Movie Industry Hospital, Nursing Home to Shutter

Facing a deficit of $10 million, the Motion Picture & Television Fund said Wednesday that it will close much of Hollywood's legendary retirement community in suburban Los Angeles by the end of the year, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The community's on-campus hospital will close and a third of its staff will be laid off, leaving 100 patients and residents to seek care and housing elsewhere. The acute-care hospital and long-term care facility at the Wasserman Campus in Woodland Hills, long a safety net for aging actors and once-known Hollywood figures, are being phased out to cut operating losses that could bankrupt the facility. The organization said it would broaden community-based services instead "MPTF is initiating these changes because it's the right thing to do, but the fact is that we have no choice," said Jeffrey Katzenberg, board chairman at the MPTF Foundation, which oversees fundraising. The nonprofit MPTF was founded in 1921 by  Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and others to help fellow members of the industry.