The ancient stone mansion sits high above the Hudson, near Tarrytown, N.Y., commanding a splendid view of the Tappan Zee Bridge and the far side of the river. Not old in the sense of some French or English buildings, it's turretted Gothic architecture and century and a quarter age make it venerable in American terms. Built as a country home for an ex-mayor of New York, later expanded into a fantasy of Tiffany glass and stone towers, eventually bought by Jay Gould and inhabited by his family until 1961, the mansion is called Lyndhurst, and it now belongs to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, open daily to the public. It is visited by thousands of people per year; architecture buffs, antique lovers, and just plain people who enjoy its spacious 70 acres of park land. With all its attractions, however, one thing is for sure: Lyndhurst was not built to serve as a movie set.
The British have often used their stately homes for film locations with great success. But America, perhaps because they have much less of a concrete architectural heritage, perhaps because they prefer to build their own, have seldom utilized authentic buildings in their work. And Lyndhurst had certainly never starred in a film. Not that it's not admirably atmospheric. The woodwork, glass, fabrics, marble statues and frescoed ceilings make a lush and authentic Victorian milieu that would be difficult for any set decorator to duplicate. But while one was aware of the fantastic multitude of people and machines that went into filming the epics of the '30s and '40s, in these days of cinema verite one conceives a film as being made by two stars, a cameraman, and just maybe a director. Now this sort of crew might have shot within the tiny rooms and immovable walls of Lyndhurst with no problems, but really very few films are made that way. Most are still created by what seems to be hundreds of various skills, and when a film is not studio made, the owners of those hundreds of skills have to be on hand wherever. It is in essence a movable film-making factory that must take all the resources of a major studio with them.
At first glance, a large estate would seem an ideal location for a film making factory. Certainly more so than the heart of a desert or the middle of Manhattan, both locales having their own special problems. But so did Lyndhurst, and a film unit settling in to shoot a feature film based on the famous TV serial Dark Shadows, for MGM, encountered some interesting ones. For instance, to make a film you need: an office for 15-20 people, facilities for feeding at least 60, dressing rooms, a work shop for special props and sets, a place to show the daily rushes (film shot the day before), not to mention room for the innumerable cars and huge vans carrying the generators that supply the quantities of electricty that lighting a film requires.
Luckily there were those 70 acres, on which were several other buildings besides the mansion. One house, a hop, skip and jump from the service entrance of the big house, had been used to accomodate maids and the estate's laundry room. Now the upper floor was a pleasant apartment inhabited by the administrator and his wife; the lower laundry floor was remade into a production office, desks, files, partitions and all, and the maid's rooms into dressing rooms for the stars. The general decor was '40s motel, and the plumbing was a problem at times, but it became home for cast and crew.The old stable area was utilized in full. It became a projection room, workshop, and a set, for all things, a stable. Also when the mansion's kitchen, where everyone had been eating in shifts (the food was catered from outside), was taken over to be remade into a laboratory for the film, several rooms above the stable became the cafeteria. Luckily, the horses had long since left. 
The major problem remaining was filming in the house itself. Behind every camera shot in almost every film stand hordes of people; electicians, grips, hair stylists, camera men, assistant directors, wardrobe ladies, and stand-ins. Lyndhurst's rooms are minute -- rumor hath it that Jay Gould was so disliked that he didn't plan on having large parties. All this crowd, plus bulky cameras and mike booms, had to cram into these tiny spaces, keeping out of the way of the camera's all seeing eye.An even more interesting juxtaposition than kleig lights and period antiques was that of people. Lyndhurst is staffed by genteel ladies from Westchester and surrounding areas who act as knowledgeable hostesses and guides for the paying visitors. This, of course, is show business of a sort, but the major excitements of Lyndhurst up to now had been events such as the annual wine tasting and a raccoon trapped in the wishing well. The "culture clash" between the high powered film makers and the gentle ladies of Lyndhurst was good humored on both sides, but inevitably present. The film makers were out to make a film on a phenomenally short shooting schedule; the Lyndhurst ladies determined to keep the dignity of Lyndhurst and its glassware intact. Both respected the other's objectives, but those objectives, at times, were bound to differ. 
The hostesses, relieved of their tour duties by the exclusion of the public on weekdays during shooting (though tours still operated on weekends) were scheduled to watch over the filming activities. Star struck at first, and agog at the activity of a movie being made, and dissolving in giggles when interviewed by the local press, disenchantment soon set in with the very real tedium of film work, which is mostly waiting for lights to be set and camera angles figured. They winced visibly as mike booms swung about the stained glass windows, and actors sat about on the plush Victorian sofas. Luckily, the Victorians built strong, however, and no major damage resulted. One hostess spoke to a prop man about the coffee cup he was carrying. "Oh, that's not coffee" he said blithely. "It's paint", and he trudged on, leaving her looking a bit wan. And another, meeting star Jonathan Frid in a dark hall when he was made up for his 175-year-old aging sequence (See History Page Five), let out a shriek that endangered every crystal chandelier in the house.
For the unwary weekend visitor, the tours took on a surrealistic air. The guides, totally inured to the filming gear by this time, would describe the period charm and architectural symmetry of a room with great aplomb, meanwhile herding the tour over lighting stands and around camera dollies with the greatest of ease.The Lyndhurst staff would brighten visibly when those days devoted to filming exteriors rolled around. The huge greenhouse and the natatorium (a swimming pool housed in its own building), both in advanced stages of picturesque decay, had been written into the script, and the major problem filming those scenes (aside from falling panes of glass and mud up to here) were those groups of teen-age girls who seemed to spring up from nowhere and stood about in shrill groups waiting for a glimpse of Jonathan Frid or David Henesy, the teen-age actor from the serial. In fact, they were constantly in evidence throughout, camping on the lawn through long days of not knowing whether their heros were even on hand. This was another problem Lyndhurst had never encountered; a determined assault by Dark Shadows fans to watch filming. The harried gate keeper soon learned to exclude almost anyone under twenty, and precious few over. Nevertheless, they managed to get in. How they did so was a mystery; a rear attack by swimming the Hudson was not unlikely, considering their determination and generally bedraggled appearance. 
Genial Gerald Fiedler, the administrator of Lyndhurst, kept his cool as general arbitrator for both sides, and togetherness was maintained. If shooting had gone on there for another month, well ... one doesn't see the ladies of Lyndhurst perched on the battlements with vats of boiling oil, but their general good nature might have cracked a bit.But peace was maintained, and after a month of movie-making, the whole film factory not-so-silently folded its tents and stole away to the next location in Connecticut, leaving Lyndhurst to the birds, the raccoon in the wishing well, and the now cinematically knowledgeable staff. They wouldn't have missed it for the world, and though the terms of the agreement are not public, one hopes that Lyndhurst will realize enough in publicity and exposure to make a start on the cherished dream of constructing a theatre on the grounds, restoring that greenhouse, and building its own pier in the Hudson. |
History Page: [Previous] 1 2 3 4 5 6 [Next]
