Community Corner
Remembering Encino Ranch Back in the Days of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’
The 89-acre ranch housed large-scale film sets that were bulldozed in the 1950s to meet San Fernando Valley's expanding needs.
Los Angeles resident Will Markland posted this YouTube video on the Encino Patch Facebook page. The video takes us down memory lane to the historic RKO Encino Ranch, an 89-acre property that housed an array of themed movie sets in the 1940s and 1950s in and around what is today’s Lake Balboa area.
Encino Ranch belonged to a company called RKO Pictures, which produced several notable films, including It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), starring James Stewart and Donna Reed, Magnificient Ambersons (1942), directed by Orson Wells, and Cimarron, which won the 1931 Oscar award for the year’s best movie.
According to the video, after RKO Pictures sold the ranch in 1954, the movie sets were bulldozed and the 89 acres were merged with adjoining land to cater to the needs of San Fernando Valley’s fast-growing communities.
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