This shot of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre taken from across Hollywood Blvd is from 1929, so it’s within a couple of years of the May 1927 opening when you could still find parking right outside the front door. What luxury! Those people looking at the handprints in the concrete would have been gathered a forecourt with a lot more room for fresh prints. And this was long before they installed a long, red marquee stretching from the door to the sidewalk.
This is how Grauman’s Chinese looked in November 2021:
This stunning aerial shot is a Los Angeles two-fer: two L.A. icons in one shot—the Goodyear blimp flying over the Hollywood Bowl. This shot gives us a better view of the natural amphitheater in which the Bowl sits, and all those parking lots behind it (which I think is now used for performers and crews, but I might be wrong about that.) This shot was taken on September 24, 1932, so it also gives us a glimpse into what pre-freeway Hollywood looked like. These days the Hollywood Freeway rampages through the area shown here on the far left of the image.
From Dave DeCaro’s always-interesting website comes this striking genuine photo from 1954 of the Hollywood Hotel as seen from the corner of Hollywood Blvd and Highland Ave. It was taken during the holiday season, which is why that white metal electric Christmas tree is out front. In photos like this we can appreciate how red the tiles on the hotel’s roof were. In real life, they must have been quite striking and visible from miles around, especially from the air.
The photographer who took this photo on February 7, 1938 was standing between the streetcar tracks running along Highland Ave. He was standing south of Sunset Blvd looking north toward Hollywood Blvd, where we can see the Hollywood First National Bank building and the Hollywood United Methodist Church, both of which are still there. Sadly, what’s no longer there is the Currie’s Ice Cream parlor on the northeast corner of Sunset and Highland. I’ve heard that their ice cream was deeel-lish!
Here’s a slice of Los Angeles life from in 1942: A streetcar stops in front of the State Theatre at Broadway and 7th Street in downtown L.A. The only protection those streetcar riders have from the traffic is that raised platform, which is more than they usually got, if other photos of the era are anything to go by. The State Theatre was a Loew’s house showing mostly MGM movies, but at this time it was playing Joan Bennett picture, and none of her 1942 releases was from MGM. Like most theaters, the State pushed the purchase of war bonds and stamps. During WWII, it also played movies 24 hours a day to accommodate shift workers at the war factories who worked around the clock.
In this shot, we’re looking at the 24-room Lookout Mountain Inn that sat atop the aptly named Lookout Mountain off Laurel Canyon. It was built 1910 with verandas on three sides that allowed the $15-a-week guests to take in the view that stretched from downtown L.A. on the left and the Pacific Ocean on the right. Not that there would have been a lot to see back in 1910, but Hollywood would have started to take the form we know it to be these days. Sadly, the hotel only lasted 8 years before being lost to a brush file. These days, a private home occupies that site, and I can only imagine the view those people enjoy.
Across Wilshire Blvd from the Ambassador Hotel and across Alexandria Ave from the original Brown Derby was the Chapman Park Hotel, which stood on the northwest corner from 1936 to late 1960s on a 5-acre site with a tower and bungalows. This photo was taken in 1947 and features its public bar, the Zephyr Room. Those two towers in the background belonged to radio station KFAC who, starting in the mid-1930s, broadcast classical music from the Packard Bell building at 3457 Wilshire that had once been a showroom for Auburn and Cord automobiles.
In this photo we’re looking east along Sunset Blvd from Fairfax Ave. It looks like the city is in the process of turning Sunset from a dirt path into a sealed road. And it’s a good thing, too, because this photo was taken in 1902, so the onslaught of horseless carriages is on the horizon, and after that, the morning peak hour isn’t too far away.
In this rather atmospheric photo, we’re looking west along Hollywood Boulevard from Cahuenga Blvd in 1928. From the electric Christmas trees lining the street, we know it’s Christmastime when the boulevard was known as “Santa Claus Lane.” We can see the vertical sign for the Warner Bros. theater which would have been playing one of the early talkies that Warners were making during the year after they had changed the game with “The Jazz Singer.” On the billboard we can see Charlie Chaplin shilling for Old Gold cigarettes, who apparently guarantee “Not a cough in a carload.” Sounds like a rather dubious claim, if you ask me.