Movietone Studio

Sony Music Studios was a well-known former music recording and mastering facility in New York City. The five story red brick building was a music and broadcasting complex that was located at 460 W. 54th Street, at 10th Avenue, in the Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan. It opened in 1993, and closed in August 2007.

In addition to being the production facility for new popular, classical and other albums, it was also used as space for soundtrack recording and mixing, post-production, and rehearsals. Sony Music Studios also had facilities for live and taped television broadcasts.

Prior to its acquisition by Sony in 1993, the industrial red-brick barn, was owned by Camera Mart for 20 years, and leased the space to movie and television producers.

William Fox, President of the Fox Film Corporation, had worked with inventor Theodore W. Case to develop a method for capturing sound on film eventually becoming the Movietone sound system. In August 1926 the Fox-Case Corporation was created, making $200,000 worth of improvements to what had been the Fox Annex, a warehouse at 460 W. 54th St. (Fox Films New York ran out of the giant building at 850 Tenth Avenue, around the corner. It eventually became DeLuxe, and is now Independence High School).

Fox-Case at first devoted its efforts to developing talking Movietone News newsreels. On April 30, 1927 (six months before Warner Brothers “debuted” the talkies with “The Jazz Singer”), the first talking Fox Movietone subject debuted in New York; it was a sensation. By the end of 1928, Movietone was churning out four talking newsreels a week, and a string of film shorts soon thereafter. The March of Time documentary film series began in rented space on the second floor from 1934-1936.

Fox Movietone newsreels ceased production in 1963, but by then the studio had become popular for film and commercial production. Among the features made there: Miracle on 34th Street (1947), On The Waterfront (1954), Middle of the Night (1959), Fail Safe (1964), The Pawnbroker (1964), The Group (1966), The Owl and The Pussycat (1970), Where's Poppa? (1970), Shaft (1971), and The Exorcist (1973).

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