MGM’s wunderkind production, Irving Thalberg, (who is the subject of my novel, “The Heart of the Lion”) died on September 14, 1936. As a tribute to his unparalleled contribution to the studio, MGM named their new administration building after him. It was completed two years later and still stands on the MGM studio lot, which is now Sony and Columbia. In the foyer, the 12 Best Picture Academy Awards won by M-G-M and Columbia are in display. It was the most important building in the studio because it’s where the head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, had his office on the third floor and a private dining room on the fourth. This photo was taken shortly after the building was completed.
I took this photo of the Thalberg building when I visited the studio in September 2014. The huge rainbow is a public sculpture that arcs over the lot, which is quite fitting for the studio that gave us “The Wizard of Oz” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
There is also a plaque which recognizes the historic significance of the Thalberg building by Culver City, where the studio is.
In the 1930s, McDonnell’s had over 15 restaurants across Los Angeles, some of them dine-in and some of the drive-in. This one was on the northeast corner of Robertson and Wilshire Boulevards, and by the looks of it, was open breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That chicken dinner for 40 cents sounds like a good deal, but can someone tell me what a “Club Breakfast” consisted of?
This photo gives us an idea of what Third Street in downtown Los Angeles looked like in around 1890. That prominent hill in the background is Bunker Hill, which got flattened in the 1960s. We can see that the street wasn’t sealed yet, which must have made it very hard going for the horses to negotiate that steep hill during the wet season. And look how wide that sidewalk is. Where that made on the right is walking with the two kids, it doesn’t look sealed either. But ahead of them, in front of the 2-story mansion it looks like it’s been nicely paved over. And that makes me wonder if homeowners were responsible for their stretch of sidewalk back then…?
Are any of us really all that surprised that Liberace had a piano-shaped swimming pool in the backyard of this home in Sherman Oaks? If anything, I’m surprised he bought a house in the Valley and not Beverly Hills. This photo was taken in 1954, which was three years before the 405 Freeway was built half a block from his house.
…sigh… Don’t you just love an eye-popping Kodachrome (which I only assume this is) photo? Especially when the photographer was standing on the west side of Vine Street, Hollywood looking at the Brown Derby restaurant over a brown 1953 Chevrolet. Look at that Western Airlines billboard “Air Coach” – were they advertising themselves as the Greyhound of the skies? And that 25-cent parking lot seems like a fair price.
This photo of the Wilcox Drug Store on the southwest corner of Selma and Wilcox Avenues in Hollywood was taken around 1942. It looks to me like it was a quintessential mid-century corner American drug store: Coca-Cola sign, sells liquor, newspaper stand, open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, barber shop next door, semaphore traffic signal out front. It was part of the Wilcox Hotel, so it was probably fairly busy all day long.
I know, of course, Los Angeles of a hundred years ago bears little resemblance to how it looks today. But I still went a bit bug-eyed when I came across this photo from 1920 looking east along Wilshire Blvd near La Brea Ave. I can see all of three cars on the road, the shoulders look like they aren’t even sealed, the only development is a billboard (for car tires, naturally), and in the distance are a couple of oil wells. If the caption to this photo hadn’t said it was Wilshire Blvd, I never would have known.
I took one look at this photo and thought “I’ll never complain about the parking at Disneyland again.” This shot was taken on Disneyland’s opening day, 17 July 1955. These days, they have pictures of characters to help you remember which section you parked in. But back then, it looks like you were on your own. Imagine being poor family parked in the last space in the back row. Yikes.
