When Earl Carroll opened his place at 6230 Sunset Boulevard in 1938, he let the world know about it by installing this huge neon sign of a woman’s head that boasted “Thru These Portals Pass The Most Beautiful Girls In The World.” As we can see, it certainly did the trick. And for $2.50 you got a “lavish revue, dinner, and dancing” – which seems pretty good value for a night out at the biggest nightclub, restaurant and showroom in America.
And check out their ashtray. This sort of thing wouldn’t fly for a number of reasons, but history is context, isn’t it?
See also Spotlight on … the Earl Carroll Theater
With those remarkable opening credits of the “Hollywood” show on Netflix, I went looking for a close-up photo of the 50-foot-tall letters to see if it was actually possible to climb and stand on top of them. I found this photo taken just after the sign was completed in 1923. It looks like some letters would have been easier to climb than others, standing on them would have been pretty much impossible.
In this photo taken atop whatever building stood on the northeast corner of Virgil Ave and Wilshire Blvd in 1934, is looking west toward the Bullocks Wilshire department store. We can see a few of the large homes that used to line Wilshire in the early part of the 20th century but in the lower left we can see a building I’ve never noticed before. That scaffolding suggests it’s still being built, but that pyramidal turret makes it quite distinctive.
Here’s a bit of Los Angeles history in the making. In 1936, America’s first outdoor shopping mall, Crossroads of the World, opened at 6671 Sunset Boulevard. To ensure people knew where it was, a soaring white tower stood at the front. On top of that tower sat a spinning globe of the earth. This photo shows that globe being hoisted into place. From the size of the man in the lower right corner, we can get an idea of how big it was. In 1980, Crossroads was added to the National Registry of Historic Places so it’s still around.
The Hollywoodland sign up the top of the Hollywood Hills looks freshly made and freshly painted, which it would do as this photo was taken in around 1925, not long after when the sign went up in 1923. The Hollywoodland development wasn’t a booming success initially, so I’m guessing that the houses in this photo were among the first to be built. Walking around the neighborhood would have felt like you were roaming open countryside, which, in a way, you would have been.
These days, Malibu is a long stretch of expensive beach houses lining the shore, but back in the 1950s, when this photo was taken, it wasn’t much more than a bunch of scattered buildings. Trancas Restaurant, which we can see on the left, was at 30763 Pacific Coast Highway. A shopping mall stands there now but PCH is still a great place for a Sunday drive, and right now during the Covid-19 lockdown, probably has as much traffic right now as it did when this photo was taken.
It’s hard to believe that the always-busy Santa Monica Blvd ever looked like this. Taken circa 1905, this photo shows us the tracks of the Pasadena and Pacific Railroad, which ran streetcars from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. This shot was taken east of the area then known as Sherman, but which changed its name to West Hollywood in 1925. It explains why Santa Monica Blvd is wider than most east-west roads—it originally had a railway line running down the middle.
It’s not often that you see a realtor share space with a movie theater. This is the Granada, which stood at 7425 Sunset Blvd, Hollywood. A Bessie Love movie called “The Ghost Patrol” was playing so it was 1923. What caught my eye was that little stand out on the sidewalk with the triangular top. I guess it was a mini billboard advertising properties for sale. The Granada later became the Oriental and in the 1950s was host to The Bugs Bunny Club. Can you imagine the din of screaming kids every Saturday afternoon?
Pickfair was the legendary Beverly Hills estate of movie stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. During most of the 1920s, they were Hollywood’s power couple and an invitation to Pickfair was a golden ticket. But most of us non-A-listers never got a chance to peek inside. This photo gives us a glimpse of Mary and Doug’s living room. I don’t know enough about décor to know what style this is, but it looks very “European Grand” with lots of knick-knacks that needed lots of dusting. Those extra-long curtains framing the right-hand steps worry me. I bet more than one luminary tripped over them.
What started started as a private airport in 1919 became the Glendale Municipal Airport in 1923 and then later was rededicated as the Grand Central Air Terminal on February 22, 1929. This photo of the graceful Spanish Colonial Revival building is circa 1937, by which time it was operating in direct commercial competition with Mines Field airport in El Segundo, which later became Los Angeles International Airport. Although Mines Field ultimately won that battle, Glendale had the geographical advantage of being closer to downtown L.A., Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and Pasadena. The building is still there but is now part of the Walter Disney Imagineering campus. Within the company, it’s known as the “Airways Building.”
