In the 1920s, housing developments sprang up all around the Los Angeles area as real estate developers purchased small farms to subdivide into housing tracts holding everything from small homes to apartments to bungalow courts. Fernridge Row, stylish Hollywood bungalow complex, was built by A.B. Zwebell, who later built designed apartment complexes around the city with his wife, Nina.

Stylish but comfortable, these complexes offered individual units that functioned as mini-homes, with multiple rooms, special amenities, and porches looking out at greenery and gardens providing their residents bang for their buck. In the 1910s to the 1930s, bungalow courts served as popular housing for new, middle-class residents of Hollywood and Los Angeles. Popular with entertainment industry professionals and wanna-bes, these mini-bungalows made a comfortable dwelling in which to nest.

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Many followed popular architectural styles of the time, be it Spanish Colonial, Craftsman, or even Art Deco. Some went farther, copying elements of programmatic architecture meant to entice people to rent, especially storybook architecture, popular in the early 1920s. Romantic and reminiscent of little fairy tale cottages, the style evolved from Hollywood designs. Architects with creative vision designed many attractive complexes appealing to residents with up market dreams.

Before renowned apartment complex architect Arthur Zwebell began designing striking units, he served as contractor and builder for a storybook-style collection in 1923. Paying homage to Harold (Harry) Oliver per the June 9, 1923, Hollywood Citizen newspaper, Zwebell constructed a “quaint village” reminiscent of Tam O’Shanter at the intersection of Fernwood and Ridgewood in Hollywood in the Sunset Square Tract, With Smith & Zwebell serving as contractor for bungalow architect Rufus Buck.

Sunset Square Tract had been developed by real estate man George M. Sunday, son of the revivalist preacher Billy Sunday. As potent a salesman as his father, Sunday sold land tracts around Los Angeles, before joining with Harry Merrick and Roger Ruddick in 1922. Merrick, formerly with the Armour Company in Chicago, would facilitate the creation of Mulholland Drive to benefit his Hollywood Country Club tract and later organize the Central Motion Picture District in Studio City in 1927, which contained the Mack Sennett Studio, now known as CBS Studio Center.

Mrs. Bairbairn of the Sunday, Merrick & Ruddick Inc. real estate office sold it for $36,000 to J.W. Mr. Bowman in early June 1923. Called Fernridge Row by the Los Angeles Times, the small, Brigadoon-like complex contained five apartments, four of them with four rooms and one with five. Building permits with the city of Los Angeles for 5711-5719 Fernwood list Mary S. Carr as owner. Though she possessed the same name as an older film actress, this Mrs. Carr was a widow.

In 1924 Mrs. Carr decided to return to England, putting the “quaint village” up for sale. Listed with auction company Kemp and Ball, the five-unit furnished bungalow court was called “a veritable snap for the wise investor” and “one of the most beautiful and unique bungalow courts in Los Angeles.” Arthur Verneau served as interior decorator.

Each unit contained built-in features along with dining room, kitchen, and bath; four-unit apartments contained Murphy beds. Interiors featured French gray oak with walls in hand done oils. Each unit contained old English fireplaces, tile and porcelain in the baths, built-in refrigerators, wall radiators, and hardwood floors. Furnishings included “period and modern mahogany and overstuffed furniture” as well as a Steinway grand piano in the five-room unit. Each unit featured its own garage as well.

On April 20, 1924, C.A. Monroe won the complex at auction for $23,106.

Over the next 40 years, many residents would enjoy this charming little village. Ads show units cost $50-$60 in 1938, $57.50 and up in 1955, with the larger unit renting for $75 in 1955.

Over time, many developers or businesses purchased small, quaint apartment complexes to demolish and construct larger, nondescript units or office complexes. On January 14, 1966, Metromedia, Inc. pulled a permit to demolish the “quaint village,” and a sweet part of Hollywood history was lost.

Though no longer standing, photographs allow this special little apartment complex to be remembered for its outstanding architecture and character.

One of Einar Petersen’s murals at the Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn., courtesy of Mary Mallory

Note: This is an encore post from 2013. Curbed L.A. recently reported on the renovations at the building.

Fame is fleeting. An individual might go unrecognized while creating great art while alive, only for the works to be considered masterpieces decades after their death, as with painter Vincent Van Gogh. Others slowly build a portfolio of work, gaining increasing recognition and respect with each new piece. They maintain fame for a long while, but see it disappear as times, styles and values change. Many become forgotten.

Unfortunately, this second scenario applies to Einar C. Petersen, recognized as one of Los Angeles’ and California’s greatest muralists in the 1920s. Achieving great reviews for his first Los Angeles mural at the New Rosslyn Hotel in 1915, Petersen would go on to craft murals for San Francisco’s Hunter-Dulin Building as well as downtown’s Mayflower Hotel, Beverly Hills Security-National Bank, and particularly, the forest mural for Clifton’s Cafeteria on Broadway Street in downtown Los Angeles. As new owners and developers came along, most either removed or painted over Petersen’s murals, save for the one in Clifton’s.

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Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. at 435 Spring St. commissioned him in 1928 to create murals for the lobby and one for its conference room titled “Aladdin and His Lamp.” It intended the murals to extol the wonders of saving with them, and the riches it would bestow.

The organization had been formed by Hollywood native Gilbert Beesemyer, developer of Hollywood and Vine, and controlling secretary of Hollywood’s Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. He bought and used the charter of Vermont Building and Loan Assn. to establish Spring Street in late summer 1928. It was renovating the ground floor of the Title Insurance Building on Spring Street as its offices for a September opening.

Their Sept. 13, 1928, ad in the Los Angeles Times featured the lobby with drawings of Petersen’s murals prominently displayed on the walls, acknowledging his creation of the murals, and inviting the public to the grand opening.

The Times review of the building that day described a lovely Art Deco office, which was stylish, and emphasized Petersen’s glorious murals. “Construction and decoration of the new offices are a departure from the usual style. The principal color scheme is silver and black, while paintings and panels depicting the life of Aladdin adorn the walls. A specially designed lighting system throws consistently changing colors over the paintings.”

To help promote both themselves and the murals, the company created a 10-page brochure with color illustrations of the lobby murals. While it declared the story of Aladdin and his lamp a myth, it announced that, “The Magic of Building and Loan is a very real, material thing.” Investing money and getting mortgages with the company would bring success to those participants, as well as a haven for their money.

The booklet opened with the foreword stating, “We are indeed grateful for the praise and admiration which the citizens of Los Angeles have expressed for our new quarters in the magnificent Title Insurance Building, even in advance of their completion.

“In the firm belief that the days are gone when a cold, forbidding aspect can any longer be considered an essential qualification for the offices of financial institutions, we have tried to combine beauty and warmth with utmost utility and a really friendly, helpful, capable spirit of service.

“This little booklet has been prepared in response to hundreds of requests for copies of the beautiful ‘Aladdin and His Lamp’ murals which are the principal decorative feature of our offices, and to the unmistakable indication that there are literally thousands who would like to know more about Building and Loan as exemplified by the Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn.

“It is our earnest hope that it will both please and interest you.”

One of Einar Petersen’s murals at the Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn, courtesy of Mary Mallory.

Page 3 of the brochure gave the story of the murals. “…The Story of Aladdin, which was chosen as the theme of the 10 mural paintings and panels on the walls of our Title Insurance Building offices, shows us first, an indolent, wastrel boy who falls into the hands of a magician, and is tempted by the tales told him of riches without effort. Next, we see him in the Sorcerer’s Cave, with the Lamp, surrounded by untold wealth. How he discovers the secret of the Ring and the Lamp are known to almost all. Even with their magic power at his disposal, the age-old traits of frugality and economy manifest themselves, and he sells the silver dishes in which the Genii brings his food, exhausting the money thus obtained before again calling upon his magic talisman.

“…Happy as is the final outcome of the Tale, it carries a forceful illustration to we moderns of the precariousness of wealth, position, and success obtained solely through good fortune. The loss of his priceless Lamp, his Palace, his Princess, his own life, almost; are such incidents.

‘Indeed, ‘Aladdin and His Lamp,’ as executed for the Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. by Einar Petersen, famed Los Angeles artist, shows the futility of ‘trusting to luck,’ in a most vivid and beautiful way. And the Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. is proud to have had the privilege of adding these colorful paintings to the art treasures of Los Angeles, and California.”

The Times would go on to feature photos of some of the murals in the Sept. 16 and Dec. 2, 1928, papers. Bessemyer would help greet Santa Claus for the Hollywood Boulevard Assn.’s Santa Claus Lane that December as well.

Spring Street was riding high. It merged with Beesemyer’s Hollywood Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. on Dec. 25, 1928, only 60 days after forming. It was affiliated with the U. S. Guarantee Corp., with assets of $25 million, with Beesemyer as president.

Unfortunately, Beesemyer was following the early practices of the wastrel Aladdin, and employing the funds of the two organizations as a piggy bank. In December 1930, the Hollywood Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. collapsed, with Beesemyer admitting to illegal actions after auditors found that $8 million was missing.

Beesemyer pleaded guilty Dec. 13, 1930, with his trial occurring early in 1931. Creditors discovered that half of the losses came from theft, and half through bad investments on Beesemyer’s part, especially in oil wells that kept coming up dry. Bessemyer admitted to buying land with the association’s money, putting the title in his name and hiding the deficit in the accounts, while never covering the overdrafts, with lax auditing by the state helping prolong the disaster. What was worse, some employees knew of his illegal actions, but turned the other way.

The court found Beesemyer guilty, giving him a 40-year sentence, in which he had to serve at least 13 years. He was sent to San Quentin as convict No. 1947155, after willingly turning over all property to help depositors who had suffered losses, and filed for personal bankruptcy.

It took almost five years to resolve matters with Guaranty, with creditors finally receiving 25% on the dollar. Even more troubling to investors was the fact that the state considered Beesemyer a model prisoner in his accounting job in the prison commissary, granting him an immediate parole on Aug. 4, 1939, after protests and hearings from the public. After serving only eight years, Beesemyer was free to leave the state, moving to Chicago for a job. He disappeared from the papers.

Spring Street Guaranty Building and Loan Assn. also closed in December 1930 because of its connection to Beesemyer, sitting empty for a time. L. L. Elliott Co., an investment firm, operated there in 1934, before being replaced by Mitchell Brown and Co., another investment firm, in 1935. The address is not mentioned again until the lobby became a Christian Science reading room in 1944, lasting at least through 1953, when the location again disappears from papers.

What became of the murals? Were they removed during all the upheavals, or did they survive until recently? I toured the building in April 2012, discovering that the lobby of 435 S. Spring St. echoes that of the New Rosslyn Building just a block away, containing blank beige walls. In July 2013, one panel of the New Rosslyn murals came up for sale on eBay, so perhaps these lovely Aladdin murals rest someplace, and will magically reappear one day, to testify to the talent of the virtually forgotten Petersen.

The Hollywoodland Sign, in a photo published in the Los Angeles Evening Herald, Dec. 8, 1923.

Note: This is an encore post from 2017.

Originally constructed as a publicity gimmick and branding symbol to help generate sales for a real estate development, the Hollywood Sign is now a worldwide icon just as powerful as Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty, signifying a land of glamour and opportunity. Myths have always existed about it, from the date of its construction to how the city of Hollywood obtained it. After in-depth research by both historian Bruce Torrence and myself, we can conclusively say the sign was constructed in late November and early December 1923, and illuminated in that first week of December.

Like me, a California transplant involved in history, research, and writing since I was child, Torrence has always been fascinated by Hollywood history, perhaps because his two famous grandfathers contributed much to it. His paternal grandfather, Ernest Torrence, starred in many classic silent films such as “Steamboat Bill Jr.” and “Peter Pan” after a successful career as an opera singer. His maternal grandfather C. E. Toberman could be called the builder of Hollywood for his construction of so many iconic structures around Hollywood Boulevard. Bruce began a photo collection of Hollywood in 1972 with thirty photographs, which has blossomed into thousands. He employed these photos in writing one of Hollywood’s first detailed history books in 1979 called “Hollywood: The First 100 Years.”
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Both of us are dogged in searching out facts and details to get Hollywood history right, made much easier with the opening of newspapers through microfilm and now digital searching, along with such great digitized sites as the Media History Digital Library and Variety Archives at the Margaret Herrick Library. We look for multiple citations to back up evidence, and especially primary evidence, such as documents, building records, and films, and secondary sources like newspapers, magazines, and books. Getting history right often means correcting yourself, as I admit I fell into the trap of claiming the Hollywoodland Sign was constructed in July 1923. After years of research by both of us, we have discovered the missing pieces clarifying the history of the sign.

When I began writing my Arcadia Publishing book “Hollywoodland” in 2010, I began searching out the history of the development and its world famous sign. Few if any period sources could be found providing a detailed, accurate history of the Hollywoodland Sign, even the Los Angeles Times, owned by one of the five partners of the Hollywoodland development. No newspaper reported the actual day of the beginning or completion of construction, but thanks to discovery on the history of Hollywoodland publicity chief L. J. Burrud, I began slowly piecing the puzzle together.
L.J. Burrud, Hollywood Publicity Man

Hollywoodland developers Tracey Shoults and S. H. Woodruff announced the opening of the real estate tract in late March 1923 newspapers. They focused mainly on the newspapers of record for Los Angeles, like the Times and Examiner, attempting to appeal to upper middle class and rich businessmen and entertainers. Since Times publisher Harry Chandler was one of the partners, the newspaper provided ample free publicity of the site in multiple stories virtually every day of the week, often with photographs. With real estate booming all round the city, sales initially took off, but the real estate men realized they needed special publicity to help brand their neighborhood as the “supreme achievement for community building” for people of discriminating taste.

On September 7, 1923, Woodruff turned to Lake Arrowhead press man L. J. Burrud to devise unique ballyhoo gimmicks to land stories and photographs of the Hollywoodland development in newspapers and magazines across the United States. Copying tactics from his past as a newsreel cameraman, actuality and documentary filmmaker, Burrud conceived of one of the first mass media campaigns to brand the special nature of the community. Besides planting stories in newspapers, the publicity man shot a film documenting construction of the Hollywoodland demonstration home, arranged for sports motor cars to traverse the rough, unpaved hills, and even created a Hollywoodland Community Orchestra to play grocery store openings and radio shows.

In later years, advertising man John Roche claimed in interviews that Times publisher Harry Chandler asked him to design a gigantic billboard visible from miles away, but it seems strange that someone would wait decades to state such information. Unfortunately no paperwork from the Hollywoodland development exists, so until it shows up, there is no definitive proof of who conceived the look of the sign and when. While virtually all other major real estate developments built thin, red-colored name signs, Hollywoodland’s would be gigantic 45 foot letters spelling out the world Hollywoodland, making it much more visible all over Los Angeles. Falling back on his filmmaking experience, publicity chief Burrud conceived the brilliant idea for newsreel coverage documenting the construction of the sign, a gimmick to help announce the opening of their stupendous development to the world.

Holly Leaves, November 1923.

I discovered that construction of the Hollywoodland Sign began in November 1923, after finding a photograph taken from the Hollywood Athletic Club published in the November 16, 1923 Holly Leaves revealing a barren hillside above the development, devoid of any sign or construction equipment. Fox Movietone newsreel footage exists of the Hollywoodland Sign’s construction, revealing workers, mules, and caterpillar tractors laboring to carry sheet metal, telephone poles, pipes, and chicken wire up the precipitous slopes to build the giant sign in a jagged line on the steep hill.

Realizing that filmmakers usually employ a slate in front of their footage listing title, date, and running time, I contacted Greg Wilsbacher, director of the Fox Movietone Newsreel Collection at the University of South Carolina, to inquire about a slate or paperwork for the newsreel footage shot of this event. Wilsbacher revealed that cameraman Blaine Walker shot the Sign’s construction, stating that the undeveloped negative arrived at the Fox Movietone Newsreel office dated “November 27th-23,” with the punch record of the New York Fox office also showing a late November 1923 date. Train travel across the United States took approximately three days at that time, meaning the footage would have departed Los Angeles on November 27 and arrived at the end of the month. As Wilsbacher also stated, a newsreel cameraman’s job was to get unique footage first and rush it to production offices for immediate distribution to theatres, meaning Walker filmed it immediately before sending it off to New York.

Not only were the developers constructing an enormous billboard to advertise Hollywoodland by day, but also one to blaze its name at night. They hired Crescent Sign Company to devise a way to build the Sign on the hill, and Woodruff hired Electrical Products Corporation to illuminate it with electric lights, creating what the December 9 Los Angeles Examiner calls the “largest electrically outlined word in the world.”

Historian Torrence discovered the actual date of first illumination when investigating when the letter “H” was actually blown off the Sign after a question posed by a reader. He, I, and everyone else mistakenly believed the letter was demolished by winds in 1949, though his examination of Los Angeles Herald Examiner and Los Angeles Times proved it actually happened in 1944.

