Eighty-five years ago, the Mack Sennett Studio opened at 4024 N. Radford in Studio City. The studio functioned as a magnet in hopes of drawing other film production companies and studios to the surrounding land owned by Central Motion Picture District.

The Central Motion Picture District land syndicate was conceived by Harry Merrick, formerly president of the Chicago Assn. of Commerce, now a local real estate man. Merrick helped organize Chicago’s Central Manufacturing District and recognized that the wide-open space near the Los Angeles River in North Hollywood could function in a similar fashion for the movie industry.

Financed by the Guarantee Building and Loan Assn., the syndicate acquired over 500 acres of former Lankershim Ranch land stretching from Tujunga Avenue to Pacoima Avenue (now Laurel Canyon Boulevard), Ventura Boulevard to Chandler Way in 1927, envisioning its own little city. This parcel of land would contain film studios and production facilities south of the Los Angeles River, with the land to the east and north functioning as the area in which workers of these organizations would construct their homes.

The CMPD consisted of Merrick, Gilbert H. Beesemyer, secretary/manager of the Bank, actor Noah Beery, Paramount studio executives B. P. Schulberg, Milton E. Hoffman, B. P. Fineman, Hector Turnbull, Roy Pomeroy, producer Mack Sennett, and others. Hoffman served as president, Beesemyer and Merrick served as vice presidents, with the others serving as directors and stockholders. Sennett, in his autobiography, “Father Goose,” explained that “a group of enterprising real estate operators in the San Fernando Valley… offered me a gift of 20 acres of land near the trickle known as the Los Angeles River.” The group now had its hook with which to sell the city.

Merrick’s company would construct the studio from plans drawn by architect Harold Cass under the management of James P. Canterbury, with Harry E. Jones acting as managing sales director and E. P. Evans serving as head salesman.

Newspapers announced on June 11, 1927, that the Sennett studio of over 12 buildings would feature California Renaissance design. To make way for construction, Sennett cuties and other workers began picking fruit from 275 acres of plum, peach and apricot orchards on Aug. 28, 1927, orchards that would soon be destroyed. Later, 60 acres of walnuts, five acres of pecans, and 25 acres of grapevines would be harvested before they too were decimated.

The 1927 plans illustrated in the Los Angeles Times called for the street north of Ventura Place to be named Sennett Street, with the small street one block north of it to be called Waldron Street, after Sennett’s studio manager, J. A. Waldron. By the time construction was completed on the studio, these two byways were rechristened with the names they possess today: Hoffman Street, named for Milton E. Hoffman, and Guerin Street, named for Sennett technical and sound man Paul Guerin.

The syndicate announced major improvements and necessities that year, including constructing three public schools at Radford and Victory, North Hollywood High School on Rita Street between Radford and Colfax Avenue, and a school on Carpenter Street. Pacific Electric introduced bus service between Universal City and Studio City at Ventura Boulevard and Laurel Canyon that year, and promised to extend streetcar service to Lankershim.

The $800,000 Mack Sennett Studio completed construction in the spring of 1928, with a gala opening held March 18, 1928, concluding with the baking of the world’s largest pie. After moving equipment from the old studio, the new facility commenced its first day of filming on May 1, 1928.

Other film companies announced projects for the area. Comedy producer Al Christie proposed building a studio adjacent to Sennett, and silent film actor Richard Talmadge intended to build a $250,000 theatre on Ventura and Laurel Canyon Boulevards.

Because so many drove down Ventura Boulevard viewing construction of the Sennett Studio, the United States Postal Service called the local facility the Studio City Post Office when it opened in 1928, thereby giving the city its name. In fact, the Los Angeles Times reported in July 1928, that Radford/Ventura Boulevard ranked as the third-busiest traffic intersection in Los Angeles, with 21,000 automobiles passing by on a typical Sunday.

While the CMPD hawked the successful opening of the studio, no other film companies followed suit in buying land or constructing facilities. By the summer of 1928, the syndicate officers turned their sights to the airline industry, proclaiming the area would become Los Angeles’ airline capital. They predicted construction of runways along the Los Angeles River and Pacoima and Tujunga washes, with airplane manufacturing and repair shops springing up nearby. The group also suggested decking the river from Universal City to Studio City to help in this effort, promising to donate land if the city and county followed suit.

The real estate syndicate invented all types of promotions in an effort to spur sales and construction. It announced in early 1929 newspaper advertisements that potential buyers should ask about a free trip through the Mack Sennett Studio. In April 1929, it created the Studio City Radio Hour, which ran Monday through Saturday from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm., and Sundays from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on KGFJ, in a effort to boost sales. April 7, 1929, was named Movie Day, with movie stars appearing after the preview of a Sennett talkie, followed by a sightseeing trip through the studio.

The last news story ran in The Times Nov. 3, 1929, just a few days after the Wall Street crash. Sales plummeted and most syndicate members moved on. Sennett himself suffered financial hardships, entering bankruptcy in 1932.

In 1935, Mascot Films, one of the tenants at what soon became Republic Pictures, submitted 1,000 signatures to the city, petitioning that the area be renamed Mascot City. The application was denied.

Note: The 85th anniversary of the opening of Mack Sennett’s studios will be featured in a presentation by the Studio City Neighborhood Council and Studio City library on Saturday, April 20. Sennett historian Brent Walker will give a presentation, followed by screening of “Taxi for Two,” “Match Play,” both from 1930, and “The Dentist” from 1932. The event will be held at the Studio City library, 12511 Moorpark St. Admission is free.

The things you see in downtown Los Angeles.

John Bengston emailed the other day to mention his research on Harold Lloyd’s filming locations in conjunction with the recent Lloyd festival on TCM. John pointed out that “Safety Last” and “Cops” used the same alley.

I DVR’d just about everything that aired and in going through “Now or Never” (1921), I noticed some shots of the old Santa Fe depot, with its distinctive roof (shown above in a postcard).

Here’s the arriving trains with the depot in the background.

And the boarding area.

Notice that Lloyd is wearing a glove on his right hand to conceal his injuries (he lost his right thumb and index finger when a “fake” bomb exploded while he was posing for a publicity photo in 1919).

And here we have someone else in a close-up, standing in for Lloyd.

Throughout its history, the city of Hollywood has seen much come and go in the name of “progress.” Instead of remodeling and reusing a historic structure, as is done in Europe or the East Coast, most builders simply tear down the old to make way for the “hip” and “modern.” Occasionally, acts of vandalism destroy grand old buildings. At some locations, however, both unfortunate actions occur.

ALSO BY MARY MALLORY

The Magic Castle
Jerry Giesler, Miracle Man
‘I Lost My Girlish Laughter’
Charles Butterworth, Professional Silly Ass

Just over five years ago, the Little Country of Church of Hollywood, located at 1750 Argyle Ave., burned down through malicious arson. This quaint structure, resembling a church found in any little farming village, bridged old and new Hollywood, thanks to its location, the site of the A. G. Bartlett estate, one of Hollywood’s early great mansions. Both unique and beautiful in their own ways, the buildings acted as community gathering places and landmarks for Hollywood residents.

