Yesterday, I watched a second-rate film noir from RKO called “Nocturne” (1946) because it starred George Raft and I wanted to see what the guy most famous for knocking back roles that made Humphrey Bogart a star was like. Turns out, he’s woefully wooden. But they did shoot on location a fair bit, including this scene at the Gotham Delicatessen. The Gotham opened in 1923 at 7050 Hollywood Blvd on the SW corner of Sycamore. It served breakfast, lunch, dinner, cocktails, and takeout, including the Gotham Special Sandwich, which it advertised as being big enough for two. One account I read said: “There was no food on the face of the earth better than Gotham’s. You could get everything there. The food was unequaled. It was just like it was a banquet.” It was listed in the 1956 L.A. City Directory, so it had a long run. You can see more photos and a menu for its $1.25 4-course “dinner de lux” from 1941 HERE.
Does anybody reading this remember eating there? I’d love to hear about your memories.
That building is long gone, replaced by a generic skyscraper. This is how it looked in April 2018:
It took three years (1911 to 1914) for the Bernheimer brothers to build their mansion – a replica of a Japanese palace – atop the hillside that overlooks Hollywood. And it’s not hard to see why they chose that location: the view is pretty spectacular. This shot (I suspect has been hand-tinted or recently colorized) was taken in 1929. On the left we can see the Hollywood First National Bank building, which was only a year old at the time, and to its right, the red roof of the Hollywood Hotel. Between the two palm trees, we can see the back of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (then only two years old), and to the far right, the Roosevelt Hotel (which hosted the first Academy awards that year.) Of those four buildings, only one is gone, which aren’t bad odds if you ask me.
This is a screen-grab from a British short called “Round About Hollywood” which travels around Hollywood in 1931 in a two-color process known as Cinecolor. As the camera approaches the Hollywood and Vine intersection, it passes that building on the left. In 1932, it became the Richard Neutra designed CoCo Tree Café, but before that, it was owned by Universal Pictures’s Carl Laemmle, who put up billboards to advertise his latest films. On the far right, we can see “The Bad Sister” which is significant in that it was Bette Davis’s film debut, as well as the first (of seven) times she appeared in a movie with Humphrey Bogart.
I usually post vintage photos of Los Angeles but I came across this one on Facebook and wanted to share it with you. And also have this one published for the record, lest we forget. With the ongoing Covid-19 lockdown in place together with the atmosphere-cleansing rains we’ve been having lately has resulted in the clearest skies over Los Angeles in years. This photo was taken on April 9th, 2020 with Echo Park in the foreground with the downtown LA skyline in the background. Kind of amazing, isn’t it?
In this photo, we catching a glimpse of around 40 Angelenos checking out the Mulholland Dam and Hollywood Reservoir on the day it open, March 17, 1925. These days, the reservoir is more often referred to as Lake Hollywood and the road that follows the waterline is a popular walking path. The dam was named after William Mulholland, who was ran the Bureau of Water Works and Supply, a predecessor the L.A. Department of Water and Power. These days, those empty hillsides are dotted with homes and the Hollywoodland sign that we can just see in the distance was only a couple of years old and still in fairly good condition.
At first glance, I took this photo to be of a bus but then I saw it was running on tracks. It was taken on April 9, 1956 (exactly 64 years ago today) which explains why it doesn’t look like the street cars from older photos. It’s a Los Angeles Railway car (aka “Yellow Car”, also aka a Streamliner) en route to downtown Los Angeles, where passengers could – as the sign says – “Take this car to Bullock’s Downtown” which was one of the main department stores at L.A.’s center. Well, they could if the car was accepting passengers except that there is a sign in the front window saying “Next car please” which makes me wonder why all the lights are on inside.
Although the Hollywoodland sign is the most famous and durable of the large signs erected in the Hollywood Hills, it wasn’t by any means the only one. In this 1924 photo looking across the northern end of Hollywood into the hills, we can see the (then brand-new) Hollywoodland sign on the right. We can also see “Bryn Mawr” which was a hillside subdivision which had opened west of Hollywoodland. And in the middle, is a lone “H” although what that was advertising I haven’t been able to figure out. If anybody reading this knows, I’d love to hear from you.
I’m not sure why a 1961 Dodge Los Angeles police car is parked out front the Griffith Observatory and then cleared of all people. But it looked like the sort of crispy sunny day where the view from Mt Hollywood would have been pretty good. Or maybe not. If this was taken in 1961, the attempts to clear up the air would still have been ongoing.
It’s amazing how little it takes to fool us movie audiences. On July 10, 1942, the cast and crew working on Warner Brothers’ “Casablanca” decamped to what was then called Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport (later renamed Van Nuys Airport) to film the arrival of Major Heinrich Strasser played by Conrad Veidt (who in reality was one of Hollywood’s staunchest enemies of the Nazi movement.) That tower we can see in the background was the Metropolitan Airport’s tower, but put an exotically shaped archway between it and the camera, add a sign that says CASABLANCA AÉRO-GARE and hey presto, we’re in Northern Africa.
In this photo, we’re looking south down La Cienega Blvd from Pico Blvd. What worries me is that there appear to be no lane lines painted on the road, which makes it look as though the prevailing law was “I’ll drive where I damn well please!” At least La Cienega Blvd appears to be very well lit with all those dual-lamp streetlights lining the both side of the street.