Before Sid Grauman opened his Egyptian Theatre (1922) and his Chinese Theatre (1927) he opened his more prosaically named Grauman’s Theatre at 307 S. Broadway. In this photo, we can see eager fans packing the theater on its February 1, 1918 opening night. The film chosen for the debut was “The Silent Man” with a personal appearance of the film’s director and star, William S. Hart. Ever the showman, Grauman renamed it the Million Dollar Theater one year later, I guess because it sounded classier.
This Million Dollar is still a working cinema. This is how it looked in February 2023.
Imagine being in Long Beach on October 16, 1924 and looking up into the skies to see the U.S. Navy airship USS Shenandoah dirigible floating over you. These days Angelenos are used to seeing the Goodyear blimp, which is around 250 feet long, which is nearly the length of a football field. The Shenandoah, however, was 680 feel long, which made it the size of a battleship. One report I read said that thousands of locals lined the streets to witness the enormous dirigible glide silently over them as it set off for Tacoma, Washington and ultimately Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey, the center of the Navy’s lighter-than-air activities (which is where the Hindenburg met its fiery end in 1937.)
In this hand-tinted postcard we glimpse what one of Hollywood’s main intersections – Hollywood Blvd and Highland Ave – looked like back in its early days. Following the annexation of Hollywood by the city of LA in around 1910, Prospect Ave was renamed Hollywood Blvd, so we can date this photo to some time after that. We can see the towers of the Hollywood Hotel on the right, and closer to us the building that would later be replaced by the 13-story First National Bank which opened in 1928. Across the street, we can see another hotel sign. It was Bonnie Brier Hotel which occupied the corner that would later be home to Rexall Lee Drugs that I 
Here are two shots I’ve stitched together of the same store. Gibson Inc. was a tailor and shoe store at 6329 Hollywood Blvd, which put it around the corner from the Knickerbocker Hotel. I don’t have a date on either of these pics, but I’m guessing circa 1930s. If you ask me, the real feature of this store is that marvelous Art Deco style sign and how the tower on the roof also lit up at night.
This isn’t a photograph but a screenshot I took while watching restored footage taken during the premiere of MGM’s “Grand Hotel” at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on the night of April 29, 1932. The 8-minute video is worth watching as you get a terrific feel for the tumult of that night. It was the first time a Hollywood studio had made a movie with an all-star cast (an idea of MGM’s Irving Thalberg) so movie fans turned out in super-excited droves. But it was this image taken, I assume, from across the street, that gives us a terrific glimpse of studio-era Hollywood at its most golden peak.
The southwest corner of Hollywood Blvd and Highland Ave in Hollywood has been home to many things over the years. When this photo was taken (I don’t know the date, but from the style of the photography—this is probably from a postcard—my guess is 1960s) it was the Rexall Lee Drugs drugstore, which had been there from at least the mid-1950s. It does give us an idea of what Hollywood looked like at night and how brightly those neon signs must have shined. I’ve also never noticed that sign for the Park Hotel next door.
Starting in the late 1890s, Hobart Whitley was one of Hollywood’s earliest developers. He built the Hollywood Hotel at Hollywood and Highland, as well as conceiving Whitley Heights on the hillside overlooking Hollywood, which became the first movie-star neighborhood. It was inevitable that he would live there too, and here we have a photo of his home under construction. I couldn’t find a date on this shot, but it must have been pretty early as they’re still using mules to grade the land. And note the Whitley Heights sign in the background. That was Hobart’s idea too, and it was he who gave the Hollywoodland developers the idea to construct one of the world’s most famous signs.
Because the Schwab’s Pharmacy at 8024 Sunset Blvd near Crescent Heights received all the attention and notoriety, it can be easy to forget that there were at least five other Schwab’s locations that I’ve been able to identify. And now we can add this one, although to be fair, it was just a restaurant without the pharmacy section. It was at 9201 Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood, right near where the western end of the Strip as it curves into Beverly Hills. The vehicles in this photo suggest it was taken circa mid-1960s, which seems about right because it was around then that Schwab’s underwent a makeover / renovation / updating with that new (Googie-esque) logo we can see in this picture.