A worker stands in crossbar of the letter “D” in the Hollywoodland Sign, Practical Electrics, September 1924.

While there, he decided to peruse the November/December 1923 Evening Herald to find information on the final days of the Sign’s construction after my discovery of the November date for the newsreel footage. He discovered the missing link, connecting the Sign’s November/December 1923 construction to its first electric illumination. Torrence came across a December 8, 1923 Evening Herald story stating that the sign, “believed to be the largest in the world,…will be illuminated tonight.” The article includes photographs showing the full length of the sign as well as an image of a worker dwarfed by the gigantic letter “D” he stands in.

On Saturday, December 8, 1923, S. H. Woodruff and his crew flipped the switch turning on the illuminated lights which spelled out the words “Holly,” “Wood,” “Land,” “Hollywoodland,” with Woodruff stating in an article in the December 9 Examiner, “it was only fitting that the first blaze of electric lights to shine forth from the tremendous sign should be in commemoration of some important event in the development of Hollywoodland,” namely the opening of Unit No. 4 to sales. In an ironic twist, the Los Angeles Herald and Los Angeles Examiner note the first lighting of the Hollywoodland Sign, while the Los Angeles Times, owned and published by Harry Chandler, one of the major partners in the development, failed to report it.

An ad in the Dec. 12, 1923, Los Angeles Times notes the completion of the Hollywoodland Sign.

Paul D. Howse, president of Electrical Products Corporation, bought an advertisement in the December 12, 1923, Los Angeles Times with an illustration of the electrified sign. He congratulates Woodruff for completing the stupendous sign, declaring “You had the vision to undertake and accomplish the greatest realty enterprise in California…” and then stating, “…We thank you, Mr. Woodruff, for having given us the opportunity to engineer and install this great electrical sign. May your expenditure be appreciated by those who love to see Los Angeles lead in enterprise and really “big” things.

A description of the Hollywoodland Sign in Practical Electrics for September, 1924.

Further sealing the November/December 1923 construction date, the September 1924 issue of Practical Electrics provided me by another historian describes what it calls “the mammoth Hollywoodland Electric Sign” in detail, noting its eight months of display. The article employs some creative hyperbole to state that “the sign is over one-sixth of a mile long, and nearly 4,000 lamps are required to light it.”

It reports that the billboard is visible at a distance of more than twelve miles, supported by a framework of telephone poles 60 to 80 feet high. “Two by six inch timbers, placed 16 to 24 inches between centers, are the horizontal elements of the frame. To this the letters, made of galvanized iron, are nailed. Each stroke of a letter is 13 feet wide. To illuminate the 13 great letters 3,700 10-watt lamps are used, placed along the edge of each stroke….There are 55 outlets to each circuit and the wiring is all open on the back of the structure. Everything centers in a junction box near the center of the sign…Taken on a straight line, the sign is 975 feet long and the letters are 45 feet high.” While the letters were 45 feet high, it’s very doubtful the sign was that long.

While erroneously reported to have been constructed in July 1923, thanks to these discoveries, we now know that the Hollywoodland Sign was constructed in November/early December 1923, and illuminated for the first time on Saturday, December 8, 1923. Paraphrasing Electrical Products Corporation President Paul Howse, Hollywoodland not only conceived the largest electrical sign in the world in 1923, but one that now serves as the iconic representation of Hollywood and its film industry while also reigning as Los Angeles’ most popular tourist attraction today

A c. 1937 image of the Japanese garden at the Huntington, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

In 1919, Henry E. and Arabella Huntington signed trust papers that would turn their estate into a public institution. Once opened to the public, the Japanese gardens became one of the top attractions to visitors, thanks to its peace, beauty and refinement. Remarkably, the garden was not created by Huntington gardeners, but bought lock, stock, and barrel from a commercial business operating in Pasadena, disassembled, and transplanted at the Huntington. Here is its remarkable story.

Japan reopened trade with the West after American Commodore Matthew Perry and his armada sailed into Tokyo Bay on July 8, 1853. Oriental and Japanese art like textiles, prints, and ceramics quickly became popular in both America and Europe, leading to a collecting craze for everything Japanese. This frenzy led to the term Japonism, the influence of Japanese philosophy, art, and aesthetics on Western Culture.

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An undated photo of the bridge at the Huntington’s Japanese gardens, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library. 

Painters like Henry McNeill Whistler, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, and Vincent Van Gogh demonstrated influences of the East in their art, the team of Gilbert and Sullivan created the comic operetta “The Mikado” in 1885, and Giacomo Puccini composed the renowned opera “Madame Butterfly” in 1904. Art objects quickly became popular as household items as well.

Japanese gardens first appeared in the United States at International Expositions, becoming popular with their guests as they offered a slice of beauty and refined culture. The Japanese government arranged simple “gardens” of plants, lanterns, and decorative items at foreign expositions, with the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition featuring the first Japanese garden in the United States. Soon they became a regular feature at these major tourist draws. A garden was one of the most popular attractions at the 1904 St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition, featuring six buildings and a large “Enchanted Garden” with a teahouse, iron and stone lanterns, a small island, arched bridge, and a variety of plants. Isaac Marcossan wrote in a 1904 article, “…the Japanese have brought the perfection of landscape beauty….” The craze for Japanese gardens was thus born.

American-style Japanese gardens became popular with the well-to-do, a form of ghost image of those in Japan, offering an element of cultural refinement to the estates of the nouveau riche. Kendall Brown in his book, “Japanese Gardens of the Pacific West Coast” writes that “Japanese-style gardens in North America tell us more about America and Canada than they do about Japan. As oppose to being merely “Japanese,” the gardens evince their patrons’ and consumers’ particular attitudes toward Japan,” creating a form of Orientalism of Westerners’ own imaginations. These white owners hired Japanese to design and construct the gardens.

Former Australian Oriental art dealer G.T. (George Turner) Marsh helped popularize and promote Japanese gardens in California when he won the franchise to create a Japanese village for the 1894 Midwinter Exposition in San Francisco. Born in Australia, Marsh lived for a short time in Japan, where he fell in love with the art and culture of the country. The village he designed in San Francisco featured an entrance gate leading to thatched roof pavilions, a theatre, teahouse, plants, and ornaments, and a hillside with waterfall, all elements which would become standardized items in West Coast tea gardens. After the Exposition, Marsh donated the garden to the city of San Francisco, which was employed in creating its offshoot, the Japanese Garden at Golden Gate Park in 1895. Marsh inaugurated the idea of commercial Japanese tea gardens, with most constructed adjacent to resort hotels and beach properties.

Marsh operated Oriental art shops around California, including in Pasadena at his Corner Store across the street from the Hotel Castle Green, and he soon constructed tea gardens adjacent to many of his businesses. In 1903 he constructed his first tea garden at his home in Mill Valley and then joined with John D. Spreckels to open a Japanese Tea Garden on Coronado Island as an attraction for Hotel Del Coronado guests (the tea garden was later destroyed in a storm). That same year he purchased land at the northwest corner of Fair Oaks Avenue and California in Pasadena to build an elaborate tea garden to replace the smaller store.

Two Armenian couples pose for a photo in the Huntington’s Japanese garden in 1931, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

Surrounded by a six-foot wooden fence stained red and black and featuring a gate entrance, the garden required guests to strike a “gong” to summon caretakers. It featured a pond, undulating hills, a miniature mountain with waterfall and stream-fed goldfish pond, “idols,” a tea house, a bridge to cross the pond, a crooked bridge, and shrine. Buddhist sculptures originally from temples and dating from 1650 to 1750 dotted the property, acquired by Marsh in Tokyo. The garden’s landscape featured evergreen, pine, cypress, plum, peach, and cherry trees, Japanese maple, azalea, peony, and camellias. Brochures claimed the “house” had been purchased in Japan and disassembled for transport to California, where it was reassembled.

A 1904 ad in the Pasadena Star claims that A.Y. Okita served as designer and builder. The Pasadena Evening Star later featured an ad supposedly quoting “one of the greatest landscape gardeners in America” stated “The Japanese garden is the most worthwhile of al the places I have been in years.”

The G.T. Marsh Japanese Tea Garden in Pasadena served mostly upscale society ladies looking for a cultured and refined location to hold teas, parties, and meetings, with newspapers listing many of these types of events. While beautiful, the gardens were expensive to maintain, leading it to suffer financial difficulties. A March 26, 1911, ad in the Los Angeles Times announced the first auction at the property of the N.J. Sargent Collection of Oriental Art. A May 14 Los Angeles Herald story reported that the garden “may be cut up into lots.”

On August 20, 1911, the Los Angeles Times announced that Huntington had purchased the $12,000 property and all its buildings, decorations, and plants, which he intended to move and transplant at his 500-acre estate in San Marino, which he had purchased from the Shoup family in 1903. After completing construction of the mansion around 1910, his overseer William Hertrich began organizing the layout and construction of gardens around the property.

In the book, “100 Years in the Huntington’s Japanese Garden,” author T. June Li states that Huntington purchased the garden in order to facilitate the development of his own garden with mature plants, shrubs, and trees, creating something that would appeal to the elegant Arabella Huntington, the widow of his uncle, whom he was courting and would marry in 1913.

The book “Founding of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery” reveals that the Japanese garden would fill an open canyon near the home, requiring the removal of a dam and hundreds of loads of gravel and dirt, the construction of terraces and then re-grading the area, laying down concrete bottoms for the ponds, and creating paths. Retaining walls were constructed in early October along with a waterfall and rockery. Hertrich wrote to Huntington: “The plants in the Pasadena Garden I have not taken out yet, but all of the rocks are piled up near the entrance, about two carloads.…I have not done anything further about moving the Japanese house. At the present time am employing about 70 men… .”

Hertrich wrote in early November, “The Japanese Garden is beginning to get some shape now. the big pond is full of water, and the reflection of the surround trees on the hills is a very good feature of it. Some of the walks are dug out and a few hills and valley complete, with the water pipes in, ready for planting. Most of the plants at the Pasadena Garden are boxed. They weigh from 500 pounds to 2 tons apiece; expect to plant some of them next week.” Approximately 25 truckloads of plants arrived at the estate.

Toichiro Kawai was hired in late 1911 for the hard work of relocating the buildings and creating new features for the garden. Much work went into moving the house from the tea garden to the Huntington property. The workers disassembled it for the move, put it back together once it arrived, and then plastered and stained it. Hertrich wrote to Huntington in December about the hard work in placing the purchased materials in the canyon. “Have done a big lot of work in that canyon since you left California… Made some very good artificial rocks with my own men. It was hard work for everybody to handle all those big plants on account of transporting them by hand, down on one side of the canyon, across the pond, and up on the other side.”

The garden’s construction was completed in February. In early March 1912, photographs were mailed to Huntington in New York. His secretary immediately recognized its beauty, responding, “I think you have created a joy forever. It seems like a beautiful dream, and I congratulate you on a great achievement. Mr. Huntington is tremendously pleased… .”

In 1913, the Chiyozo Goto family was hired to serve as caretakers for the garden, the same role they had occupied when it was owned by Marsh. They were required to dress in Japanese costume and greet guests. That year, the “Garden Chronicle of America” called the Japanese garden “the crowning glory” of the Huntington estate. Very few gardeners were assigned to help manage the grounds, and by the 1920s, it was overgrown. The Gotos returned to Japan in 1923.

Eventually the Japanese garden was restored, becoming an oasis of calm and peace. The Japanese garden along with its teahouse were restored in 2013, and remains one of the most popular areas of the Huntington today. A classy reminder of bygone days, the Huntington Japanese garden reveals the long hidden story of its construction by G.T. Marsh and and its saving by Henry Huntington.

The Christmas House in Boyle Heights, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

Long before the inauguration of Instagram and trying to win social media by posting the most elaborate or flashy photo, George G. Skinner designed a homespun holiday light installation in the late 1930s meant as a simple opportunity to enjoy happy times and pleasures with friends and family. A popular holiday destination in Los Angeles similar to Christmas Tree Lane in Altadena, the Christmas House at 919 S. Mathews St. perhaps inspired later fancy holiday light displays throughout Southern California.

Born in Canada in 1912, George Skinner found himself in Los Angeles when his father Albert abandoned the family and took his son with him to sunny Southern California in 1920. The teenager developed a strong bond with his father, enjoying camping and beach trips. Though he yearned for his family, he remained with his dad, who told George that the warm weather better suited his health.

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“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

Jean Portland, left, and Windy Gilmore, in bathing suit, play in “snow” after a fire damaged the Christmas House in 1938, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

George thrived. In 1934 he was about to graduate from business school and hoped to propose to his girlfriend. While swimming laps at the Los Angeles City College pool May 22, 1934, George suddenly lost feeling in his arms and legs. Two strong athletes rescued him from the pool as he sank toward the bottom.

Rushed to Los Angeles County General Hospital, Skinner would spend two years encased in a huge, casket-like 650-pound iron lung to recover from polio.  Friends and neighbors visited often, showering him with cookies, candy, letters, cards and books. Skinner vowed to one day repay these people for their kind deeds.

Inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also had polio, Skinner devoted himself to getting better. In one of his fireside chats, Roosevelt mentioned hydrotherapy and the healing waters of Warm Springs, Georgia. George yearned to try it, but Los Angeles County Hospital only offered hydrotherapy in its pool freely to those under 21. George received the treatment after writing a letter to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt with the help of a nurse, as long as he could pay whenever he could.

In May 1936, Skinner finally went home to the tiny white bungalow with its white picket fence and small porch, wearing a body brace on his upper body and steel braces on both legs, using canes to aid his mobility. Tool and die maker father Albert struggled to support his son, but found enough money to construct a simple backyard gym to help him gain strength.

The Christmas House grew out of George’s dreams during his two year stay at the hospital, when he imagined Christmas in Canada with his far away mother, who taught him everything about the true holiday spirit. Good at design and construction, Skinner hoped to entertain and enthrall children, and thank his neighbors for their generous and kind support of him. He sincerely aspired to grace others with a little bit of sunshine just as he had been blessed. Working on his proposed design kept his mind occupied, a chance to escape from Depression blues.

That first year, 1936, George creatively devised a glittering light display through simple but smart ways. Per his daughter’s book, “The Christmas House,” George figured out that mirrors would increase the twinkly light display, freezing steam would make icicles to hang from the rooftop, painting cereal flakes white could replicate snow, and playing 78s of Christmas carols on the family record player would provide a little musical ambiance which people could sing along with.

George’s giving attitude and boundless energy inspired businesses and even movie studios to lend costumes or props or even make a small donation. Snow shipped in from Utah was dumped on the front lawn and when it melted, ingenious George dressed up his cereal flakes with white spray paint to serve as snow. Father Albert constructed a Santa figure for the roof and even dressed up as Santa to surprise guests, aided by a wishing well equipped with recording equipment and microphone.

Members of the Women’s American Legion Sunrise Post 370 pulled together his designs and watered the 12 eight-foot tall live trees inside as well as making hot chocolate to share with the many visitors.

The first time Albert flipped the switch turning on the lights, the fuses blew from overload. George realized they were drawing twice the electricity provided by the power company. Telephoning the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, George mentioned that a reporter from the Herald-Express was coming to cover the Christmas House opening. The supervisor offered to loan him an emergency generator.

Radio stations and newspapers like the Los Angeles Times ran stories about the enthusiastic young man and his sweet cause, inspiring bumper to bumper traffic from admiring gawkers. The December 21, 1936, Los Angeles Times reported on Skinner’s display, noting that two elaborately lighted and decorated Christmas trees stood on the front lawn. The Times stated, “The snow effect on the roof is made of cotton batting; the icicles are covered strips of rubber and the flake snow in the yard is the chemical kind used by motion picture studios.” The stories drew tens of thousands of marveling Angelenos, creating what might be the first “Happiest place on earth.”

In 1937, papers announced that 265 carolers would serenade guests and serve homemade pastries with milk and hot apple cider. Eight life-size reindeer towing Santa’s sleigh graced the roof and even more decorations and costumes were loaned by businesses and studios. The Santa Rosa Republican on December 25, 1937 ran a photo feature, noting that decorations included 150 pounds of artificial snow, 304 feet of tinsel, 250 pounds of cotton, and more than 350 electric lights adding sparkly charm to the house. Papers in 1938 estimated that over 80,000 children toured the exhibit.

George spent the year of 1938 getting ready for the next big show, focusing on a Snow White theme to coincide with the Walt Disney Company’s animated feature released that year. Decorations included a wishing well, cascading waterfall, sparkling Christmas lights, and replicas of Snow White’s cottage, all complementing the 30 Douglas firs trucked from Tahoe inside the house. Skinner’s passion and enthusiasm continued to inspire business owners to donate goods and services, with even the Los Angeles Department of Power and Light paying the family’s light bill.

