This 1937 shot of the northeast corner of Hollywood Blvd and Cherokee Ave, Hollywood would be a fairly normal photo of a 1930s Hollywood street: the Jade Café, a United Airlines ticket office, Bradley’s Five and Ten (which, incidentally, wasn’t a five-and-dime store like the nearby J.J. Newberry and Kress’s but was a bar that attracted the sort of menfolk who enjoy the company of other menfolk.) But what about that strange, huge box on the roof of 6619 Hollywood Blvd? It looks like some sort of rear-projection screen, but did they have those in 1937? Ten feet tall? And if so, what did it project? All theories, guesses, and stabs-in-the-dark are welcome.
Here’s the same corner from another angle:
This shot is from 1925, when the Jade Cafe was the Bee Drugstore:
** UPDATE ** – In 1936, Mabel Grady leased the rooftop of her building for construction of a new “motion picture billboard.” Less than a year later, however, Grady sold the building to Sanford Jacobi, who demolished the building for a new Sontag drugstore. — L.A. Citizen, September 5, 1936
That same corner in April 2018. The Jade Cafe was around 1939 to 1949.
My thanks to David Ginsburg for these photos of The Jade:
Driving down Broadway at night in 1956, when this photo was taken, was a wonderland of bright neon light. In this one view alone we can see: Silverwoods (menswear), Desmond’s (menswear, especially hats), the Palace Theatre, Hotel Lankershim, Bullocks (department store), Kress (five-and-dime), the Los Angeles Theatre, Swelldom (women’s clothing), and Hartfield’s (department store.) Even the dentist on that block had a neon sign—he probably needed one just to stand out!
I’m not sure who I’m more envious of in this photo of a Red Car traveling through the Cahuenga Pass en route to Hollywood in 1950: the people riding the Red Car, who didn’t have to deal with traffic at all, or the motorists who only had to deal with a level of traffic that the Hollywood Freeway only sees at 6am on a Sunday morning these days. Either way, I hope these people knew how good they had it.
In 1915, Thomas Ince partnered with D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett to form The Triangle Motion Picture Company. It’s not hard to see where they got the name: the triangular shape of their studio lot bordered by Washington Blvd on the left (north), Culver Blvd on the right (south), and Overland Ave along the bottom (west.) This photo was taken circa early 1920s, by which time Sam Goldwyn owned the studios. By 1924, he was gone and the studios became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which would soon boast that it had “More Stars Than There Are in Heaven.” It’s now Sony Pictures Studios, but it’ll always be MGM to me.
This is a 1946 photo of the Crosby Building at 9028 Sunset Blvd, at the western end of the Sunset Strip. It got that name from Bing Crosby whose company was headquartered there from 1936 to 1977. More than “just a singer,” Bing’s company perfected audiotape, and later videotape recording. Also housed in this building was Finlandia Baths, which was a popular Finnish bathhouse, which opened in 1937 and quickly became a place where many Hollywood stars—Humphrey Bogart and his pal Peter Lorre were frequent regulars—came to relax in the steam room and sauna, and maybe get a massage—or just get away from the unrelenting pressures of being a public person.
I was yesterday years old when I learned that chariot racing was an actual thing in Los Angeles—and I don’t mean while filming “Ben Hur.” From what I can gather chariot racing was part of the annual Rose Parade festivities in the early 1900s. They took place at Tournament Park in Pasadena and gauging from his photo, thousands of people turned out for it.
The next time you have a bad day, ask yourself if it’s a run-your-car-up-a-telephone-wire bad. You have to wonder how fast this motorist was going as she (it was 63-year-old woman) turned off Sunset Blvd and ran her car up the telephone wires. (I’m also wondering how it stayed there and how they got it down.) But you also have to marvel at the irony if the sign on the bus stop bench: “For Peace of Mind.” I imagine this motorist didn’t find any of that until she got home and fixed herself a double whiskey. This image is from 1955.
In this circa 1927 aerial photograph, we’re looking at the studios freshly built by Mack Sennett, aka Hollywood’s ‘King of Comedy’ in the area known as Studio City in the San Fernando Valley. These days, all that vacant land you see is filled in with homes (fun fact: the street in the top right corner is Dilling St, which is where the Brady Bunch house is) but back in the 1920s, the valley had more orchard trees than people. The glimpse of road in the bottom right corner is Ventura Blvd and that strip of land where the “Studio City” sign stand is now shoulder-to-shoulder restaurants and small businesses. By 1935, the lot was home to Republic Studios, who were there until in 1958. In 1963, it became CBS Television and is where a number of TV shows were filmed. (Bonus fun fact: the Gilligan’s Island lagoon was located at the northwestern edge of the lot.) My thanks for David Ginsburg for finding this photo and identifying details.
