In a photo reminiscent of the one I posted last week of Donahue Real Estate on Wilshire Blvd, this one also reminds us of how many unique and beautiful commercial buildings Los Angeles had. The Don Lee Cadillac and LaSalle car dealership stood on the northwest corner of Green St and El Molino Ave in Pasadena in 1927. These days, Don Lee is mostly remembered as a radio broadcaster. From 1929 to 1936 he ran his 12-station network of radio stations affiliated with CBS and known as the Don Lee-Columbia Network. But it was only possible because he made a fortune in the automobile biz.
The building is down the block from the Pasadena Playhouse. To my surprise, it’s still there, albeit not quite as ornate. This image is from June 2022. The current tenant is Jacob Maarse Florist.
I suspect this shot of Alfred Hitchcock rehearsing his cast on the set of “Rope” at Warner Brothers in 1948 is a set up. Those busy bees in the background “working” on the set all look a bit too choreographed, if you ask me. And if they were actually there doing their probably-noisy jobs, I’d have thought it’d be awfully distracting to both Hitchcock and his cast. Still, this photo is a nice glimpse into golden-era moviemaking and I’m thankful they made the effort.
This smiling motorist seems very happy to pose for this photograph of him and his shiny new automobile (does anyone know what make it is?) as he sits at the western end of the Colorado Street Bridge heading into Pasadena. These days we all take the freeway to Pasadena, but back in 1918, this bridge was the main way in. It was only 5 years old when this photo was taken and still probably fairly free of traffic—of the motorized variety, anyway.
Whenever I see photos of this colonnade studio entrance I think of MGM’s Culver City studios in the 1930s and 40s. But until I found this photo, I’m not sure I realized that those columns date all the way back to when the lot was known as Triangle Studios, founded in July 1915 as a home to three big names in silent movies: D. W. Griffith, Thomas Ince and Mack Sennett. The colonnade served as a classy entrance to the studio, but back when this photo was taken in 1916, you could obviously find easy parking right out front too.
Most vintage photos of stores (at least, the ones I come across) are nearly always of the exterior, so it makes for a refreshing change of pace to see inside. This one shows us what the interior of a Thrifty Drug Store in Santa Monica looked like on January 4, 1937. I’m surprised to see that it looks like the lunch counter filled nearly half the store. That’s a lot of valuable floor space, so I’m guessing it was busy with hungry customers all day long.
Angelenos got all dressed up in their Sunday-best finery to be among the first citizens to ride two of Los Angeles’ first electric streetcars on Pico St, which I believe is now Pico Blvd, in 1887. The sign on the side of the streetcar reads: “Electric RR – Maple Ave – Pico St” so this may have been taken where Pico meets Maple Ave, which runs all the way into downtown LA and ends at 5th St. I’ve never before seen those four-wheeled engines that are pulling the open-air carriages, so I’m guessing they didn’t last long. At any rate, what we’re seeing is the start of what would become LA’s vast public transportation network.
This bird’s-eye view of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre is from March 1953 and reminds us how much open space still surrounded it. There were parking lots to the east and west, as well as the one behind the Hollywood Hotel near the top right corner. Toff’s diner on the Orchis Ave hasn’t appeared yet, which gives the appearance of more space. Even Hollywood Blvd is practically empty. Maybe this shot was taken early on a weekend morning? Four movies played Grauman’s in March of 1953, each of them only lasting a week. The only one I’ve heard of is “The Star” starring Bette Davis, so I like to think that’s what was playing when this photo was taken.
Sometime after of Iowa-born portrait photographer Melbourne Spurr arrived in Hollywood in 1917, he got his big break when he impressed Mary Pickford. By the mid 1920s, he was one of the most in-demand celebrity photographers. In 1933, he opened a new studio at 3986 Wilshire Blvd, and obviously he knew the value of advertising. Out front of his place, he erected this huge sign. When this photo was taken, he filled it with photos he’d taken of beauties featured in a film called “Young and Beautiful” which came out in September 1934. (The WAMPAS Baby Stars was a promotional campaign sponsored by the United States Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers, which honored 13 young actresses each year whom they believed to be on the threshold of movie stardom.)
I think we can safely put this in the “They Sure Don’t Make ‘Em Like That Anymore” file. This glorious piece of architecture was the offices of James J. Donahue Real Estate and it used to stand on the northeast corner of Wilshire Blvd and Western Ave. This shot is from 1925, which puts it 6 years before the glorious Wiltern Theatre opened its doors on the southeast corner. Imagine a Los Angeles where every other building looked like this. I know the city’s population growth couldn’t sustain smaller buildings like this, but they made for a much more human-scale cityscape, didn’t they?
That Thomas Ince fellow sure packed a lot of living in his 44 years. It wasn’t enough that he became a pioneer filmmaker who practically invented the Hollywood studio system and the Western. He also developed a 460-acre tract where Sunset Blvd meets Pacific Coast Highway and called it Inceville, which was his first movie studio. Then he formed Triangle Motion Pictures with DW Griffith and Mack Sennett on a Culver City lot that would later become MGM, as well as second lot that would become Selznick International and later Desilu. But now I find that in 1914, he also built an aviation field in Venice on a triangular plot of land at Venice Blvd between Washington Blvd and Washington Way. I don’t know when this aerial photo was taken, but I assume mid 1910s. According to 
