Imagine, if you will, taking a drive up the Pacific Coast Highway that parallels Santa Monica Beach. Now imagine that it’s 1948 and this is how clear the road is. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 25 years and have never seen traffic on PCH this light. What a heavenly Sunday drive it would be. Is it any wonder that I often suffer from anemoia which, I’ve recently learned, means nostalgia for a time you’ve never known. Am I the only one who suffers from this incurable condition?
**UPDATE** : The house on the bottom left with the 4 dormer windows on the roof line was Daryl Zanuck’s home during the late 1930s. The hous to the left with the threee-car garage belonged to Sam Goldwyn, and out of frame the house next door to that belonged to Harry Warner.
After the unfortunate death of Earl Carroll in 1948, his eponymous nightclub – the largest in the world – at 6230 Sunset Blvd remained closed until Frank Sennes, former manager of the Hollywood Gardens (a nightclub where he gave Betty Grable her first break) took it over and in 1953 relaunched it as the Moulin Rouge. I don’t have a year on this photo, but Louis Armstrong was heading a review called C’est La Vie, which the marquee promised a cast of 100, so it really must have been something. I also like that they kept the iconic (and enormous) neon sign of a woman’s face – and a smart move, too. It was a local landmark; everybody knew where it was.
Oh, for a time machine that would take me back to 1922 where I could snap up even just a few plots of all this open land we can see in this aerial view of Beverly Hills. The road cutting diagonally across the bottom of this photo is Wilshire Blvd. (Which means that line of trees at the very bottom would be Charleville Blvd.) Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but the three main streets we can see here, running straight between Wilshire Blvd and Santa Monica Blvd, then curving are Rodeo, Beverly, and Canon Drives. Back then, Beverly Hills must have had a country-town atmosphere, where people could escape from the constant hubbub of downtown Los Angeles.
Horse-drawn streetcars were introduced in Los Angeles by the Springs and Sixth Street Railroad in 1874. Over the following years they were developed and refined into something nicer like this one which, for the summer months, was actually fitted out with curtains. How refined! I do pity the poor horse, though. It seems a heavy load for one creature to pull, especially if the streetcar was full!
We don’t often see the Hollywood Bowl from this angle. My guess is that the photographer was standing on the hillside where the 32-foot cross stands and was facing southeast. It’s interesting to see the Bowl from the rear with all that space out the back for the performers. Past it we can see the parking lot where the buses are parked during a performance, and past it the houses (I wonder if the residents can hear the music?) Farther back, those high-rise buildings are clustered around the Hollywood and Vine intersection; the Capitol Records building is particularly clear. And, of course, beyond that, Los Angeles sprawls out as far as the horizon.
If this line of moviegoers snaking outside the Mason Theatre at 127 South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles is anything to go by, Warner Bros.’ “Desert Song” was a big hit. It did, in fact, earn 10 times its budget, a hit by anybody’s standards. It was party because this was a talking-and-singing picture which, in 1929, was still a huge novelty. It was also photographed partly in two-color Technicolor, making it the first film released by Warner Bros. to include footage in color. It also had a 10-minute intermission during which music was played. Note also the Woolworths 5-10-15-cent store next door. I wonder how many people bought their movie snacks in there while they waited.
In this photo we’re looking along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, circa 1907. I loved seeing photos from the era when the streets of L.A. accommodated automobiles and streetcars alongside horse-drawn carriages. The noises and smells must have been quite different from what we’re used to. That street car is headed for the Bimini Baths, a spa and “plunge” (public swimming pool) built on a natural hot spring at 180 Bimini Place in what is now Koreatown, near the corner of Third St and Vermont Ave. On my website, I have a page of photos of the Bimini Baths: 
These movie-going motorists snaking all the way to the street (and probably beyond) were waiting to get into California’s very first drive-in theater on September 9, 1934. Because there weren’t any others, it was simply named Drive-In Theater. Located on the corner of Pico Blvd and Westwood Blvd, it was later renamed the Pico Drive-In. That night, patrons were treated to Will Rogers in Fox’s “Handy Andy.” (Not to be confused with MGM’s Andy Hardy series starring Mickey Rooney from the late 1930s.) The Westside Pavilion shopping mall now occupies that site.
