In this photo we’re looking west along Wilshire Blvd from Vermont Ave. In the medium distance we can see the I. Magnin department store at 3240 Wilshire Blvd, which had some major competition a couple of blocks east: Bullocks Wilshire. This photo was taken circa 1940s when Wilshire was a busy commercial thoroughfare, but, as we can see here, was still had a feeling of spaciousness that it no longer has. I’d love to see the full United Airlines billboard on the right and know how much airfares to San Francisco were back then.
Melody Lane restaurant at night, corner of Hollywood and Vine, Hollywood, circa 1940s
The graininess of this photo adds to the atmosphere it captured when someone took a nighttime photo of the Melody Lane restaurant on the northwest corner of Hollywood and Vine some time during the 1940s. The Melody Lane was there from 1940 (replacing Coco Tree Café) until 1955, when it became a Hody’s. The intersection is controlled by two-light semaphore traffic signals and they were phased out in the 50s, so I’m guessing this photo is circa 1940s. I don’t think the White King soap brand is still around but the Knickerbocker Hotel in the background is still with us.
These days, that corner is a parking lot. This image is from April 2019:
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Tagged Hollywood, Hollywood and Vine, Hollywood Blvd, Hotels, Night photo, Restaurants
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Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Hollywood Blvd, during the run of MGM’s “The Hollywood Revue of 1929,” June 1929
Here we have a shot of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre taken in June 1929 during the run of MGM’s “The Hollywood Revue of 1929.” We can see the title of the picture in huge letters on the eastern wall of the building on the extreme right. It was a big deal at the time because it was one of MGM’s first sound films. It ran for 13 weeks and was an enormous hit. With prices ranging from 50 cents to $1.50, moviegoers were treated to a Fox Movietone Newsreel, a short film called “Follies of Fashion,” an overture called “Highlights of Hollywood” by the Grauman’s Chinese Symphony Orchestra, and then they saw the movie. I’d say they got their money’s worth.
The sign even lit up at night:
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Tagged Grauman's Chinese Theater, Hollywood, Hollywood Blvd, MGM, Theaters
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Bomb shelter sales display, 6135 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, circa 1940s
Here’s a very 1950s photo: Get your bomb shelters right here! A couple of doors west of the Wilshire Blvd/Fairfax Ave intersection (where the May Company department store stood) was this sales display for bomb shelters, which were going for $795. The billboard behind the suited-up salesmen is invoking the memory of Pearl Harbor while also suggesting alternative uses such as rumpus room, playhouse, laundry, storage, deep freeze, or dark room. I wonder how many they actually sold.
No bomb shelters in sight anymore. This image is from April 2019:
Palomar Ballroom, 245 S. Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, 1935
Remember the time when people would go out for an evening of dinner and dancing? Yeah, neither do I, but I saw it an awful lot in the movies before television glued our collective butts to the sofa. This place started out life in 1925 as El Patio Ballroom, then became Rainbow Gardens, and then in 1936 it became the Palomar Ballroom, which claimed to be “the largest and most famous dance hall on the West Coast.” The place was an entire block long of Vermont Ave (between 2nd and 3rd Streets) so they were probably right. On August 21, 1935, Benny Goodman and his band began a three-week engagement there, thus ushering in the Swing Era. This photo was taken a year before the place burned to the ground on October 2, 1939.
Advertisement for Benny Goodman playing the Palomar Ballroom, Vermont Ave, Los Angeles.
This is a shot of the dance floor. Pretty spiffy, wasn’t it?
Looking south down Broadway toward the Eastern Columbia Building, downtown Los Angeles, circa 1930
In this circa 1930s shot—a rare treat taken from the rooftops—the photographer was looking south along Broadway from around 8th Street. The building on the right with the flying buttresses (is that what they’re called?) is the Eastern-Columbia Building at 849 S. Broadway (a department store, 1930 to 1957) which is now a building of loft apartments. But take note of the elaborate decoration on the building to the left. A dozen stories in the air, nobody would see any of it, but someone thought it was worthwhile.
The Eastern-Columbia building in April 2019:
The Easter-Columbia building as seen from the air in 2020. As you can see, it really stands out.
Before it became the most famous movie studio in the world – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – the studio lot on Washington Blvd, Culver City was home to Triangle Film Corporation where the giants of the mid-1910s film industry, Thomas Ince, Mack Sennett, and D.W. Griffiths produced their pictures. The front of the studio is as recognizable now as it was back then – that line of ten columns are still there, but of course the studio (now owned by Sony) is far greater now than it was when this photo was taken circa mid-1910s.
What we’re looking at here is a shot taken at the 17th annual Los Angeles Automobile Show in Expo Hall at the Shrine Auditorium in February 1930. I can barely imagine the time, effort, and skill it took to get all those cars positioned exactly right with very little turnaround space. But I’d like to give a shout-out to the guy who came up with all that over-the-top ceiling decoration. Did they double his budget for the 1930 show, or do you think maybe the Expo Hall was always bedecked like that?
In this rather remarkable photograph, we see the National Guard marching along Spring Street, downtown Los Angeles, circa 1900. It looks like major parade, which I’d imagine attracted quite a turnout. I do wonder what those two guardsmen are doing in the foreground. Are they being carried? And look at the sign on the building behind them for W.F. McBurney Harnesses. With horseless carriages in the near future, how much longer they were in business?
This is as early a photograph of the motion picture industry’s beginnings as we’re ever likely to find. Thomas Tally’s Phonograph Parlor was on South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. It was taken circa 1897. He had several locations at different times, so it’s hard to pin down exactly which location this was. Nevertheless, we get to see how people watched movies back then—by looking through a little peep hole!