When I first saw this photo taken outside the Melody Lane restaurant on the Hollywood and Vine intersection, I assumed it was taken on V-J Day, celebrating the end of WWII. But then I saw the bleachers set up with its back to Melody Lane which meant it was facing the Taft Building on the southeast corner. A little digging revealed that these people were part of the estimated 25,000-person crowd who showed up on Tuesday, August 6, 1946 to witness the unveiling of the Trans-Lux Flashcast news ribbon mounted on the Taft. It was owned by local radio station KFWB (which itself was owned by Warner Bros.) and was a big deal because it was the first moving news ribbon sign in the west. According to one report I found, the list of luminaries in attendance included: California Governor Warren, L.A. Mayor Bowron, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Tom Breneman, the Earl Carroll Showgirls, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Trigger, Hedda Hopper, and a score of (Warner Bros. I assume) film stars.
According to JH Graham: “On October 12, 1931, the Los Angeles Times had unveiled its “Times-Richfield Electric Newspaper” on the side of the Paramount Theater at the northeast corner of Sixth and Hill downtown LA.” So maybe it wasn’t the first moving news ribbon in the West, as the ballyhoo guys might have had us otherwise believe.
This ad claims 40,000 which I think it a bit of a stretch.
Another story about that evening’s events from worldradiohistory.com.
https://i.imgur.com/f2X8v88.png
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1946/1946-08-05-BC.pdf
Thanks, Johnny. That article is a great find!
Within a few years of this, another Flashcast would be installed above the third floor of the Warner Hollywood Theatre at the corner of 7th and Hill. There was no known photo of that one, except for a film shot that was colorized on YouTube and apparently in its original state on archive.org or somewhere. As for this one, it was apparently deactivated after Warners’ sold KFWB radio.
I think Flashcast had only 39 or 40 alphanumeric characters at their disposal (the 26 letters of the alphabet, plus numbers 2 thru 8 as the letters I and O doubled as numbers 1 and 0, plus 5 or six other characters – ( $ ), ( . ), ( – ), ( ‘ ), probably ( / ) though I’m not sure, plus one where all 35 slots in a character were filled to test the zipper to see if it worked). By the 1950’s, as a news zipper, it was being overtaken by Naxon Telesign whose perforators had up to 44 characters.
Thanks for stopping by, WB. I didn’t know about the second zipper. And it’s weird that nobody’s found a photo of it. I’d have thought something like that would have caught many a photographer’s eye.