I don’t know who this dude is who is posing outside the Mocambo nightclub at 8588 Sunset Blvd, but the place was known as “the Nightclub’s Nightclub,” so I’m guessing he wanted to be in with the in-crowd. Opening on January 3, 1941, until it closed on June 30, 1958, Mocambo was one of the best see-and-be-seen joints on the Sunset Strip at the height of the era of glamorous nightclubs. And yet, I can’t help but wonder who designed that vertical sign behind him. It looks like they made the letters too big and had to squish them in to make them fit. It needs a do-over, if you ask me.
These days an Equinox gym occupies that site. This image is from November 2021.
These days the eastern side of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre is taken up with the Hollywood and Highland shopping mall. But back during the summer of 1961, it was still the theater’s parking lot. We can see an early line of stars on what back then would have been the new Hollywood Walk of Fame, which had been officially dedicated on November 23, 1960. What surprises me is that they’re set back from the street. Today, those stars are much closer to the curb. I never knew they’d been in a different place. Playing at Grauman’s is the Lara Turner movie, “By Love Possessed” (which sounds like a Lana Turner movie if ever there was one) which played an impressive 5 weeks from June 14 to July 18, 1961. We can also see Toff’s restaurant that stood on the Orchid Ave corner. This was back when Orchid ran from north of Franklin all the way down to Hollywood Blvd. The Hollywood and Highland mall now stands on what used to be that street.
This photo from 1940 has me wondering how many of LA’s public streets have now been closed off to the public. This particular one is called Trousdale Parkway and connects Jefferson Blvd with Exposition Blvd near the University of Southern California south of downtown Los Angeles. I love those dual-lamp electroliers that light the median strip. Interestingly, there are no lanes painted on the roads—maybe because they each go in one direction only.
Isn’t it amazing to think that Hollywood every looked like this? This is St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church which stood on Hollywood Blvd (then still known as Prospect Ave), which was dedicated on November 29, 1903. Some websites say that it was on the Vine St corner, others say Cahuenga Blvd, while still others say Ivar Ave. I’m going with Ivar unless someone reading this knows definitively. At any rate, it’s a little mind-blowing that the streets of Hollywood had beautiful buildings like this nestled in among thickets of pepper trees. It all looks so tranquil and bucolic, which are two words you’d rarely use to describe the Hollywood of today.
I don’t know how good Lloyd King was at selling Fords, or how long he sold them for, but I do like his showroom at 5912 Pacific Blvd in Huntington Park. With those backlit signs and the display above the front door, I’m sure all the locals knew where King plugged his cars, including the Lincoln Zephyr V12 if the sign in the window is anything to go by. This image is from 1937.
These days, the Santa Monica pier is filled mostly with amusement park games and a big arcade of games. But back in 1936, when this photo was taken, the big draw was the La Monica Ballroom whose dance floor was soon big it could hold up to 5,000 people dancing the night away to live big band music. And it had a good run, too, opening in 1924 and lasting until 1963. And in the bottom right corner we can see the 
This photo hearkens back to circa 1915, when I can’t imagine there were many automobiles on LA’s roads yet. And the ones chugging around LA streets probably all looked like the one on the right. The smiling woman in the sun hat is pointing to a sign welcoming people the zoo and golf links section of the 3,015 acres that Griffith J. Griffith donated to the city of Los Angeles in 1896. The golf course opened on November 1, 1914 and is still around today. The zoo opened in opened in 1912 and closed in 1966 with the opening of the new Los Angeles Zoo. If you go wandering around that area, you can see some of the old enclosures. They were never torn down, so they look like a scene out of a Stephen King novel.
Here we have a glimpse of the beginning of the end of the silents. The people in this photo are lining up to see John Gilbert in MGM’s “Man, Woman, and Sin” (a silent movie title if ever there was one!) at Sid Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre at 6712 Hollywood Blvd. The movie came out in November 1927, a month after Warner Bros.’ “The Jazz Singer” forever changed the game. We don’t often see that canopy extending from the door of the theater to the sidewalk, but I do like that Egyptian boat design they’ve stenciled on the front. That Sid Grauman was a stickler for details!
Of all the Hollywood restaurants I missed out on experiencing, one of the first I’d head into when I finally get my time machine is Don the Beachcomber which stood at 1727 North McCadden Place just of Hollywood Blvd from 1933 (after the repeal of Prohibition) to 1987. Inventor of the Mai Tai and the Zombie, it was one of the first places to introduce Angelenos to Polynesian culture, which back then was considered very exotic. I don’t have a date on this photo but from that car I guess 1970s? Whenever it was, that $4.95 price tag sounds like a good deal to me.
I wish more gas stations looked like this at night these days—they’d be much more appealing to visit. This Gilmore outlet at the corner of Beverly Blvd and Fairfax Ave was photographed in 1935. And it’s a good thing someone thought to capture it as it only stood there from 1931 to 1936. And yes, this is the same Gilmore as the Gilmore Stadium, Gilmore Field, and Gilmore Drive-in on the other side of Fairfax were CBS Television City now stands.