The Philanthropist Who Rescued a Piece of Cinema History

So many a movie star has passed through this, probably Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, all the movie stars. Frank Sinatra, all of them. Everybody has passed through these gates right here. Welcome to Silicon Valley, Farnborough. We're here in Northern California in Escalon at Ann Leslie Smith Ranch. And Ann is a philanthropist. She was a musician. She's been involved in radio. She has a radio talk show. And she's also the proud owner of one of the most celebrated horses in U.S. history. Okay, so tell me, what are we looking at? What is this gate all about? Well, welcome to my ranch estate. It's a vineyard estate, actually, with horses, so it's got everything. But this, this is a piece of history here. This is what we call the Hollywood Gate. And what it was, was it was the main entrance gate for Fox Studios down in L.A., probably the late 1800s, early 1900s. And here it is here. So you had it moved here? Yeah, had it moved here. Yeah. What they did was at Fox Studios, I think in the 60s, they, they took it down because they wanted to make it look like, they thought this was a little archaic looking and they, they were doing really well back then. So they said, let's get rid of this old thing and get something new. So this was put in a wooden box and stored for many, many years. And then until somebody saw it, saw that it had the initials of CS, which, which used to be Century Studios. That's what Fox was before, before it was Fox, it was Century Studios. So my late husband's name is Chester Smith and we own several Fox affiliates and several TV stations. And so they said, would you like to have this gate? And he says, yep. So here it is. So we call it the Hollywood Gate. And it's very significant. It's all European hand hammered. And the tulip design at the top is interesting. I studied that, that is significant because the artists that, that the iron workers that work on this had their, I guess, levels of status. Now, if you had an art, artisan that could do the tulip pattern, that meant that you were pretty wealthy, you know, it was a status symbol. So this one has the tulips on it, of course. And this was representing the studio at the time. Was represented the, the wealth of the studio. So many, a movie star has passed through this, probably Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, all the movie stars, Frank Sinatra, all of them, everybody has passed through these gates right here. That's awesome that it's so great to be in front of history and experiencing it. Yeah. Well, thank you. And they're going to move it on to the next, next place in your estate. You're welcome. We're back with Ann Leslie-Smith here at her estate in Escalon, California. And Ann, we want to, you know, thank you for having us here at your estate, beautiful place. And your late husband, Chester Smith, he was involved, you know, with this estate, of course. And he was also had the vision to build a television station in Spanish, which from what I understand, there was no Spanish TV station before that. Tell us a little bit about how he went about doing this. You know, what, what was in his mind? Why did he do it? If there was any Spanish TV, it probably was very small, you know, but, but not in the way that it turned out to be. So when he was here in the Central Valley, he saw a lot of the Spanish people coming into California. And he had a vision that these people need to be, they need to communicate. They need to be entertained. They're working hard here. They go home and everything's in English. They don't understand, you know. So he started to put on, he, he started out singing and he did really well in singing. He got a contract with, oh gosh, what was it? I don't know. Some big. Country, country. Yeah, it was country music. But the, but down in LA, it was, he was a big star. And so anyway, he was singing. He did really well with that. Then he got on radio and started owning radio stations. And then from that, he parlayed that into owning television stations, getting the permits to do that. So then he had the idea to bring up Spanish novellas out of, out of South America and putting them on the air. And so when he started doing that, that's when it hit. That's when things started going jackpot, you know? And so then the Spanish people in California had something, you know, to, to listen to and be entertained. But at the time when Chester was trying to get investors for that, a lot of people laughed at him and said, oh, there's no way that's going to work. Are you kidding? And there was one man that, that went along with him and needless to say, that has a very happy ending. It had a very happy ending for those that wanted to invest. And there was one man that did, but, but that just goes to show that sometimes when you have a vision, a lot of people won't believe you, you know? And here it was just huge. Now, as you know, the number one station in, for example, Los Angeles is Spanish speaking and will be forever, you know? It's almost hard to imagine there was a time when there was no Spanish TV. And, and I assume some of the meetings, some of the discussions, the planning was done here, or at least prior to, to building this, there were discussions, right? About how to build this, this amazing station. Yeah, he, and it's amazing because he was not educated. He was from Oklahoma, but he had such a strong vision that it all, I don't know how he did it, but it just came to his mind and came into place. Everything, all the legal aspects of it, you know, building the television stations, getting the permit. So basically he was, he was the one who, who spearheaded this. He was the mind behind it. It was amazing. It was an amazing man with that vision, you know, visions are very important, you know, but they're hard to do. He had to sacrifice a lot to get to that point. It wasn't just an overnight, yay, success, you know, it wasn't, but, but then it turned out, yeah, it turned out it was Spanish International Network at first, and then Telemundo, Telefutura, and then Univision. And then Univision sold, he saw his dream come true. Univision sold about a year before he passed away. So we got to see the fruition of that. Yes. Yeah. And we thank you so much for that. I think next we're going to move on to what really is your passion these days. Okay. Stay tuned. Gracias.