancelled two outright. A crew on a weekly deal gets paid anyway. Most of the people on a Hollywood set are not on a weekly deal.
July 29, 2026
- Adelaide Nunnally, 93, Studio Still Photographer Who Made the Images People Actually Remember
She shot on set for thirty-eight years, produced perhaps two hundred thousand negatives, and spent her retirement in a fight with three studios over who owned them.
July 29, 2026
- Shoot Days Are Up This Summer. Almost All of the Gain Is Commercials.
Permitted production days in Hollywood rose 9 percent over last summer — a headline the city is pleased with. Break the number apart and the scripted work is still going the other way.
July 28, 2026
- Stage 7's Landmark Hearing Is Set for September, and the Studio Breaks Two Years of Silence
The Cultural Heritage Commission will take up the 1928 soundstage on September 17. The lot's owner, which has never commented on its plans, now says it has no intention of demolishing the building — and will oppose the designation anyway.
July 24, 2026
- Ignacio Berríos, 90, Who Bent the Glass That Lit the Boulevard
For fifty-one years he shaped neon tubing by hand in a shop off Santa Monica Boulevard, and he taught the man who relit the HAROLD'S sign in June.
July 22, 2026
- Eunice Gastelum, 96, Who Could Find Anything the Times Ever Printed
For forty years she ran the newspaper's clipping morgue under a filing system of her own devising, and for thirty more the paper called her at home when it got lost in it.
July 18, 2026
- The Crews Behind the Camera Weigh Leaving the City That Made Them
As production chases richer incentives to Georgia, New Mexico and beyond, Hollywood's grips, gaffers and set decorators are doing math they never expected to do.
July 17, 2026
- Stunt Veterans Renew the Push for Recognition of Their Craft
Veteran stunt performers, gathered at a training gym off Santa Monica Boulevard, are pressing again for formal credit and an award for their craft.
July 16, 2026
- The Last Soundstage on the Block Seeks Landmark Status
Stage 7 has held pirate ships, spaceships and a full-scale ocean liner. Preservationists now want it held onto — permanently.
July 15, 2026
- Leo Farkas, Who Ran the Reels in Half the Houses on the Boulevard, Dies at 88
For fifty years he threaded film and tended the carbon-arc lamps in Hollywood's movie palaces, keeping the light steady from a hot booth the audience never saw.
July 15, 2026
- Salvatore 'Sal' Prima, Studio Scenic Painter Who Made a Thousand Skies, Dies at 94
For half a century he stood on scaffolds with a brush the size of a broom and painted the horizons that fooled the camera; colleagues said his clouds looked more like clouds than clouds do.
July 11, 2026
- A Celebrity-Free Table Read Packs a Small Theater for the Food Bank
No stars, no red carpet, no announced title until the actors sit down. The annual benefit reading has quietly become one of the neighborhood pantry's biggest nights.
July 9, 2026
- Bernard Salcido, Who Ushered in the Boulevard's Movie Palaces for Fifty Years, Dies at 84
From a teenager with a flashlight to a fixture of the balcony on a crowded night, he made a craft of seating strangers in the dark without a word.
July 7, 2026
- A Century of Props Goes Under the Hammer
Ardmore Property & Scenic, a prop house open since 1921, sold off a century of its inventory over three days before closing for good.
July 6, 2026
- The Revival Houses Are Full, and the Projectionists Are Booked Solid
Attendance at Hollywood's repertory cinemas keeps climbing, and the small guild of people who can still thread a film projector has become the industry's unlikeliest bottleneck.
June 28, 2026
- A 1940s Screening Room Runs Film Again
Restorers and retired projectionists spent a year returning a 1940s studio screening room to working 35-millimeter order.
June 26, 2026
- A Mid-Size Animation House Signs a Long Hollywood Lease, Against the Current
As production chases incentives out of state, a growing animation studio has committed to a decade in a Hollywood building — a bet its founders say the work itself makes possible.
June 25, 2026
- Warren Tibbetts, 91, Who Kept KHWD on the Air When Everything Else Went Dark
For four decades he was the engineer behind a Hollywood radio station's signal, nursing its transmitter through earthquakes, brush fires and the occasional act of God.
June 22, 2026
- Sonny Barbieri, Whose Saxophone Colored a Hundred Films You Never Knew Was Him, Dies at 92
A studio session player of the old school, he sight-read film scores for seventy years, took union scale, left no credit, and called that doing it right.
June 17, 2026
- A Race Against the Last Nitrate Reels, One Frame at a Time
Inside a climate-controlled vault, a small crew is copying a film archive's final reels of nitrate stock before the volatile old film decays past saving.
June 15, 2026
- A Century-Old Costume House Gives Away Its Archive: 40,000 Pieces
Meridian Costume Company, founded in 1921, is donating its entire collection to a regional film archive rather than sell it off by the rack.
June 14, 2026
- Short on Sound Mixers, the Industry Trains Its Own
A shortage of production sound mixers has prompted a paid apprenticeship program pairing newcomers with working veterans on real sets.
