It’s not every day that you get to announce the culmination of a project that’s taken ten years, but today is one of those days. I am happy and excited and relieved and sad and amazed and more than a little verklempt to announce that the 9th and final novel in my Hollywood’s Garden of Allah series is now available. Hop over to my blog for the details and links to all the retailers:
http://bit.ly/ClosingCredits
~oOo~
Hollywood’s Garden of Allah novels:
Book 1 – The Garden on Sunset
Book 2 – The Trouble with Scarlett
Book 3 – Citizen Hollywood
Book 4 – Searchlights and Shadows
Book 5 – Reds in the Beds
Book 6 – Twisted Boulevard
Book 7 – Tinseltown Confidential
Book 8 – City of Myths
Book 9 – Closing Credits
~oOo~
The 1660-seat Fox Ritz Theater was one of Fox’s major movie palaces in the 1930s and 40s. This circa 1940s night photo shows us the view looking west down Wilshire Blvd from Sycamore Ave. The theater was pulled down in 1977 and replaced by the mother of all LA clichés: a parking lot. But we can glimpse the E. Clem Wilson Building on the far right and the Dominguez-Wilshire building in the distance. They are both still with us, so two out of three ain’t bad.
In the history of early Los Angeles television, Don Lee stands out as a pioneer. But what I didn’t know until I came across this photo, was that he started out as the owner of a Cadillac dealership. This is a circa early 1930s shot of his car lot on the southwest corner of 7th and Bixel Streets in downtown LA. After purchasing a radio station in 1926, he got a television broadcasting license in 1931 and on December 23, 1931, his station W6XAO launched one of the country’s first regular television broadcasts. Talk about a career change!
These passengers are preparing to board the Overland Train (which ran between Chicago and Los Angeles) at the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe Railway’s La Grande Depot which used to stand between today’s 2nd and 3rd Streets in downtown Los Angeles until it closed on May 7th, 1939. This photo is dated 1893, which means that those ladies are probably wearing tight corsets and who know what other contraptions that I would think made that days-long trip not particularly comfortable.
Here we have a shot of the Venice pier that Abbot Kinney (original developer of Venice) built in 1905. From left to right are the auditorium (with 300 seats), the Cabrillo Ship Café, and the dance pavilion with room for 800 couples. The Ship Café was originally built as a hotel and restaurant in the form a Spanish galleon but became a very popular nightspot in the 20s, mainly because it was where you could get liquor during Prohibition. It was eventually dismantled along with the rest of Venice Pier in 1946.
We’re looking along Pico Boulevard from the Pelham Ave corner, not far from the Hillcrest Country Club. Judging from the cars parked outside the windmill-topped Van de Kamp’s bakery this shot was taken in the late 1920s when it must have been nice to drive around Los Angeles and see those charming landmarks. (Historical note: during this time country clubs were “restricted” which was code for “No Jews Allowed” so the numerous Jewish Hollywood power players joined Hillcrest instead.)
Judging from the Studebaker in the foreground, this photo of the NBC radio and television studios at the corner Sunset Blvd and Vine Street appears to have been taken around 1950. Note the “The Sky’s No Limit” recruitment poster for the U.S. Air Force in the foreground. Recruitment would have been on the upswing with the advent of the Korean War, which started in the summer of 1950. Also, note this intersection still had a two-light semaphore traffic signal. The city of Los Angeles removed the last of those in 1956.
I don’t know who’s in that car pulling up to the entrance of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in Culver City but judging from the movie fans crowding around her, I’m guessing it’s a Somebody Special. This photo was taken in 1943 so it was in the middle of WWII. We can see the AIR RAID SHELTER sign over the guard booth, which makes me wonder where it was located. And that sign with the stars denoted how many MGM staff members were involved in the war. The gold star on top showed that 4 MGM’ers had lost their lives, and the blue star showed that were serving.
When I saw this photo, the song from Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines immediately started playing in my mind. This circa 1920 photo gives us a glimpse of an air show held at the Chaplin Airfield at the corner of Wilshire Blvd and Fairfax Ave (then called Crescent Ave.) Chaplin Airfield was established by Charlie’s elder half-brother, Sydney in the late 1910s. On the left you can see a hanger for Mercury Aviation Company. It was started by Cecil B. DeMille at around the same time because apparently helping to invent the movie industry didn’t take up enough of his time.