In April 1901, sheet music publisher A. G. Bartlett purchased five acres at the northeast corner of Prospect Avenue and Vine Street, on which to build an $18,000 estate. The two-story, 12-room mansion, called “Vista del Mar” after the tract of land on which it was located, was designed in the mission style with clay tile roof.

Gardens were lavish as well, with exotic flowers, shrubs and trees from around the world decorating the grounds, which served as a government experimental station. Valued at $100,000, the collection included many rare species and varieties that grew only on the property. Tourists flocked to see the elegant gardens and admire the house.

After Bartlett’s death in 1923, the family sold the property to a 25-member syndicate for $1.35 million, the highest price ever paid for a subdivision in Los Angeles. The syndicate, which included actor Antonio Moreno, planned on dividing the property into business sites along the 382-foot frontage on Hollywood Boulevard. At the same time, the company paid the city for Argyle Avenue to be extended through the property from Hollywood Boulevard.

Along with paying for street construction, they made other agreements. “Provision is made in the map for six sites for a height limit to business buildings to front on Hollywood Blvd.” These buildings – Taft Building, Guaranty Building, Plaza Hotel, B. H. Dyas Department Store, among them – would all be built in harmony with surrounding properties.

The syndicate intended a grand hotel resembling that of the Biltmore to be constructed on the home and garden’s two-acre site. Business declined as the decade wore on, and after the stock market crash, dreams of a hotel died. The home was soon torn down.

Methodist minister William Bennett Hogg and his wife arrived in 1933 from Tennessee via Texas, drawn here to preach the word of God. A college graduate, Hogg served as minister for a few years before serving in World War I as a chaplain. The brutality of war and burying so many of his comrades caused him to have a nervous breakdown.

Once back in the states, Hogg became a circuit preacher, traveling by horse and buggy between several churches in a rural area. While he found that many of his congregants took the Bible literally, they also practiced their faith seven days a week. Hogg dropped his more sophisticated ways to take on the persona of Josiah Hopkins, growing in popularity.

Instead of preaching in a Los Angeles church, Hogg broadcast on radio station KFAC starting Jan. 2, 1933, similar in style to Garrison Keillor’s monologues on “Prairie Home Companion.” Under the name Parson Josiah Hopkins and Sister Sarah Hopkins, Hogg and his wife presented daily life in country village “Goose Creek.” The show blended folksy humor, homespun philosophy, hymns, homilies and stories, and quickly gained a large following.

Hogg acquired the former Bartlett estate property in early 1934 with donations raised by radio listeners with plans to reproduce a country village consisting of church, corn mill, creek and spring. Plans moved quickly, with groundbreaking occurring Feb. 18, 1934, for construction of the little church designed by architect Paul Kingsbury. On March 4, 1934, Hogg and his followers consecrated the site, with 3,000 persons watching the laying of the cornerstone. Hogg declared that, “The Little Country Church is dedicated to the pioneer mothers of California.”

They planned on offering old-time religion to sophisticated city folk looking for direction and hope. According to the Los Angeles Times, “Dr. and Mrs. Hogg believed that most churched and unchurched folk were hungry for a simple faith. The Country Church was built as a simple country meeting house to remind people of some little church they had known earlier.”

Volunteers built the 250-seat chapel almost entirely from donated goods. Recycled stone from Los Angeles’ old City Hall sidewalk became terracing and steps. Mrs. Bullock, widow of the founder of Bullock’s department store, gave the church two sets of bells chosen from the collection of the Mission Inn at Riverside; one, a replica of an ancient Venetian bell, and the other, a main bell from a sailing ship.

At the April 15, 1934, dedication, attended by such people as songwriter Carrie Jacobs Bond and actor Lionel Barrymore, a message was read from President Franklin Roosevelt, followed by simple singing and speeches. The Country Church quickly opened its doors beyond its regular services, offering weddings, talks and musical performances.

Unlike most churches, however, the Country Church also served as a broadcasting station for Hogg’s Goose Creek show, as microphones, loudspeakers and a control room were installed during construction. Hogg continued on KFAC until Sept. 30, 1934, when Columbia Broadcasting began carrying a Sunday afternoon broadcast of services.

Hogg’s show exploded in popularity, with some comparing Hogg’s homilies to Will Roger’s stories. Daily Variety reported March 18, 1936, “Racked up by smart production and pointed for matronly reception, this one-time Columbia sustaining show has the makings of a new favorite.” On Aug. 30, 1936, Hogg’s show began broadcasting Monday and Thursday evenings at 7:45 PM on CBS, crusading for “back-to-the-simple-life.”

Later that fall, Hogg underwent prostate surgery, and his health began failing. He died on Jan. 15, 1937, with services on Jan. 18, 1937, followed by burial at Forest Lawn. Five ministers participated in his service, with members of Hollywood’s American Legion Post 93 serving as guards of honor. Two thousand people attended Hogg’s memorial service on June 6, 1937, with 12 rosebushes planted around the flagpole of the Argyle property, and Army and Navy veterans sowing poppy seeds from Flanders around the site.

Virginia Hopkins carried on, continuing interdenominational services with ministers of other churches officiating. She also persevered with the radio program as it became a country gospel radio show, ending with her death in 1966.

In 1992, the city of Los Angeles named the Little Country Church Historic-Cultural Monument No. 567.

Martha Hogg, aka “Peachy Applewhite,” the first church secretary and organist, continued on in that role until she and her sister were forced to close the Country Church April 27, 1997, due to dwindling membership.

Susan Moore of Hollywood Hills Coffee Shop planned a 200-seat bar and restaurant on the grounds of the church in 1999, but such a business horrified the Hogg sisters, leading another business to purchase the property.

The Little Country Church sat virtually empty until Christmas Day 2007, when it mysteriously burned down. Today, the property sits vacant, surrounded by remains of the two gardens. Even with destruction, the empty site evokes echoes of simpler days.

The city of Pasadena will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the gorgeous Colorado Street Bridge on Saturday, June 22, 2013, one of the outstanding historic cultural monuments of the city. Built to serve a basic utilitarian purpose, the bridge also came to function as a striking icon representing the beauty and grace of Pasadena.

From the 1880s to the mid-teens, a simple, wooden bridge constructed by the Scoville family over the Arroyo Seco served as the connection between Pasadena, Crown of the Valley, and the community of Eagle Rock. This plain bridge required steep ascents and descents up and down the banks of the Arroyo. With the coming of automobiles, the city of Pasadena realized a more substantial bridge was required to serve growing traffic.

ALSO BY MARY MALLORY

Franklin Pangborn
Erich von Stroheim’s ‘Paprika’
Einar Petersen, Forgotten Artist

Pasadena Mayor Thum and others began discussions with architects about a proposed new bridge in July 1911, per The Los Angeles Times. By August, the city chose Alexander Low Waddell of Waddell and Harrington engineering firm from Kansas City to design the bridge, signing a contract on Aug, 29, 1911. By Nov. 26, 1911, Pasadena received building plans.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to support construction on Feb. 20, 1912, agreeing to pay half of the costs. After receiving bids in March, Pasadena chose Mercereau Bridge and Construction Co. of Los Angeles to build the structure.