June 12, 2026
- Studio Tours Set an Attendance Record as Production Slumps
Studio tours posted record spring attendance even as production slowed, underscoring tourism's role as the industry's steadiest business.
May 22, 2026
- A Hollywood Film Lab Survives on Old Reels and a Stubborn Few Who Still Shoot Film
As digital finishing became the default, one neighborhood lab pivoted to archival scanning and the handful of productions that still expose celluloid, keeping a fading craft at work.
April 17, 2026
- Emory Vance, Studio Carpenter Who Built Worlds That Lasted a Week, Dies at 88
For more than four decades he framed sets, staircases and standing exteriors on Hollywood lots, taking a craftsman's pride in work built to convince, then be struck.
March 30, 2026
- Storyboard Artists Meet the Machine That Draws, and Decide What They Still Do Better
As image-generating tools seep into pre-production, the artists who sketch a film before it is shot are neither panicking nor pretending nothing has changed.
March 27, 2026
- Harold Bettancourt, Whose Used Bookshop Was a Refuge Off the Boulevard, Dies at 83
For nearly fifty years he ran a crowded shop of secondhand books where the aisles were narrow, the cat was in charge, and no one was ever hurried toward the door.
March 25, 2026
- With Shoots Scarce, Some Hollywood Stages Rent to a Different Kind of Show
Immersive attractions, corporate events and commercial shoots are filling soundstages that a thin production year has left dark — a stopgap owners describe without much romance.
March 23, 2026
- Rumors Swirl Around the Fate of Historic Stage 7, and the Crews Are Listening
No application has been filed and the studio will not comment, but talk that a landmark soundstage could be eyed for redevelopment has unsettled a workforce already thinned by a slow year.
March 18, 2026
- Otis Pruitt, Who Drove the Same Hollywood Bus Line for Three Decades, Dies at 88
Riders set their mornings by him, and when he pulled to a stop a minute early he would wait the minute out with the doors open rather than leave anyone behind.
February 17, 2026
- Awards Season Fills the Old Houses, and a Small Economy Wakes Up With Them
For a few weeks each winter, the campaign screenings pack Hollywood's revival theaters and put a seasonal payroll to work: moderators, projectionists, valets and the caterers who feed the lobby.
January 13, 2026
- With Film Work Scarce, a Soundstage Rents to Whoever Will Book It
A Hollywood stage complex that once turned away everything but film and television is filling its empty months with corporate parties, immersive attractions and commercial shoots.
December 11, 2025
- Manny Sable, Whose Boulevard Souvenir Shop Sold Hollywood to the World for 52 Years, Dies at 86
He stocked thousands of snow globes of a place that never snows, and made no apology for any of it. The tourists wanted a piece of Hollywood to carry home, he said, and it was an honest trade to sell them one.
December 9, 2025
- A Stock-Footage House Digitizes a Century of Film, Betting Someone Still Wants the Past
A family-run film library on Cahuenga is scanning tens of thousands of cans of stock footage, wagering that real archival material still has buyers in a market that wants everything instantly.
December 3, 2025
- Winifred Trask, 94, Whose Steady Hand Inked Four Decades of Cartoons
She spent her working life in the ink-and-paint department, tracing an animator's pencil roughs onto celluloid a frame at a time, a craft that vanished with the arrival of the computer.
December 2, 2025
- Margie Dunlap, Who Fed the Boulevard's Night Shift for Forty Years, Dies at 86
From behind a small lunch counter off Hollywood Boulevard she served cabbies, cops and the occasional star on their way down, and never once printed a menu because everyone already knew it.
November 13, 2025
- The Slump Reaches the Cutting Rooms
A Hollywood post-production house that finishes other people's films has cut hours and let staff go, a sign the downturn has moved from the sets to the rooms where the work is put together.
November 11, 2025
- A Prop House Rides Out the Lean Year One Rental at a Time
The warehouses that furnish film sets with everything from chandeliers to shopping carts have leaned on commercials and streaming to stay open. Their managers say the real task is keeping the collection intact until the work comes back.
October 2, 2025
- For One Week, a Scoring Stage Is Full Again
A rare run of sessions brought a full orchestra back to a Hollywood scoring stage this month. The players and engineers who filled it know better than to call it a recovery.
August 19, 2025
- Cornelius Boothe, Who Ran a Downtown Hotel's Hand-Operated Elevator for 46 Years, Dies at 94
He could stop a manual elevator level with the floor to within the thickness of a coin, without looking, and he ran the mahogany car as a kind of moving lobby where guests told him things they would not tell the front desk.
August 12, 2025
- A Grip-and-Lighting House That Outfitted Hollywood Shoots for Decades Gives Up Half Its Floor
With soundstages quiet and call sheets thin, one of the neighborhood's older equipment-rental firms is subletting warehouse space and selling off trucks it can no longer keep rolling.
July 24, 2025
- A Grip House Counts Idle Trucks as the Slump Grinds Into Summer
The rental yards that supply film crews with lights and camera rigs are parked more than they roll. The people who keep them are cutting hours, chasing commercial work, and waiting on a fall that may not come.
