In James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon, Shangri-La was a valley of delicate beauty and perfect serenity set against a backdrop of soaring Tibetan mountains. To Movie Producer Ross Hunter, Shangri-La is Burbank, Calif. The mountain range is only 600 ft. long (not bad by studio standards) and made of plaster; in Hollywood, serenity is a realm that lies only beyond the fourth martini or the third joint. Otherwise, Hunter's Shangri-La—the set for a new musical version of Hilton's novel—has it all over the novel, as well as Frank Capra's 1937 black-and-white Ronald Colman tearjerker.
The four-acre set cost $500,000 —more than some entire movies in today's budget-squeezed Hollywood. Next to the plaster mountains are two 40-ft. waterfalls, four glistening pools, and an 80-ft.-high Greco-Roman-Byzantine-Gothic-Sung-Khmer Lamasery that owes more to Hilton the hotelier than Hilton the novelist. "It's like having a dream you can walk into any time you want to," gushes one of the Columbia Pictures secretaries who spend their lunch hours or coffee breaks on the set trying to catch glimpses of a cast that includes Charles Boyer, John Gielgud, Peter Finch, Sally Kellerman and Liv Ullman, Ingmar Bergman's most famous female star.
Plaster dreams for people to walk into are Hunter's stock in trade, and a very profitable trade it is, too. In the past 20 years, his 45 movies have grossed countless millions; one of them alone, the 1969 Airport, has grossed $45 million, according to Variety, making it the fourth-ranking moneymaker in Hollywood history. Though he is only 51, Hunter is the apostle of the old big-budget Hollywood, and he would be properly mortified if anyone saw any social relevance in such Hunter-produced films as The Magnificent Obsession, Pillow Talk and the various Tammies (Tammy Tell Me True, etc.). "What I offer people is escape," he says. "I have never in my life made a picture to please me. Can you imagine that I'd make a film like Tammy for me?"
Well, yes. An affinity for schlock like Hunter's must be sincere. Except for a few million dollars and an opulent house in Trousdale, overlooking Beverly Hills, he has changed little from the movie-struck kid who ushered at Lowe's Park Theater in Cleveland 30 years ago.
Golden Hair. The son of a real estate man, Hunter grew up to become briefly a high school English teacher. His girl students were so dazzled by his golden-haired good looks that they sent his picture to a Hollywood movie agent. Improbable as it sounds, a contract resulted, and Hunter starred in 26 B-grade flicks, each one, he recalls, "as forgettable as the next, mostly because I was a horrible actor."