It looks like United Artists pulled out all the stops when it held the world premiere of “Trapeze” at the Fox Wilshire Theatre at 8440 Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills on May 29, 1956. Behind that huge spotlight shooting into the air there’s what looks like ten rows of bleachers which, given the circus setting of the movie, might have been set up like seats under a big top. All this effort was worth it: “Trapeze” was one of the biggest movies of 1956 (although, of course, nothing came close to “The Ten Commandments.”)
The Fox Wilshire Theatre is now known as the Saban. This image is from December 2022.
Here we have an early example of the sort of double-decker motor coaches that were put into service to transport people between Los Angeles and Venice. Back in 1914, when this photo was taken, there was a lot of open, empty land between the two. What worries me is that the top deck of this bus appears to be very full. The whole thing looks dangerously top-heavy, if you ask me. Even more so if that road they’re driving along isn’t sealed, which back then it probably wasn’t. Even Sunset Blvd wasn’t fully paved until the early 1930s.
The Rose Bowl is probably best known for its New Year’s Day parade, called the Tournament of Roses, but it’s a football stadium located in Pasadena, California, with capacity for nearly 90,000 screaming sports fans. It was also the track cycling venue for the 1932 Summer Olympics held in LA and is the site of a very popular that takes place the second Sunday of every month. This photo was taken in 1954 when everyone back then was driving classic cars!
And from the “I Wish It Was Still Like This” file comes this 1963 aerial photograph of Disneyland and its parking lot. My first visit was in 1975, and I’m pretty sure it was like this. You drove up to Disneyland, you found a space to park your car, and you walked inside. No parking structure, no waiting for the tram, no tram ride, no security search. And it looks like this was a good day to go to Disneyland — I can see three fully empty rows. But now I’m wondering what time you had to get to the lot in order to nab that prized slot right in front of Main Gate.
I’ve read in a number of places that the intersection of Broadway and 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles was the city’s busiest intersection. I have not, however, been able to understand why that was. But when you see photos like this, you can see it must have been true. Here we can see a Los Angeles Railway “M” streetcar sometime in the 1920s. It’s rattling along Broadway en route to Inglewood while it looks like half of LA is crowding the sidewalk! The other side of the street (outside Boos Bros. Cafeteria) doesn’t seem nearly so packed. It makes me wonder why some of those people didn’t cross the street!
I doubt that I shall ever tire of looking at vintage photos of the Bullocks Wilshire department store. It stood at 3050 Wilshire Blvd between Westmoreland Ave and Wilshire Place. The store opened on September 26, 1929 and at the time it was is considered a risky venture because it was outside of downtown LA, where all the important stores were located. And then a month later, the stock market crashed—not exactly a primo time to open a very upscale, very large store. But Bullocks Wilshire survived, and by the time this photo was taken in the late 1930s, it was thriving as one of THE stores that people with lots o’ dough went to spend it.
As an Angeleno who often finds himself stuck in traffic, I take a measure of satisfaction knowing that my fellow Angelenos from yesteryear had to deal with much the same thing. These poor drivers were stuck in a traffic jam in around 1946 as they were on Wilshire Blvd (note the Wilshire Special streetlights.) The white building on the right is the Rex Arms apartments, which I suspect means we’re looking west down Wilshire from around Figueroa St and the cars were heading into downtown LA. It looks like those drivers turning onto a side street had had enough!
To my way of thinking, this photo is a quintessentially LA photo. There wasn’t much separating these Angelenos swimming at the Echo Park Community Pool from the Hollywood Freeway—just a triangle of grass and a wall. But for inner-city dwellers like these people probably were (Echo Park is adjacent to downtown Los Angeles) it was easier than catching three buses to the beach in the middle of summer. The Hollywood Freeway (aka “the 101”) opened in the early 1950s and this photo was taken in 1958, by which time the freeway saw lots of traffic each day.
These three cars are parked out front of CBS Radio’s Columbia Square studios, which opened at 6121 Sunset Blvd to much fanfare on April 30, 1938. It was home to CBS’s Los Angeles radio and television operations until 2007, which is an admirable run by anyone’s standards. It’s a pity we can’t make out who was listed on the marquee so see what show was playing that day, but that red station wagon is a 1955 Ford. By the mid-1950s, CBS was making television at the Columbia Square studios, too.
And from the “They Sure Don’t Make ‘Em Like That Any More” file comes the Fox Stadium Theatre at 8906 W. Pico Blvd, Los Angeles. It opened on March 5, 1931. This photo was taken later that same year, so everything we can see here is brand spanking new. As if the detailing on the main part of the building wasn’t enough, that tower is a masterpiece of Art Deco gorgeousness. And it had beacon at the top to warn low-flying aircraft.