Most photographs of the Vine Street Brown Derby usually focus on the restaurant itself. Less frequently do we see the rest of the building to the south as we can in this shot, which also gives us a view of the Satyr Book Shop, which opened around 1926 and was a precursor to the Stanley Rose Book Shop next to Musso & Frank’s on Hollywood Boulevard. Does anybody reading this recall shopping at the Satyr and can share with us what it was like?
The Satyr’s bookplate:
Actor John Boles at the Satyr Book Shop, Vine St, Hollywood, 1931:
The Satyr Book Shop also had a branch at 3929 Wilshire Blvd in the Bilicke Building Satyr adjacent to the Hi-Hat restaurant:
I received this interesting information from Eric Baker:
“The man standing to the right of actor John Boles in front of the Satyr Book Shop on Vine Street is the shop’s owner, William “Milton” Goodhand (1887-1971). Milton was married to my distant cousin, Hazel Baker (1889-1973) who was a co-owner of the shop. Milton was born in Camden, New Jersey. He and Hazel worked together in acting companies that toured the Northeast and Midwest during the Nineteen Tens and Twenties. (Milton was a stage name.) The couple moved to Los Angeles in about 1925.
At some point the shop moved to a new location at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Milton and Hazel sold their interest in the shop in the early Sixties to Edward Gilbert and the shop became known as Gilbert’s Bookstore.
Milton and Hazel had no children.
The above information was provided to me by Milton’s nephew who is now eighty years old. He lived in Los Angeles during the Sixties and Seventies. He knew Milton and Hazel very well.”
During the 20s and 30s, the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel was the ultimate in glam nightclubbing but by the 50s, not so much. The Sunset Strip clubs and Las Vegas had pulled crowds away, and television was keeping people at home. But apparently on this day in 1955, apparently a fashion show was enough to get them back again. The place looks packed!
My favorite sort of sign is when the lighting is placed behind the letters as it is here at Al Levy’s Grill, which was at 617 S. Spring Street, downtown Los Angeles during the 1930s and 40s. This shot is from the 30s but I found it listed in a 1941 Los Angeles Guide: “One of the oldest restaurants in town. Noted for its seafood and steaks.” Levy also the Al Levy’s Tavern at 1627 North Vine St across from the Brown Derby. It was a lovely building but unfortunately is now a parking lot…or “fortunately” if you’re looking for parking in Hollywood.
These days, of course, Beverly Hills is considered centrally located, but when the Beverly Hills Hotel opened in 1912, it was pretty much out in the middle of nowhere—as we can see from this photo taken during that first year: open land, lima bean fields, and a bridle track. It was built as a country retreat where guests could get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, by which was meant downtown Los Angeles. It must have been so peaceful and refreshing to walk out the front door and see…nothing!
I love that when Charlie Chaplin decided to build his own studio on La Brea Ave that he intentionally designed it to look like a quaint English village. I also love that he thought to film its construction and include it in the first 2 minutes of “How to Make Movies” (1918) (it’s on YouTube – 
Here we have the entrance into Hollywoodland Village. I’m guessing this photo was taken in 1923 when the slow-to-take-off-but-eventually-got-there Hollywoodland house development in Beachwood Canyon opened for business. As we can see, them there hills are mighty empty, but of course over time, that would change completely.
This is one of those miraculous photos of Los Angeles that you rarely see: a prominent building that hasn’t changed much over the years. This is the CBS studios—known as “CBS Columbia Square—at the corner of Sunset Blvd and Gower St and is where many of nationally broadcast radio shows. It’s no longer radio studios of course. It’s now called NeueHouse and is a shared office space facility, but the building itself isn’t all that different.
Given that there are a tractor and a horse in this shot, I’m assuming it was taken right after the Hollywoodland sign was completed at the end of 1923. So these are some of the workers who helped build the sign. They thought they were erecting an advertisement for a housing development and would probably be amazed to know that what they’d just built would become a globally recognized icon.
Until I came across this photo, I didn’t know that Baskin-Robbins started out as Snowbird Ice Cream. Actually, Irv Robbin’s ice cream parlor was called Snowbird before he merged with Burt Baskin’s Burton’s Ice Cream Shop. This photo was taken in 1948 at the Glendale, California store, where their ice-cream empire first started. I can’t help wondering what that guy standing in front of the truck would say if we could tell him that “Baskin-Robbins” would become an internationally known name with over 7500 stores.
When the Schwab’s brothers (for the record, they were Bernard, Leon, Jack, and Martin, and two sisters, Lena and Yetta) opened their pharmacy at 8024 Sunset Blvd next to the Crescent Heights Market in 1932, I can’t imagine they’d ever have envisaged that by the time this photo was taken in 1947, it would have become a world-famous hangout for some of the most celebrated people in the world. Pictured here, it seems quite small, but inside, oh! What a hive of activity it was!