On December 8, a fire causing $10,000 worth of damage swept through the bungalow, resulting from faulty wiring. The interior was badly damaged, as well as half of the display. Heartbreakingly, the family lacked insurance. The December 15 Los Angeles Times reported the 16 person crew, 12 women and four men, began reconstructing the site after spending six months building props and six weeks getting everything ready. The cleaned up site, with damaged areas hidden under fake snow and tinsel, opened to the public on December 19, with papers later estimating that over 100,000 visited Christmas House that year.

On May 17, 1939, Joe Seewerker and Charles Owens wrote and illustrated a column about the Christmas House and its demise for the Times, but stating that a stray cigarette caused the fire. They reported that as the family worked in the backyard, just hours from opening, a man tired of waiting stepped over the ropes preventing entry and ushered his wife and daughter into the home. When he carelessly threw away a cigarette, it landed on one of the 30 live trees inside the home, setting it ablaze.

George married Pearl Majoros in 1942, moving out of the Mathews Street home, which was eventually demolished. The Skinners moved to Hollywood by the late 1940s, with George working as a sound engineer and later designer at movie studios. After the birth of his daughters, Skinner and his wife even devised a shimmering display for their Curson Avenue home.

Other areas of Southern California began displaying elaborate Christmas lights, from the Griffith Park Light Display to the boat parade at Naples to neighborhoods like Upper Hastings Ranch in Pasadena and Candy Cane Lane in the San Fernando Valley. Soon these decorations became a way to bedazzle crowds and outdo neighbors rather than a sincere effort to enjoy the holiday spirit.

Daughter Georja collected the stories on her father’s Christmas House for her 2005 book, hoping to inspire readers with her father’s indomitable spirit. His work pulling together the holiday house healed his life emotionally and spiritually. In the concluding paragraph of her book, Skinner states, ”My hope is that the story of the Christmas House might help others find a way to hold on to and strive for whatever they believe in, no matter how impossible their goals might seem.” Focus on possibilities, not insurmountable obstacles. Following George Skinner’s maxim, “Dream big. Otherwise, why bother?”

Merry Christmas!

The Woodley Theatre, from Motography, July 14, 1917.

Comedy king Mack Sennett recognized the self-promotion power of owning his own movie theater long before film studios owned theater chains or Netflix looked to acquire the Egyptian Theatre. In 1917, savvy Sennett purchased downtown Los Angeles’ Woodley Theatre to premiere and plug his product, adding a touch of prestige to slapstick and burlesque comedy.

Selling his Optic Theatre at 533 S. Main, veteran theatre owner Robert W. Woodley purchased 836-840 S. Broadway in 1913 to upscale his trade as moving pictures blossomed into big business. He hired architects Train and Williams to design a 900-seat theater costing $22,500 in April 1913, opening for business September 27, 1913.

Mary Mallory’s “Living With Grace” is now on sale.

The Orpheum on South Broadway was built in the location once occupied by the Woodley Theatre.

A consummate showman, Woodley bought what the September 25 issue of the Los Angeles Times called a “super organ,” “equipped with full orchestra, brass, strings, drums, and grand piano,” for his flashy organist C. Percival Garratt. Per the paper, Woodley first purchased the organ before designing a theater to hold it, and then bought the property on which to build. Woodley’s swanky theater featured all-leather seats with two-seat divans in the loges and solar ventilation that helped heat and light the structure.

Woodley operated as a quality, first-run house, booking high-end products from major companies from Lois Weber films to Biograph. In September 1914, the Los Angeles Investment Co. took over ownership, with Woodley continuing to serve as operator and this time featuring William A. Brady pictures.

The theater appears to have pioneered the practice of organizing a film festival to honor a star with their late April 1915 Mary Pickford Revue, showing reprints of “fine old Biograph subjects” selected by Pickford herself and directed by the master D.W. Griffith. The May 1 Moving Picture News reported that almost 12,000 tickets were sold to see “The New York Hat,” “Wilful Peggy,” “All on Account of the Milk,” “Iola’s Promise,” and “Lena and the Geese,” with 10 one-sheets on display at the entrance.

A few months later, King of Comedy Sennett searched for box office ballyhoo to goose ticket sales for his product, and joined forces with Woodley. The two formed the Woodley Theatre Co., purchasing the theater from Los Angeles Investment Co. as reported by the June 26, 1915, Moving Picture News. Woodley would serve as manager, continuing to showcase prestigious titles.

The ticket booth was turned into a windmill for “Hulda From Holland.”

The theater continued booking pictures by America’s top producers and directors, from Griffith to Thomas Ince. America’s Sweetheart earned the theater’s biggest box office receipts when her film “Hulda From Holland” screened that summer, assisted by the eye-catching display of turning the box office stand into a giant windmill.

In April 1917, the Woodley Theatre Co. issued $25,000 in capital stock and reorganized with Sennett as manager. The theater showcased Sennett films produced under his Paramount deal, premiering slapstick comedies with lavish stage shows featuring the Keystone Girls. Sennett stars such as Ford Sterling, Louise Fazenda, Charlie Murray, Gloria Swanson, and his world-famous Bathing Beauties often appeared at the theater, helping boost sales.

Woodley continued devising great publicity gimmicks, such as the creation of a gigantic papier-mache locomotive above the theater entrance for the “Teddy and the Throttle” release. While Sennett films opened double features, dramas starring such stars as Pauline Frederick and Mae Murray followed.

Looking for a bigger bang for his buck, Sennett announced a contest to rename the theater on October 19, 1917, with a $50 grand prize. Within a few weeks the theater unsurprisingly began operating as the Sennett Theatre with ushers in natty blue uniforms.

The entrance to the Woodley Theatre, made into the cab of a locomotive to promote Sennett’s “Teddy at the Throttle.”

The gimmick played well for a few months before running dry. Harry P. Caulfield, formerly manager of Universal City and the Garrick Theatre, took over theater operations in March 1918, changing the name to the Riviera Theatre but remaining a “high-class family theater” per the February 26, 1918, Los Angeles Herald. Business flattened.

Looking to increase attendance, Sennett authorized a major overhaul of the theater in September 1920, hiring the Frank Meline Co. to redesign the structure, adding new restrooms, orchestra pit, marquee, ticket booth, and dressing rooms and renaming it the Victory Theatre. The Victory continued to feature Sennett films and even preview his comedy features like “Down on the Farm.” By 1923 the theater was rechristened the Mission Theatre.

New owners bought the property in 1926, tearing down the Mission and constructing the regal Orpheum Theatre, which stands today.

For a short time, Mack Sennett gained power, publicity, and prestige owning and operating his own motion picture theater, helping set the stage for later production companies acquiring theaters to create large business conglomerates or for companies like Netflix looking for a glamour showcase to premiere their works.

Courtesy of KCET/PBS SoCal.

Long renowned for its excellent documentaries and intelligent programming, KCET PBS SoCal premieres another strong work with its moving portrait of pioneering African American architect Paul R. Williams in “Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story.” Co-producers/co-directors Royal Kennedy Rodgers and Kathy McCampbell-Vance focus on Williams’ inspiring story with an insightful production as graceful and stylish as the man himself.

Born in Los Angeles in 1894 after his parents moved from Memphis looking for a healthier climate, Williams was orphaned at the age of 4, separated from his brother Chester Jr. and raised by a foster family. Scolded by a guidance counselor for considering a career in architecture, Williams transformed himself into one of Southern California’s premier designers of elegant, refined homes.

A trailer for “Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story” is here.

Frank Sinatra goes over plans for his home with architect Paul R. Williams and Williams’ daughter, interior decorator Norma Harvey. Photo from Ebony Magazine, used in “Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story.” Courtesy of KCET/PBS SoCal.

Inspired by his foster mother to dream big, work hard, and pursue his passion, Williams followed a circular path through art sessions, landscape design training, architectural engineering classes at USC and apprenticing in some of Los Angeles’ top architectural firms before establishing his own practice. Coming of age at the same time as the West’s most booming city, Williams found more freedom and opportunity to chase his dream.

Williams ingratiated himself with mentor figures such as architect Reginald Johnson and  U.S. Sen. Frank Flint (R-Calif). His mastery of diverse architectural styles led silent film star Lon Chaney to hire him to design a glamorous but classy residence for himself. Other Hollywood icons such as Cary Grant, Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, and Frank Sinatra followed, winning him the nickname “architect to the stars.” After becoming friends with client, comedian Danny Thomas, Williams later designed St. Jude Children’s Hospital for free.

Current residents of Williams-designed houses like Disney CEO Robert Iger and producer Steve Tisch praise the luxuriousness and quality of their homes, extolling such touches as romantic curving staircases and grand, expansive entranceways featured onscreen. Christopher Hawthorne, chief design officer for Los Angeles, extols Williams’ designs, arguing for the historic preservation of these iconic structures.

Tenacious as well as supremely talented, Williams contested racism along the way. The refined man found himself unwelcome in hotels or restaurants he had designed, and endured having to draw upside-down and on the opposite side of the table from his white clients. Williams and his family were also restricted from living in many of the neighborhoods where he built homes.

An interior of a Paul R. Williams home, shown in “Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story,” courtesy of KCET/PBS SoCal.

The first African American to become a member of the American Institute of Architects in 1923, Williams excelled in commercial buildings as well. Such businesses as legendary Hollywood restaurants Perino’s and Chasen’s, department store Saks Fifth Avenue, talent agency Music Corporation of America, and the Beverly Hills Hotel, with its iconic script signage in his own handwriting, feature his sleek and dazzling designs.

Besides showcasing his work, the producers highlight Williams’ enduring legacy contributing to the betterment of others, especially the African American community. The architect promoted affordable housing and opportunities for disadvantaged youth, including building the 28th Street YMCA for youngsters in similar situations to those in which he grew up. He designed the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building which serviced the needs of fellow African Americans and helped found Broadway Federal Bank, which provided financial services of minorities in Los Angeles.

Timely and compelling, the documentary features interviews with Williams’ grandchildren as it reveals how the dignified Williams employed dazzling talent and strong perseverance to rise to the top of his profession as he battled racism and prejudice.

Released to coincide with Black History Month, the documentary premieres Thursday, February 6, at 8 p.m. on KCET PBS SoCal, later streaming on PBSSoCal.org and airing on PBS stations across the country.

Elmer Balaban, left, Mary Martin and William L. Pereira, Boxoffice, Aug. 3, 1940.

Almost a year to the day after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved funding to construct a new Peter Zumthor-designed building for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire Boulevard, demolition began on the William L. Pereira three-building campus for the museum erected in the 1960s. Academy Award winners Brad Pitt and Diane Keaton lauded the work of Zumthor and praised the number of awards he had received, without realizing that original architect Pereira had not only had won architectural awards, but also served as an academy member and had shared the 1942 Oscar for special effects for the film “Reap the Wild Wind.” Pereira began his architecture career with a focus on entertainment, and over the next 20 years, he made a major impact on the field through both architecture, charitable efforts, and films.

Born April 25, 1909, in Chicago,  Pereira graduated from the University of Illinois School of Architecture in 1931, joining the firm of Holabird and Root. He contributed to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair master plan before helping found his own film with his brother Hal called Pereira, Senseney and Pereira, quickly gaining recognition for their design of Chicago’s Esquire Theatre for Balaban and Katz. Within seven years, the film designed 74 other motion picture theatres and contributed buildings to the San Francisco World’s Fair before the Pereira brothers moved to Los Angeles in search of bigger challenges.

Mary Mallory’s latest book, “Living With Grace: Life Lessons from America’s Princess,”  is now on sale.

An architect’s rendition of the Hollywood Museum, designed by Pereira, Business Screen Magazine, 1964.

Ambitious, driven William Pereira found success combining architecture with film work, be it designing buildings or sets. Quickly establishing a niche at Paramount with President Barney Balaban, for whom he had designed the Esquire Theatre, Pereira designed plans in 1939 for a proposed new $12-million studio for Paramount in West Los Angeles, an unrealized project, while also serving as a member of the Advisory Board of the Modern Theatre Planning Institute. The Scarab National Architectural Society awarded him their Scarab gold medal in 1940 for “significant professional achievement” for an architect under 35.

Pereira continued important work for entertainment projects in 1941. In April, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Walter Wanger appointed Pereira and director Sam Wood to study location sites and types of buildings for possible construction of a new academy building. At the same time, he had served as co-art director for the Paramount films “Aloma of the South Seas” and “New York Town.”

The architect’s most important project that year served the needs of the motion picture industry’s veterans by providing them a home in old age or medical need. Entertainment trades noted at the end of March that Pereira volunteered his services to design a main building and exterior cottages for the Motion Picture Relief Fund after it acquired land outside Calabasas and Woodland Hills to build a “retirement, rest, and recuperation facility.” Directing construction of the project with Paramount’s Keith Glennan, Pereira worked with the Screen Set Designers Guild in laying out the interior design of the structure, opened to its first residents in 1942. For his dedication to the project, Pereira received the group’s first humanitarian award “for outstanding charitable efforts” designing the home.

Prolific as well as organized, Pereira also served as art director and contributor to special effects for Paramount films “Beyond the Blue Horizon,” “This Gun For Hire,” and “Reap the Wild Wind” for which he earned an Academy Award for special effects in 1943. Trades noted in 1942 that Pereira also converted Hollywood’s legitimate El Capitan Theatre into a first-run motion picture house for the studio, which they renamed the Paramount.

An image from “Jane Eyre,” set design by Pereira, from Photoplay Magazine.

Always looking for new challenges, Pereira moved on to projects offering more opportunity to shape the look of films. Early in 1942, David O. Selznick hired him to serve as production designer for his film “Keys of the Kingdom” but when it was postponed, Pereira moved on to Twentieth Century-Fox. He served as assistant director on the studio’s gothic release “Jane Eyre,” starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, with Film Daily calling the film “atmospherically impressive, offering solid architectural settings.” Motion Picture Daily’s February 2, 1944, review stated, “Creatively, honors clearly go to William Pereira, who designed the production… .”

Impressed, Selznick brought him back to the studio to serve as production designer for “Since You Went Away.” In a story noting the appointment, Showman’s Trade Review called Pereira “an artist of note and one of the country’s leading architects.” The two men planned out the design and look of the entire movie before filming, with Selznick and author Margaret Buell Wilder shaping the story to fit Pereira’s drawings. The architect designed the atmosphere of the film as well as creating structures to serve as factory, stores, and residences.

In 1944, Pereira moved over to RKO to work as an associate producer shepherding films through design, shooting, and editing. Pereira once again crafted an atmospheric production, helping it stand out from typical melodrama. Box Office Daily called the George Raft starrer “Johnny Angel” a credit to Pereira and Film Daily called it “well produced by William L. Pereira for a film of modest proportions.”

Pereira moved on to the Joan Fontaine starrer “From This Day Forward,” with Film Daily calling it an “exemplary production” from Pereira, offering a moving and realistic look at employment for returning veterans. Motion Picture Daily called the film “extraordinary in the timeliness and the breadth of its public appeal.”

Besides working on films, Pereira once again donated his time to assisting the Motion Picture Relief Fund. He worked with others on plans for the rehabilitation of film workers serving in the armed forces, which never came to fruition, but did complete the design of the new hospital for the Motion Picture Home in 1948. On the side, Pereira was signed by Paramount to design a theatre at Wilshire Boulevard and Doheny Drive that could be employed for taping live television, a project the studio soon dropped.

Returning to theater design, Pereira served as architect for the Encino Theatre in 1948 for Jules Seder and Howard Goldenson. Containing an outdoor garden, 400-car garage, and “special lobby features,” the 1,000-seat theatre cost $250,000. Over the next few years, Pereira designed KTTV’s television studios along with other entertainment structures.

Pereira focused on architecture exclusively by 1950, joining in partnership with old college colleague Charles Luckman to form Pereira and Luckman. Though trained in architecture, Luckman had turned to commercial marketing and later served as the president of Lever Brothers, buying large quantities of advertising on CBS Radio.

CBS Television City as it looked in 1952, Sponsor magazine.

Thanks to their connections and talent, the men earned the commission to design CBS Television’s new CBS Television City facility at Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, the first factory designed exclusively for television production. The site was what the November 11, 1952, Variety referred to “Gilmore Island,” the traditional name for a parcel of unincorporated county land annexed by Los Angeles in the 1940s, known for its concentration of Farmers Market, Stadium, Field, Drive-In, and Pan Pacific Auditorium. The 25-acre, $7.5-million CBS Television facility and campus featured moveable walls allowing flexibility, easy taping and production of such TV shows as “My Friend Irma,” “Lux Video Theatre,” Life With Father,” and the “Jack Benny” and “Red Skelton” shows.

In the same issue of Variety, Pereira and Luckman wrote of their trailblazing work, “Our aim was to develop a facility in which the creative elements in television – the actors, musicians, writers and directors – were provided the best environment for working and for projecting their talent; and at the same time design a plant in which entertainment could be mass-produced with enough economy and efficiency to meet the requirements of the management group in reducing operating costs.”

The team of Pereira and Luckman broke up in 1958, but Pereira quickly gained major entertainment related work on his own. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors had been discussing the construction of a motion picture museum for several years, and in 1959 they named him counsel and architect for the project. Pereira drew up plans for the large museum and vaults in which to hold film prints donated to the facility, a building offering a foreshadowing of his design for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire just a few years later. Financial discrepancies and outrage over the destruction of surrounding houses led to the demise of the project.

While Pereira’s landmark International Style CBS Television City just a few blocks up Fairfax received Historic Cultural Monument status last year from the City of Angeles, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors instead approved the destruction of Pereira’s landmark work for the museum. Celebrate Pereira and other’s historic work while you can as massive, new projects threaten their very existence. Pereira contributed much to the entertainment and cultural fabric of this city, and his thoughtful, elegant, work shouldn’t be forgotten.

Photo: An Oviatt clock, listed on EBay in 2010.

Note: This is an encore post from 2012.

Thanks to the motion picture industry here in Los Angeles, fine haberdashers and designers have sold elegant, tailored clothing to the rich and famous, while also existing in stylish surroundings themselves. Bullock’s Wilshire is one such establishment, Adrian’s another. Alexander and Oviatt, a fine men’s haberdasher in downtown Los Angeles, constructed a beautiful Art Deco sales room in the late 1920s, one which exists to this day.

James Oviatt helped found Alexander and Oviatt in 1912, to provide fine tailored clothing and furnishings for a male clientele. Located in downtown Los Angeles at Hill and Sixth Streets, the firm offered elegant, European cuts and styles, discovered during Oviatt’s travels overseas to offices in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna.

In early January 1923, Oviatt announced the pending construction of a twelve story office building on Olive Street that would house the haberdashery as well as office space for other businesses. The new edifice would cost approximately $750,000 on land rented for 99 years at a cost of $2 million, and be designed by Walker and Eisen, top architects in Los Angeles. As the January 14, 1923, Los Angeles Times described it, “The building, designed by Walker and Eisen, is to be class A, reinforced concrete construction, and will be finished in pressed brick, terra cotta trimmed…Alexander and Oviatt will occupy the basement, the first, second, and third floors of the structure. The remainder of the building, consisting of lofts, is to be rented to high-class specialty shops.”

Jan. 14, 1923:Alexander and Oviatt’s 12-story building on Olive.

The basement space would contain golf and sporting goods, with a practice golf course. The haberdashery and hats would occupy the first floor, the second housing the suit and overcoat departments, and the third would contain women’s sports clothes. A factory making pajamas, underwear, lounging robes, and shirts would exist on the fourth floor. Unfortunately, finances would prevent construction for five years.

In that time, they renovated the Sixth and Hill street location to resemble a Jacobean estate, with Oriental carpets, rich draperies, exclusive fitting rooms, mezzanines, hallways, and balconies.

On March 12, 1927, Alexander & Oviatt announced that they would soon begin construction on a thirteen story office building at 615-17-19 Olive Street, to cost approximately $1,050,000, with excavation already completed for some time. Per the Los Angeles Times article on that day, they paid $75,000 for a half-interested in the alley which would separate their building from the Sun Finance Building.

Over the next couple of months, as construction slowly began, Oviatt gained space in The Los Angeles Times to display the current style of men’s hats, as well as to display and describe the correct clothing for various professions. As the April 27, 1927, Los Angeles Times reported, “Every profession, he believes, calls for a definite style of attire. For instance, doctors should wear clothes which are in harmony with their calling; lawyers will – or, at least, should – wear the cloth of the bar, while newspaper reporters are expected to wear anatomical scenery which will silently proclaim their vocation to the world.” His description of the reporter’s duds: “Large Glen Urquhart plaid suit, purple hue; dark wine shirt with collar to match; pink necktie with pink carnation in buttonhole; white socks, black pumps, white gloves, straight handle Malacca cane with hand-carved ivory ball top and concealed compass attachment; vest pocket camera, small magnifying glass and telescope; pearly derby hat with black band and white binding. Very light tan coat with large purple plaid, suitable for wet or dry weather.”

The August 7, 1927, Los Angeles Times reported on construction progress, with Edwards Brothers completing foundation excavation, with concrete to be poured in the next few days, with subcontractor Thomas Haverty Company stating that they hoped to complete construction in record time. Interior designers Fell & Paradise were creating an elegant Art Deco design, per Oviatt’s instructions, after he had toured the 1925 Paris Decorative Arts Exhibition. The December 4, 1927, Los Angeles Times displayed the imposing elevation, along with a long story about its stylish interior.

Style permeated the building with no expense spared; French marble imported from Europe filled the space, with a green slate roof similar to those of Europe, door numbers were silver metal bordered in crimson enamel, all plumbing fixtures would be a tan shade to match the French marble and dark woodwork, all door top panels would be of amber cathedral glass, all hardware would be a new white metal called “Mallechort” or “Melchoir”, “commingling of copper, zinc and nickel and is both beautiful and durable,” per the December 4 Times. All the furniture, windows, carpets drapes, fixtures, etc. were being constructed in Paris and shipped to Los Angeles. The crowning jewel of the whole building was the first creation and installation of Lalique glass outside of Europe. As the paper described it, “Lalique has designed and built for the James Oviatt Building the entrance doors, elevator doors for both store and building, art glass windows throughout the building and the ceiling, which is exceptional in every way. Most of these creations now are on exhibit in the semiannual French art exhibition in the Grande Palais in Paris. The building crest, used on many of the doors and elsewhere, will be two angels, representing Los Angeles, the city of the angels, ringing chime-bells, the idea being to combine the old world with the city of Los Angeles.”

The building finally opened on May 15, 1928, and was widely hailed in The Times. “Something entirely different – a dream come true in architecture, in art, in decorative features has been embodied in this new building and in its series of shops.” They went on to describe how the lighting behind the Lalique glass seemed to resemble a rainbow.  All of this beauty seemed natural to Oviatt, as he told the paper, “Art is not a thing, but a way – a beautiful way.”  He was described as trying to instill ideals and artistic inspiration into business.

Two years later, Oviatt opened his own luxurious penthouse atop the building, one which included a pool with sand imported from France, a tennis court, gardens, Turkish bath, steam-room, and a practice golf links.  As with the store, rare foreign woods were imported along with furniture and light fixtures including more Lalique glass.  The apartment contained ten rooms filled with beautiful Art Deco furnishings, including a living room, guest room, dining room, reading room, dressing room, and master bedroom.

The Depression greatly impacted the firm, leading to unique ways to drum up business.  Per the November 12, 1930, Daily Variety, Alexander and Oviatt employed Nat Deverich, a former studio executive to coordinate three day visits to all the studios, where they modeled clothes for stars and executives as well as fitted them for new outfits.  They also offered deep discounts on their merchandise for the first time, with a June 23, 1932, Los Angeles Times article mentioning, “Lowered prices to meet lessened incomes” as one of their new slogans, as many of their patrons were now just having old clothes mended and altered without buying new wardrobes.  By 1933, they were reducing expenses while maintaining the same full staff and exquisite quality of clothes.  A couple of months later Oviatt was able to announce that all creditors had been paid in full, and that he was back in possession of the building.  By 1935, the firm completely remodeled the third floor for a made-to-order business.

Tenants in the building also enabled Oviatt to pay the bills.  Businesses such as electrolysis, beauty salons, and an employment agency for white collar workers operated at the Olive Street locations, as did the Music Corporation of America or MCA, a Chicago based music talent agency, which opened its LA office on half of a floor in the Oviatt building in 1931, per Variety.

By 1935, Oviatt’s was enough again in the chips that the firm sponsored a radio show called “Broadway Bill” with Edward Williams, which revealed gossip from Santa Anita racetrack and ran Monday through Saturday at 6:30 PM on KFAC.  As the December 25, 1935, Daily Variety reported, “It’s a hotter subject than studio shop talk and those who know their Hollywood know what that means.  Oviatt’s, class men’s shop, advertises the broadcast as a sporting gesture for lovers of horses.”

As the decades went on, Oviatt seemed to become increasingly conservative, to the point of alarm.  He wrote editorials to the paper denouncing the government’s financial policies, and became an ardent John Bircher.  He even rented space in the building to the Christian Defense League, which the attorney general’s report in 1965 called a para-military organization.

Jean Duardin and Berenice Bejo in a scene from “The Artist” filmed at the Cicada Club.

In the 1980s, the first floor became the elegant Rex Il Ristorante, one of the top drawer restaurants in Los Angeles, after developer Wayne Ratkovich completely restored the building in 1980.  Cicada moved in in the late 1990s, and chef Stephanie Taupin added gold leaf to the ceilings.  In the last ten years, Maxwell DeMille has taken over running Cicada, turning it into a swanky Dinner Club reminiscent of 1930s Hollywood.  Open Thursday through Saturday for dinner, on Sunday nights it becomes the Cicada Club, featuring a pricey prix fixe dinner and live music by some of Los Angeles top performers of 1920s-1950s music.  Patrons observe a strict dress code, with many wearing vintage clothes and dancing to their favorite performers.  For those who can’t make it live, DeMille streams the show live over the Internet.

In another unique bid to gain clientele and remain part of the chi-chi set, Oviatt’s opened an art gallery run by Ernst v. Harringa in 1937, which displayed old masters for sale during its first showing.

For those who have seen the Academy Award winning film, “The Artist,” Cicada is featured in a scene where Peppy is interviewed over the radio.  In the film, she comes down the stairs from the bar and the restrooms, not from the real entrance on the same floor.  One can catch a glimpse of the glory days of old Hollywood in that lovely scene.

The Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel in an undated photo from the Security Pacific Collection, housed at the Los Angeles Public Library.

A little run-down today, the Knickerbocker Hotel at 1714 Ivar has survived scandal and notoriety to endure as one of Hollywood’s grand old hotels from the booming 1920s. Beginning life under another name, the Apartment Hotel stood as one of Hollywood’s grandest residences in its heyday.

Though known today as the Knickerbocker, the structure actually started life under the name Security Apartments. After a home was moved from the lot in early 1923, construction began on the project. The Los Angeles Times reported August 29, 1923, that B.E. Harrison and E.A. Powell, managers for the Hollywood-Own-Your-Own Company Inc. announced the day before that architect E.M. Frazier had drawn up plans for the Italian Renaissance-style building, with Richardson Building and Engineering Co. to serve as contractors.

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The Knickerbocker Hotel via Google Street View.

Plans indicated that the 10-story, reinforced concrete, Class A structure would contain more than 170 apartments, divided into two rooms each, and cost more than $1.5 million from purchase through completion. The First Mortgage Co. issued a bond sale of $900,000 to begin construction, expected to take 10 months.

The Security Apartments would feature up-to-date and special features including automatic electric refrigerators, electric heat, electric ranges, vacuum cleaning service, Murphy beds, fireproof wall safes, soundproof apartments, tiled baths, telephones, radio connections, maid service, separate sheltered automobile entry, entertainment rooms, lobbies, Italian garden with sheltered arcade, roof garden with sun parlors, and four high-speed passenger elevators. An early form of co-op apartment, owners would own not only their own residence, but a part of the whole complex. Intended for upscale residents, costs ranged from $6,000 to $30,000 per unit.

Construction began on digging the pit for the building’s frame, and managers flooded newspapers with ads promoting the luxurious property, now 12 stories. Owners could live in their units or lease them to others in what ads called “the Biltmore of Hollywood.”

The August 3, 1924, Los Angeles Times featured a photo of the construction, stating that the property would include 172 apartments consisting of 81 singles, 55 doubles, and 36 triples. The William Simpson Construction Co. now served as contractor. The building now featured red brick and white art stone on the exterior, and the interior would include hardwood and white enamel finishings. Unfortunately, work slowed as money troubles hit the project, with elevators not ordered until June 1925.

Betty Fox, wearing a Super Circus banner, performs a stunt on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel to advertise the circus in an April 5, 1962, photo from the Valley Times, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library. The photo was “edited for publication.”

On October 13, 1925, the original permit for the sale of securities was revoked by the State Corporation Department “on the grounds that there were irregularities in complying with some of the restrictions of the permit.” The Holliver Holding Co. had applied to take over the project. Even without completing the project or having residents, owners listed the project in the city directory from 1926 to 1928 under the name Security Apartments.

Legal proceedings took years, but on February 19, 1927, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Collier ruled that a bond lien took priority over a mechanic’s lien. Court proceedings stated that the first construction company completed seven stories of the project, with half of the bonds employed in construction. Work stopped for months before another group took over the project to complete it. When this group attempted to refinance it after the original bond total ran out, banks refused to issue money, claiming default on the principal and interest of the original bond issue.

A new group secured a deposit of $887,000 of the bonds and proceeded to foreclose to take over, but the group that had finished the building filed suit. The judge decided to appoint someone to sell the property and hopefully receive enough money to cover the lien and to provide equity to those who completed it.

On November 29, 1928, Frank R. Strong, Walter R. Wheat, Elwood Riggs, and others purchased the building and grounds, with costs for this and remodeling expected to cost $2.65 million. The group would spend $200,000 to quickly remodel the structure, and spend $250,000 with Barker Brothers for furnishings. They would operate under the name Knickerbocker Apartment Hotel, hoping to receive a certificate of occupancy March 1, 1929, with the intention of it becoming “one of the finest apartment hotels in the West.” The building now contained 444 rooms and was considered the largest project of its kind in Los Angeles at the time.

The entrance to the Knickerbocker Hotel in an undated image from the Security Pacific Collection, housed at the Los Angeles Public Library.

Architect/general contractor John M. Cooper Co. on behalf of owner The Cromwell, Inc. pulled permits on January 26 to update the building. In particular, they would connect the two buildings by constructing a new section between the two wings, with a wall at the rear to form a new lobby. This new section would feature two bachelor apartments on each floor and allow passage from one building to the other.

In April, new owners under the name Knickerbocker Inc. operated the building. They pulled permits to turn the basement into a garage, remove partitions and install plumbing for a new kitchen in the south wing along with canopies on the exterior. In 1931, a new rooftop sign would be constructed as well.

Once opened in July 1929, the Knickerbocker served as Hollywood’s new in-spot to hold meetings and throw parties, as well as serving as a high-class residence. Publicists and other entertainment professionals opened offices in the structure. The Screen Writers Guild and other early guilds threw rallies and meetings at the hotel, and a flower shop operated in the lobby.

Papers reported in 1931 that former silent stars Sessue Hayakawa and Tsuru Aoki resided there after returning from overseas and the East Coast. Actress Jacqueline Saunders lived there for a short time before her furnishings and items were auctioned in September 1932. The Hollywood Reporter’s gossip column even included a squib stating, “what ex-blonde film star has such a yen for the gigolos connected with the Knickerbocker Hotel here that her husband is now up to his neck in tango lessons?”

The interior of the Knickerbocker Hotel in an undated image from the Security Pacific Collection, housed at the Los Angeles Public Library.

Jackie Coogan and his wife, Betty Grable, hosted an elaborate birthday party for Coogan with 200 guests in January 1936, and later that fall threw a costume party for 80. Mickey Rooney put together an eight piece-band to perform in the renowned Lido Room of the hotel in January 1937, performing occasionally. That winter, radio station KMTR even broadcast a daily show from the hotel.

Over the next few decades, the hotel remained a magnet for celebrities, good and bad. On October 31, 1936, Mrs. Harry Houdini held her last seance to try to contact her famed husband, magician Harry Houdini. Actress Frances Farmer would be arrested in her room January 13, 1943, after missing an appointment with her probation officer. Character actor Charles Grapewin and wife would be robbed of $2,250 worth of paintings from their apartment on October 2, 1945. Resident Alfono Bedoya, 36, would suffer a mild stroke while visiting the Mayan Theatre on September 9, 1949.

Though fewer in number, celebrities enjoyed their time at the hotel as well. Hoagy Carmichael hung out in the Lido Room with musician buddies in 1948. Joe DiMaggio would stay at the hotel when visiting Marilyn Monroe before they married, and Elvis Presley would reside there while shooting “Love Me Tender.” The TV show “This Is Your Life” surprised film comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in Room 205 on December 1, 1954, recording a show highlighting their careers. Other TV shows and films captured glimpses of the Knickerbocker as well, such as the film “711 Ocean Drive,” and the TV shows “Mission Impossible” and “Mannix.”

The interior of the Knickerbocker Hotel in an undated image from the Security Pacific Collection, housed at the Los Angeles Public Library.

Alterations continued over the years trying to keep the hotel up to date. In October 1939, four apartments were removed to be converted into service rooms, including maid and waitresses’ restroom and locker room, men’s locker room, a public/private dining room, and public restrooms. Architects Paul R. Williams and Stiles Clements would supervise minor alterations in the 1950s. In 1952, the apartments were converted into hotel rooms, and in 1955, a pool was added.