J. C. Wright, chief engineer for the contractors, noted that the bridge design was the most up to date for its time, particularly in that the bridge curved as it crossed the arroyo. “The curve in the line of the bridge is a point of interest in the design as well as in the architectural appearance of the bridge, and was used to make the most economical crossing of the arroyo possible under the existing conditions,” per his interview with the November 1914 Water and Sewage Works journal.

Construction started in July 1912 on the arroyo bridge with 40 men working to erect the largest concrete, reinforced bridge built on a curve. Starting on the west side of the channel, the company constructed frames and forms as they proceeded eastward. The company fell behind and missed the estimated opening date of May 3, 1913. By June 1913, the crew expanded to 100 men to speed construction. Once again, they missed the Aug. 3, 1913 opening date. Finally in November, work was completed, after injuries to company engineer Norman Clark, and deaths of two construction workers.

The 1914, Western Machinery and Steel World reported that the company employed 11,000 cubic yards of concrete and 600 tons of reinforced steel, requiring 23,100 days of man labor to construct the 1,468-foot-long bridge at a uniform grade of 2.655% at a height of 165 feet above the arroyo. The bridge contained 28 feet clear asphalt-paved roadway with 15 feet clear cement sidewalk the full length of each side. The bridge spanned a width of 45 feet from the artificial stone balustrades. Forty-eight ornamental light posts decorated the bridge, with 15 parabolic arches supporting the structure. Final construction costs totaled over $191,000; adding in right of way costs, the final tally reached $250,000.

On Dec. 13, 1913, the city of Pasadena and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors held a grand opening celebration for what they called the Colorado Street Bridge. Meeting at Carmelita school grounds, automobiles decorated with banners and pennants proceeded to Colorado Street and then headed west across the structure. Speeches from city and county official followed. Speakers pointed out that the artistic look of the bridge complemented the beautiful, panoramic views it offered.

In the fall of 1914, officials lowered the speed limit for the bridge to 10 mph and also flushed the pavement, after light rain led to three wrecks in 15 minutes because of skidding on the rain-slicked curve.

City officials quickly began employing images of the bridge in advertising promoting tourism and visits to the Rose Parade and football game. Photographs filled magazines, guidebooks and brochures, along with suggestions to either walk or drive across its length.

Unfortunately, the bridge also attracted the attention of those suffering from mental, physical or financial troubles. Per the June 7, 1915, Los Angeles Times, Joseph M. Roma gave the bridge its first “blood-christening” on May 28, 1915, followed in quick succession by the suicide of a tuberculosis-suffering Canadian, Alfred T. McDonald, on June 6, 1915. McDonald remarked to friends after hearing of Roma’s death, that “he would go that way some time.” The third victim, J.J. Neal of Guelph, Ontario, lived 15 minutes after he jumped over the side. In the 1920s, two people survived jumps when they grabbed branches of eucalyptus trees just a few feet from the railings.

Charles H. Kelley suggesting placing narrow wire nets beneath the railings to prevent suicides in December 1930. Others suggested a grille above the railing in 1933, but for a short time that year, three Pasadena policemen acted as a suicide guard patrolling the length of the bridge. The city considered this too costly and canceled it a month later. Finally on June 8, 1937, the city voted to construct a 7½-foot fence topped by barbed wire along the sidewalks for $7,000. Desperate people still climbed over the wire to jump.

The state Division of Highways suggested tearing down the Colorado Street Bridge in December 1934, and building a suicide-proof structure, one designed to carry even heavier traffic. This idea was quickly shot down.

In 1950, the California Highway Commission submitted plans to the city for a new bridge to replace the aging Colorado Street Bridge, a stronger bridge with more lanes of traffic. Construction started in May 1951, and after three years of work, the new highway opened in June 1954.

Over the years, a few stunts added a measure of fun. Daredevil pilot Arthur Goebel flew under the bridge with a woman standing on the upper wing of the airplane in 1926. Inventors Jack Fry and Floyd Bowman tried out their quick-opening parachute on Aug. 6, 1927, throwing a 300-pound bag of sand attached to the chute over the side, which opened before it fell 15 feet. They quickly hightailed it away before authorities could arrive.

By the 1970s, chunks of concrete occasionally fell from the structure, caused by water damage over the years. In 1979, the California Department of Transportation suggested demolishing it, but Pasadena Heritage and others rallied support to prevent destruction. The group’s work gained the bridge National Register status in 1981. After the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake, the Colorado Street Bridge closed, and the city realized it needed to raise money for restoration and retrofitting work.

Seismic retrofitting and renovation began in January 1991, which required replacing supporting columns with reinforced replicas, and rebuilding with stronger reinforced arches and piers. This 33-month renovation cost more than $24 million. Reopening and rededication occurred on the Colorado Street Bridge’s 80th birthday on Dec. 13, 1993.

The Colorado Street Bridge still serves as an elegant focal point along Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco, a gentle reminder of simpler days.

An Einar Petersen mural from the Rosslyn Hotel.

A vendor on EBay has listed what is apparently one of Einar Petersen’s long-lost murals from the Rosslyn Hotel — in rather sorry condition. The price is Buy It Now for $5,000.

The Times said the five panels installed at the hotel were 9 feet by 19 feet and described this panel: “A stagecoach entering Los Angeles in a gay and lively way, horses and driver full of spirited action.”

ALSO: Mary Mallory on Einar Petersen

The vendor says:

Several decades ago, a friend of ours purchased 4 panels from an older California couple, (that moved to Montana) years ago. The story goes that they purchased them in the 1980′s when the old Hotel was being renovated. The whereabouts of the 5th panel is not known.

Our friend had them in a storage unit until about 7yrs.ago, when he put 3 on a local auction. He decided to keep the Stagecoach one because he liked & it was in the best condition. Also, it was the only panel signed by the artist, but he couldn’t make out the name, so never knew the identity of the artist.

The other 3 that went to auction were in very poor condition, but nonetheless, extraordinary paintings! (my opinion). I remember when first saw them being sort of awestruck & thought they must’ve been incredible when they were first unveiled at the Hotel. At the time, I wasn’t sure what I would do with them, and couldn’t afford to have them restored, so I didn’t buy them, but know the guy who did.

I never forgot about them, and finally purchased the Stagecoach one 2 yrs. ago. Unfortunately, it is in very poor condition. I had a professional art restorer look at it & he said COULD be restored, but would be expensive, so I am selling it.

As with anything on EBay, an item and vendor should be evaluated thoroughly before submitting a bid.

A postcard of Hamburger’s Department Store is listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $2.99.

The classy, oversize May Co. Department Store located at 801 S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles is up for sale. Today, the mostly empty Broadway Trade Center hosts makeshift swap meet stalls on the first floor in this once celebrated building, the largest department store west of the Mississippi River. Once known as Hamburger’s Department Store, the facility later operated as the May Co. Original owner Hamburger’s was a more elegant and upscale Wal-Mart, hosting every type of business under its roof, even a movie theater.

Hamburger’s Department Store ranked as one of Los Angeles’ premier shopping centers in the early 1900s. Asher Hamburger and his son David immigrated to Los Angeles from Sacramento in 1881, establishing the 20 x 100 foot People’s Store at Main Street and Requena. This department store featured mass but quality goods at fair prices, popular with penny-pinching consumers.

Also by Mary Mallory
Keye Luke
Auction of Souls
Busch Gardens and Hogan’s Aristocratic Dreams

Also on the Daily Mirror
On Location, the May Co.
Movieland Mystery Photo – Architecture Edition

The downtown May Co. is used as a filming location for “The Public Enemy.”

By the early 1900s, customers overflowed the small store. The family decided to construct a bigger and better store, one at a more central location, to attract even more business. Buying land at Broadway and Hill Street between 8th and 9th Streets, the Hamburgers hired architect Alfred Rosenheim to design an elegant, six-story structure in the Beaux Arts Classical style, featuring a white-glazed terra cotta exterior.

Following the Oct. 17, 1905, groundbreaking and almost three-year construction, the beautiful, $4-million Hamburger’s Department Store opened with grand fanfare on Aug. 9, 1908, hosting more than 75,000 people who walked through its almost 13 acres and 400,000 square feet of retail space that day. With a staff of more than 2,300 people, Hamburger’s featured 800 square feet of window frontage, with a 128-foot arch spanning the main doorway on Broadway. Its cross aisle stretched almost a block, 32 feet wide between columns.

Like today’s Wal-Mart and Target department stores, Hamburger’s operated as a giant shopping hub catering to the public’s needs. The store contained its own post office, Wells Fargo office, own fire department, emergency hospital with doctor and nurse, steamship and train ticket booth, express and telegraph offices, bookstore, candy department, drugstore, barber shop, hairdresser and beauty shop, notary public, conservatory, dentist, opticon, cafe, cafeteria, roof garden, photography department, furniture department, piano department, playground, nursery, grocery store, bakery, meat market, fruit market, 80-foot soda water fountain, wheelchair rental service, interpreters, and its own legitimate/moving picture theater, named the Arrow Theater. It also housed the downtown Los Angeles Public Library on its third floor.

As the Oct. 4, 1907, Los Angeles Times reported, a 100 x 80-foot “wee playhouse” would be installed on its fifth floor. “The principal feature of amusement will doubtless be the adventurous form of the moving picture entertainment.” The small theater seating 500 people would feature a small orchestra and stage, and be dark Sundays and nights. Somewhere along the way, the theater acquired the name Arrow Theater, and besides motion pictures, hosted vaudeville acts, meetings, convention presentations, lectures and the like. The department store also provided occasional free children’s programs “with clean entertainment.”

The Arrow Theater featured an hour program of five reels, costing the regular rate of 5 cents, 10 cents for reserved seats. Early ads mentioned it as a “good place to rest when you are tired of shopping,” as it was “comfortable and well-ventilated.” By Aug. 29, 1909, store ads in the Los Angeles Herald mentioned that the theater was open nights and offering “a large and varied program, consisting of motography, art pictures and vaudeville numbers….”

Mostly educational and newsworthy items were shown in the first years, with footage of President Taft presented in October, 1909, 2,000 feet of motion pictures showing the Rheims Aviation Contest in December 1909, film of Theodore Roosevelt returning to the United States from an African Safari in 1909, along with singing of “The Stars and Stripes and You,” and footage of England’s King Edward’s funeral in June 1910.

The May Co. appears in “Employees’ Entrance.”

By 1912, Hamburger’s prominently mentioned in ads that programs changed Mondays and Thursdays, with the Arrow featuring “first run, never shown in Los Angeles” films. The March 8, 1912, program consisted of a couple of songs from a singer, followed by Edison’s “The Nurse,” American Film Manufacturing Co.’s “The Best Man Wins,” starring J. Warren Kerrigan and Marshall Neilan, and IMP’s “The Power of Conscience,” starring King Baggot.

Ads over the next several years prominently mentioned the films of prominent production companies like Thanhouser, Gaumont, Reliance, Keystone, Solax, Kalem, Edison, Essanay, and Selig, and stars like John Bunny, Ford Sterling, Mary Pickford, Kathlyn Williams, Mary Fuller, Irving Cummings, and Alice Joyce.

In April 1912, the Arrow moved beyond just showing programs to the public. The April 23, 1912, Los Angeles Times, reported that the City Council approved leasing the Arrow Theatre for $75 a month for the work of the city’s Board of Censors.

The Arrow also presented other types of programming like lectures, meetings and children’s shows, besides its regular screenings of movies. Music groups like the Bachmann Orchestra performed popular music of the time, Herman the Magician appeared on May 23, 1914, Jewish groups presented talks about the situation in Palestine, and various doctor and dentist conventions featured keynote speeches in the theater.

On Feb. 22, 1909, Professor Edward Bull Clapp gave an illustrated lecture on painting, employing lantern slides. Professor Edgar L. Hewitt, director of the School of American Archeology, spoke Sept. 21, 1909, about the cliff dwellings of Paye Mesa, also using lantern slides. George Washington James lectured on “The Romance of California,” the week of May 18, 1913, accompanied by “a collection of several hundred stereopticon views and photographs.”

The Los Angeles Times catered to zealous baseball fans in fall 1913, hiring the Arrow Theater and other venues around the city to host Free Bulletins of the World Series, where play-by-play descriptions of each game were read aloud to eager attendees.

By 1914, the Arrow shifted its focus to special programming for a more discerning crowd. On Jan. 4, 1915, the theater presented the five-reel All-Star and Alco Films motion picture, “The Old Curiosity Shop.” A few weeks later, it presented the Italian film, “Manon Lescaut,” starring Lina Cavalieri. “Dorothy and the Scarecrow” played the week of Feb. 20. In April, D. W. Griffith’s “Judith of Bethulia” was such a hit that the theater extended its run.

By December 1915, the Arrow seemed to turn its focus back to lectures, with a telephone demonstration Dec. 22 through 24. Pacific Telephone and Telegraph moved the transcontinental phone line from the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco to Los Angeles for three days, with Supt. George Peck giving a lecture about its use. Thomas A. Watson, Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant, then appeared in a new Edison “talking motion picture” on the development of the telephone, showing the construction of the line between the coasts. Attendees employed receivers placed on each seat to hear American Telephone and Telegraph executive C. E. Willner “read out of the New York evening papers, play operatic selections on a phonograph, and wish everybody in Los Angeles a merry Christmas.”

Soon after, Hamburger’s drastically decreased mentions of the theater in its ads, seeming to focus more on lectures and meetings than screenings of films or live performances. By 1919, the Arrow Theater ended operations.

