Taken with what I can only assume was a very slow shutter speed, this photo gives us a glimpse of how Hollywood Blvd was transformed into Santa Claus Lane each holiday season. This particularly atmospheric shot was taken in the early 1950s from Cherokee Ave looking east. Midway down on the right we can see the neon sign for Kress, which was a five-and-dime store like Woolworths. (In real life, the sign was bright can’t-miss-it red.) And farther down, the Hollywood-Broadway department store sign on the Vine Street corner. I do love how the lights of those electric Christmas trees are reflected on the cars parked along the street.
Looking east along Hollywood Blvd from Cherokee Ave, Hollywood at night, Christmastime, circa early 1950s
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In the Teens and Twenties, L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books, lived on Cherokee Avenue, not too far from where this photo was taken. If someone in that era had stood where the photographer stood in the 1950s, the Walls of Babylon, left over from D.W. Griffith’s filming of Intolerance, would have been visible at Hollywood and Highland. There’s a good chance, given human nature, that people from the Teens and Twenties, observing this intersection in the early Fifties, would have been convinced that the city had gone downhill in the intervening years.
Actually, Bill, the “Intolerance” set stood at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz, which is quite a few miles east of Hollywood and Highland. And it was gone by the early 20s.