Kaufman Astoria’s Neighborhood Studios

July 2007
Article in Markee Magazine


Founded by Jesse Lasky and Adolph Zukor in Astoria, New York in 1920 Kaufman Astoria Studios attacted “the best of the best in the silent era” to the borough of Queens instead of early movie mecca Fort Lee, New Jersey, Says President Hal Rosenbluth.

The studios, which flourished until the 1930s when Zukor left for Hollywood to head Paramount, were run independently until i1942 when the US Army took over and maintained them until 1970 “Any image you saw while in the Armed Forces came from here,” Rosenbluth points out. “The Army helped make Hollywood: They taught the soldiers to be editors, animators, cameramen, etc., and after the war they went to Hollywood.”

Subsequently, the facility was given to the City of New York, a non-profit foundation was formed to save it, the studios gained landmark status, and the biggest stage outside Hollywood began to lure productions again beginning with Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz followed by Endless Love, Hair and All That Jazz.

George Kaufman won the right to renovate and develop the property turning two form Army barracks into Stages G and H. The Museum of the Moving Image was established in the old lab and other barracks became the temporary home of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts high school which will open permanent quarters next year. Kaufman Astoria also added services to the neighborhood: Starbucks, Carvel, Pizzeria Uno and a 14-screen multiplex.

“We’re the only facility in New York City that’s not in isolation,” notes Rosenbluth. “The Studio and the neighborhood have merged. We’re one block from Astoria’s Broadway/Steinway Street corridor where you can do anything you’d normally do during your lunch hour, and we’re three (subway) stops from Bloomingdale’s.”

Kaufman Astoria boasts six stages, K/A/S Lighting services, the 97-seat Zukor screening room and KAS Music & Sound for recording and mixing. NEP provides technical services for electronic productions, and postproduction is four-walled as needed. Kaufman Astoria has begun construction on an 18,000 square-foot stage across the street from it entrance where industrial buildings and film vaults once stood; it will offer 25,000 square feet of support space as well.

Rosenbluth cites the ideal way to take advantage of the studios’ diverse capabilities. When Whoopi Goldberg was shooting her sitcom on the lot she was able, in a single day, to “rehearse the show, shoot a Slimfast commercial, go to KAS Music & Sound to do a PSA and walk across the hall to Music’s big stage to record her part in Stripes, an animated feature she is working on.”

Kaufman Astoria is currently hosting season 39 and 40 of Sesame Street, a long-time tenant, and season two of The Disney Channel’s Johnny & the Sprites. A Spike Lee film is on the lot as is the sitcom The Return of Jezebel Jones for FOX. Last year’s credits include the features Music & Lyrics, Pride and Glory and We Own the Night; earlier, The Stepford Wives, The Manchurian Candidate, The Pink Panther and TV’s Angels in America, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, Convictions and 3 Lbs. shot at the studios.

Rosenbluth believes New York City’s 15 percent tax credit against below-the-line costs, instituted in 2004, “helped save an industry” facing competition from Canada and other states with generous incentives. “It has allowed the studios in town to get their fair share and the market to grow,” he says. “New York itself always adds value to a project that other places don’t. We’ve been around since 1920, and we’re working hard to make our history proud of us.”