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This photo of Audrey Hepburn in a soundstage at Paramount studios during the filming of “Sabrina” give us a glimpse of what it actually looks like behind the scenes on a movie set. The lighting guys need a lot of room to set the lights just right to make us believe we’re in a New York mansion. Those sets that can look so sumptuous and plush on the inside, are often just thin wood made to last the duration of the shoot, which in the case of “Sabrina,” ran from September to November 1953.
Until I came across this photo, I wasn’t aware that the Roosevelt Highway (now Pacific Coast Highway) had an specific opening day. Turns out it was June 29, 1929 and the event attracted 1500 automobiles because the Malibu stretch of the Roosevelt Highway was the last segment to open to the public. California Governor C.C. Young was on hand to cut the ribbon—and then presumably quickly stepped aside to let those motorists navigate the highway’s many curves and bends.
In July of 1963, Pacific Theatees announced the construction of the Cinerama Dome, a huge dome-shaped theater at 6360 Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, that would showcase Cinerama’s new 70mm single-strip motion picture presentation. (Before then, Cinerama movies were shown using a three-projector process.) A mere four months later, on November 7, the theater opened amid a circus of Hollywood ballyhoo with the world premiere of Stanley Kramer’s star-studded “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” This photo shows the dome nearing completion and well on its way to become an L.A. landmark. In 1998, it was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.
The Cahuenga Pass has long been one of the main routes connecting Los Angeles with the San Fernando Valley. This photo is circa 1920, after it had been expanded from a dirt track to a streetcar line running alongside a two-lane roadway. And not a very packed one, which is good because it didn’t even have lanes painted on it.
Here’s a terrific icon-in-the-making image: the Hollywoodland sign under construction. I would have thought they’d have built each letter before moving onto the next. But the “L” and the “A” look like they’re only partially constructed, so maybe they left the two letters closest to the tractor path until last. The sign was illuminated for first time on Saturday December 8, 1923, so I’m guessing this photo was probably taken in the late summer.
The caption on this photo read “Palm trees on North Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, circa early 1930s.” Without any other geographical markers to verify it, it’s hard to know for sure if this is actually a picture of N. Canon, but wherever it was, I think somebody went a little overboard in the palm tree planting department. Perhaps only planting every third tree would have been enough, do you think? And I wouldn’t want to be the person whose job it was to pick up all those fronds during the windy Santa Ana season.
Here we have a rather grand aerial of what was the first of many incarnations of the movie studios at 9336 W. Washington Blvd in Culver City. This photo is from 1918, which is the year Thomas Ince built them. He owned them until his death in 1924, when they became the (Cecil B.) DeMille Studios. In the bottom center of the photo you can see the iconic administration building, which is most recognizable to moviegoers when David O. Selznick took over the lot in 1935 and used it as part of his logo. These days, it’s now called the Culver Studios, which were recently taken over by Amazon. But my goodness, look at all that empty land to the south!
The Crossroads of the World outdoor mall at 6657 W. Sunset Blvd (opened October 1936) is so unusual that it usually hogs the focus of most photographers’ attention. But right next door is a lovely church, the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, which usually gets ignored. So I was happy to find this color shot from 1967 showing them both.
It’s not that hard to find photos of the Pacific Electric street cars roaming around Los Angeles in their heyday. But less plentiful are photos taken inside them. So it’s nice to see this circa 1920 photo showing us what the layout was like: A row of double seats on each side and I’m guessing that those hand grips on the aisle seats meant you could change the direction so that four people could sit facing each other? Also, the metal poles in the center of the car, were they cross-bars at around waist height making a turnstile, or just alternative places for passengers to hang on?