Restaurants in a railway carriages aren’t unusual in Los Angeles—the Pacific Dining Car on the edge of downtown, and the Formosa in Hollywood come to mind—but this is one I’d never heard of before. The Club Car stood at that diabolical intersection where Wilshire and San Vicente Boulevards meet at the eastern edge of Beverly Hills. It was around in the late 1930s (this photo is from 1938) and owned by—of all people—Alice Faye. Her partner in this venture was Harry Sugarman (aka “Sugie”) who opened The Tropics at 427 North Rodeo Dr in 1936 and was one of the earliest of the pre-Polynesian places and later became The Luau, which was managed by Lana Turner’s ex-husband, Steve Crane.

By the 1940s, this place had become “Sardi’s Wilshire”:

And at some point, it became a BBQ place called Jerry’s Joynt. This advertisement is from 1947: