A postcard showing the Bimini Baths, courtesy of Mary Mallory.

For centuries, those looking for healing of mental or physical ailments visited therapeutic spas and springs at such places as Bath, England, and Baden Baden in Germany. By the 1860s, Glen Ivy Hot Springs offered refreshing waters to Southern California residents. In the early 1900s, Los Angeles boasted a curative hot springs near Westlake Park, the Bimini Baths.

Discovered accidentally when an African American worker searching for oil struck a natural mineral springs 1,750 feet underground beneath marble three feet thick, the waters quickly became popular after Dr. David Edwards opened Bimini Baths on Dec. 31, 1902. Located remotely from downtown near Third and Vermont amid a eucalyptus grove, Bimini Baths was named after a Butterworth poem that described Ponce de Leon’s search for the fountain of youth. The Baths, the second largest on the West Coast after San Francisco’s Sutro Baths were housed in one building with three separate pools.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

The Bimini Baths in the Los Angeles Herald.

Edwards’ spa featured green and white interiors filled with tropical plants, and contained three “plunges” or separate bath areas, one for women only, over 18,000 square feet. They were filled with 112-degree water that was changed every night. The Los Angeles Times called it “a new local wonder” in a Dec. 28, 1902, story. The potassium and soda solution of the water seemed to have curative benefits for those suffering from various health disorders.

Edwards spent $50,000 constructing his huge natatorium with a main pool 50 yards long and 2 1/2 to 10 feet deep, as well as two smaller pools. Upstairs, there were 50 individual rooms where people could bathe alone in tubs. Above the main pool was a balcony to sit 1,000, so that special aquatic shows could be held, as well as swimming competitions. Electric light illuminated the facilities, aided by an arching glass roof by day. A cafe adjoined the baths to provide refreshment.

The baths occupied only a small part of the 14 acres surrounding it, and Edwards proposed to build a park. By early January, Edwards announced intentions to build a Mission-style hotel of 50 to 100 rooms of the “choicest class,” along with constructing pavilions, lawns and tennis courts among the grounds. With nothing happening, W. T. Somes and Arthur G. Newton proposed spending $75,000 to build a 150 room “Mission-Style” hotel run by the the baths management in April 1904, but once again, nothing materialized.

Eli P. Clark and M. H. Sherman extended their trolley line from Hollywood and the downtown trolley line also stretched toward the facility, enabling even more guests to visit. More and more lines extended tentacles toward Third and Vermont, providing better transportation to boost ridership.

Disaster struck the evening of Nov. 8, 1905, when a fire devoured the building, as staff and guests rushed to save furnishings rather than the building. No fire plug existed anywhere in the vicinity, though Dr. Edwards had requested the city install one nearby. Unfortunately, the building was drastically underinsured, valued at $150,000 to $200,000 with only $50,000 insurance.

The Bimini Baths in Modern Sanitation.

Edwards hired architect Thornton Fitzhugh to draw up grander plans for a new Bimini Baths, quickly constructed and reopened Aug. 3, 1906, in a virtually similar Mission style. The new $250,000 building stretched 24 x 125 feet with individual pools for men, boys and women. Incandescent light once again illuminated facilities that contained 500 dressing rooms with sterilized suits and towels, valuables counter, a cafe, lunch counter, soda fountain, ladies’ parlor, roof garden and cigar stand. The 50-room hotel nearby promoted itself as “refined, cheerful, homelike and restful.” By 1907, surging crowds from all over the United States made it one of Los Angeles’ top tourist attractions.

Bertha Smith wrote a long article about the facility for the July 1907 issue of Modern Sanitation, describing it as a “peaceful place of luxury,” where those with blood and breathing problems could partake of its pain-relieving heat and medicinal qualities. Individuals could switch between tub rooms of hot and cold water, visit steam rooms, massage rooms, Turkish baths, or even manicurists and chiropodists. She called the waters “a velvet bath,” enveloping bathers in an almost oily softness that possessed a mild astringency. Drinking the water would clear the lungs, and sweating would help clear minds and pores. She stated that sodium carbonate and potassium chloride along with other minerals filled the waters.

In 1915, various publications like American Contractor and even Moving Picture World reported that W. E. Page of Kansas obtained a 20-year lease on the eight acres of Bimini Hot Springs, where he hoped to construct an open-air amusement park named Bimini Electric Park with a moving picture theater, and build additional elaborate baths and concessions, two 200-foot illuminated towers, and a luxury hotel among the grounds. Architect John J. Franenfelder drew up preliminary plans for the park, but none of the projects came to fruition.