In 1923, the Hamburgers sold the department store to the May Co., and for the next seven decades, the building operated as the Los Angeles’ flagship for the May Co. After the company abandoned the building around 1990, it sat empty for years before becoming the Broadway Trade Center.

Hopefully, new owners will recognize the unique elements and history of the elegant building, freshening and restoring its hidden glories, and open the theater and other special departments to new legions of consumers.

This 1921 architectural photo of Loew’s State Theater under construction at 7th Street and Broadway has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $24.

Notice the signage for Bullock’s in the background.

Jan. 6, 1924: The Times publishes a photo of an Oakland car that was driven up to the Hollywood sign.

Parade magazine claimed in its July 7, 2013, issue that the completed Hollywoodland sign premiered July 13, 1923, but provided no documentation. After investigating the question this week, I believe I have solved when the sign was actually completed, late November 1923.

No newspapers or books from the period contain stories or photos of the Hollywoodland sign from the year 1923, save the Los Angeles Times, which contained a Dec. 30, 1923, story recounting how an Oakland motor car ascended to the Hollywoodland electric sign, and displayed a photo of the car below the sign on Jan. 6, 1924.

Newsreel outtakes do show construction of the Hollywoodland sign, as men and tractors drag material up the hill, and workers wave from the letter H. I consulted Greg Wilsbacher, director of the Fox Movietone Newsreel Collection at the University of South Carolina, to see what the records pertaining to this footage say about when it was shot or delivered to Fox.

Also by Mary Mallory
Keye Luke
Auction of Souls
Busch Gardens and Hogan’s Aristocratic Dreams

Hollywood Leaves, Nov. 16, 1923.

Wilsbacher informed me that records state that the Fox Movietone New York office received the undeveloped footage from their Los Angeles cameraman, Blaine Walker, “November 27th-23.” The punch record created by the office after the film was developed also dates to late November 1923. While Walker could have shot the footage months earlier, his job as Fox’s Los Angeles newsreel photographer was to capture and send newsworthy footage to New York as soon as possible for exclusives.

From further research this week, I discovered this somewhat grainy image in the Nov. 16, 1923, Hollywood newspaper, Hollywood Leaves, displaying a photograph of the Hollywood Hills visible from the tower of the Hollywood Athletic Club. It appears that the sign is only partially constructed, as it looks like only an H, and O, are visible in the upper left side of the hill.

Walker had served as a newsreel cameraman since at least 1922, per the Los Angeles Times, which also calls him the Pacific Coast manager of Fox News. By 1937, he retired from the newsreel business and served as the president of Culver City’s Chamber of Commerce. In 1938, he and the Exposition and Museum Corp. announced plans to hopefully build a $1-million “motion picture exposition and museum” at Culver and Overland boulevards. Architectural firm Walker and Eisen had drawn up plans, and the corporation had submitted grant proposals to the Public Works Administration and Works Progress Administration for much of the funds.

The Times takes a dim view of Mexican revolutionaries.

July 17, 1913: Arabella D. Huntington, widow of the late Collis P. Huntington, marries his nephew, Henry E. Huntington, in Paris at the American Church in the Rue de Berri.  Their friends express surprise. The Times says:

“The possibilities of H.E. Huntington’s marriage to the widow of the famous Collis P. Huntington has for years formed a topic for discussion in the numerous clubs of which the railroad magnate is a member. In the past few years it has become more or less a joke of intimate friends to charge him with serious intentions in this direction. Huntington many times denied that there was any foundation to the rumor and even on his visit home last winter declared that there was nothing at all to this affair of the heart.

The new Los Angeles Investment Building at Broadway and 8th is billed as “the most palatial office building in the city.”

John George Boyle and his wife — who is never identified by name — came to Redondo Beach from San Francisco with a plan of killing themselves. She waded into the surf and drowned. He changed his mind, he told Patrolman Flanders.

The Los Angeles Investment Building, also known as the C.C. Chapman Building, via Google Street View.

This young woman attracted several observers as she stood on 6th Street just west of Spring — near the Starbucks — on  Wednesday evening to sketch the streetscape. I didn’t want to interrupt her to ask her name. All I know is that she’s good — and left-handed.

Here’s a closer look at her work:

The Studio Club in Photoplay, 1917.

T he advent of the 20^th century offered the possibility of more freedom and opportunity for women. For decades, women had advocated for the right to vote, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Others clamored for more work opportunities beyond teaching, librarian, and secretarial positions.

The relatively new medium of motion pictures also tantalized audiences with many new possibilities beyond their hometowns: exciting new cities, novel hobbies and recreations, and modern employment opportunities. In fact, many people considered the growing film industry itself an excellent field to try their luck, especially movie-struck, naïve young women.

ALSO BY MARY MALLORY
Magic Castle
Mack Sennett
Brand Library
Auction of Souls

Innocent young girls descended on Hollywood in the mid-teens from Midwestern farming communities, small Southern towns and large cities, hoping to be discovered by film folks. For the first time, many young women independently traveled west to California with their meager savings seeking out opportunity in glamorous Hollywood. As their money slowly dwindled, many hung around libraries and other respectable locations.

Mrs. Eleanor Jones of the Hollywood Public Library began noticing many young women staying until closing time. Many had nowhere to go and no friends or family to spend time or live with. Jones began befriending them and trying to help them. A young girl whom Mrs. Jones regularly noticed sitting alone in the library disappeared one day, and then reappeared more than a month later. When Jones asked where she had been, she replied that she had spent a month in the hospital with no visitors. Soon after, as she realized that she had no prospects in Hollywood, she returned home.

Jones approached Mrs. W. Richmond, Mrs. William De Mille and Lois Weber and they started a drama club in the library called the Hollywood Studio Club. When the Young Women’s Christian Assn. heard about the club, it offered a dancing teacher, with many new classes quickly added. Attendance soon outgrew the small space. The large attendance convinced local businessmen to advance $1,500 for a year’s rental on a large two-story Colonial building at 6129 Carlos Ave., the former home of the Hollywood Military Academy, as a clubhouse offering classes and get-together opportunities. Any girl connected with the film industry could join as a member and take classes, but when a few of the young women mentioned that they had no place to live, they were invited in.

In 1916, the YWCA International Institute leased the home, and the Hollywood Studio Club officially became a residence hall with 80 paid members, with many more hoping to get in. The Nov. 14, 1916, Moving Picture World noted in an article that it was the third YWCA Club home for girls after ones in New York and Paris, and the “only one in existence for motion picture girls.”

Celebrities such as Lois Weber, Dorothy Davenport, and Tsuru Aoki, Mrs. Sessue Hayakawa, visited on Sundays, and studios held regular teas for the girls. Many classes were offered beyond acting and dancing, including scenario writing, makeup, pantomime, gymnastics and first aid. Girls could enjoy the large gardens, sitting on the front porch or welcoming guests.