July 24, 2025
- The People Who Find Hollywood's Backdrops Are Having Trouble Finding Work
Location scouts carry an encyclopedic map of the neighborhood's stairways, alleys and dingbats in their heads. In a slow year, that knowledge has fewer buyers.
June 24, 2025
- Ruth Ann Kessler, the Voice That Ran a Hollywood Cab Fleet by Radio for 39 Years, Dies at 84
From a console of pinned index cards and a two-way microphone, she held the whole city in her head and matched forty drivers to fares faster than any map could, until the smartphone ended the trade.
May 27, 2025
- Aurelio Sabatini, Who Kept the Movie Palaces' Ceilings From Falling, Dies at 93
He cast and repaired the ornamental plaster of the old theaters — the rosettes, the cornices, the gilded proscenium arches — matching a hundred-year-old ceiling by hand when a piece came down.
May 15, 2025
- One of the Last Film Labs in Town Cuts Its Hours as the Reels Thin Out
A photochemical lab that still develops motion-picture film has trimmed to a few days a week, another notch in the long decline of a craft that digital finishing has all but replaced.
April 22, 2025
- Yolanda Cruzado, Whose Wigs Aged Actors and Raised the Dead, Dies at 87
She knotted hair into lace one strand at a time for the studios and the stage, building the wigs that turned a thirty-year-old into a king and back again by lunch.
March 18, 2025
- Hollywood Crews Watch Sacramento as a Bigger Film Tax Credit Is Debated
With the production slump into its second year, below-the-line workers are pinning cautious hope on a proposed expansion of California's film incentive — and bracing for it to disappoint.
March 6, 2025
- A Warehouse Becomes an LED Stage, a Bet Placed in the Middle of a Slump
A small company has wrapped a converted Hollywood warehouse in wall-to-ceiling video screens for virtual production, wagering that the technology will draw work back even as the calendars stay thin.
February 18, 2025
- Dinah Corcoran, Who Sang the Standards From a Hollywood Piano Bench for 50 Years, Dies at 88
She held the room at a string of Hollywood lounges night after night, taking requests, remembering regulars' songs, and outlasting most of the bars she sang in.
February 13, 2025
- A Casting Office That Once Ran Three Rooms Is Down to One, and Waiting
The production slump reaches the people who fill the small parts. At a neighborhood casting office, the phones are quieter, the sessions fewer, and the regulars are getting nervous.
January 30, 2025
- A Historic Soundstage Draws Redevelopment Whispers, and Preservationists Start a File
No plans have been filed for Stage 7, the 1928 soundstage where three full-scale ocean liners were sunk on camera. But talk that the lot's owner is eyeing its eastern edge has local historians quietly gathering evidence.
January 22, 2025
- Sonny Vandermeer, Who Made the Footsteps and the Thunder, Dies at 91
For half a century he stood on a Foley stage inventing the sounds a film forgot to record — the punches, the rain, the creak of a door — out of props the audience never saw.
January 16, 2025
- Amos Trafford, Whose Barber Chair Near the Wiltern Held Three Generations of Regulars, Dies at 87
For fifty-one years he cut hair from a single chair in a narrow storefront off Wilshire, where men who came in as boys for a first haircut later brought their own boys and, eventually, their grandsons.
January 14, 2025
- A Thin Year on the Call Sheets Leaves Hollywood Crews Doing the Math
More than a year after the strikes ended, the grips, gaffers and drivers who keep productions running say the work has not come back the way they expected, and some are looking at other states.
October 15, 2024
- Sal Brancato, Who Drove the Studio Tram and Told Its Stories for 41 Years, Dies at 84
From the front of an open-sided tram, he guided tourists past the backlots and soundstages of a major studio for four decades, and knew which stories were true well enough to improve the rest.
September 27, 2024
- Charles 'Chick' Bellamy, Stunt Driver Who Wrecked Cars So Actors Wouldn't, Dies at 88
By his own count, kept in a spiral notebook for fifty years, he rolled 91 cars on purpose and walked away from all but two. He insisted the work was arithmetic, not bravery.
July 23, 2024
- Gus Petrakis, Who Waved Hollywood Through the Studio Gate for 38 Years, Dies at 87
From a booth at a Paramount gate he checked the badges of stars, teamsters and lost tourists alike, and remembered the names of people the studio had long since forgotten.
July 16, 2024
- One of the Last Film Labs in Town Keeps the Chemicals Warm Through a Lean Year
Digital shooting nearly ended photochemical processing a decade ago. A small Hollywood lab survives on the directors who still want film, and this year even that thin stream has run thinner.
April 10, 2024
- Hollis Grieve, Matte Painter Who Put the Distance in a Thousand Films, Dies at 91
For forty years he painted the skies, canyons and far horizons that live-action sets could not reach, on sheets of glass set before the camera. The work was meant never to be noticed, and mostly it wasn't.
March 26, 2024