Sadly, the Knickerbocker earned more fame as the site of tragedy and notoriety, with several deaths occurring on the property. On May 8, 1937, school teacher Helen Parker of Ojai committed suicide by jumping out of her eighth-floor window, leaving a note for her husband which stated, “Harry: Please forgive me for lying about coming to buy new clothes.” John Hix, 36, writer for the internationally popular column “Strange as It Seems,” fell against a parked car in front of the hotel on June 6, 1944, dying at home of heart attack the next day.

Director D.W. Griffith suffered a cerebral hemorrhage July 23, 1948 while telling stories in the Knickerbocker bar, collapsing in the hotel lobby and dying on the way to the hospital. On November 15, 1962, troubled costume designer Irene Lentz, known professionally as Irene, checked herself into the hotel before committing suicide. Former resident William Frawley, famed comedian known as Fred Mertz on the “I Love Lucy” show, suffered a heart attack outside the Knickerbocker on March 3, 1966, dying in the lobby a short time later.

After World War II, the area around Hollywood and Vine began slowly declining and the former luxurious residence was turned into a hotel. By the 1960s, the Knickerbocker was merely a shadow of its former glorious self, languishing in decrepit circumstances. In 1970, the building was converted into senior housing and remains apartments to this day.

While now a fading diva, the Knickerbocker Hotel still possesses a remarkable history in the development of Hollywood and the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.

El Rancho Super Mercado Carniceria, 960 Vine St., via Google Street View.

Los Angeles has led the way in the evolution of shopping and markets, thanks to its fascination and acquisition of vehicles. Originally simple stores in the heart of a community allowing either easy pedestrian access or location adjacent to streetcar routes, popularity of automobiles transformed the very concept of markets. 960 Vine St., a grocery/market for virtually all of its 93 years, reveals how businessmen chased car owners to sell their wares.

For several decades in the early 1900s, acreage south of Fountain Avenue along what is now Vine Street remained mostly agricultural with small farms gradually giving way to small bungalows or the occasional apartment building. As Hollywood’s main arteries like Cahuenga and Vine grew more commercial and automobile ownership increased, the area gained larger, more diverse businesses catering to these people. Grocery stores evolved as well.

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The Vineyard Drive-In Market in 1927, from the Security Pacific Bank Collection, via the Los Angeles Public Library.

In January 1927, Richardson California Investment Co. purchased the northeast corner of Vine Street and Barton Avenue to construct a drive-in market. After moving Mildred Ireland’s small tenement, the company hired architect A. Burnside Sturges to design an attractive storefront. Focusing mostly on churches and schools, Sturges conceived a Spanish Revival grocery taking advantage of its Vine Street access to appeal to automobile owners.

The January 23, 1927, Los Angeles Times reported the Richardson Company market as the second drive-in announced for the area, seeing increased construction and newly laid concrete streets. Sitting back from Vine Street almost 40 feet allowed twenty parking spaces for automobiles to be added in front of the building. The developers named their attractive one-story market “The Vineyard” to appeal to upscale shoppers, employing concrete, brick and steel in construction.

Breaking ground in early March, the Vineyard beat the other market to construction, becoming the first grocery and open-air market on Vine Street. To make it more attractive to consumers, developers added a 12-foot canopy providing shade and protection to automobiles. Owners pulled a permit on April 23 to add an illuminated neon sign with gas-colored lights on their roof garden to enhance visibility at night.

The Richardson Co. sold the market to John Del Zoppo, who operated a variety of businesses inside the structure. The proprietor quickly made alterations, slightly reducing the size of the market by adding partitions to operate two other businesses inside the building. Besides the market, Del Zoppo opened a hardware and Hollywood Lawn Mower stores, a one-shop shop for those looking for products to enhance their homes. The Vineyard Market thrived as automobile ownership increased, with Del Zoppo running ads in 1931 looking for $25,000 in order to expand his business.

In 1933, however, Del Zoppo sold the structure to C.A. Gaines, a former fruit representative from the Fresno area as elaborate new supermarkets lured customers away. The new proprietor pulled permits to install glass front windows to enhance cleanliness for display products inside the market. Glass partitions/windows featured art tile at the ground adding another elegant touch. Gaines replaced the neon sign with a rotating one, hoping to further attract attention to those driving by.

Gaines struggled for a couple of years before selling the market to Louis Nathan in 1935. The new proprietor changed the name to Rotary Market and rented the two small storefront areas under the addresses 954 and 962. S. Vine St. D.E. Parker operated a meat market in 1938. Isaac Krizhevsky ran a fruit stand in one of the areas from 1935-1936 before Japanese American proprietors took over the space. Many Japanese businesses operated throughout Hollywood along Cahuenga and Vine from the teens, especially those catering to groceries and markets. Sakai Kato operated the fruit market in 1937 and 1938, to be replaced by Y. Yoshida in 1941. After internment and World War II, no more Japanese Americans opened businesses in the structure.

During the 1950s, owners renovated the building looking to maintain a steady business. The small storefronts were altered into a laundrette and a paint store, and have seen continual adaptive reuse since that time, currently operating as a dentist’s office and hair salon.

Though slightly shopworn after 93 years of business, 960 Vine Street still remains viable as a market, with little alterations over time and an excellent example of 1920s Spanish and drive-in market design. While most chain businesses today construct a continual string of cookie-cutter, modular structures, this striking little market demonstrates the care and attention builders took in 1927 to make it a distinctive business attractive to customers.

The Tower appeared in the March 24, 1939, installment of Nuestro Pueblo by Joseph Seewerker and Charles Owens of the Los Angeles Times.

Both marketing gimmick and necessity, the elevator shaft that gave the name High Tower Drive to a street in the Hollywood Highland Avenue Tract is now an icon in Los Angeles. Almost 100 years old, the tower represents the can-do spirit of Los Angeles and its residents.

In 1901, Los Angeles investors H.J. Whitley, F.H. Rindge, Griffith J. Griffith, M.H. Sherman, and E.P. Clark organized the Los Angeles Pacific Boulevard and Development Company to purchase land for development north of Prospect Boulevard in Hollywood. Sherman and Clark, brothers-in-law from Arizona, owned the streetcar line around the city adjacent to land they purchased for later sale as residential lots. Their trolley line ran down Prospect Boulevard and up Highland Avenue as well. The November 18 Los Angeles Evening Press stated “the purpose of this corporation is to boom Hollywood, to make it an attractive suburban town.”

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The syndicate purchased 165 acres north of Prospect (now Hollywood Boulevard) and adjoining Hollywood at its western edge at Emmet Avenue in the fall of 1901, with more than a mile of frontage on Prospect. The land ran adjacent to Highland Avenue to its west. Ads appeared that December calling the area the Hollywood Ocean View Tract. The December 5, 1901, Los Angeles Times stated that the area, part of Cahuenga Valley’s “frostless belt” and “home of the pineapple, banana and other tropical plants,” “has one of the most attractive views in this neighborhood, including the ocean, city, valley, and mountains.”

George Hoover would later purchase land at Highland and Prospect in 1902 to construct a 50-room hotel to be known as the Hollywood Hotel, and other sales would also include what is now the Magic Castle and Yamashiro’s. Sales would remain strong for three to four years, slowing petering out. Empty lots would continue to be sold to individual investors for years to come.

In 1922, one such syndicate appeared. Investor Fred S. Gallagher organized four other friends to pool their money for purchasing five acres of what they named the Hollywood Highland Avenue Tract. Gallagher, Platt Music Company secretary and treasurer, left the company in 1919 after six years of service, looking to set up on his own. He sold pianos and talking machines at 627 S. Broadway. By the early 1920s, he decided to invest his profits in real estate.

Gallagher’s syndicate purchased five acres north of Sycamore off of Highland Avenue from Edward S. Field for more than $50,000 on March 25, 1922. The group subdivided the property into individual lots, as best they could, with a large part found on a steep hillside. Following a common practice seen all around Los Angeles at the time, the group constructed stairs or “walk-streets” to upper reaches that lacked streets or driveways. Stairs provided easy access to city streets and public transportation, such as the streetcar line off of Highland Avenue below.

Budding mogul Gallagher hired construction engineer Edward T. Flaherty for help in designing stairs as well as even easier access to the high lots. Flaherty, “expert bridge builder” possessed great experience and reputation from constructing the Victoria Bridge at Riverside in 1917, Santa Ana’s Main Street Bridge in 1918, and the Ocean Park Pier in 1921. He would later serve as engineer for the lemon exchange building at Cahuenga and Santa Monica Boulevard as well as the Palmer Building on Hollywood Boulevard.

Newspapers reported April 9 on the group’s innovation, installing “a community electric automatic elevator, by which residents in the tract will be lifted to the top of the hill.” Residents would enjoy some of the best views in the area “without the physical efforts of climbing.” Garages would be situated at the bottom of the hill, near the entrance to the elevator. Ads even featured an illustration of the proposed tower.

Gallagher finally pulled a permit for the tower at 2178 High Tower Drive on October 24, 1922, listing Flaherty as engineer. Estimated to cost $15,000, the five-story tower would feature “250 yards of concrete and 20 tons of decomposed reinforcing steel” to bolt it to the hillside. The group intended it to stand permanently in Hollywood.

The tower’s dramatic, eye-catching look has made it a perfect choice for crime pictures looking for an evocative backdrop. First appearing in a 1961 television episode of “Naked City,” the tower has served as the home of Elliott Gould’s Sam Spade in the 1973 film “The Long Goodbye” and the 1991 thriller “Dead Again.” Strong yet silent, the tower’s individual design perfectly represents the character of the lone, crusading detective.

A true city landmark, 2178 High Tower Drive connects low and high, old and new, as it serves its residents’ needs and lives 98 years after construction.

One of Los Angeles’ most glorious examples of architecture merging glamour and commerce, downtown’s Eastern-Columbia building turned 90 years old September 12. Designed by Claud Beelman and erected in 1930, it symbolizes the City of Angels’ ascendance to the pinnacle of style, pizzazz, and success during the delirious 1920s. A stunning Technicolor Art Deco masterpiece, the Eastern Columbia Department Store exemplified the aspirational nature of both the companies that constructed it and the booming city in which it stood. The Los Angeles’ flagship location combining the operations of two outfitting companies, the Eastern Outfitting Company and the Columbia Outfitting Company, it demonstrated the growing success of the two concerns.

Though two separate organizations, both companies were founded and operated by the same gentlemen, Polish immigrants Henry and Adolph Sieroty and Henry Shemanski. Eastern Outfitting Company sold furniture and housewares while the Columbia Outfitting Company sold clothing; both selling well made, affordable products to those aspiring to greater things. To ease purchasing, the Eastern Outfitting Co. established credit installment pay plans in the 1880s, allowing the middle class access to better merchandise by paying fixed prices over a set period of time.

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The Eastern Columbia Building during construction, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

The Sierotys arrived in California in 1882 after immigrating as young men from Poland, quickly growing their fortunes and success. By 1885, they co-founded the Eastern and Columbia organizations in San Francisco, with the chains operating independently. The companies featured outlets up and down the Pacific Coast. Adolph Sieroty, Vice President and General Manager of the chain, arrived in Los Angeles in 1899 to establish Southern California branches of both around Sixth, Spring, and Main in the heart of the city. Success came quickly for the brothers, with the two outfits growing and adding

locations around Southern California and Los Angeles, always of high quality and architecture. In 1921, Columbia Outfitting Co. purchased 851 S. Broadway and gradually began acquiring the buildings surroundingsurroundng it as well. By January 8, 1922, the Los Angeles Times declared that the Eastern Outfitting Co. and the Columbia Outfitting Co. intended to construct a height limit Class A tower at the Northwest corner of Ninth and Broadway to house the two concerns, to be designed by the renowned firm Meyer and Holler. For unknown reasons, the company held off construction for eight years.

On April 21, 1929, the Los Angeles Times announced that Claud Beelman had released a statement announcing he would design a Class A tower of steel, reinforced concrete, and terra cotta at 849 S. Broadway, with J. V. McNeil Co. serving as contractors. “Modern type of architecture, as used in the latest New York City structures, has been followed in the design.” The structure would feature three high speed elevators and two freight elevators, with a lobby comprised of imported marble. Eastern would occupy the lower floors while Columbia would be housed in the upper, with other space leased to outside concerns.

A man poses with the clock, c. 1930. Los Angeles Herald Examiner Collection, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

That June, Beelman visited New York to inspect department stores “to incorporate advanced designs.” Wowed by Art Deco architecture there and in the nearby Richfield Building, the architect conceived an exuberant Art Deco structure for the site, something connoting glamour as well as success. Struck by other colorful buildings arising around the city, such as the Richfield, Bullock’s Wilshire, and the like, Beelman announced that he would add color to the building as well, drawing all eyes to its streamlined facade.

Though the stock market crashed in late October 1929, Eastern and Columbia moved ahead to building their deco palace. Construction began one minute after midnight, January 1, 1930, with McClintic Marshall Co. providing steel and Gladding McBean to create more than 1000 tons of glamorous terra cotta turquoise and gold terra cotta to outfit the building as stylishly as the merchandise sold. Businesses raced to sign leases in what promised to be one of Los Angeles’ most gorgeous buildings, with more than 90% leased by March.

Speeding through construction with a clean safety record, the $1.25 million building appeared ready for its close up in July 1930, with papers announcing on June 1 that the “modernistic” structure would be ready for occupancy in one month. A tad off, the department store prepared for opening in September. Papers trumpeted the new grand opening of September 12, noting the 13 story Streamline Moderne tower clad in cerulean blue terra cotta and gold leaf accents represented the best Southern California could offer.

Given special permission, the newly christened Eastern Columbia building at Ninth and Broadway exceeded the city’s 150 foot height limit by more than 114 feet with a sleek neon lit, four-faced clock tower, the largest time piece in the city, outfitted with a Telechron timepiece by the General Electric Supply Company. Unusual for its time, the clock tower featured the boiler room and mechanical equipment.

From its inception, Los Angeles’ residents saluted its beauty and style, eventually calling it the “Queen of Los Angeles’ Art Deco architecture, and one of the most beautiful Deco buildings in the country. The organization crowed about their landmark location’s beauty and convenience in full page ads in September 12 newspaper editions trumpeting that day’s housewarming party.

Eastern and Columbia operated separately in the space, with the floors containing the following departments:

Ground floor – lobby, arcade and glassed-in display area, elevators, Columbia apparel Mezzanine – Eastern – pottery; Columbia – apparel

Second Floor – Eastern – musical instruments; Columbia – apparel

Third Floor – Eastern – floor coverings and rugs; Columbia – apparel

Fourth Floor – Eastern – bedding and accessories; Columbia – apparel

Sixth Floor – shipping

Seventh Floor – Eastern – porch/patio furniture and lamps Eighth Floor – Eastern – living room furniture

Ninth Floor – Eastern – dining room/breakfast room, “junior goods”

Tenth Floor – Eastern – glassware/household accessories

Eleventh Floor – stock record department

Twelfth Floor – administrative offices/auditorium

Thirteenth Floor – employee showers, club room and lunchroom serving 700 employees; electricity, water, heating, air filtering, incinerator

The organization kept up with the times as well, undergoing renovations and remodelings over the next several decades. In 1939, the building experienced remodeling and expansion costing $130,000, with fluorescent lighting added to enhance interiors. Trying to improve on service, the company announced quicker credit, service, and delivery in 1940, along with free parking next door and across the street. They also began operating under one name, the Eastern-Columbia Department Store.

Growing sales led to the purchase of a neighboring building on Hill Street, with the new addition opening in 1950. While they kept up-to-date and stylish in every way, times were changing, with stores opening in neighborhoods where shoppers lived and businesses and offices moving away from the downtown area, leading to a slow deterioration.

On February 2, 1957, Eastern-Columbia announced a shocking going out of business, immediately beginning to liquidate stock. They would begin leasing out their space to other companies, turning more into a credit institution themselves. As they began remodeling, officials announced that most of the building would be converted into office space, with display areas for apparel companies. This $1 million remodeling would include adding air conditioning, adding marble walls to the lobby, terrazzo floors and sidewalks filled with chevrons and zigzags, and four high-speed elevators.

For the next few decades, the building continued as office space, earning recognition as a Los Angeles’ Historic Cultural Monument in 1985 before being converted into lofts/condos in 2005.

One of Los Angeles’ most striking and original structures, Eastern-Columbia still remains of the city’s, if not the nation’s, most fabulous Art Deco buildings.

Motion Picture Magazine, 1925.

Note: This is an encore post from 2015.
In the early days of the motion picture industry, no rules and regulations held down the field’s growth and development as companies basically made it up as they went along. There were no labor rules, no production blueprints, no permits required for much of anything. This free form independence allowed filmmakers the opportunity to let their imaginations go wild on story ideas, sets, even film locations. With small crews, a film company could easily sneak shots at virtually any public location without notifying police or gaining anyone’s permission.