Bimini Baths remained popular with upper middle visitors and Hollywood celebrities, as the business designed colorful lithographic brochures placed in various tourist destinations and train stations. 1920s brochures listed opening hours as 8 a.m. – 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. on Sundays at the State Board of Health certified facility. These booklets promoted three plunges along with tub bath rooms, Marinello Beauty Shoppe, hairdressing parlors with electric hair dryers and sun parlors for women. No one with colds, coughs, fever, or inflamed eyes could enter the pools, which were treated with chlorine, filtered through a circulating system, and changed four times daily.

Unfortunately, many people were injured or drowned over the years, either from poor swimming skill, being overcome by heat, or by hitting their head while diving.

Over time, attendance dropped as well, as wealthy citizens constructed their own swimming pools, the middle class visited city-run pools, and regular spa facilities began opening. Racist practices also decreased attendance at the Baths, as later owners prevented African Americans and Hispanics from entering. Protests flared.

By the early 1940s, the baths began advertising and promoting themselves on KFAC and later KFWB radio stations, with 13-15 week shows. The KFAC show featured interviews with the Southern Pacific Assn. of the Amateur Athletic Union coaches, swimmers, and officials. The KFWB show, called “The Talent Parade,” introduced a weekly amateur program.

Owners tried to operate as a dance hall, before shutting down in the late 1940s rather than admit people of color after stand-ins and other protests. On Feb. 2, 1951, Bimini Baths, consisting of the building and two acres, was auctioned off for $125,000 to Manny Feigenbaum and Associates after falling into bankruptcy. He attempted to run the building as a training center for fighters. Within a year, the facilities at 180 Bimini Place were auctioned once again, this time acquired by Frank Cohn of Chicago.

By 1956, the springs were covered over and an office building erected at the new address of 3421 W. Second St. A fire that year caused $7,000 damage for Zenith National Insurance, headquartered at the building. Within a few years, the site was a used car lot. In 1969, the Daily Racing Form constructed a $2-million building on the site.

While another hot springs exists in the area at a neighborhood spa, the original Bimini Baths introduced luxury spa and water treatments to Los Angeles residents looking for curative powers of medicinal waters.

“I stood beside him in the bay window of Laura’s living room. East 62nd Street had yielded to the spirit of carnival…”

The 200 block of East 62nd Street, New York, via Google Street View.

In case you just tuned in, I’m using Louella Parsons’ May 15, 1944, item on Rouben Mamoulian being replaced as the director of “Laura” to take a meandering look at the making of the film, which was released in Los Angeles in November 1944. Previous posts have examined the writing career of “Laura” novelist Vera Caspary and the state of the detective story in 1941, when she was writing the novel.

In this series of posts, we’re looking at some of the sites used in the novel. Recall that in “Murder for Pleasure, Howard Haycraft’s 1941 book on the history and art the detective story, Haycraft urged mystery writers to use actual locations:

The Making of “Laura” Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19

Spoilers ahead

The 100 block of East 62nd Street, New York, via Google Street View.

One of Caspary’s strengths was her skill in observing detail and among the best examples in “Laura” is the description (Page 35) of Laura Hunt’s apartment on East 62nd Street as given in the voice of newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker (played by Clifton Webb in the film). This location is particularly important because it’s the crime scene and because much of the action occurs here:

“The house was one of a row of converted mansions, preserved in such fashion that Victorian architecture sacrificed none of its substantial elegance to 20th century chic. High stoops had given way to lacquer-red doors three steps down; scrofulous daisies and rachitic geraniums bloomed in extraordinarily bright blue and green window boxes; rents were exorbitant. Laura had lived here, she told me, because she enjoyed snubbing Park Avenue’s pretentious foyers. After a trying day in the office, she could neither face a superman in gilt braid nor discuss the weather with politely indifferent elevator boys. She had enjoyed opening the street door with a key and climbing the stairs to her remodeled third floor. It was this taste for privacy that led to her death, for there had been no one to ask at the door if Miss Hunt expected a visitor on the night the murderer came.”

Caspary sprinkles details of the interior of Laura’s apartment throughout the book. There is the bare floor of the entryway where the body fell next to the Aubusson rug (Page 10) and elsewhere she describes “blood running in rivulets to the edge of the green carpet” (Page 36). Waldo refers to a refectory table (Page 37), a “long green chair and an ottoman” (Page 37) and a “black marble fireplace in which the logs were piled.”  On the bookshelves (Page 38), Detective Mark McPherson (played by Dana Andrews in the film) notices “a certain small volume bound in red morocco.” And a baseball autographed by Cookie Lavagetto on Laura’s desk. (Page 40).

