NORTH MIAMI – Florida’s motion picture history is more than Universal and Disney. One of the early pioneers was Ivan Tors, best known for Flipper
In the 19760s, a number of series featured Florida, the best known being Surfside Six and Flipper.
Tors wrote and produced films such as The Magnetic Monster (1951), Riders to the Stars (1954), Gog (1954) and the television series Science Fiction Theatre, Sea Hunt, and The Aquanauts, starred Keith Larsen, Jeremy Slate, and Ron Ely, renamed Malibu Run. He created the NBC science fiction series The Man and the Challenge, starred principally George Nader and Jack Ging and was the executive producer of Ripcord.
Below is a film tour of Ivan Tors’ Studio, showing behind-the-scenes manufacturing, equipment, wardrobe, stages and special effects. There is great underwater footage, including reefs, animals, camera crew and props from “Thunderball.” Viewers see Ivan Tors, actor Lloyd Bridges and Flipper. The video was posted to YouTube by the Florida Memory Project.
The studio is now known as Greenwich Studios; Hollywood Reporter has an excellent story on the investment in movie production in South Florida HERE.