This guerrilla style of filmmaking is obvious in primitive cinema, where dogs standing on the sidewalk run into the scene, or crowds can be glimpsed watching the filming or even joining right in. Moviemakers basically shot wherever they wanted, as many owners of possible locations just wanted to see stars or a film being made, and required no payment. Others were given cameos, and some possibly earned a fee for allowing filming, there is no historic paperwork to explain.

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Shooting at a lavish estate, on the other hand, required either making connections to an owner, or actually knowing them, meaning that few mansions were employed as locations in the first couple of decades. By the early 1920s, however, the Assistance League of Los Angeles created their own Film Location Bureau that licensed filming at exclusive sites while raising money for charity. The first of its kind, this organization allowed wealthy and important homeowners to rent out their property for filming while sometimes remaining anonymous and gaining money for their favorite charities.

Multiple stories over the years about the Assistance League’s Film Location Bureau claimed that Cecil B. DeMille was instrumental in the creation of the league through his enthusiasm at filming on the Hancock Banning estate down near Wilmington, but the dates and mathematics for his supposed involvement didn’t add up and lacked important details. The actual founding of the bureau appears to have taken place in 1921, as the August 23, 1921, Exhibitors Herald stated that Robert E. Wells, manager of the Bureau, reported that over $10,000 had been donated by the motion picture industry to charity in the last six months for the use of exclusive estates. The July 21, 1921, Los Angeles Times stated that Wells had formerly served as the manager of the Victory and later the Mission Theatres. The May 2, 1933 New York Times itself claimed the organization began in 1917.

The July 23, 1922 Evening Star stated that Rupert Hughes’ Goldwyn picture, “Gimme,” paid money to the Assistance League for the use of Mrs. C. Templeton Crocker’s San Mateo mansion for shooting purposes.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, July 3, 1943.

As Motion Picture magazine reported in a May 1925 issue, “A group of society women and social workers in California have an organization called ‘The Assistance League.’ For its charities, it raises funds by renting its houses to the movies. When they want a rich-looking house, the movies have only to telephone the League and explain whether they are looking for an imitation Fifth Avenue, a Long Island estate, an English country house, or a hacienda of California of the days before the Gringos came.” Fees of $150 a day were charged, with half going to the Assistance League and half to a charity of the owner’s choosing.

As an example, Motion Picture News stated in the July 2, 1923 issue that shooting of scenes for the Warner Bros. film, “Little Johnny Jones” occurred in and around the home of Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, arranged with Warner Bros. donated money to the Assistance League of Los Angeles to benefit charities.

The June 11, 1926, Los Angeles Times reported that the group raised almost $14,000 in 1925, with other charities receiving over $5,500 and the Assistance League themselves netting more than $8,200. The Assistance League’s own newsletter, California Southland, revealed in 1926 that the organization grossed $21,340, netting $13,425 for themselves and from the work of their Location Bureau. Some of the homes employed belonged to members of the group, while others came from friends and neighbors of these society women.

It was not until September 1927 that the motion picture industry itself formed a Location Managers Association per the September 22, 1927, Hollywood Vagabond, in order to share information on locations between member studio and production companies. The group also acted as a conduit between property owners and studio production teams.

The Assistance League’s Film Location Bureau suffered when sound came in, losing a large part of their revenue stream and studios began filming on stages where they could control the heavy cameras and equipment needed to record sound. As the December 1, 1929 Los Angeles Times stated, the boycott and restriction of actual location shooting ceased with the timing of “In Old Arizona,” and studios once again began visiting mansions for regular filming. Sound did force tough restrictions on shooting near airplanes, railroad tracks, tension wires, and major traffic locations, and the like, with production more difficult as crews expanded to more than four times the size of early film crews. As the leader said, “When sound came in, we had to revise our lest. We couldn’t use homes near trolley lines, airports, or streets.” Within a few months, the Assistance League began booking their exclusive list of properties once again, with new locations being added every year.

In 1923, a new leader for the group took charge, Mrs. Lee Wray Turner, a graduate of Harvard Law School with a master’s degree from Columbia. The mother of three children, she met with studio executives to discuss needed locations, discovered and selected them, took directors and crew members to visit these possible sets, created an iron tight contract, and then supervised filming. She called herself “the happiest woman in the world” for handling these location duties for the charity.

Mrs. Turner described her work for the Assistance League to newspapers, as reported in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph May 5, 1935, “We always prepare a contract which absolutely protects the owner against any damages and permits him to specify any charity as recipient of the fee paid by the studio. In this way we have obtained many locations which otherwise would be barred from motion pictures.” She also stated, “I would have a much wider variety of places to choose from if it weren’t for the palm trees. We can’t have palms in a setting that is supposed to be New York, Virginia, England, or France.”

As she also told the February 17, 1951, Toledo Blade, “I can draw a contract even movie lawyers can’t find a loophole in.” This contract protected the homeowner from possible destruction, set ground rules, and established payment. In effect, Turner worked as a buffer between owners and the motion picture industry, working to ensure that filming proceeded smoothly for all involved.

As the September 27,1936, Buffalo Courier Express wrote about Mrs. Turner, “She has to have the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job and the iron hand of Ivan the Terrible.” Her steely demeanor ensured that crews towed the line on film sets, as she arrived before anyone else each day, and was the last to leave after establishing that everything had been returned to proper order and nothing was damaged or destroyed. Studio personnel described how no one would even throw down a cigarette butt whenever she was around.

Thanks to her hard work, properties and mansions owned by such individuals as Edwin Janss, Harry Chandler, Harvey Mudd, Daniel Murphy, Edward Doheny, Frank Meline, Burton Green, Edwin Palmer, Alphonzo Bell, Lucky Baldwin, and the O’Melveny, Guastii, Camarillo, Jewett, and Bernheimer Estates allowed filmmaking. Every year the amount of properties available for filming increased, jumping from 1,500 to 2,000 between 1936 and 1937. The properties stretched from Burlingame to San Diego, Montecito and Santa Barbara included. Besides estates, the list included the Los Angeles Tennis Club, the Los Angeles Country Club, the Bel Air Country Club, the Flintridge Country Club, the Annandale Country Club, Busch Gardens, theatres, polo fields, parks, churches, beach clubs, race tracks, and pools. Fees also increased as well, ranging from $50-$500 a day for houses, with average fees around $150-$200 a day.

The Edwin Janns estate, The Times, April 5, 1936.

Edwin Janss’ mansion stood in for the home of Janet Gaynor and Fredric March in “A Star is Born” in 1936, Pasadena’s Jewett Estate hosted everything from Buster Keaton’s “Cops” (1922) to “Check and Double Check” (1930) to “Born to Kill” (1947). Busch Gardens, a favorite shooting site, saw such films as “Beau Geste” (1939), “David Copperfield” (1935), “Peter Ibbetson” (1935), “Disraeli” (1929), “Raffles” (1930), and “Get Your Man” (1927). In fact, studios could erect exterior sets in Busch Gardens, if they demolished them upon completion of filming.

As she told papers, “It has proved a good way to share Southern California’s wonders with the rest of the world.” Mrs. Turner also revealed that her hardest job was convincing an owner of a San Marino estate to allow a helicopter to land on the front lawn for the filming of “It Happened One Night.”

Mrs. Lee Wray Turner created her own photo library of locations, growing from around 3,000 to almost 10,000 images by the late 1930s, which she allowed studio location scouts to examine to choose possible filming sites. She then talked with owners, showed directors and crew members around the property, wrote contracts, provided insurance policies, served as go-between, kept extras out of homes, and saw that immediate repairs took place to any damage.

Revenues began dropping in the late 1940s for several reasons. Many property owners began subdividing large estates in order to pay taxes, while others were destroyed to make room for freeways or other developments. Studios began filming overseas to take advantage of monies raised from foreign exhibition which was forbidden from leaving those countries and helped alleviate tax issues for film conglomerates. Mrs. Turner told the Salt Lake City Tribune on January 2, 1949, “We don’t see why they go overseas. I can duplicate any foreign spot right here.” Around this time, her daughter, Marcia Smith, began assisting her mother in finding and arranging locations for the Bureau.

The Daniel Murphy home, The Times, April 5, 1936.

In 1955, Mrs. Turner left the Assistance League to become Executive Director of the California Arboretum Foundation, which she led until 1960. She arranged filming here just as she had for the Assistance League. On November 27, 1970, Mrs. Lee Wray Turner passed away, and she was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Glendale.

In 1970, Mrs. Smith began operating her own film location bureau out of her own home, per an ad in the Pasadena Star-News February 24, 1970, following in her mother’s footsteps.

By the time Mrs. Turner moved on to the Arboretum, Los Angeles and other cities had established their own departments for booking shooting at various public sites around the city, as well as establishing the use of permits to film on public streets and other locations. The motion picture industry’s use of location managers escalated, and organizations like Film LA would be formed to assist with location shooting as well.

The Assistance League of Los Angeles innovated the practice of obtaining luxurious estates and ranches for motion picture filming, which now is virtually a necessity for many of these sites to pay bills and maintain the property. Much research still awaits on the history of location filming, and how and when the use of permits was actually established.

A sketch of the “The Witch’s House” by Charles Owens from “Nuestro Pueblo,” courtesy of Mary Mallory

Note: This is an encore post from 2013.

Once upon a time, home design and architecture saluted fantasy and make-believe, and not just in fiction. Bilbo Baggins and lucky leprechauns resided in twee little bungalows, short, off-kilter, hutch-like, but so did imaginative and childlike Los Angeles residents of the 1920s. Storybook architecture, dreamed up and promoted by film industry veterans, flourished near movie studios, magical little Brigadoon-like structures.

A strong proponent of storybook design was Hollywood art director Harry Oliver. Noted for his work as art director on films “7th Heaven” (1927) and “Street Angel” (1928). Oliver merrily dreamed up colorful structures on the side, like the famous Van de Kamp’s windmills and Los Feliz’s Tam-o-Shanter restaurant. Another whimsical structure, however, remains his most famous design, the Witch’s House in Beverly Hills.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland:Tales Lost and Found” is available as an ebook.

A postcard of the “Witch’s House” is listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $10.97.

Oliver began working as a printer’s devil as a child and came to California as a theatrical scenery painter in 1908. By 1919, he was working for film director Irvin Willat as a technical director. Starting as a cameraman in New York’s fledgling film industry in 1908, Willat moved from studio to studio until he ended up as an integral lenser for producer Thomas Ince, especially on films like “Civilization” (1916) and “False Faces” (1919). Willat shot atmospheric films and devised intricate visual effects for the times as well, and sometimes edited the pictures on which he worked.

Willat directed the film, “Behind the Door” in 1919, on which Oliver served as technical director. Admiring Oliver’s work, Willat employed him as technical director on two more pictures that year, “Below the Surface” and “Down Home.”

When it came time to design an administration building for his new Irvin Willat Productions in February 1920, the director turned again to Oliver. Oliver’s playful design appeared on the March 1920 cover for the Home Designer magazine, a gabled, angular cottage with thatched roof straight out of “Snow White” or “Hansel and Gretel.” By April 15, 1921, the studio was virtually completed, and the dreamy building appeared as a set in the film “The Face of the World,” starring Barbara Bedford and Edward Hearn.

Unfortunately, Willat quickly ran into financial problems and by 1922 folded his company. The sweet structure was employed as a set for several years, until journeyman film director/producer Ward Lascelle purchased it. Lascelle, who entered the film business working for Fine Arts Studio and D.W. Griffith, acquired property in Beverly Hills at Carmelita Drive and Walden Drive in 1925, and realized that the colorful building would draw attention as his personal residence.

The March 1925 Photoplay magazine called the building, “An artistic structure, one might say, almost futuristic, all gables and gables and gables.” The magazine related that Lascelle bought a lot in Beverly Hills, and “he went to Willat and purchased his studio’s main administration building. He moved it gables and all…” to his property.

New Movie Magazine featured the house in its September 1930 issue, describing it as a “Witch’s House,” and giving a little history. “A strange Mother Goose creation of broken roof lines and eerie windows, this house was the studio of Irwin (sic) Willat. When he abandoned picture production, the structure was moved to Beverly Hills, where it is now the residence of Ward Lascelles (sic), another picture executive.”

The Green family and others owned it over the years, and by 1980, the home contained 12 rooms in 3,700 square feet, including wet bar, wine cellar, three fireplaces, maid’s quarters, three bedrooms, and four bathrooms. The home also appeared in at least two other films, “The Loved One,” and “Clueless.”

A popular tourist attraction today, “The Witch’s House” represents the perfect whimsical and spooky Halloween residence, a proper abode for such popular culture witches as Witch Hazel or Wicked Witch of the West.

A postcard of A.G. Schloesser’s Castle San Souci, listed on EBay for $7.98.

Before movies introduced dream-like locations and visions to the world, Dr. Alfred Schloesser constructed stunning fantasy castles, mentally transporting viewers to more romantic times and places. Although Glengarry Castle and Castle Sans Souci existed for only a few decades, they left an indelible impression on the city of Hollywood.

Born in Chicago on April 19, 1851, Dr. Alfred Guido Rudolph Schloesser lived and dreamed large from a young age. Born to naturalized Americans who had escaped oppressive Prussia and then achieved success in Chicago real estate, Schloesser graduated from respected high end schools before receiving graduate and medical degrees. He graduated Rush Medical College at 20, the youngest as well as first in the class. After graduation, Schloesser toured Europe, gaining additional knowledge and experience, studying tuberculosis in Berlin and spinal deformities in Switzerland.

Mary Mallory’s “Living With Grace” is now on sale.

A postcard of A.G. Schloesser’s Castle San Souci, from the Security Pacific National Bank collection, via the Los Angeles Public Library.

Returning to America, Schloesser served as a physician in Chicago for 15 years while balancing a real estate portfolio, He earned his own small fortune investing in the Hayden Hill mine in Lassen County in 1894. Schloesser and his wife, Emma, grew to love Los Angeles in the late 1890s after visiting her brother, a resident of the area. Moving to the city in 1899, Schloesser served as a physician while slowly spending more of his time in investments and real estate. In books such as “Who’s Who of the Pacific Coast,” Schloesser pridefully promoted his royal background, stating that he descended from “Count von Hopffgarten, Lord Chamberlain of Frederick William II of Prussia,” and the captain of Alexander’s regiment.

Like Harvey and Daieda Wilcox, Schloesser fell in love with the rolling hills and valleys of little Hollywood in the early 1900s. Moving quickly, he purchased acreage around what is now Franklin, Argyle, and Vine Streets in 1904 to establish his own real estate tract named Schloesser Terrace. Schloesser ran newspaper ads early that year promoting his new 20-lot tract, calling Hollywood, “The Queen City of Southern California,” the perfect suburb in which to build a new home.

Residents could erect their own homes, or buy complete small farms with residence and outbuildings. As a special amenity, Schloesser announced intentions to build Apollo Hall on the tract, a special entertainment venue featuring a large pipe organ to host dances, concerts, and theatricals, with bell chimes to strike on the hour and half-hour. Schloesser and his wife loved the arts, attending concerts, opera, and theatricals, and building his own performing arts center would further bring culture to Hollywood.

Like any great real estate man, Schloesser possessed enormous self-confidence and braggadocio, announcing his projects the best, the largest, most desirable. At the same time, he loved making an ostentatious display of wealth. Schloesser gave reports to the newspapers on all his various trips around the world, from the Arctic Circle to the Equator to Europe, particularly his meetings and social gatherings with royalty and celebrities like Theodore Roosevelt. To cement his status as Hollywood power mogul, Schloesser would erect a massive mansion to dwarf anything in the city. Long before William Randolph Hearst would construct Hearst Castle, Schloesser collected his own rare antiques and art to fill his elaborate Xanadu.

The September 13, 1908 Los Angeles Times announced Schloesser’s grand ambitions to construct a stunning mansion on his tract, at the northwest corner of Franklin Avenue and Grand View Boulevard to be called “Glengarry,” after the ancestral castle of his wife’s family near Inverness, Scotland. While large, this castle served only as forerunner to a more enormous, magnificent structure. Architectural firm Dennis & Farwell would design both Glengarry and its larger brother.

A postcard of A.G. Schloesser’s Glengarry from the Security Pacific National Bank Collection, via the Los Angeles Public Library.

Composed of heavy plaster to hold twelve large rooms, Glengarry would feature a medieval entrance hall with huge fireplace and bays, outfitted with “heavy-beamed ceilings, and high-wainscotted walls, with numerous shields, and suits of armor… .” Huge tapestries would line the walls, art from Italy and Germany would fill space, with special lighting hidden within vintage torches. Stained-glass art windows collected in Europe would highlight other areas of the home. Five bedrooms and baths would occupy the second floor, along with guest rooms featuring Murphy beds. The tower would include den and billiards room.

