Football Records of the

U.S. Army Signal Corp Photographers

Army Pictoral Center

Astoria

1949
	L		Camp Kilmer
	L		West Point Military Attachment
	L		Fort Devens
Nov. 11	canceled	Away	Fort Monmouth





1958
		6-Man Tackle
	1^st Army Flag Football Championships
		(Double Elimination)
Nov. 17	L 0-18		Fort Jay





1960
		6-Man Tackle
	1^st Army Flag Football Championships, at West Point
		(Double Elimination)
Nov. 15	L 0-44		Fort Monmouth

The U.S. Army Signal Corp Photographers, Astoria (1942-1971)

•	The U.S. Army bought the mostly dormant Paramount Studios, in Astoria, Queens in 1942 for $500,000.
•	Opened as the “Long Island Studio” by Jesse Laskey and Adolph Zukor's Famous Players in 1920, at 36th Street & 35th Avenue, Astoria, next to the Steinway Piano factory.
•	Famous Players-Lasky was renamed Paramount Pictures in 1927.
•	Valentino, W.C. Fields, Lilian Gish, Clara Bow were in some of the 114 movies made here through 1932. Ginger Rogers, Louise Brooks, Claudette Colbert, Eddie Cantor, Edward G. Robinson, Walter Huston made their first films there. The Marx Brothers “Cocoanuts” and Gloria Swanson's “Manhandled” were made there. “The place was full of free spirits, defectors, refugees who were all trying to get away from Hollywood and its restrictions. There was a wondeful sense of revolution and innovation in the studio in Queens”...Gloria Swanson
•	Perhaps the reason Paramount closed was due to noise. As “talkies” had begun, Paramount in Astoria eventually asked the city for permission to put up “Hospital Zone-Quiet” outside on Pierce Avenue, as several scenes of “The Sap From Syracuse” and “Heads Up” had to be retaken due to rumbling trucks and fire engine sirens “competing” with the actors voices (June 1930). “The Sap From Syracuse” starred Jack Okie and Ginger Rogers. Production was held up for an hour as the “echo-hunter” looked for the source of a disrupting squeak. Foreign language films for overseas distribution began at Astoria in 1929-30 as an experiment, “sound shorts” in Spanish, and both English and French versions of “The Big Pond” where Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert, fluent in both languages, filmed scenes in both back to back.
•	The U.S. Army Signal Corps Photographic Center opened in these studios in June 1942. The Signal Corp Photographic Training School moved here from Fort Monmouth as well. Through the Vietnam War, thousands of training (or indoctrination) films were made here, “The Big Picture” being one; “Toward Independence” won an Academy Award for best documentary in 1949.
•	Headquarters for the 9440^th Technical Service Unit, the wartime worldwide Army photographers' unit.
•	Renamed the Army Photographic Center and then Army Pictorial Center, it was closed at the end of June 1971 and moved to Norton Air Force Base in San Bernadino, California.
•	The non-profit Kaufman Astoria Studios opened in these studios in 1977. Sidney Lumet who, as a child actor had worked at Astoria in 1939, directed the first film at the new studio, “The Wiz”. Known as the Astoria Motion Picture and Television Foundation
•	Woody Allen, Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Denzel Washington have filmed in Astoria. It is the home of Sesame Street and WFAN sports radio.
•	Home to the American Museum of the Moving Image as well.