I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like to witness this disaster unfold. At 4.10pm on the afternoon of March 5, 1929, an electrical circuit sparked a fire at the Los Angeles Auto Show, which was being held under four large tents at the corner of Hill St and Washington Blvd south of downtown LA. None of the 2500 people attending the show were harmed, but the nearly 400 cars were ruined beyond saving. I’d imagine the pall of smoke (and the smell) must have hung in the air for days.
This is how the show looked before the fire took hold. I love how they even had landscaping:
The Mode-O-Day building looking over 1924 auto show fire:
Most Angelenos who see that “Bob’s” logo immediately think of the chain of Bob’s Big Boy retro diners, like the one in Burbank that plays host to automobile meet-ups of lovingly restored cars. So I was surprised to encounter this photo of a Bob’s coffee shop. It was on the northwest corner of East Broadway and Maryland Ave in Glendale. We can see the Bob’s mascot on the wall to the left. I love the addition of four dots on the marquee (is that what it’s called) – it looks very 1950s, which, by the look of how those women are dressed, is when this photo was probably taken.
This photo gives us a glimpse of what it was like to film a simple scene for a movie. Or not so simple as it turns out. On the set of “Gone with the Wind” Vivien Leigh films a scene with William Bakewell playing a Confederate soldier. I count five huge lights needed to illuminate the scene, even though they’re outdoors. That’s because the Technicolor camera (the big box to the left) needed A LOT of light to photograph properly. The dapper man in the jacket and tie is Victor Fleming, who took over from George Cukor on February 17, 1939. Given how grueling the colossal movie was to film, I’m impressed that he’s dressed so properly.
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.
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.
