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A LONG-AGO LUNCH in a D.C. hamburger joint with Tom Cruise, a peek into an L.A. industrial site that once subbed for burning Atlanta in "Gone With the Wind."

Those are a couple of Hollywood memories that came back to me recently with the news that Cruise will be sparking the revival of the fabled movie studio United Artists.

Call me a sentimentalist, but I still long for the days when studios like UA and MGM were filling our heads with glorious fantasies.

But the UA/Cruise story is more than a journey into corporate nostalgia. It's a case study of how, at a time of dizzying change in society, some of the old ideas can become bracingly fresh.

Let's begin with that hamburger-laden interview with Cruise.

The 1983 call came from a studio PR man in D.C. As the film critic for The Free Lance-Star, I occasionally made my way to Washington for interviews with actors, directors and producers.

But I already had been north once that week, and a nobody named Cruise in a movie named "Risky Business" seemed, well, risky as a time investment.

I gave in, when my PR pal said I could have an exclusive lunch interview with the actor--at a hamburger place on Wisconsin Avenue.

It wasn't exactly the toniest location, but Cruise was endearing. He seemed like a real person. He talked about his reading disability, which made scripts a challenge. I liked him.

Little did I know he'd end up getting married in an Italian castle under a worldwide spotlight a couple of decades later.

The other part of this oddly paired tale has to do with my onetime predilection for hunting down legendary movie sites during my annual visits to L.A.

With a little research, and a few phone calls, I not only made it onto the legendary MGM lot in Culver City (now owned by the Sony Corp.), but I also navigated my way to what had been the back lot at the nearby studio once run by David O. Selznick.

That's the site where the old "King Kong" sets were used for timber during the burning-of-Atlanta scene in 1939's "Gone With the Wind."

Not even a row of industrial storage tanks on the long-converted "back lot" could detract from this moment of cinematic discovery.

Those hunting trips made me a lifelong admirer of MGM, the grandest of the old studios. As I noted in a column a few months ago, the recent revival of MGM as a major distribution force in Hollywood, after exaggerated reports of the studio's death, provided me with a heady dose of nostalgic glee.

Now, with the revival of the MGM-owned United Artists, the comeback is complete.

Cruise's tarnished but still powerful superstardom will jump-start the recently defunct UA into big-time business.

The irony is that, though MGM and UA may be overflowing with Golden Age credentials, their reincarnations are wonderfully cutting edge.

Avoiding many of the overhead costs that go with traditional studios, MGM has focused on becoming a distributor of films mostly made by independent production companies.

UA, created in 1919 by the artists themselves (D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Charlie Chaplin), will return to its roots. Cruise, along with other actors and directors, will take projects directly to UA management, rather than going through the layers of middlemen so prevalent in Hollywood.

Will the new MGM and UA flourish? It's too early to tell.

But CEO Harry E. Sloan deserves the thanks of all film buffs for finding a way to convert the best studios in Hollywood history into key players for the future.

ED JONES is editor of The Free Lance-Star. He can be reached at 540/374-5401 or at edjones@ freelancestar.com.

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