The Fox Commissary opened for business in 1930 with dedication ceremonies hosted by two of the studio’s biggest stars of the day – Will Rogers and Fifi D’Orsay. The commissary was constructed on the set of a French restaurant called the Café de Paris, and for many years kept that name.

The famous mural – part of which is seen on this 1980s menu cover – was unveiled in 1935.

Representing nearly every country in the world, the painting was conceived and created by the Studio’s art department, along with John Otterson Jnr who also painted the murals in the Empire State Building in NYC.

Fox’s stars such as Shirley Temple, Janet Gaynor and Will Rogers are depicted in cameos throughout the mural.

Hollywood’s oldest commissary was the scene of many famous encounters. VARIETY reports how scriptwriter Ernest Lehman would eat there while working on the screenplay adaptation of The Sound of Music in the 1960s and was teased by Burt Lancaster for his work on the musical which went on to win five Oscars.

Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder often shared a table at the commissary in the 1970s when they were making Young Frankenstein

Perhaps the biggest event at the commissary happened when Nikita Krushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, dined there in 1959. Among the stars present were Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Henry Fonda and Judy Garland.

The biggest star was Marilyn Monroe who was asked to wear something black and figure-revealing. ‘He looked at me the way a man looks on a woman,’ she later said of Krushchev.

Her husband playwright Arthur Miller, who had appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities to answer questions about his Communist leanings, was not invited. Ronald Reagan and Bing Crosby both declined to attend.

In 2020, one of the most recognized names in film history was rebranded by its new owner Disney as 20th Century Studios.

Its headquarters remain at the Fox Studio lot in Century City, California, leased from the Fox Corporation owned by media proprietor Rupert Murdoch and his family.

Today, this historic commissary remains a fully functioning restaurant on the Fox Studios backlot and its Shirley Temple private dining room can be rented and reserved for special events and filming.