Two other items are worth mentioning. The first is mercury glass vase on Laura’s mantel (Page 39), which appears on the cover of the book.

“Bessie Clary, Laura’s maid, had told the police that her first glimpse of the body had been a distorted reflection in the mercury glass globe on Laura’s mantel. That tarnished bubble caught and held our eyes, and we saw in it fleetingly, as in a crystal ball, a vision of the inert body in the blue robe, dark blood matted in the dark hair.”

 

“Jeanne Balzac” by Eugene Edward Speicher, via American Gallery.

The second is the portrait of Laura (Page 40-41):

“Near the door, a few feet from the spot where the body had fallen, hung Stuart Jacoby’s portrait of Laura. Jacoby, one of the imitators of Eugene Speicher, had produced a flattened version of a face that was anything but flat. The best feature of the painting, as they had been her best feature, were the eyes. The oblique tendency, emphasized by the sharp tilt of dark brows, gave her face that shy, fawn-like quality which had so enchanted me the day I opened the door to a slender child who had asked me to endorse a fountain pen. Jacoby had caught the fluid sense of restlessness in the position of her body, perched on the arm of a chair, a pair of yellow gloves in one hand, a green hunter’s hat in the other. The portrait was a trifle unreal, however, a trifle studied, too much Jacoby and not enough Laura.”

To be continued.

Note: As many of you know, Mary Mallory’s father passed away, so in her absence we’re running one of her most popular posts, from 2012. 

Buster Keaton seemed to have it all in the mid-1920s. His career was riding high, as the public loved his film comedies, making him one of America’s top film personalities. He had a beautiful wife, Natalie Talmadge, and two lovely boys, though the public didn’t know that behind the scenes, the marriage was shaky. All he needed was a grand house to complete the image of the successful gentleman.

The Keatons first built a nice though average size home that Natalie considered too small for the family and staff once completed. After selling it off, Buster began planning an elaborate estate for his wife, one to rival that of her more successful sisters Norma and  Constance, as well as top stars Harold Lloyd and Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

Keaton’s home in a display ad, Los Angeles Times, March 20, 1927

The Keatons bought land at 1004 Hartford Way in Beverly Hills, and hired architect Gene Verge as architect. Verge designed homes around Los Angeles, as well as schools, churches, and club buildings, mostly in the Italian Renaissance or Spanish style. The Jan. 3, 1926, Los Angeles Times stated that Verge had drawn plans for a home to cost around $200,000 in the Italian Renaissance style, with “spacious forecourt,…terraces, cascade dropping from a height of fifty feet to the pool beneath…extensive grounds will have room for tennis, archery and numerous other sports.” Supposedly Keaton’s special effects man Fred Gabourie lent assistance to the project.

The 10,000-square-foot home named “the Italian Villa” by Keaton was completed in late 1926 at a cost of $300,000 per Marc Wanamaker in his “Early Beverly Hills” book. The house contained 20 rooms over three acres, with a pool, tennis court, guest house, and a small shed in back where Buster would cut his films as well as store his own private film prints. Detailing included painted ceiling beams in the dining room, wrought ironwork for staircases, and an elaborate, motorized movie screen that retracted into the screening room wall when not in use.

A long driveway ended in a circular forecourt and fountain in front of the estate’s grilled ironwork door. The sunken entrance gallery led up a few steps to a fountain, with large salon-like rooms opening off each side. Off to the right was the large screening room and drawing room, with small music room off to one side. A family room off the screening room functioned as card and billiard room. A dining room and salon opened off the other side of the gallery, and a glass enclosed patio occupied the rear of the house. Beautiful gardens lay just outside the windows.

Natalie’s personal bedroom suite occupied almost the entire west wing, while Buster made do with just a small bedroom.

As Marion Meade states in “Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase,” “On the knoll of a hill, overlooking a rolling lawn, the pale green stucco mansion rose like a fifteenth-century suburban house transplanted from the Venetian countryside. Against a backdrop of cypresses and palms a staircase of exactly sixty steps descended to a thirty-foot Romanesque swimming pool, flanked by classical nude statues and inlaid with mosaic tiles. The steep terraces had been landscaped by a gardener who once worked for Pope Pius X11.”

Meade also states that the grounds included a trout stream winding through the property could be “turned on and off at the push of a button.”

Buster was proud of his home, proudly showing it off in his film, “Parlor, Bedroom and Bath” in 1931.

