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	<strong>First-ever film on the history of Catalina Island to premiere on American Public Television</strong></p>
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	Award-winning &ldquo;Hollywood&rsquo;s Magical Island &ndash; Catalina&rdquo; recounts why it became a mecca for film stars, music greats, and the thousands who arrived by boat each day <img border="0" src="images/stories/catalinaboardwalk.jpg" style="margin: 10px; float: left;" /><br />
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	LOS ANGELES &ndash; November1, 2005 &ndash; Today, Catalina Island is a picturesque getaway that Southern Californians might visit once or twice in their lifetimes.&nbsp; In its heyday, thousands flocked to this once world-famous mecca in a single day &ndash; lured there by such attractions as the Big Band swing music of such legends as Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Les Brown; the world premieres of the first talkie motion pictures; underwater kelp gardens found nowhere else in the world; and endless other man-made and natural wonders.<br />
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	What you don&rsquo;t know about this quaint, 22-mile long, eight-mile wide oasis &ndash; located just 26 miles (or a one-hour boat ride) off the coast of Los Angeles &ndash; has been captured in an award-winning documentary that will premiere on the PBS affiliate, KOCE, on March 8 at 7:30 pm.<br />
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	Narrated by Emmy-winning actor Peter Coyote, &ldquo;Hollywood&rsquo;s Magical Island &ndash; Catalina&rdquo; presents the fascinating history of California&rsquo;s own paradise isle through rare 16 mm footage, never-before-seen vintage photographs, and interviews with celebrities, island historians, and a Wrigley heir.<br />
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	&ldquo;Hollywood&rsquo;s Magical Island&rdquo; received The Audience Award from the 2004 Temecula Film Festival.&nbsp; The film has also been showcased in the Marco Island (FL), Ojai, Big Bear Lake, Wine Country (Napa Valley), Pacific Palisades, and Newport Beach Film Festivals.<br />
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	Filmed over a period of several years by first-time director Greg Reitman, who maxed out his credit cards to get the documentary made, &ldquo;Hollywood&rsquo;s Magical Island&rdquo; takes viewers on a first-time journey through its unparalleled history &ndash; beginning in 1919, when self-made chewing-gum magnet William Wrigley, Jr., purchased a portion of the island sight-unseen in 1919, then bought up the rest for $2 million soon after arriving.<br />
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	Among those featured on-camera are:<br />
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	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; William Wrigley, Jr.&rsquo;s granddaughter, Ada Wrigley Schreiner, in her first-ever interview.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Actor Gregory Harrison &ndash; a third-generation islander and son of the captain of the famous Glassbottom Boat that ferried tourists around Avalon Bay.&nbsp;<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Tony Dow &ndash; one of our favorite childhood stars as Wally Cleaver on the classic series, &ldquo;Leave it to Beaver&rdquo; &ndash; who spent every summer there with his family.&nbsp;<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Oscar-nominated actress Kathleen Quinlan, who was born in Avalon and returned each summer.&nbsp;<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The late Les Brown in his last interview, talking about playing the famed Catalina Ballroom with his Band of Renown orchestra.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who frequently visited during his body-building years.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Oceanographer and explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau, an admirer of how well the island has been preserved.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Surf guitar legend Dick Dale.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Veteran film producer A. C. Lyles, who was working for Paramount Pictures when buffaloes were imported to Catalina for the&nbsp; filming of Zane Gray&rsquo;s &ldquo;The Vanishing American&rdquo; in 1924, and shot many of his own pictures there.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The late screen siren Peggy Moran, a cult favorite for her 1940 role in &ldquo;The Mummy&rsquo;s Hand,&rdquo; who was a regular during the Big Band era.<br />
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	&ldquo;Hollywood&rsquo;s Magical Island&rdquo; takes viewers on an intimate journey through such history-making developments and moments as:<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The construction of the Sugarloaf Casino in 1920 &ndash; an eight-sided, steel-framed stucco structure designed to accommodate 250 couples at a cost $250,000 &ndash; which later became the world&rsquo;s largest birdcage.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The discovery of the island&rsquo;s real treasure in 1926, the clay deposits that were manufactured into the widely-known &lsquo;Catalina tile,&rsquo; evident throughout Avalon.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The design and construction of the island&rsquo;s world-famous landmark, the 140-foot circular Catalina Casino, unveiled in 1929 at a cost of $2 million &ndash; where, notably, gambling has never been allowed.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The first theater ever built for &ldquo;talkies&rdquo; &ndash; which later became an acoustical model for Radio City Music Hall.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The 15,000 square foot Avalon Casino Ballroom, where all the big band greats played to crowds of 6000 or more during the Golden Age of swing music.