The large garden contained manicured lawns with an Italian fountain and rare plants from Europe. Glengarry’s entrance doorways would replicate Bremen, Germany’s “famous” City Hall entrance. Adding a special touch, two enormous 150-year-old Carrara marble lions from outside a cardinal’s residence outside Venice, Italy would flank the front door. After opening, Glengarry would host cultural gatherings of all types: symphonic concerts, opera recitals, theatricals, dance performances, and even special club meetings, a lavish location at which to entertain. Magazines such as Out West, and Homes and Gardens of the Pacific Coast included spreads on the lush estate. Some even mentioned it as a premiere tourist attraction.

Two and years later, Schloesser announced plans to construct a new massive castle across the street from Glengarry. Newspapers once again ran illustrations of the fantastic building, to be called Sans Souci, “Without Worry.” The November 13, 1910 Los Angeles Times stated that Dr. Schloesser asserted “that he regards “Glengary (sic),” his present stately castle dwelling at the northwest corner of Franklin and Argyle avenues, as a satisfactory architectural experiment only, and that he has had a larger place in mind all the time.” The Gothic Tudor building combined, “as it does in its lines, suggestions from the ancient buildings of the University of Oxford, Glengary (sic) Castle in Scotland, and a bit of the Gothic element from the Neurenberg (sic) Castle in Germany.”

A.G. Schloesser’s Glengarry, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

A grander residence required even more elaborate decorations, with a long, winding drive and huge brick “antique” wall surrounding the estate, accentuated by a “great Gothic gateway” entrance. A series of terraces would lead up to the castle, with the highest 50 feet by 20 feet and paved in brick. Grounds would extend 600 feet from Argyle. Nils Emitslof, “formerly landscape artist of the czar of Russia, creator of Queen Victoria’s Windsor orchid beds…” designed elaborate, landscaped gardens to rival those in Europe. The medieval castle’s tower would provide views to the ocean and Los Angeles.

The citadel’s entrance would lead “through an open, arcaded cloister into a Gothic hall, 50 feet by 25 feet, finished in oak, and with a heavily-beamed ceiling 25 feet above the floor.” Gothic windows high above niches filled with suits of armor would flank a massive stone fireplace. Stained glass with art depicting knights in the time of chivalry would fill the windows. Art would dominate a massive gallery, with a pipe organ at the opposite end. Louis XV furniture would decorate reception rooms, each designed after a different time period and style. Tapestries, art, and prints collected throughout Schloesser’s travels would line the walls.

Time arranging financing, planning, and design delayed construction until late summer 1911 however. The September 1911 Los Angeles Times reported that a permit for a 12-room home costing $16,000 had finally been pulled by Schloesser. Construction cost and size would explode beyond estimates in creating the lavish estate. Once completed in 1912, Schloesser put Glengarry up for sale, completely furnished.

Castle Glengarry sold for $100,000 October 7, 1912, to New York banker J. F. Riley to serve as he and his mother’s winter residence. Within a few years, however, Schloesser once again acquired it, renting it out to others. By 1920, silent film star Sessue Hayakawa and his wfe, Tsuru Aoki, would own the property, entertaining movie industry society as well as fellow Japanese. After Hayakawa earned a large contract in Europe in 1923, Aoki put the home up for auction in December, with large ads in newspapers. In 1924, Robert Walter Douglas, who pretentiously called himself a “world-famous American baritone,” attempted to lease Glengarry. When he failed to make the first payment, real estate agents discovered he was actually “the Ponzi of Art,” creating elaborate schemes to finance a lavish lifestyle.

As with Glengarry, Schloesser and his wife entertained the community with all types of cultural performances and salons at Sans Souci, as well as allowing groups to hold meetings or conduct fundraisers. In 1916, they opened the home to artist Henry Lovins to hold gallery showings of his paintings of such locations as Arroyo Grande, Long Beach, Yamashiro, Glengarry, and Sans Souci itself. For a time, Schloesser himself would operate an art gallery out of the Castle. As with Glengarry, Sans Souci filled tourist guidebooks like California Motor Guide and Gazetteer and California and Californians, called one of Hollywood’s greatest attractions.

Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler in a scene from “Tillie’s Punctured Romance,” filmed at San Souci.

Recognizing Sans Souci’s uniqueness, Schloesser permitted movie companies over the years to rent it out for filmmaking. Marie Dressler, Charlie Chaplin, and Mabel Normand appeared on its grounds for the filming of Mack Sennett’s “Tillie’s Punctured Romance” in 1914, with comedian Billie Ritchie causing a ruckus at a social event on the estate for the 1915 short “Almost a Scandal.” Renowned director Lois Weber directed her epic “Dumb Girl of Portici” starring dancer Anna Pavlova on the grounds in 1916, using San Souci as a stand-in for ancient Italy. In 1925, the Hal Roach Our Gang short “Mary, Queen of Tots” featured the mansion as the home of star Mary Kornman.

After World War I started in 1914, the Schloessers even organized fundraisers for German widows and orphans and other European countries, before throwing massive rallies and fundraisers for the Allied effort after the United States entered the war in 1917. Not until April 12, 1918, however, would Schloesser and his wife petition Los Angeles’ Superior Court asking for a name change because of their “hatred for all things Prussian,” noting they were both American born, strong flag wavers, and war supporters. They asked to change their last name to Castle, the English translation of Schloesser.

Over the next decade, Schloesser moved in and out of a variety of careers, selling real estate, running a medical practice for glandular therapy out of the home, and even continuing the art gallery. He put Sans Souci up for auction with furnishings in 1921, but it failed to sell.

Expensive to maintain, the resourceful Schloesser recognized the value of the property on which his mansion stood. Demolishing his own lavish estate, the real estate magnate pulled permits in 1928 to construct a 7-story, 156-room apartment building costing $265,000, naming it the Castle Argyle Arms in homage to the glorious castle. Not long after, newspaper stories reported that Schloesser intended to build another elaborate castle with sixteen rooms near Castle Argyle to be called Falconhurst Castle, but these plans failed to materialize.

Though Sans Souci survived less than 20 years, Glengarry stood until the 1960s, when it too was demolished for other structures. Built originally as models of conspicuous consumption, these magnificent residences came to reflect the over-the-top glamour and inventiveness of Hollywood, dreamy escapes from the dreary, drama-filled world around them. Sans Souci and Glengarry set in motion Hollywood’s creation of magical netherworlds, Brigadoon-like visions arising from the misty earth, as well as celebrity over-the-top McMansions, caricatures of style fashioned out of huge amounts of money.

T.L. Tally, Moving Picture World, 1915.

Note: This is an encore post from 2017.

Los Angeles has stood at the forefront of not only motion picture production, but the fields of exhibition and distribution as well. Former Texan T. L. (Thomas Lincoln) Tally pioneered in these fields, seeming to anticipate changes in the marketplace during the early decades of the Twentieth Century. Shrewd and risk-taking, Tally earned a fortune entertaining the citizens of Los Angeles, introducing several firsts to the city, including the first theatre built exclusively to show motion pictures and the first to cause a nitrate fire. As early as the 1920s, articles and books proclaim him as the pioneer exhibitor in Los Angeles, but “printing the legend” instead of the facts as to when he entered the moving picture business.

Little is known of his early life, save that Tally was born July 6, 1862, in Rockport, Texas (per ship passenger logs). By 1890 he resided in San Antonio per the March 26, 1890, San Antonio Daily Express and first visited Los Angeles in April, when the April 6, 1890, Los Angeles Herald lists him as a guest at the permanent exhibit of California on Wheels.

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T.L. Tally in his Phonograph Parlor in San Antonio in 1893, International Photographer.

Tally perhaps discovered his fascination with the mechanical reproduction of sound, film, and other products when he visited the 1893 Chicago World’s Exposition, perhaps seeing the demonstration of Thomas Edison’s Kinetophone, which married motion picture film and sound for the first time. At the same time, sounds emanating from the phonograph gave him a thrill, introducing famous singers and their world-renowned voices. Savvy and entrepreneurial and enamored of the new technologies, he returned to San Antonio as the city’s representative of Edison Phonographs, opening a Phonograph Parlor to introduce the new and exciting product to the state of Texas. Phonographs allowed average people to hear great singers and performers warbling the latest and greatest song hits, as well as providing a unique form of entertainment.

Over the next few years, Tally visited both Santa Monica and Los Angeles per news records, setting up Phonograph Parlors in Santa Monica and a business at 245 S. Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles, focusing on businessmen and immigrants for his early business. Perhaps Tally visited Peter Bacigalupi’s Kinetoscope Parlor, falling in love with the visual presentation of moving pictures and the dreamlike world they offered. Bacigalupi, the sole California representative of Edison products like the wondrous Kinetoscope, was born in New York City and moved to San Francisco as a young man before immigrating to Peru and becoming prosperous promoting trade photos, acting as a Remington typewriter agent, and selling other products. He returned to San Francisco in the early 1890s and established Phonograph Parlors there before setting up his Edison Phonograph Parlor at 206 S. Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles, and later a combined Phonograph and Kinetoscope Parlor as well, which allowed individual viewers to watch a short film by turning a knob and watching images on a small screen in a cabinet.

T.L. Tally in his movie parlor at 311 S. Spring St. in Los Angeles, which opened in August 1896, according to  International Photographer, 1932.

“At the rear center are two chairs facing an Edison peepshow on the screen. At the left side of the picture are the Edison kinematographs, in the center Biograph mutoscopes, and at the right the customers are listening to phonographs.”

Bacigalupi purchased a December 24, 1894 ad in the Los Angeles Herald inviting citizens to come see Edison’s great invention, the first time motion pictures appear to be advertised and exhibited in the city. He advertised the first screening of a moving picture film in Los Angeles with his September 25, 1895 Los Angeles Herald advertisement stating that he is the sole California Edison representative for “enlarged and improved Kinetoscopes,” announcing “Corbett vs. Courtney prize fight, six furious rounds and knockout, will be on exhibition for a short time only at 248 S. Spring Street; 5 cents per round or six rounds 30 cents.”

Overwhelmed attempting to operate and manage Phonograph and Kinetoscope Parlors in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Bacigalupi sold his downtown Los Angeles parlor to the ambitious Tally and moved back to the City by the Bay. Showman and huckster Tally went all out promoting his new acquisition, buying an October 8, 1895, Los Angeles Herald ad stating, “Expert phonograph and exhibitor of east who has been located at 245 S. Spring St. bought Corbett fight to show at new parlor at 248 S. Spring.” Tally appeared to have acquired a Vitascope to add to his Kinetoscopes, Mutoscope, Phonographs, and peep shows, with a July 25, 1896, ad stating that images would be displayed on a “great screen,” just a week after the Vitascope’s first performance at the Orpheum theatre downtown. This would enable the huckster to promote both New York’s greatest song hits and amazing moving pictures to enthralled audiences.

An ad for Edison’s Projectoscope at Tally’s Phonograph Parlor, 311 S. Spring St., Los Angeles Herald, Sept. 30, 1898.

Tally moved all his business to downtown Los Angeles by fall 1896, as the September 15, 1896, Los Angeles Herald reported that his parlors at Santa Monica’s Arcadia Hotel were “being removed to Los Angeles, where Mr. Tally will house his headquarters.” This business would be located in the basement of the Ramona Hotel at 311 S. Spring, a storefront operation. The observant and thoughtful Tally witnessed what attracted patrons and sought to satisfy their desires, thereby growing in success. Putting the patron first earned him a fortune.

Terry Ramsaye in his 1926 book “Million and One Nights” claimed that patrons were wary of entering the storefront, so that the sharp Tally created a partition with holes in it facing the screen, “so that patrons might peer in at the screen while standing in the comfortable security of the well-lighted Phonograph Parlor.” Events in September suggest otherwise, that Tally in fact operated an open projection room.

At this location, Tally appears to have caused the first nitrate film in the city of Los Angeles, as reported by the September 15, 1896, Los Angeles Herald. The story recounted Tally’s Vitascope catching fire in his operation under the Ramona Hotel, and causing $3,000 worth of damage, with wallpaper scorched off the upper walls and ceiling and the apparatus basically destroyed.

Tally’s Broadway Theater, at 6th Street and Broadway, seated 500 people, according to Moving Picture World, which called it “the first real motion picture theater in Los Angeles.”

The story described the setup as follows: “On a platform built over the main front entrance was mounted the expensive machinery of the Vitascope, from the lens of which life size moving pictures were thrown onto a screen at the further end of the room. A powerful arc light was used here and it was from it the fire originated. A spark from the carbons of the arc lamp fell onto a roll of film used in the Vitascope and the inflammable material flashed up like powder. It was but a second until the fire had seized on everything on the little platform and spread down the room, carried by a cloth chute through which the rays of the vitascope were projected onto the screen at the end.”

Twenty of Tally’s Vitascope and Kinetoscope films were destroyed at a value of $1,200, and the apparatus virtually destroyed, all of which could be replaced by his insurance. Quickly replacing his stock, Tally reopened and continued his business success, with his wife Mary (M. A.) listed as proprietor in the city directory around this time. His brother Edward operated the Phonograph and Projectoscope Parlor at 339 S. Spring St. in 1899.

Some surrounding business owners, perhaps jealous of his success or peeved by his successful demonstrations of his product, appealed to the city on November 18, 1898, to halt his playing of songs audible to the neighborhood, which many found annoying. Tally found others supporting the music, claiming it brought happiness to the area. The two sides appeared to reach a truce, and business continued profitably for the smart Tally

.

Dec. 17, 1899: International yacht race at Tally’s Phonograph Parlors, 399 S. Spring St., Los Angeles Herald.

In 1901, O. F. Goodrich who managed his parlor at 137 S. Main Street and another operator were arrested for showing “lewd and obscene photographs of nude women in indecent attitudes” in their “nickel-in-the-slot” machines. While some obviously disapproved of the entertainment, the parlors were not closed, but continued to operate, dispensing entertainment for those of all persuasions.

By 1900, Tally owned two parlors downtown, the one at 339 S. Spring and one at 137 S. Main, larger than his previous stores. Business continued booming as he expanded his advertising reach beyond businessmen to housewives as well. He began dreaming of bigger and better exhibition practices, focusing solely on the exhibition of moving pictures for the general public, women as well as men, a first for the city of Los Angeles.

Eager to make more money, Tally took over the larger space of the Electric Theatre at 262 S. Main Street in which to conduct his experiment. Ramsaye reported that Tally purchased an ad in the April 16,1902, Los Angeles Times, but I only find one in the May 10, 1902, Times, where Tally proclaimed the Electric Theatre “a new place of amusement, providing up to date moving picture entertainment, especially for ladies and children. See the Capture of the Biddle Bros, New York, in a Blizzard,” and many other interesting and exciting scenes. An hour’s amusement and genuine fun for 10 cents admission, evenings 7:30 to 10:30.” An overwhelming success, Tally advertised afternoon matinees for children at 5 cents a piece.” He called his entertainment “a vaudeville of motion pictures lasting an hour.”

Tally quickly learned the power of hyperbole. On May 12, Tally ran an ad appealing to women, stating, “Ladies, bring the children to see the beautiful snow scenes.” By May 14, he tops that, announcing, “Ladies, bring the children to see the grandest MOVING PICTURE SHOW ever given.” Of course, this was the first motion picture show ever exhibited in the city, making his announcement slightly ironic.

Over the next twenty years, Tally would inaugurate many new practices in the exhibition and later distribution fields, making a fortune entertaining the masses with the grand new medium of motion pictures. A following post will describe his innovative practices in expanding the reach and output of the business.

To be continued.

“The Great Corbett Fight” at Tally’s theater.

Note: This is an encore post from 2017.

Former Texan T. L. (Thomas) Tally pioneered early film exhibition practices in the film metropolis of Los Angeles, catering to the needs of his audiences. Always enamored with technology, he seemed to anticipate and lead trends in advancing both the presentation of films as well as their selling and distribution. Though Tally was recognized as an innovator, his history has been promulgated with repeated errors that distort history.

In my first post, I presented the first part of the factual history regarding Tally’s life. Born in Rockport, Texas in 1862, he established his first phonograph parlor in San Antonio in 1890 and first visited Los Angeles that year. Fascinated with engineering and mechanical marvels that produced sound and images, he began seeking out these products.

Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: T.L. Tally – L.A.’s Pioneer Film Exhibitor, Part 1

T.L. Tally in “Moving Picture World”

Tally established his first phonograph and kinetoscope parlors in Santa Monica and Los Angeles in 1895, a full year before any other historian puts him in Los Angeles, announcing on October 8, 1895, that he had purchased Peter Bacigalupi’s downtown parlor and was continuing the exhibition of the Corbett fight. On July 25, 1896, he announced his acquisition of a Vitascope and exhibition of films in the Los Angeles Herald, and later caused the first nitrate fire that September.

Leading the way for other exhibitors, Tally took over the Electric Theatre at 262 S. Main Street and turned it into the city’s first film-only theatre, opening on May 10, 1902, with an ad in the Los Angeles Times, not in April as other historians claim. One of his later advertisements that month stated, “a vaudeville of moving pictures lasting one hour,” thereby elevating film to the realm of theatre. Tally promoted his business with side screenings in Oxnard, per the Oxnard Courier. The savvy businessman attracted big crowds, advertising off and on in the newspaper through the summer of 1903, never going out of business and never going on the road. In fact, Tally first exhibited Melies’ “A Trip to the Moon” at the Electric Theatre on June 17, 1903, per an ad in the Los Angeles Times that day.

