This image (I suspect it’s a still or a freeze-frame from video footage) shows us a tender moment in Hollywood’s history. The cars in this long cortege belong to various film industry luminaries as they head to the West Coast funeral service held for Rudolph Valentino. The date was September 7, 1926 and they were driving through the streets of Beverly Hills to the Church of the Good Shepherd on Roxbury Drive. I bet the chapel was packed shoulder to shoulder that day with a who’s who of silent Hollywood. Later on, his body was put to rest at the Hollywood Forever cemetery on Santa Monica Blvd.
Hollywood film industry luminaries drive through Beverly Hills en route to Rudolph Valentino’s West Coast funeral service, September 7, 1926
Color photo of the exterior of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre during the run of “David and Bathsheba”, Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, September, 1951
The PR department at 20th Century-Fox went into overdrive in their efforts to ensure that moviegoers were aware that “David and Bathsheba” starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward was playing at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. All those vivid awnings would have been hard to miss. The movie had a star-studded premiere on August 31, 1951 ahead of a 4-week run. Those PR guys sure earned their keep that month. The movie was a huge success, earning twice its budget and becoming the 3rd highest grossing picture of 1951. See what 20-foot Technicolor cut-outs can do?
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Tagged 20th Century-Fox, Color photo, Grauman's Chinese Theater, Hollywood, Hollywood Blvd, Theaters
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Riding horses down the bridle path along Rodeo Drive north of Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills (undated)
Oh, what a different Beverly Hills it must have been back when people could ride their horses along the bridle path that used to run down the center of Rodeo Drive, replacing an old Pacific Electric streetcar line that had connected Santa Monica Boulevard with the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Blvd. It also explains why these days that section of Rodeo is much wider than any of its neighboring streets. I don’t have a date on this photo, nor do I know when the Rodeo Dr. bridle path was closed, but I suspect it was late 1930s. If anyone reading this can correct or clarify, I’d love to hear from you!
Roughly the same view in June 2022:
Main concourse waiting room at Union Station, downtown Los Angeles, 1939
After six years of demolition (of the original Chinatown) and construction, Los Angeles’ new Union Railway Station (technically its name is the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal) opened on May 3, 1939. This photo is also from 1939, so the Angelenos seen here waiting for their train in the main concourse might have been experiencing it for the first time. It’s one of my favorite places in LA because it largely looks the same now as it did then. With all that hustle and bustle, it’s also amazingly quiet, thanks to special sound-absorbing panels attached to the walls. Quite frankly, I know some restaurants who could do with installing them.
The auto-colorizer did a pretty job bringing this image to life.
Streetcar running along First St stops at Alameda St, downtown Los Angeles, 1918
In this photo, a streetcar is running along First St as it stops at Alameda St in downtown LA. It was taken in 1918, when it was still quite normal to encounter horse-drawn carriages around town, as we can see on the right hand side of this photo. I’m a little surprised to see what I take to be a traffic cop in the middle of the intersection because all I can see are two automobiles, a street car and those horses—hardly a traffic jam.
Stanley G. says, “Alameda St. carried mainline steam trains in that era; hence the crossing gates.”
That same corner in June 2022. Nothing remains of the old view.
Gala premiere of “Cleopatra” at the Pantages Theater, Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, June 19, 1963
With seemingly endless mountains of publicity and scandal surrounding the studio-bankrupting production of “Cleopatra,” the Los Angeles premiere was guaranteed to attract legions of fans, press, and onlookers when it took place at the Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Blvd on June 19, 1963 (which was a Wednesday, which seems an odd day for something like this.) As we can see, the crowds packed the sidewalks of both sides of the street, and a string of 12 valet parkers are lined up outside the front waiting for the stream of VIP cars that I imagine snaked along Hollywood Blvd for miles.
Casey W. said: “But, back then, Wednesday was the day new movies came to theaters to run for the week. But yes, it does seem odd that a major premier would be staged on an ordinary day.”
Casey also said: “The post-production for Cleopatra was a boon for studio musicians and non-studio musicians in L.A. at the time. My dad got plenty of work doing the music for the movie, but then he would have anyway–dad played bass in just about every Twentieth Century movie, (and every one scored by Alex North) except those with exclusively jazz scores. The orchestra for Cleopatra was huge, and many musicians at the periphery of the motion picture industry worked on it, particularly percussionists. I remember my kettle drum lessons were cancelled because Bob Kraft, my instructor, along with every other top-notch percussionist in L.A., was busy recording the score for Cleopatra’s entry into Rome.”
This is how the Pantages looked in June 2021. Not too different from 58 years before. Even the Frolic Room looks exactly the same!
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Tagged 20th Century-Fox, Hollywood, Hollywood Blvd, Movie Premiere, Pantages Theatre, Theaters
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Booster poster to attract people buy government land in California (undated)
I couldn’t find this image anywhere else on the internet, so I’m only assuming it’s a genuine. But even if it isn’t, it’s very reminiscent of the booster posters that were created to attract people to movie to California. Cheap land! (In fact 43,795,000 acres, which is a very specific number.) Room for millions of people! Cyclone-free and blizzard-free climate for health AND wealth! I don’t know how the entire rest of the country didn’t up stakes immediately! Of course, there are days when I’m on the San Diego Freeway and it’s a barely-moving parking lot and I wonder if everyone actually did.
** UPDATE ** – Turns out this is a modern reprint real poster circa 1885.
Looking north up Beverly Drive north of Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, 1923
It’s funny now to think that Beverly Hills ever looked like this sparse, but this photo was taken in 1923, the same year that Beverly Hills became an incorporated city. Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, the official population of Beverly Hills in 1920 was 634. We’re looking up Beverly Dr. north of Santa Monica Blvd. With literally nothing and nobody around, I wonder if the car we can see parked on the side of the road belongs to the photographer who thought to get out and take a photo of not much except a curving street lined with baby palm trees.
And this is roughly that same view in January 2021.
View of a largely empty Hollywoodland development, Hollywood Hills, 1924
These days we’re used to a Hollywoodland that has filled most square feet of the Hollywood Hills below the Hollywood sign. But back in 1924, when this photo was taken, only half a dozen places had been built—and that includes the Hollywoodland Realty office. The famous Hollywoodland sign we can see in the background was illuminated for the first time on December 8, 1923, so it was brand new in this photo, and flashing HOLLY – WOOD – LAND – HOLLYWOODLAND at night.
Mary M says: “It took time to build the roads through the hills as you can see. Their advertising made it sound like lots were selling like hotcakes, but only half sold by 1930.”
Here is one of their ads:
This is approximately what that view looks like these days:
Aerial view of Paramount studios and the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, Hollywood, circa 1930s
This shot gives us a bird’s-eye view of Paramount studios sometime in the 1930s. Running up the middle of the photo we can see the soundstages and to the right (i.e. the west) the backlot. This was a time when RKO was a separate studio existing directly to the left out of the frame of this photo. To the north of the photo is a cemetery known back then as Hollywood Memorial Park. For a long while, it was the main cemetery where many of Hollywood’s early leading light were buried. These days it’s called Hollywood Forever and is where Judy Garland was recently moved to.
This satellite image of the same area is from January 2020.
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Tagged Aerial photographs, Movie Studios, Paramount Pictures
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