I love this off-the-cuff photo taken from inside a car driving north up Vine St as it approaches Sunset Blvd. We can glimpse what it was like to be driving around Hollywood on a regular day with regular people going about their business. The sign on the NBC studios – KRCA TELEVISION CHANNEL 4 shows they’ve been converted from radio. And that “DRIVE” painted on the ground would have led to Carpenter’s, which was a popular drive-in restaurant at the time.
Roughly the same view in May 2022:
I like that the whole lamp post on the corner is in view, too. There’s a sign on it pointing to a U.S.O. Where was that on Vine Street, I wonder?
The USO was on Hollywood Blvd at Cahuenga.
https://martinturnbull.com/2019/02/25/owl-drug-store-and-uso-club-banner-corner-hollywood-and-cahuenga-blvds-hollywood-circa-1943/
Of course, by this time Carpenter’s had already been converted to a Stan’s location. Another view, purportedly early 1960’s shows a set of low buildings with businesses then occupying the site. [A narrow horizontal pano-shot.] On the western edge is a signage for Stan’s Playroom, which seems to be a bar that must have acted as the surviving remnant marking the drive-in’s old site? (I found nothing mentioned about it searching on-line.)
Wonder if that is “The Blonde” driving the white Thunderbird!