T he YWCA quickly struggled to pay the bills. It offered dances on Friday nights with young men welcomed to attend. Entertainers and studios presented theatrical productions, musical performances and other fundraisers. In December 1916, the Lasky Feature Play Co. players presented the first fundraising performance, giving many more over the years. Lasky players Helen Jerome Eddy, a former resident, Lillian Leighton, Laurence Tibbett, Mabel Van Buren, Clarence Geldart and George Hackathorne presented “The Tragedy of Nan” in February 1918 in the building’s auditorium. A live nativity was presented Dec. 22, 1919, in an amphitheatre arranged on the front lawn, with Frank Keenan as narrator, Eddy as Mary, Walter Long as Herod, and Lionel Belmore as one of the Wise Men.

Film journalist Rob Wagner in his 1918 book “Film Folk; Closeups of the Men, Women and Children Who Make the Movies,” spoke with an industry leader who called the Hollywood Studio Club a “godsend to the kids who have no place to go except to bat round the town. We have teas, garden parties, studio dances, and all kinds of stunts that bring the bunch together, and if a girl gets down on her luck, she can stay at the club until she lands on her feet again.”

The local YWCA approached studios and film folk like Mary Pickford for help in purchasing the property in 1919 to provide additional living space. In newspaper stories, residents mentioned that it was basically a sorority with film atmosphere, giving them a sense of home life, protection and assistance. There were few rules beyond living and acting with good taste and manners. Girls paid membership fees of $5, $10, $25, $50 and $100, allowing them a place to live and access to the dining room, gymnasium, classes and the like. The club offered additional classes as well: art, embroidery, exercise, remodeling clothes and dramatics, along with the Sunday teas, monthly dances, and camping and beach trips.

During these early years, actresses such as Helen Jerome Eddy, Carmel Myers, Mildred Harris, Marjorie Daw and Louise Huff lived at the club, along with writer Sarah Mason and Paramount secretary Anne Bauchens.

Demand quickly outgrew the space, and by 1923 a group led by Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille, Mrs. Jesse Lasky, Mrs. Charles Christie and others bought property from Seward Cole at 1215 Lodi Place and Lexington Avenue on which to erect a new home at a cost of $150,000. Famed Hearst Castle architect Julia Morgan designed a building along “Spanish, Italian and French lines, with some of the warm colors of the Moorish,” with central patio, library, two reception rooms, private dining room, large dining room, stage, practice rooms, writing and makeup rooms, and 66 single and double bedrooms with their own lavatories.

The YWCA sold the Carlos Avenue property to St. Stephens Episcopal Church for use as a parish hall to buy the Lodi Place property and began a fund drive to construct the new building. They also sought pledges for furniture, equipment and other necessities.

During the next two years, every studio donated funds. Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson and Jackie Coogan gave $1,000 each, Florence Vidor, Lucien Littlefield, Jesse Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille, Will Hays and others gave large sums, Charles Ray allowed paid tours of the Mayflower reproduction at his new studio benefiting the club, and the gate from a special performance of “Robin Hood” at the Egyptian Theatre would benefit the club. Norma Talmadge donated the last $5,000 to reach the campaign target.

The YWCA held a grand dedication May 7, 1926, of the lush new facility, with each bedroom named for a contributor. The building quickly overflowed with residents; some were actresses, but most were affiliated with the motion picture industry in support or behind the scenes roles. An average of 93 lived in the 105-capacity home at one time. Most girls stayed for approximately six months, and many received assistance while unemployed.

Residents in the 1920s included future writer Ayn Rand, along with actresses Mae Busch, Janet Gaynor and Zasu Pitts.

Rates were lowered in 1932 during the Depression, from $13 a week to $7 a week for women ages 18-35. A June 11, 1932, ad in the Hollywood Filmograph noted, “Free use of lounge, patio, library, piano, radio, laundry, typewriter, and sewing machine.”

During World War II, the girls employed the empty lot next door for the “back-to-the farm” movement, raising fruit and vegetables they sold for funds to buy the property, aided by donations from Louis B. Mayer, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, George Cukor and Harry Warner. In May 1944, the USO constructed a building housing 1,000 servicewomen, operated as a guesthouse by the Hollywood Studio Club.

Costs continued rising after the war, with the YWCA needing help paying the bills in 1947. Donations coming from Joseph Schenck, Mae West, Joseph von Sternberg, Ernst Lubitsch, Mitchell Leisen and Budd Schulberg, among others, helped ease the burden. Thus began a several decade fight to earn enough money to keep the facility open. Former residents formed an alumni group in 1953 to help support the club, holding fundraisers and offering support.

Changing times and mores added financial pressures to the Hollywood Studio Club, with young women free to live independently and come and go as they pleased. Extramarital sex became more accepted. Governmental assistance and unemployment became available.

Though the club struggled financially, waves of girls continued flooding the building. Future celebrity residents included actresses Maureen O’Sullivan, Gail Patrick, Linda Darnell, Donna Reed, Evelyn Keyes, Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, Marie Windsor, Barbara Britton, Barbara Hale, Janet Blair, Dorothy Malone, Barbara Rush, Gale Storm, Rita Moreno, Nancy Kwan, Barbara Eden, Donna Douglas, Yvonne Craig, and Ann B. Davis, along with editor Dede Allen.

By 1970, the YWCA considered selling the Hollywood Studio Club, but residents fought to save it by holding fundraisers, asking for pledges, and the like. The YWCA allowed paying groups to hold meetings and classes in the rooms. It opened a small thrift shop to sell items. Former resident Rosemary Breckler wrote a March 3, 1975, letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times, speaking to how the building nourished young women. “The thing I remember most is the wonderful feeling we had of being cherished, loved, protected, guided, and assisted in our aspirations.”

After the club closed in 1976, the YWCA put some furnishings up for auction with Sotheby Parke Bernet in July 1977, and sold others in its thrift shop. In 1982, it donated some materials from the club to Cal State Northridge.

The lovely building stands forlornly at 1215 Lodi Place, ready to welcome eager new Hollywood residents.

If this image looking south on Spring Street on this 1907 postcard looks unfamiliar, there’s a reason. Most of the buildings are gone and Spring Street was straightened out to make way for City Hall. The postcard is listed on EBay for $5.

SPRING STREET REVISITED – a series of posts I wrote when the blog was at latimes.com

So you can get your bearings, the large building on the right, the Hotel Nadeau, was at 1st Street and Spring and was demolished to make way for The Times Building.

Notice the horse-drawn vehicles, the streetcars and the streetlights. It’s a bit hard to tell, but it looks like Spring at this point was paved with brick.

Also notice that there are no traffic controls: No stop lights, no traffic officers. No crosswalks. Nothing. People are crossing the street at random. This was an interesting time for transportation in Los Angeles. Ever wonder what happened when a streetcar hit a horse? That’s a story for another day.

Cats have nine lives. People often experience second or third acts in their lives or careers. Some homes have multiple lives as well, like Villa Aurora, which has experienced three diverse lives, bringing knowledge and refuge to those who come through its doors. Opened in 1928, the Villa began life as a Los Angeles Times Demonstration Home, later housed German Jewish expatriates Lion and Maria Feuchtwanger, and now serves as residence for fellowship artists from around the world to freely create new works.

