My last vintage L.A. Christmas photo for 2021 was taken in December 1953 looking east along Hollywood Blvd from around Cosmo St in Hollywood. The electrified decorative trees along Hollywood Blvd during that time were painted white—I’m assuming to mimic snow that fell in Los Angeles once every ten years. The big store in this picture is Foreman & Clark at 6353 Hollywood Blvd. They were a department store that I think of as being mostly for men, but if anyone reading this can tell me otherwise, I’d love to hear from you.
The Foreman & Clark building is still there, as is the high-rise across Ivar Street. (The building is now owned by the Church of Scientology.) This image is from January 2021.
In the early days of Los Angeles, the rich built their fancy mansions on or near the top of the Bunker Hill neighborhood of (what we now call) downtown L.A. Not only because of the views, but the tops of the hills caught the best breezes, and in the age before air conditioning (and corsets for women) Angelenos took advantage of every breeze blowing their way. This photo, taken circa 1880s at Hill St near Fourth St, shows the wealthier homes looming on Bunker Hill over the more modest ones down below. It looks like Hill St wasn’t even paved yet.
In the 1960s and 70s, the Shrine Auditorium was the ultimate venue for musicians to play. If you played the Shrine, you’d made it, baby. But the version that stands on Jefferson Blvd at Royal St, near the University of Southern California south of downtown Los Angeles is the second incarnation. This photo, taken 1920, is the original version, known as the Al Malaikah Temple. Al Malaikah is division of the Shriners, aka the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, which is a Masonic society that goes all the way back to 1870. It’s a good thing this photo was taken, because 1920 was also the year that a fire broke out and gutted the place in 30 minutes. The new incarnation opened in 1926 and has played host to many Grammy and Academy Awards ceremonies.
I don’t know where on Franklin Ave this photo was taken, but it does give us a good idea of what the streets of Hollywood looked like back in the day. In this case, the “day” is circa 1920s. Before the palm trees became the most common type in Hollywood, it was the pepper trees that locals were most likely to come across, and to provide shade from the relentless Californian sun. However, they had a tendency to not play well with sidewalks, causing them to buckle with their roots, so in the 1910s the city began to replace them. They also sprouted TONS of berries, which probably played havoc with car windshields and squished underfoot. But still, they lent a genteel pastoral charm to the cityscape.
Sadly, we have precious few Googie-inspired coffee shops left intact around Los Angeles these days, but fortunately we do have photos of many of them in their prime. The Penguin Coffee Shop opened at 1670 Lincoln Blvd in Santa Monica in 1959, which is when this shot was taken. There’s something about that angular roof, the stonework on the pillars, and those beachball-shaped light fixtures that make me want to jump right into this image and order a burger with extra fries and a chocolate malted thick shake.
Most photos of the front of Disneyland are, understandably, taken from the outside looking in because it’s so lovely to look at. So I was pleased to find this one taken from the inside looking out. That’s the Disneyland railway station at the Main Gate and past it the vast parking lot. And beyond the parking lot is what looks to be the orange groves that used to blanket Anaheim. These days, that land is now the California Adventure theme park, and Disneyland visitors now park in a hug multi-level structure where the daily fee is $30(!) Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955, so what we’re looking at is opening day. My guess is that the photo was taken on top of the building where the “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” attraction now is (but wasn’t installed until 1965.)
With Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story” currently in theaters, I thought it a good time to post this colorful shot of when the original version played Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. It had its splashy premiere on December 13, 1961 ahead of an astoundingly record-breaking run of 57 weeks (it’s still Grauman’s longest run) that ended on January 17, 1963! The theaters marquee is advertising how the movie won 10 Oscars. The ceremony took place on April 9, 1962 so I’m guessing this photo was taken during the summer of 1962.
It seems I can’t get enough of photos of when Hollywood Blvd would be turned into “Santa Claus Lane” for the holiday season. In this one, we’re looking west along Hollywood Blvd from Argyle St. On the north side of the street, we can see the Pantages Theatre lit up. RKO’s “Bride for Sale” starring Claudette Colbert was playing, which means this photo was taken December 1949. They don’t look it, but according to Mary Mallory’s research, the electrified trees put up after the war were 26 feet tall! No wonder they looked so spectacular!
The roaring success of the real-life Hollywood Canteen on Cahuenga Blvd in Hollywood led to Warner Bros. making a film about it. The fact that Warner Bros. stars, Bette Davis and John Garfield, probably had something to do with that. Because the real Canteen was packed every night, Warner Bros. built a faithful reproduction on their soundstages, came up with a fictional story, and recruited a ton of stars (as well as a horse – Roy Rogers’ Trigger) to make cameos. The result was Warner Bros.’ most successful movie of 1944 which was good news for the Hollywood Canteen because the studio donated 40% of ticket sales to keep it going. This photo was taken on December 20, 1944, the day it opened at the Warner Bros. Theatre on Hollywood Blvd.
In this 1944 photo, we’re looking west along Beverly Blvd where it’s crossed by San Vicente Blvd. At first glance, I assume that gorgeous tower sat atop a movie theater, I guess because it reminded me of the Fox Westwood Theatre. But it didn’t take me long to realize, nope, that’s a gas station. It even had a name: the Beverly Tower. I’m guessing it would have been a local landmark at the time—which is kind of the point, in a “build it and they will come” sort of way.
