A few years later, Howard Hughes moved production to the lot used and shot the World War I epic Hell's Angels (1930), known for its innovative use of sound and for the screen debut of Jean Harlow.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy; Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Glenn Ford, Fredric March, and Erich von Stroheim were among the stars who worked on the lot in the pre-World War II years.

In 1951, the lot made history when Stage 2 became home to I Love Lucy, the first prime-time comedy shot on film and produced before a live audience originating from the West Coast.

The television version of actress Eve Arden's radio series Our Miss Brooks produced its first season on the stage adjacent to I Love Lucy.

[citation needed] In 1980, director Francis Ford Coppola purchased the lot, naming it Zoetrope Studios; he intended to use it to produce a slate of films.

For the film, Coppola transformed the entire lot into a giant set that included a replica of part of Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport.

Cost overruns on One From the Heart combined with its poor box-office performance caused Coppola to fall into financial difficulties and the lot was sold again, this time to Canadian real estate developers, the Singer Family.

The Singers initiated a comprehensive modernization and refurbishing effort[8] that sparked a revival of the lot's fortunes and attracted a new generation of feature film and commercial filmmakers.