In the Oct. 1, 1926, Los Angeles Times, Santa Monica Judge Arthur A. Weber, George W. Ley, Edward Haas, and other investors announced they had spent $3 million to acquire 847 acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean over what was then called Beverly Boulevard (now Sunset Boulevard), not far from Ocean Highway, to establish Miramar Estates. Their development would offer homes reminiscent of the Mediterranean because of the property’s gorgeous panoramic views that resembled those of Naples or Nice. Mark Daniels, former assistant secretary of in the Interior, superintendent of national parks, and renowned Los Angeles architect of what is now Hotel Bel-Air, the clubhouse of Hollywood Riviera Beach Club, and many Bel-Air homes, was hired to design homes in the development.

While MGM director Robert Z. Leonard bought one of the $10,000 lots and constructed a home in Miramar, homes were slow to sell. In the summer of 1927, the developers persuaded the Los Angeles Times to come in with them and build a gorgeous $100,000, 6,700-square-foot demonstration home in the development, one to show off elegant Mediterranean/Spanish architecture and luxurious furnishings provided by local designers and businesses, to lure visitors and buyers to the area. In effect, The Times would provide more than nine months advertorial space to promote the beauty and exclusiveness of Miramar Estates to its readers, pushing the comfort, elegance, beauty, decoration, harmony and character of the building and site.

Elaborate groundbreaking ceremonies were held Aug. 28, 1927, with speakers like Seward Simons of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, acting Los Angeles Mayor William Bonelli, Santa Monica Mayor Herman Michel, Irving Smith, Los Angeles Times advertising manager, representatives from the Los Angeles Realty Board, and Pacific Electric, along with special performances by local music hall performers and Spanish dancers.

The Times announced that the purpose of the demonstration home was “to embody in every detail and appointment the best in material and workmanship that human ingenuity and artistic sense have been able to devise…. It will be a master dwelling especially adapted to the Southern California climate to California conditions and will be built on a typical California site.”

The paper began running weekly stories detailing the construction process of the 520 Paseo Miramar home, managed by contractor Ley Constructors, Inc.: reporting on everything from receiving permits, grading, laying foundations, raising the frame, adding sewers, electricity, painting, furnishings, etc. Besides updates in the paper, visitors could tour the site every Sunday during construction. The occasionally pretentious stories promoted the professional work by each vendor, designer, or provider, noting how middle-class readers could adopt or adapt each of these steps in construction of their own dream homes.

The double-thick walled house contained many elaborate and unique features: a “burglar-proof, insect-proof, fireproof vault” for furs, electric dishwasher and refrigerator, incinerator, three-car garage with an automatic door that could be opened inside the home as well as outside, and a $15,000 pipe organ built by Artcraft Organ Co. of Santa Monica with an echo unit across the living room. As The Times called it, “an ideal dwelling of pleasant surprises.”

Many of the rooms possessed original and distinctive painted wood ceilings copying those of chapels and cathedrals of Spain, overlaid with gold leaf and hand-applied colors. Handmade tiles and mosaics decorated outdoor walls and baths.

After construction was completed, developers opened the home for daily tours from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., on April 29, 1928, for three weeks, extended for a fortnight more. The home was filled with antiques provided by Beaux Art Antiques Shop, hand-carved furniture from Jack Rennick, paintings from the New House galleries, food in the pantry provided by Safeway Stores, and Cadillac-provided cars sitting in the garage. Visitors came from all 48 states, Paris, London and Vienna, totaling almost 100,000 in all. Special experts provided daily talks on decoration, landscaping, furnishings, etc., led by architect Daniels.

Unfortunately, after all the hype, hyperbole, and tours, no one stepped forward to buy the home. It sat empty during the Depression, before developer Weber finally stepped forward to purchase it in 1934. The family lived there for several years, before financial problems hit them in 1939.

Illustrated advertisements in the Jan. 21, 1940, Los Angeles Times trumpeted, “It is one of the showplaces of the Palisades” in announcing the Jan. 22 and 23, 1940, auction of the $125,000 furnished home. Everything was for sale: home, Persian carpets, sterling, bronzes, furniture, the organ, a library of several hundred volumes and a large stamp collection – to cover encumbrances of $10,000. Mr. and Mrs. Morris Kaplan won the auction, but were forced to put it up for auction again on July 1 and 2 of that year, once again to pay the encumbrance. No one bid, and the house stood empty. Villa Aurora’s second life began when rescuing angels Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger stepped forward in 1943 to purchase it as their refuge from Nazi Germany.

Feuchtwanger, the son of a Jewish factory owner, had earned his doctorate before establishing the German magazine Der Spiegel in 1908. On the side, he wrote theater reviews, plays, and novels, becoming one of Weimar Germany’s most prominent intellectuals and prominent critics of Nazism. Nazis burned his home and confiscated manuscripts in 1933 while the author lectured in the United States. Unbowed, the Feuchtwangers moved to Southern France, where the Nazis caught up with them again in 1940, sending them to French concentration camps. Lion and Marta escaped from their separate prisons and were reunited in Marseille, from which they walked through the Spanish Pyrenees to Portugal, boarding a ship bound for America. The Feuchtwangers arrived in Los Angeles in 1941 and rented rooms until they acquired the lovely home in 1943.

After cleanup and renovations, the couple moved in, turning the property into a refuge for other German Jewish intellectuals, with Thomas Mann calling it “a true castle by the sea.” Such prominent artists as Arnold Schoenberg, Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Mann, Franz Werfel and Alma Mahler, and Hollywood people like Fritz Lang and Charlie Chaplin regularly attended salons at the home. Feuchtwanger acquired another large library. Upon his death in 1958, Marta established a trust giving the home and library to USC, but allowing her to live on the property until her death at age 94 on Oct. 25, 1987.

USC professor Harold von Hofe contacted German journalists Volker Skerka and Ludwig Marcuse about organizing a drive to save the home when it appeared that USC wanted to sell it later that year. In an early form of Kickstarter, many prominent German elites and politicians joined the campaign. In 1988, the group merged with Tagesspiegel Federation in Berlin to preserve the home by founding the nonprofit group “Friends and Supporters of Villa Aurora, “ buying the home and restoring it with funds from the German Lottery Foundation and the Foreign Office. Later that year, the home earned a Cultural Heritage Landmark from the city of Los Angeles.

Villa Aurora started its third life in 1995, when it began serving as an artists’ residence for composers, writers, filmmakers and journalists on fellowship for several months’ duration. Journalists and writers threatened and forbidden freedom of expression in their own countries also won the opportunity to come practice their craft. More than 250 people have created works of art here, inspired by the gorgeous views of the Pacific and Los Angeles’ coast.

From time to time, the organization opens the home for special chamber concerts, poetry readings and film screenings, like the recently concluded Silents Salon co-sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Villa Aurora still radiates charm and beauty 85 years after construction, a refuge and inspiration for all who walk through its doors.

