On November 26, 1935, beauty maestro, Max Factor, opened his grand Hollywood Makeup Studio at 1666 North Highland Ave, just down from the Hollywood Blvd corner. It quickly became a mecca for Hollywood beauties and rich studio wives. But i only recently learned what had originally been there: the Hollywood Fireproof Storage Company. It sure took some imagination to transform a rather plain and functional building into one of the most beautiful and enduring structures in Hollywood. Today it’s home to the Hollywood museum, which has restored it to its full glory.
Approaching the intersection of Hollywood and Vine along Hollywood Blvd heading west, circa mid 1950s
If you’ve ever wondered what it might have been like to cruise through the intersection of Hollywood and Vine in the mid 1950s, here’s the closest you ever likely to get. It looks like traffic was heavy that day—or least the traffic heading west past Hody’s coffee shop (1955 to 1969) on the NW corner. Roadwork was happening on the south side of Hollywood Blvd outside the Broadway department store, which the guy in the circa 1954 Jaguar roadster just in front of us was checking out.
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Tagged Color photo, Hollywood, Hollywood and Vine, Hollywood Blvd, Restaurants, Stores and Shopping
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Vine Street looking north during WWII compared with a recreation for “Bugsy” (1991)
Last night I watched the Warren Beatty/Annette Bening movie “Bugsy” (1991) and was struck at how well they recreated 1940s Los Angeles. It’s no wonder it won the Oscar for Best Art Direction. But there was one shot of Vine Street at night that I thought was particularly striking. I was pretty sure I had a photo of the real thing so I freeze-framed my TV and took a photo of and went hunting in my archives. Sure enough, I did find a shot of Vine Street Hollywood looking north. It was taken during WWII so it’s darker than the recreation (LA had a lot of blackouts and dimouts during the war) but now that I can see them together, I think they did a marvelous job.
(The top photo is the one taken during WWII and the bottom photo is the shot I took of my TV screen last night.)
After recently posting that shot of 1940s Vine Street recreated for the movie “Bugsy” (1991) someone just sent me a photo of the matte painting used. Apparently the painting was six feet wide.
The Orange Inn, 146 E. Foothill Blvd, Arcadia, California, 1924
Southern California Marketing 101: If you’re going to sell oranges, build a big orange. This roadside stand stood on Foothill Blvd in Monrovia (east of Pasadena) in the 1920 – this photo was taken in 1924. As we can see from the sign, it was known as The Big Orange, so naturally out front they had a 10-foot orange to catch the eye of passing drivers, which I’m sure it did.
Here’s another photo taken the same day:
The Big Orange later became The Wigwam (because it was at the corner of Foothill Blvd and Wigwam Ave)
Los Angeles’s first drive-in theater opens at 10860 W. Pico Blvd, September. 9, 1935
Monday September. 9, 1935 marked the beginning of a new era in movie-going in Los Angeles with the opening of the first drive-in theater creatively named The Drive-In Theatre. It was on Pico Blvd just west of Westwood Blvd (where the Westside Pavilion mall now stands.) Admission was 35 cents and the movie that night was Fox’s “Handy Andy” starring Will Rogers. Later renamed Pico Drive-In Theatre, it stayed open until October 1, 1944 when its final showing was Fred MacMurray in “Double Indemnity” with James Mason in “Candlelight in Algeria.” However, it wasn’t demolished until 1947, when it was moved to Olympic and Bundy and reopened as the Olympic Drive-In.
Hollywood Roof Top Ball Room on the southwest corner of Vine and Selma Streets, Hollywood, circa 1920s
My thanks to Jim Lewis for sending me these photos of a place I’d never heard of before. The Hollywood Roof Ball Room (‘ballroom’ spelled in two words on the sign) which stood on the southwest corner of Vine and Selma Streets in Hollywood. The resident bandleader was Don Juielle, who I’d never heard of but appears to have been a Cuban musician who wrote a song for an Eddie Foy Jr featurette for Warner Bros.’ Vitaphone, called “Hotel a la Swing.” (1937) This photo is from the 1920s, and by the 1930s, this building had become a dance school.
The actual ballroom itself gave customers plenty of room to cha-cha:
This is how that corner looked in January 2018:
Color photo of Farmers Market at Fairfax Ave and Third St, Los Angeles, circa late 1950s
There’s something about the vibrancy of the old Kodachrome process that really brings vintage photos to life so well that it’s not hard to imagine actually being there. This shot of the Farmers Market at Fairfax and Third on a cloudlessly sunny Angeleno day is a case in point. My favorite part of this photo, though, is that 1958 Ford Thunderbird in glorious pink. It also allows us to date the photo was being from the late 1950s, which was when the neighboring Gilmore Stadium baseball park was razed to make way for CBS Television City.
Roughly that same view in April 2019:
Looking south down Vine Street, Hollywood, the night of the Cinerama Dome opening, November 2, 1963
This photo is as Hollywood as you can possibly get. It was taken at the top end of Vine Street looking south past the Capitol Records building on the night of November 2, 1963. That was the night of the grand opening of the Cinerama Dome with the premiere of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” I counted 25 different searchlights. They must have rented every available one in LA!
Al M. says: “Searchlights of the era generally rotated and “held” at the end of their swing on two different axes. What I believe you’re actually seeing here is a long exposure of several lights at different points in their swing, as the portions of their rotations where they pause would register during a long exposure, whereas the beam in motion would not be visible. If you look at the sources, I see around 8 of them, not 25.”
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Tagged Cinerama Dome, Hollywood, Hotels, Movie Premiere, Night photo, Stores and Shopping
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Western Airlines ticket office on the southwest corner of 6th and Olive Streets, downtown Los Angeles, circa 1946
Does anybody Western Airlines? They flew around the western part of the US, with hubs in LA, Salt Lake City, and Denver, from 1926 until 1987, when they merged with Delta. I don’t have a date on this glorious shot of their ticket office on the southwest corner of 6th and Olive downtown LA, but in a way, it’s timeless. The whole look of it is so clean and crisp, and with such beautiful lighting—especially along that marquee. My only regret is that we can’t see the whole WESTERN AIR LINES sign.
** UPDATE ** – This photo has been identified as being circa 1946. You can see more photos taken that day here:
https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll5/id/7336
This is the building on that corner. There’s no sign of the Western Airlines office, but the building itself is rather nice. This image is from May 2019.
In this aerial shot of the 8400 block of the Sunset Strip, the building in the center isn’t of any great consequence. It’s the building behind it that was one of the most famous nightclubs in Los Angeles: Ciro’s, at 8433 Sunset Blvd, which closed around the time this photo was taken, on July 19, 1957. The building behind it is still around. It’s a luxury apartment house known back then as the Hacienda Arms at 8439 Sunset, and is now Piazza del Sol. But most striking about this image is how deserted and deathly quiet it is in what I assume was the middle of the night.