I’ve posted a few photos of the Carthay Circle Theatre before but this one is kind of special. It shows us the theater during its very first engagement: Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Volga Boatman.” It was an auspicious opening because that film was a huge hit and made a star of William Boyd, who would later become immortalized as Hopalong Cassidy. I was surprised to see how well established the trees were back then until I found another photo of the place as it was getting ready for the opening:
A line of almost identical automobiles are parked alongLarchmont Boulevard near Paramount studios (and all of them are facing out!) in what was probably 1930. The double bill playing at the Larchmont Theater is impressive. In Old Arizona was the first talkie shot outdoors (although, ironically, not in Arizona.) Hallelujah was the first black-cast film produced in Hollywood, none of whom had performed in front of a camera before.And the fact that the program also featured a “sound cartoon” was important enough to fill the side marquee.
Like most Angelenos, I lament the loss of Pershing Square as a leafy, shady greenspace amid a bustling downtown Los Angeles. But progress cannot be ignored and more parking was needed in the heart of the city and putting five floors of parking underneath the square seemed logical. But what I didn’t realize is that when the time came to bulldoze the park, hundreds of Angelenos would turn out to watch the demolition in 1952. (Fun fact: Many of the palm trees that were excavated in the 1950s were sent to be used in the Disneyland ride The Jungle Cruise.)
I’ve seen plenty of photos of the Max Factor Building on Highland Ave in Hollywood but I’ve never noticed the signs above the front door and each window either side. They’re not there in photos of the 30s and 40 and as this shot is circa 1952, I’m guessing they went up in the early 50s. I can’t read the one furthermost from the photographer, but the other two are “Wigs” and “Toupees.” I have to admit that surprised me. I’d have thought hairdressing was a side service to their main line – makeup. Doing wigs is understandable, but toupees? I wouldn’t have thought any 1950s-era guys would walk through the front door of Max Factor to be fitted for a toupee—but I guess I’m wrong on that score.
There are plenty of photos of the May Company department store at the corner of Wilshire Blvd and Fairfax Ave, and it’s little wonder that it has become an iconic example of LA architecture. But when you see a straight-on photo like in this 1948 shot, it’s easier to see how simple the lines of the building were and how that wraparound vertical sign really made it stand out. The building is currently undergoing a complete overhaul and is due to open as the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in late 2019.
Although this postcard is a highly stylized, artificially colorized depiction of the NBC Radio City studios at Sunset Blvd and Vine St in Hollywood, it gives us an idea of the sort or artwork / photography hybrid they used to produce in the 1930s. The building went up in the late 1930s so I’m guessing this was a promotional postcard to publicize the opening. Look how short those palm trees were!
It looks like this photo looking east down Hollywood Boulevard was probably taken from the fire escape of the Hotel Christie on the corner of McCadden Place. It was taken in 1934 when the feature movie playing at the Egyptian Theater next door was Melody in Spring – a Paramount musical starring Charles Ruggles and Mary Boland. But what really caught my eye was the Myer Siegel & Co sign across the street. Myer Siegel was women’s clothing store, which I usually associate with their large store in the Dominguez-Wilshire Building on Wilshire Blvd.
In this photo from 1940, we can see a line of shops from I. Magnin to The Broadway Hollywood department store on the Hollywood and Vine corner. What I especially love is how the buildings that house each of the stores are quite different from each other. It makes for a much more interesting urban landscape. Interestingly, you can still see the silhouettes of those buildings today, which is more than can be said for other stretches of Hollywood Boulevard.
In this photo we see curious crowds gathering to see Universal’s seminal horror picture “Frankenstein” which was in it’s “3RD HORRIFYING WEEK” at the Orpheum Theatre, downtown Los Angeles, January 1932. I love how the banner proclaims: “10000 Thrills Frozen Into An Epic Of Terror.” I bet the studio publicity department had a great time with this one. And maybe they were right. This movie preceded all the horror-movie tropes and clichés that we now laugh at. And in fact, invented most of them. So the people in this shot had never seen anything quite like it before.
NBC Studios at Sunset and Vine get most of the attention but down the street at Sunset and Gower were CBS’s Hollywood facility, known as Columbia Square. The eight-studio complex got a splashy opening on April 30, 1938 and quickly became an important radio broadcasting hub, and in the late 40s and early 50s, its prime television studios too. Some of them later became recording studios for Columbia Records. This photo was taken in 1939, when radio was king. At the bottom left corner you’ll see a sign with a bell on it. That signified that that stretch of Sunset Boulevard was a part of El Camino Royal, which is the 600-mile road connecting the 21 Spanish missions in California.
