USAF LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN LABORATORY
PROMOTIONAL ALBUM FOR CLASSIFIED FILM STUDIO.
United States Air Force Lookout Mt. Laboratory Hollywood, Calif. Los Angeles, [late 1940s/early 1950s]. 10 1/2 x 9 3/4-inch binder containing: 18 7 1/2 x 9 1/2-inch silver gelatin print photographs interspersed with typed descriptions of the studio facilities, including a memorandum signed by commanding officer Lt. Col. James L. Gaylord.
Provenance: Lt. Col. James L. Gaylord.
Lookout Mountain Laboratory (LML), officially the 1352nd Photographic Group of the United States Air Force (USAF), was the government's own motion picture production studio hidden in the Hollywood Hills. It produced films not only for the military, but also for government agencies such as the Department of Defense (DoD), the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), NASA and any other government agency that required classified work. "During its two‐decade history (1947–1969), the Air Force film unit was responsible, so far as we have been able to determine, for producing at least 600 films about America's nuclear weapons program and many other films on other topics" (Hamilton & O'Gorman pp 129-130).
"As a film studio created for the purpose of "cold war" in a nuclear age, LML was part propagandistic agency, part chronicler of institutional evolution, part instructional and training aid, part inter‐office communication medium, part scientific and historical witness to the grand experiments of nuclear‐weapons‐related science, and part producer of therapeutic cinema meant to reassure government officials that everything was under control" (Hamilton & O'Gorman p 130).
Hamilton & O'Gorman, "Filming a Nuclear State" in: A Companion to the War Film (2016).