The death of the Phantom Stage

When I was a kid just out of school, I worked a great deal on the Universal Studios lot, on such stuff like Beverly Hills Cop 3, Apollo 13 and Seaquest DSV. On Seaquest, a fun but silly show, I had the luck to walk onto Stage 28 on the lot, where the studio had shot the Original Phantom of the Opera in the mid 1920's, and I was amazed seeing the original opera set still built along the walls of the stage!

Here's a better look inside:

Sorry, it's a little blurry.

Here's another angle:

And here's the set from the actual film:

Look carefully at the balconies. A decade later, one of them would be used to shoot a scene from Dracula:

And eighty years later it would look like this:

And it would look like this during the shooting of the show I worked on while I marveled at the opera set all around our silly sets:

How a kid like me ended up being lucky enough to be on that stage and feel a little bit of Hollywood history around me, I'm still wondering.

So, the stage was torn down recently:

So the stage where the Phantom lived died, but the memories, for me, remain.

Thought all five of you would like to read this:)