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This is really a dirty shame.

The Motion Picture & Television Fund -- a charity started by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and other Hollywood luminaries to care for entertainers who fell on hard times -- said Wednesday that it was closing a hospital and nursing home by year's end.

With more than 500 hospital admissions last year and about 100 long-term residents, the Woodland Hills facilities have been a $10-million annual drain on the fund's budget for the last four years. The fund administrators projected the shortfall would only grow as a result of the deteriorating economy.

The origins of the "motion picture home," as it is commonly referred to by people in the entertainment industry, date to 1940, when actor Jean Hersholt, who played Shirley Temple's grandfather in the film "Heidi," planted 48 acres of walnut and orange trees in Woodland Hills on the site of the future Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, opened eight years later.

Residents have included DeForest Kelley, who played Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy on "Star Trek"; Dick Wilson, of Mr. Whipple fame; and producer-director Stanley Kramer, whose credits include "High Noon" and "Judgment at Nuremberg." He died there in 2001 at 87.

(Not to mention Larry Fine, Mae Clarke, Whit Bissell, and David Manners - R)


Full story and video:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/valley/la-fi-moviehome15-2009jan15,0,5884533.story (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/valley/la-fi-moviehome15-2009jan15,0,5884533.story)