This rare color view taken in 1966 (from what I assume was the top of the skyscraper at Sunset & Vine) affords us a bird’s-eye view of the Hollywood & Vine intersection with the Plaza Hotel (note their sign is red!), The Broadway-Hollywood store, and the Taft building with the huge Pepsi sign which replaced the equally huge Miller High Life Beer sign that stood there for years. And way in the distance, we can see the Hollywood sign which, 12 years later, would be replaced as the original had deteriorated so much. (And we have Hugh Hefner to thank for that.)
View looking north across Hollywood toward Hollywood and Vine and the Hollywood sign, 1966
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That gap across from the Pantages Theater (at the parking lot) would be where they set up stands for the big show prior to the premiere opening of Walt Disney’s The Happiest Millionaire in 1967. It was the last film Walt had a hand in, having died before it was all completed. The event idea was to try to do something on the scale of what went with Mary Poppins, but this film just flopped and the grand opening celebration became a historical footnote. I still have our fuzzy Kodacolor shots of it. They brought in a whole Disney band for this thing. The last hurrah of an era that would never be seen again.
BTW…you can really see here how the swath of that darn freeway destroyed so much of the heart of old Hollywood.
As I recall, Alice Cooper also contributed to the rebuild of the Hollywood sign. What could be more Los Angeles than the duo of Hef and Alice?
That empty space across from the Pantages was the site of one of the old Hollywood cinema houses. During the forties it was known as the Hitching Post where kids showed up in their western garb to attend those dime a dozen horse dramas. I think the buffs that cover this stuff may have missed this image. John (Tex-son) Ritter once mentioned this ritual about his childhood, but they must have shifted to another old theater to the east as this place stopped doing that about the time he was born.