Downtown hipsters know the spot at 1st Street and Broadway as a big hole in the ground, where construction seems to be getting underway. More mature Angelenos may recall the 1950s Cold War monstrosity that was demolished after being damaged in the Northridge earthquake.

Prior to that, however, one of the buildings that occupied the southwest corner of the intersection was the Mason Opera House. Here’s a program from the Mason, dated 1913. It’s priced at $49, which is more than I would pay (I have a couple of programs), but they are interesting old curious.

Here’s a YouTube film I did on the Mason in 2006 for the 1947project. Unfortunately, since YouTube was acquired by Google, the video has been stretched so the aspect ratio is wrong.

I came across this street artist last evening while walking in downtown Los Angeles. He’s painting a street scene of the corner of Broadway and 7th Street.

Update: Ed Fuentes identifies our artist: “Alex Schaefer. And he has a show opening soon at District Gallery (3rd and Traction).”

Thanks, Ed!

Here’s a close-up of his work:

I didn’t want to interrupt him (he was already dealing with a sidewalk art critic) but I noticed that his shirt said thehivegallery.com.

As I said, the artist was already contending with a sidewalk art critic.

I have had a copy of this drawing over my desk for years as a reminder that I really ought to write a series of posts on the subject. This is the first in a series of columns featuring Charles Owens’ drawings of Los Angeles landmarks with commentary by Timothy G. Turner. This series appeared for 49 installments between 1935 and 1936, and was followed by Nuestro Pueblo, by Owens and Joe Seewerker, which was compiled into a book published in 1940.

As far as I know, Rediscovering Los Angeles was never published in book form, although The Times urged readers to clip them out and compile them into a scrapbook.

What I find most interesting is that Los Angeles in 1935 already needed to be “rediscovered,” because these days, people seem to be most interested in the 1940s, which were still several years away.

For those who don’t recall my previous posts about Turner, he was quite a character, who wrote several books and was recently “discovered” by Times book critic David Ulin, who didn’t bother to find out that Turner used to write for The Times.

Who was Turner? He appears to have been a local journalist, but other than that, not much is known.

Here’s a post I wrote on Turner in 2005 for the 1947project:

Women in Slacks – BY TIMOTHY G. TURNER

Having led a long and wicked life, it ill behooves me to wax censorious. But ere I die, and may my soul rest in peace, I am going to raise my weak, small voice, so help me, against women wearing trousers.

The late Harry Carr once wrote that women never would wear pants because “they are far too decent.” How wrong he was. The slack craze came in nearly a decade ago and, like red fingernails, folks said, “It will be over in a season or two.” But it seems to be increasing and women of mature years vie with young ones in looking as much like men as they possibly can.

The craze was begun by a European actress, who used it as a publicity gimmick. Marlene Dietrich, be it noted, only wore them for a short time, and then returned to the short skirts and sheer hose which made her the darling of cheesecake photographers. She started it, but she quit. Not so the rest, the sillies.

It has been the fashion of late to reproduce cartoons and line drawings from magazines of the last century. Several of these, in denouncing woman suffrage, showed what the “new woman” would be like. They depict her in trousers and otherwise gotten up in just about the way she now gets herself up. They depicted her leaning against a bar chatting with male hoodlums. She always was shown smoking.

Now I have no objection to women drinking and smoking, for I believe in liberty, but why women should try to dress like men is beyond me. It violates the law, lay and divine. I am astonished by what I am about to do: I am about to quote Scripture. In Deuteronomy, it says: “A woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto man, neither shall man put on a woman’s garment for all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord Thy God.”

+ + +

Timothy G. Turner was a prolific, long-established writer for The Times, beginning with a feature on Anna May Wong in 1921. While he retired from the paper in 1954 (having taken a few years off to work in public relations), he continued contributing articles until his death — in fact he wrote a cover letter on a submission to The Times a few hours before he died in 1961 at the age of 75.

He was a bald, lanky man with glasses, and the unsmiling mug shot with his obituary makes him look serious, cold and, in his signature bowtie, a bit eccentric. However, the story says he took delight in poking fun at all pretensions, lived downtown and refused to learn how to drive a car.

For much of his career, Turner covered hotels, which meant interviewing all sorts of celebrities (his final column, on parody, recounts how he infuriated poet Robert W. Service by quoting a once well-known satire on one of Service’s Yukon verses). He also wrote a book about his experiences as an Associated Press correspondent with Pancho Villa’s army, “Bullets, Bottles and Gardenias,” and an anthology of short stories about Los Angeles, “Turn Off the Sunshine.”

Turner was one of those prolific, old-time reporters, turning in 54 columns for 1947 out of more than 1,000 stories in his career at The Times, from long features to a few paragraphs launching a series in 1924 on “The Most Interesting Place in Los Angeles.” (He chose Sonoratown, then located on Main Street between Temple and the old plaza).

And despite his rant on women in slacks, he could be an evocative writer. Here’s part of a column about the park next to the downtown Los Angeles Public Library:

Library Park once had its tragedy. People at their breakfasts in the many windows thereabouts saw a man, apparently sleeping, on a bench. It was too cold to sleep in comfort and they wondered. The long-legged library gardener finally came up and shook him. Then he went away.”

“Then a policeman and a man who wore no uniform came. They threw a sheet over the man on the bench. Then a wagon came and took him away. They also took away the revolver, with one empty chamber, that lay by his side.

“The gardener washed off the bench with a hose and the sun came out and dried it off. I wondered who would be the first to sit down on it. Soon they came, a young man and a young woman, who sat down on the bench and talked earnestly for a long time. Then they sat saying nothing, just sat there holding hands.”

This postcard complements the Rediscovering Los Angeles post on Angels Flight. It’s postmarked 1904 and photo was taken from Spring Street looking toward the 3rd Street tunnel.  Bidding starts at $5.

The 3rd Street Tunnel, former home of Angels Flight, as seen from Spring Street, via Google Street View.

The Bradbury Building is on the left side of the street at Broadway.

Notice that the streets are unpaved and that there are no streetlights.

The building on the left, barely visible beyond the Bradbury Building would be torn down to make way for the Million Dollar Theatre.

Here’s an update on renovations at the Hollis Mulwray house from “Chinatown.” The last time I posted a photo it looked like this.

This is how it looked in February 2012.

And how it appears in the movie.

Nov. 18, 1935: This is the third installment in the Rediscovering Los Angeles series, featuring Charles Owens’ artwork and text by Times columnist Timothy Turner. Unlike the later Nuestro Pueblo series by Owens and Joe Seewerker, these entries were never published in book form. The Times encouraged readers to clip these columns and save them in a scrapbook.

This week, Turner and Owens visit the Pyrenees Hotel at Aliso and Alameda, built in 1874, which was being demolished to make way for Union Station. The side of the hotel was used as one side of a ball court or “rebote fronton,” Turner writes of the popular pastime of rebote.

Aliso and Alameda via Google Street View.