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The stunning art deco-style murals by artist John Gabriel Beckman, a designer of Grauman&#39;s Chinese Theater a year earlier.&nbsp;<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The instrumental role that Catalina&rsquo;s fleet of steamships played in transporting the hordes of tourists who visited from the mainland daily.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The advent of amphibious seaplane service to the island, launched in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin&rsquo;s half-brother in a failed venture.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The 30-year history of Catalina as the spring training ground of the Chicago Cubs.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The unlikelihood of Ronald Reagan&rsquo;s being signed to an acting contract, as a result of covering the Cubs on Catalina as a Chicago radio announcer.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Best-selling novelist Zane Gray&rsquo;s famed fishing exploits as a member of the Catalina Tuna Club.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The trend-setting fashion influence of the Catalina Swimsuit Company.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The many death-defying contests that started up after 1927, including a cross-channel swim with a grand prize of $25,000.<br />
	&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Marilyn Monroe&rsquo;s life as the wife of a serviceman stationed on the island during World War II &ndash; while she was still Norma Jean Baker.<br />
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	About the Production<br />
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	&ldquo;Hollywood&rsquo;s Magical Island&rdquo; marks the directorial debut of Greg Reitman, who also wrote and co-produced the Blue Water Entertainment Production with well-known casting director Mike Fenton.&nbsp;<br />
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	Reitman, now 33 years old, grew up outside New York City, and was headed to Emerson Film School when his father &ndash; owner of an executive search firm in the publishing industry &ndash; objected, insisting his son pick a more respectable profession.&nbsp;<br />
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	So he enrolled in international studies, graduated from the University of Massachusetts, then spent a year working in the sales department of the trade division at Oxford University Press &ndash; followed by a year in England as the multi-media manager for Simon &amp; Schuster International.<br />
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	Ready for a new challenge, he moved to Australia and became a vice president of sales for META Group, selling information technology research to Fortune 500 companies.&nbsp; At the same time, he got his first hands-on experience in filmmaking from Tina Dalton, the award-winning wildlife documentary filmmaker whose work is frequently featured on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic.<br />
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	It was enough to inspire Reitman to transfer to META Group&rsquo;s Los Angeles office, where he was put in charge of their Southern California operation.&nbsp; At the same time, he embarked on an intensive training program to learning filmmaking, A to Z.&nbsp; Besides reading every book published on the subject, he enrolled in UCLA&rsquo;s Extension certificate program &ndash; or which he attended classes five days a week for two years.<br />
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	After graduating, Reitman started planning his exit from META.&nbsp; He had made a lot of money, put away as much as he could, and now just wanted to bury himself in celluloid.&nbsp;<br />
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	As fate would have it, Reitman was on the verge of leaving META when he happened into a Malibu dive shop, where he saw a book on Catalina&rsquo;s indigenous underwater kelp forests.&nbsp; A scuba diver since college, he had explored the waters of Australia&rsquo;s Great Barrier Reef, the Florida Keys, Hawaii and Israel, yet never seen anything like this unique natural wonder.<br />
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	Intrigued, he hired a Harvard-educated researcher and paid her $500 to tell him more.&nbsp;&nbsp; She returned two weeks later with a 10-page report that included the history of the island.&nbsp; &ldquo;I said, &lsquo;Wow,&rsquo; this is a fascinating place!&rsquo;&rdquo; he recalls.<br />
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	Buoyed by the fact that no one had ever captured Catalina&rsquo;s history on film before, Reitman resigned META, formed Blue Water Entertainment and visited Catalina for the first time.&nbsp;<br />
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	Fortunately, he feel madly in love with the island the moment he saw it &ndash; because he would spend the next several years racking up $50,000 in credit card debt, supplemented by a free Panavision package, film from Kodak and post-production services from Modern Video Film.<br />
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	&ldquo;Documentaries are wonderful, but you do not make a living making documentaries,&rdquo; Reitman says with a laugh.&nbsp;<br />
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	Even so, he&rsquo;s hard at work on his next one.<br />
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	For more information, please contact:<br />
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	Lyla Foggia<br />
	Foggia+Associates<br />
	Public Relations<br />
	(661) 259-6561<br />
	lfoggia@sbcglobal.net<br />
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