On July 19, 1903, Tally elevated his program, refining it for a better class of patrons. The Los Angeles Times ad revealed a new name for the Theatre, the Lyric, featuring “refined vaudeville, and will still continue to keep the lead of all other show houses with our fine programme of moving pictures.” Admission remained 10 cents with continuous performances. Perhaps his screening of better pictures rubbed off on the newspaper, for it gave its first review of the motion picture “Fairyland” playing at his theatre on October 11 of that year, going on for nine paragraphs about its wonders.

As moving pictures improved and grew more popular, exhibition grew more profitable and advanced as well. Seeing a steady rise in attendance, Tally soon realized he needed a larger space to accommodate higher-class patrons and to put on a more elaborate show. He acquired 554 S. Broadway, the Broadway Theatre, which possessed 500 seats. Tally renamed it the New Broadway Theatre and upgraded his presentations. By 1909, moving pictures were becoming a growing business not only in Los Angeles, but in towns large and small throughout California. Seizing on opportunity, Tally established a film exchange on the upper floor of his theatre, selling all manner of product to other exhibitors, growing his business and his acumen.

Staying ahead of the curve, he spent $600,000 to purchase a 50-year lease on land at South Broadway and Eighth Street between Hamburger’s Department Store and the Majestic Theatre on which to construct an even more elaborate theatre, and one to hold 900 patrons. The March 16, 1910, Los Angeles Times reported that Odemer and Homeyer would construct the two-story $25,000 theatre designed by Train and Williams, a lass-A building constructed of steel and concrete.

Located at 831-835 S. Broadway, the theatre originally had been conceived as an eight- to ten-story building, with mostly offices on upper floors, but only the two-story theatre was constructed. It featured marble corridors, mahogany paneling, two high-speed elevators and one freight elevator. Tally went high-tech, adding the first electrical orchestra pit, which lifted the group from the basement to stage level at the start of the show, called a “disappearing orchestra.” The September 1, 1910, issue of Nickelodeon magazine also noted his elaborate program,” five reels of licensed pictures, two illustrated songs, and either vocal or instrumental specialties… .”

Smart and observant, Tally catered to the wants and desires of his patrons. Once he discovered their interests, he focused on films to continue luring them in. He screened early Biographs and other major companies’ product, and on September 18, 1913, signed a contract giving him exclusive rights to exhibit Famous Players Film Co.’s moving pictures in his theatres. On August 20, 1914, Tally consolidated his power and position by inking a deal to control the booking of most big features in Los Angeles and the Southwest, looking for ways to make more money.

When Famous Players merged with the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co. and formed the distribution arm Paramount Pictures, Tally negotiated a contract on September 5, 1914 giving him the exclusive right to exhibit their films. To fill out his schedule throughout the year, he also booked Selznick, Goldwyn, Fox, Metro, and Hodkinson pictures. Refusing to raise prices, Tally hosted eight shows a day featuring musical accompaniment, with 22 employees serving the needs of the public.

Always looking for ever more elaborate ways to upgrade presentations, Tally enhanced his theatre’s musical capabilities by installing what some call the first moving picture theatre organ. The July 10, 1915, Moving Picture World stated that Tally paid $17,000 to the Johnston Organ and Piano Music Co. for a four manual echo organ, the largest of its kind in the world, for his house. Built in Los Angeles, it consisted of a swell organ, great organ, choir organ, and echo organ, housed all around the building. Jean de Chauvenet served as the first organist, with special concerts on Sunday. Besides the magnificent organ, the theatre featured four stained glass panels in the ceiling, large windows flanking the screen, and green plush curtains framing the screen.

By 1917, Tally and other major exhibitors across the country chafed at the idea of paying studios for a program of pictures in order to get the few blockbusters starring mega stars like Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. On April 20, 1917, he joined with J. D. Williams and others to form the First National Exhibitors’ Circuit, buying films outright from major producers to distribute on their own, cutting out the middlemen. The group met in New York on May 12, 1917, electing S. L. “Roxy” Rothafel president and Tally as vice president. First National’s Los Angeles office was housed in Tally’s theatre.

Tally took an active role, negotiating on his own with Sydney and Charlie Chaplin for exclusive right to Chaplin films, finally signing Chaplin to a $1-million contract for eight pictures plus a $75,000 bonus after cigars and coffee at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, per the August 1, 1917 New York Clipper. Members would pay a pro-rata share of Chaplin’s contract. The paper reported that Tally had never shown a Chaplin film in his theatres and failed to find him funny, but realized his enormous popularity with audiences. Tally pursued talks with Mary Pickford as well, arranging an exclusive deal with her in September 1918 in which she would make four films for $250,000 each. At the same time, Tally purchased the Kinema Theatre on Grand Avenue in September 1919 for an additional outlet.

First National was none too thrilled when Chaplin, Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith formed United Artists in 1919, requiring Pickford and Chaplin to fulfill their contracts with the company. Pickford completed her films but Chaplin failed to deliver the vast majority of his product.

By 1920, Tally yearned to return to his first love, exhibition. He resigned from First National and sold off his interests in the company. He also joined with Sol Lesser and the Gore Brothers in exhibition in a company called Fox West Coast. He turned the Broadway over to them for several months, before taking it back in 1922 and turning it into a second-run house.

Tally continued in the exhibition business until he sold the Broadway Theatre to the May Co. in 1929, which demolished it in May to construct a 10-story addition. The smart businessman began looking for new challenges, helping finance the creation of a Three Dimensional film camera by a Mr. De La Garde in 1931. He took over the Criterion Theatre and operated its house for several years after Fox West Coast went through reorganization. By the mid-1930s, Tally was suing multiple people for bankruptcy, and financing deals gone bad, though he needed no money.

On Thanksgiving Day in 1945, Tally passed away at his Beverly Hills home at 703 N. Palm Drive, gaining mention in the papers as the founder of Los Angeles first exclusive film theatre. As early as the late 1910s, film trades played up Tally’s background in exhibition, recognizing the wrong dates he entered the business and founded the first film theatre, errors passed on by newer researchers who failed to check facts.

Thomas Tally stands as one of the pioneers of film exhibition in the United States, establishing ever improved theatres and presentations to lure customers and provide outstanding entertainment. He organized practices trying to establish some separation between producers, distributors, and exhibitors, giving major stars opportunities to establish their own production companies and to control their own destinies. Virtually forgotten today, Tally helped lead the way to make film screenings a magical night out, where the “show” starts on the sidewalk.

Time to start the Daily Mirror’s holiday gift suggestions and there’s no better way to begin than with “Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Essence of Sunshine and Noir” by my Crime Buddy Nathan Marsak, published by Angel City Press ($40). The book is full of historic photos and vintage ephemera, and the text is a deep dive into L.A. history in Nathan’s freewheeling style. If you’re fortunate and have a local independent bookstore, try it first.

Nathan is also the author of “Los Angeles Neon” (2002) which is out of print, but available from a variety of dealers.

As of today (Nov. 27), “Bunker Hill” is in stock at Skylight Books and Book Soup and can be ordered from Vroman’s in Pasadena.  Also available online from Angel City Press.

Also available from Amazon.

The Hollywoodland Sign, in a photo published in the Los Angeles Evening Herald, Dec. 8, 1923.

Note: This is an encore post from 2017.

Originally constructed as a publicity gimmick and branding symbol to help generate sales for a real estate development, the Hollywood Sign is now a worldwide icon just as powerful as Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty, signifying a land of glamour and opportunity. Myths have always existed about it, from the date of its construction to how the city of Hollywood obtained it. After in-depth research by both historian Bruce Torrence and myself, we can conclusively say the sign was constructed in late November and early December 1923, and illuminated in that first week of December.

Like me, a California transplant involved in history, research, and writing since I was child, Torrence has always been fascinated by Hollywood history, perhaps because his two famous grandfathers contributed much to it. His paternal grandfather, Ernest Torrence, starred in many classic silent films such as “Steamboat Bill Jr.” and “Peter Pan” after a successful career as an opera singer. His maternal grandfather C. E. Toberman could be called the builder of Hollywood for his construction of so many iconic structures around Hollywood Boulevard. Bruce began a photo collection of Hollywood in 1972 with thirty photographs, which has blossomed into thousands. He employed these photos in writing one of Hollywood’s first detailed history books in 1979 called “Hollywood: The First 100 Years.”

Hollywood at Play: The Lives of the Stars Between Takes, by Stephen X. Sylvester, Mary Mallory and Donovan Brandt, goes on sale Feb. 1, 2017.

Both of us are dogged in searching out facts and details to get Hollywood history right, made much easier with the opening of newspapers through microfilm and now digital searching, along with such great digitized sites as the Media History Digital Library and Variety Archives at the Margaret Herrick Library. We look for multiple citations to back up evidence, and especially primary evidence, such as documents, building records, and films, and secondary sources like newspapers, magazines, and books. Getting history right often means correcting yourself, as I admit I fell into the trap of claiming the Hollywoodland Sign was constructed in July 1923. After years of research by both of us, we have discovered the missing pieces clarifying the history of the sign.

When I began writing my Arcadia Publishing book “Hollywoodland” in 2010, I began searching out the history of the development and its world famous sign. Few if any period sources could be found providing a detailed, accurate history of the Hollywoodland Sign, even the Los Angeles Times, owned by one of the five partners of the Hollywoodland development. No newspaper reported the actual day of the beginning or completion of construction, but thanks to discovery on the history of Hollywoodland publicity chief L. J. Burrud, I began slowly piecing the puzzle together.
L.J. Burrud, Hollywood Publicity Man

Hollywoodland developers Tracey Shoults and S. H. Woodruff announced the opening of the real estate tract in late March 1923 newspapers. They focused mainly on the newspapers of record for Los Angeles, like the Times and Examiner, attempting to appeal to upper middle class and rich businessmen and entertainers. Since Times publisher Harry Chandler was one of the partners, the newspaper provided ample free publicity of the site in multiple stories virtually every day of the week, often with photographs. With real estate booming all round the city, sales initially took off, but the real estate men realized they needed special publicity to help brand their neighborhood as the “supreme achievement for community building” for people of discriminating taste.

On September 7, 1923, Woodruff turned to Lake Arrowhead press man L. J. Burrud to devise unique ballyhoo gimmicks to land stories and photographs of the Hollywoodland development in newspapers and magazines across the United States. Copying tactics from his past as a newsreel cameraman, actuality and documentary filmmaker, Burrud conceived of one of the first mass media campaigns to brand the special nature of the community. Besides planting stories in newspapers, the publicity man shot a film documenting construction of the Hollywoodland demonstration home, arranged for sports motor cars to traverse the rough, unpaved hills, and even created a Hollywoodland Community Orchestra to play grocery store openings and radio shows.

In later years, advertising man John Roche claimed in interviews that Times publisher Harry Chandler asked him to design a gigantic billboard visible from miles away, but it seems strange that someone would wait decades to state such information. Unfortunately no paperwork from the Hollywoodland development exists, so until it shows up, there is no definitive proof of who conceived the look of the sign and when. While virtually all other major real estate developments built thin, red-colored name signs, Hollywoodland’s would be gigantic 45 foot letters spelling out the world Hollywoodland, making it much more visible all over Los Angeles. Falling back on his filmmaking experience, publicity chief Burrud conceived the brilliant idea for newsreel coverage documenting the construction of the sign, a gimmick to help announce the opening of their stupendous development to the world.

Holly Leaves, November 1923.

I discovered that construction of the Hollywoodland Sign began in November 1923, after finding a photograph taken from the Hollywood Athletic Club published in the November 16, 1923 Holly Leaves revealing a barren hillside above the development, devoid of any sign or construction equipment. Fox Movietone newsreel footage exists of the Hollywoodland Sign’s construction, revealing workers, mules, and caterpillar tractors laboring to carry sheet metal, telephone poles, pipes, and chicken wire up the precipitous slopes to build the giant sign in a jagged line on the steep hill.

Realizing that filmmakers usually employ a slate in front of their footage listing title, date, and running time, I contacted Greg Wilsbacher, director of the Fox Movietone Newsreel Collection at the University of South Carolina, to inquire about a slate or paperwork for the newsreel footage shot of this event. Wilsbacher revealed that cameraman Blaine Walker shot the Sign’s construction, stating that the undeveloped negative arrived at the Fox Movietone Newsreel office dated “November 27th-23,” with the punch record of the New York Fox office also showing a late November 1923 date. Train travel across the United States took approximately three days at that time, meaning the footage would have departed Los Angeles on November 27 and arrived at the end of the month. As Wilsbacher also stated, a newsreel cameraman’s job was to get unique footage first and rush it to production offices for immediate distribution to theatres, meaning Walker filmed it immediately before sending it off to New York.

Not only were the developers constructing an enormous billboard to advertise Hollywoodland by day, but also one to blaze its name at night. They hired Crescent Sign Company to devise a way to build the Sign on the hill, and Woodruff hired Electrical Products Corporation to illuminate it with electric lights, creating what the December 9 Los Angeles Examiner calls the “largest electrically outlined word in the world.”

Historian Torrence discovered the actual date of first illumination when investigating when the letter “H” was actually blown off the Sign after a question posed by a reader. He, I, and everyone else mistakenly believed the letter was demolished by winds in 1949, though his examination of Los Angeles Herald Examiner and Los Angeles Times proved it actually happened in 1944.

A worker stands in crossbar of the letter “D” in the Hollywoodland Sign, Practical Electrics, September 1924.

While there, he decided to peruse the November/December 1923 Evening Herald to find information on the final days of the Sign’s construction after my discovery of the November date for the newsreel footage. He discovered the missing link, connecting the Sign’s November/December 1923 construction to its first electric illumination. Torrence came across a December 8, 1923 Evening Herald story stating that the sign, “believed to be the largest in the world,…will be illuminated tonight.” The article includes photographs showing the full length of the sign as well as an image of a worker dwarfed by the gigantic letter “D” he stands in.

On Saturday, December 8, 1923, S. H. Woodruff and his crew flipped the switch turning on the illuminated lights which spelled out the words “Holly,” “Wood,” “Land,” “Hollywoodland,” with Woodruff stating in an article in the December 9 Examiner, “it was only fitting that the first blaze of electric lights to shine forth from the tremendous sign should be in commemoration of some important event in the development of Hollywoodland,” namely the opening of Unit No. 4 to sales. In an ironic twist, the Los Angeles Herald and Los Angeles Examiner note the first lighting of the Hollywoodland Sign, while the Los Angeles Times, owned and published by Harry Chandler, one of the major partners in the development, failed to report it.

An ad in the Dec. 12, 1923, Los Angeles Times notes the completion of the Hollywoodland Sign.

Paul D. Howse, president of Electrical Products Corporation, bought an advertisement in the December 12, 1923, Los Angeles Times with an illustration of the electrified sign. He congratulates Woodruff for completing the stupendous sign, declaring “You had the vision to undertake and accomplish the greatest realty enterprise in California…” and then stating, “…We thank you, Mr. Woodruff, for having given us the opportunity to engineer and install this great electrical sign. May your expenditure be appreciated by those who love to see Los Angeles lead in enterprise and really “big” things.

A description of the Hollywoodland Sign in Practical Electrics for September, 1924.

Further sealing the November/December 1923 construction date, the September 1924 issue of Practical Electrics provided me by another historian describes what it calls “the mammoth Hollywoodland Electric Sign” in detail, noting its eight months of display. The article employs some creative hyperbole to state that “the sign is over one-sixth of a mile long, and nearly 4,000 lamps are required to light it.”

It reports that the billboard is visible at a distance of more than twelve miles, supported by a framework of telephone poles 60 to 80 feet high. “Two by six inch timbers, placed 16 to 24 inches between centers, are the horizontal elements of the frame. To this the letters, made of galvanized iron, are nailed. Each stroke of a letter is 13 feet wide. To illuminate the 13 great letters 3,700 10-watt lamps are used, placed along the edge of each stroke….There are 55 outlets to each circuit and the wiring is all open on the back of the structure. Everything centers in a junction box near the center of the sign…Taken on a straight line, the sign is 975 feet long and the letters are 45 feet high.” While the letters were 45 feet high, it’s very doubtful the sign was that long.

While erroneously reported to have been constructed in July 1923, thanks to these discoveries, we now know that the Hollywoodland Sign was constructed in November/early December 1923, and illuminated for the first time on Saturday, December 8, 1923. Paraphrasing Electrical Products Corporation President Paul Howse, Hollywoodland not only conceived the largest electrical sign in the world in 1923, but one that now serves as the iconic representation of Hollywood and its film industry while also reigning as Los Angeles’ most popular tourist attraction today