Here’s a building I had never encountered before I was sent this 1964 photo. These days, it’s hard to miss the Director’s Guild of America building on Sunset Blvd on the southwest corner of Hayworth Ave. It’s around 5 or 6 stories high, circular, with a bronze-tinted exterior. It opened in the late 1980s, but I hadn’t ever given much thought to what it replaced. Sitting on the same block was their previous headquarters, a far more modest one-story structure with what looks like a theater at the back (with the sloping roof.) I could find no details on this building, but I do love that white patterned facade at the front. It’s got a very mid-century Palm Springs vibe about it.
Rowland H. said: “It did have a theater at the back part. They often used it for when they had people to come in and rate pilots for possible TV shows. Each chair had a hand controller in which you would push buttons when something was dull or boring or interesting, etc. That info went somewhere because they used it to make decisions on programing. I went there once, as a part of the audience that pushed the buttons. Who knows what careers I had my hand on! They may have also done that for particular movies before they re-edited them?”
This is what the currently DGA building looks like. This image is from August 2022.
Every juxtaposition of historic L.A. with the city’s contemporary physical landscape reveals largely the same thing – the same jolt of the passing of time – but this particular juxtaposition puts the contrast in highest relief with the loss of a stylish, well designed and nicely proportioned structure on a modest street corner to an imposing, graceless behemoth that shouts, “here I am!”
Some time ago I was looking for a photo of this building and it took a very long time to find one, which seems odd. I finally found one of Ed Ruscha’s photos of it. The new DGA is on the east side of Hayworth and the previous DGA was on the west side of Hayworth. Sometime in the very early 1980’s I attended a (nitrate print) screening of the film How Green Was My Valley there, which included a Q&A with Roddy McDowall and Anna Lee. Trivia Question: Only one other Oscar Best Picture winning movie has a “color” in the title. Name the movie!
Thanks, Martin. To tell the truth, I like the pix of the old building than today’s building! It looks cozy. Opened its doors way back in 1936. Today it costs of 14,000 dollars to join the joint. ! Where do you get the mazuma, Sam? That’s what’s paying the mortgage and taxes on that new building!!!!! Maybe if they kept then old place, by now it would have been paid off and your entry fee would be about 400 bucks!!!!!