I recently acquired a copy of the the Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures for 1939. Their year books were thick, hard-bound bricks of books that detailed what everything, everyone, every studio, every contract player was doing. Very comprehensive! The 1939 book caught my eye as 1939 was commonly known as Hollywood’s Greatest Year because a huge number of highly regarded movies that have stood the test of time were released during that year. (See my blog for a list.)It’s also why I am writing a trilogy of novels set in 1939 called – fittingly enough – the Hollywood’s Greatest Year trilogy.
In leafing through the book, a 4-page spread caught my eye. It was for MGM’s The Wizard of Oz, which indicates how much they were promoting it. Not many other movies during Hollywood’s creative high-point got that treatment. So I thought I’d show what the spread looked like.
Being published 1939, it was, in fact, a compendium of movies that had come out in 1938, and in some cases, 1937. It jam-packed with details about motion pictures, performers, studios, directors, and so much more. In other words, it’s a book form of IMDB.com!
This one details what performers (aka “players”) recently appeared in. This page included Clark Gable and Judy Garland:
This page includes a table of how many features were produced by each studio over the previous 10 years:
Art directors and casting directors at each studio. (I’m not sure why Jack Otterson from Universal) got the bold- typeface-and-capitals treatment, but if anyone can tell me, I’d love to hear from you.)
And on this page, all the features released by each studio in the previous year (1938) are listed:
Not all buildings have to be grand and ornate to catch the eye. They can also be striking with simple, clean lines like this J.C. Penney store. It stood at 1202 3rd St, Santa Monica, on the corner of Wilshire Blvd. This photo was taken in 1949, decades before that corner became the end of the Third Street Promenade pedestrian mall. This photo is empty of vehicle and people traffic so I guess it was taken early on a Sunday morning which was probably the only time nobody was around.
I’m so glad the photographer of this 1965 image was using color film. Otherwise we might never have known that 1960 Chevrolet Impala zooming past the Theme building at Los Angeles International Airport (which had opened in 1961) was such a vibrant red. Whenever I see cars like that, I wonder how the heck the driver pulled off parallel parking. Lots (and lots) of practice, I suppose.
In this remarkably crisp aerial shot from 1932, we’re looking north from south of Sunset Blvd across Hollywood to the Hollywood Hills. They were still sparsely populated with lots of room for more and more homes. The image is so detailed that we can see, from left to right: the Roosevelt Hotel, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood High School, Hollywood United Methodist Church, streetcars along Highland Ave, and the Hollywood First National Bank building on the corner of Hollywood and Highland.
As far as I know, this was the only Pacific Electric red car that participated in the war effort during World War II. Car #5000 was rebranded “FLY FOR NAVY” to encourage eligible Angelenos (with high school diplomas) to sign up to the US Navy with a view to, I assume, become a Navy pilot. I don’t know where this photo was taken, but we can see that it was en route to the Subway Terminal in downtown Los Angeles, which was a convenient two-block walk to the Navy recruiting office at 306 W. 3rd St, which put it next to Sid Grauman’s Million Dollar Theater.
This undated image (which I assume is a from a postcard) is a night view looking southeast past the Hollywood Cross down the Hollywood Freeway into Hollywood. Outside of a Cecil B. DeMille epic, perhaps, religion and Hollywood are rarely put together (all those libidinous showbiz folks, you know…) so a glowing cross over Hollywood makes for a rather striking image. The cross (also known as the Hollywood Pilgrimage Memorial Monument) is 32 feet high was erected as a memorial for Christine Wetherill Stevenson who established the Pilgrimage Theatre (now the Ford Amphitheatre) which presented “The Pilgrimage Play” from 1920 to 1964.
Yesterday, Jeffery M commented on my photo of See’s Candies said that they moved from that location on Santa Monica Blvd to Wilshire Blvd in a Vons supermarket. And so I went looking to see if I could find a photo of it. Oh boy, did I ever: this atmospheric night shot of the Vons at 1311 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica at Euclid St. The neon on the tower is spectacular, as is the lighting hidden behind the V O N S. And See’s Candies nabbed themselves a prime position and probably nabbed a lot of foot traffic coming out of the supermarket. The date on this photo was given as 1940 which is 4 years earlier than yesterday’s photo, so maybe they moved from Wilshire to Santa Monica Blvd.
I don’t know what was happening on this day in 1944, but whatever See’s Candies were offering at the store at 301 Santa Monica Blvd in Santa Monica, people were willing to line up for it. WWII was still happening, which means sugar was rationed. Maybe someone found 10 extra bags of it in the basement of See’s factory on La Cienega Blvd (See’s started in LA in 1921) and these Angelenos were the first to hear of it. But I do like the juxtaposition of a candy store on the ground floor and the dentist office right above it.
I am always interested to know 1950s-era coffee shops attracted the attention of customers. In the case of this Hody’s at 3553 S. La Brea Ave, Los Angeles, it was to build a flat tower at least twice the height of the coffee shop itself, decorate it with five groups of lights and top it off with a (I assume) neon sign. It must have been glorious to see at night.
