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.
This is how the western end of Grauman’s now looks (February 2021) The marquee is gone which leaves that rather nice archway visible.
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.
In 1923, the two main social clubs of Long Beach, California merged to form the Pacific Coast Club. In June 1925, construction was started on the club’s impressive, castle-like headquarters at 850 East Ocean Blvd, and on October 27th, 1926, the place opened and duly impressed the locals. (This photo is from 1938.) The place offered its members guestrooms, an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool, a beauty shop, a barber shop, basketball court, sauna, haberdashery, gym, women’s tea room, padded wrestling room (!!), library, dining room, and a private beach. Whatever they charged for membership, it wasn’t enough to cover the cost of all this luxury because within a year, the club verged on bankruptcy. However, the far more successful Los Angeles Athletic Club came to their rescue and the club continued on until the 1960s, when this style of living eventually petered out.
This 1940 aerial view gives us a whole different perspective of the Ambassador Hotel which stood on Wilshire Blvd at Alexandria Ave. The hotel opened in 1921, when the land along that part of Wilshire Blvd was cheap and plentiful, but I’m surprised by that huge chunk to the left of it is still empty. The apartment block in the center of the photo is the Gaylord, which is still there. The small dome to its left is the Brown Derby, which is long gone. To the left of it is the Chapman Park Hotel, with its large grounds and bungalows. Farther to the left we can see a large white tower which is now the Oasis Church. The grounds of the Ambassador is now the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. So, 80 years after this photo was taken, some buildings are still around and some, inevitably, have gone the way of the wrecking ball.
In this aerial photo taken by Life magazine, we get to see what a chunk of the Universal Studios backlot looked like in 1963. If you’ve not been to a movie studio backlot before, the castle in the bottom right corner gives you a pretty good idea. Impressive from the front, but at the back? Just wooden scaffolding and some ladders. Those two Navy boats moored in the lake on the left, I’m fairly sure they were there for “McHale’s Navy” which filmed at Universal in from ’62 to ’66.
Back in the day when Hollywood Blvd was decorated for the holiday season with electric Christmas trees, the street looked very festive. But this nighttime photo from 1948 looks almost film noir with the puddles of rain water scattered across the road. The photographer was at around Whitley Ave looking east toward radio towers atop the Warner Bros. theater and the Broadway-Hollywood department store, whose neon sign we can see in the distance.
This photo offers us a glimpse into early 1900s life in downtown Los Angeles as two women stroll down Spring St 
This photo is undated, but I’d say it’s from the 1920s—mostly because everybody is dressed up in hats and coats and suits while at the beach. Something big was happening that day on those bleachers rigged up in front of the Venice Pier on Venice Beach. My guess is that it’s a swimsuit beauty pageant, but being the 1920s, there would have been more swimsuit to see than skin. In the background to the left we can see the word “SHIP” strung up high in the air between two masts. That was the famous Ship Café—famous because it wasn’t hard to get illicit booze during Prohibition at the place built in the shape of a Spanish galleon.