By the 1930s, the Keaton marriage was in serious trouble. In April 1932, Buster took his sons and their nurse flying to San Diego to visit an Encinitas Ranch. Natalie and her sister Constance Talmadge rushed to Dist. Atty. Buron Fitts’ office, asking him to have police meet the plane in San Diego and bring the children back. When interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Buster claimed, “I only took the boys on the plane trip to show who wears the trousers in our house…I just wanted to see who’s boss.”

Natalie Keaton finally filed for divorce in July 1932, with the official end of the marriage in August.

She was awarded the home in the divorce settlement, but soon sold it. Various celebrities lived there over the years, including Barbara Hutton and Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich.

In 1949, owner John Reynolds Owens died, and the entire estate was auctioned off, furniture and all. Actor James Mason successfully negotiated down the price of the house from around $200,000 to under $100,000, but to help finance costs, some of the acreage was subdivided, including the lovely stairs cascading to the pool. They made alterations inside, as had former owners. In later years, Pamela Mason, who won the home in a divorce settlement with James, deferred maintenance, shutting the doors and not entering rooms which needed major work. She eventually sold it to buyers who restored old estates. After more than two years’ work, they sold to the current owners.

Much has been restored in the home, with a false ceiling removed in the dining room, revealing the beautiful painted ceiling beams. A room has been added off the screening room, matching the wooded paneling and beams almost exactly.

The Los Angeles Conservancy featured a tour of the home and grounds Saturday, Oct. 6, 2012, as an elaborate fundraiser. Participants were allowed to tour the entire first floor of the home, projection room, grounds, and the exterior of the shed, where Mason found much of Keaton’s films. The grounds once again resemble those of an Italian villa, with paths leading to small nooks and private areas. Outdoor seating areas offer places of respite and beauty. Walking through the home, one could almost feel Buster making a sandwich in the kitchen and taking it with him to his large screening room, where he could watch rushes of his films or see a completed work. A lovely home and monument to an incredibly talented man.

A postcard of the Garden Court Apartments, listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $9.99.

For decades, the elegant Garden Court Apartments represented high-class living for both aspiring and successful residents of Hollywood. Located just west of the thriving business district at 7021 Hollywood Blvd., the neo-baroque structure featured regal caryatids holding up pilasters just above the first floor, a dramatic design showing the strength and integrity of the building.

The June 3, 1916, Los Angeles Times noted the beginning of construction for J. E. Ransford’s four-story class C apartment home, designed and built by the renowned Frank Meline Co. The classical structure would consist of 190 two and three room suites composed of hard wood and tile. An ad in the Jan. 1, 1917, Times proclaimed Hartwell Motor Co. President Ransford’s $500,000 building, “the Most Modern in the West,” and the paper called it “the most beautiful and complete apartment house” in a Jan. 22, 1917, story.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

Via Archive.org.

Opening to the public in January under the management of Mrs. Maud V. Mills, the Garden Court Apartments offered residents such special amenities as its own garage providing car service, a commissary, two ballrooms, billiard room, beauty parlor, daily maid service, two tennis courts, pergolas, trellises, and gardens. By April, the building hosted dances, and on May 12, 1917, hosted a tennis exhibition benefiting the Belgian Relief Fund, featuring many top male and female tennis champions in round robin competition. Its swanky ballroom served as a meeting location for many large groups, including a committee attempting to organize the Motion Picture Home for Convalescent Soldiers in March 1918, led by Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille and Mrs. J. S. Blackton.

Reaching out to high-end residents, Ransford purchased a full page of advertorial space Jan. 1, 1920, in the Los Angeles Times, featuring lavish, hyperbolic prose describing the luxurious, tasteful and well crafted “Apartments de Luxe” and its harmonious blending with surroundings, “like a perfect jewel carefully fashioned and finished by the hands of some enthusiastic artist, and then placed in a setting of wondrous mountains carved in nature’s generous grandeur… enjoyed by some, admired by all.”

The flowery prose calling Hollywood “the wonder spot of the southland” described how the pergolas, gardens, and walks suggested Southern Italy with their stately beauty, and surrounded the playing fountain and pool in the inner court, a warm, simply elegant “House of a thousand wonders – the house of the heart’s desire.”

The dramatic architecture housed regal English Renaissance furnishings in a mahogany-lined lobby festooned with velvet drapes, with lounge room and banquet room outfitted in French walnut, art-glass dome, and wall decorations below, as well as tiled kitchen, a ballroom exactly duplicating that of Paris’ Petit Trianon, and a billiard room with Batchelder tiles.

Rich mahogany and ivory trim decorated each apartment, which included hard wood floors, plate glass windows, and period furniture, along with such special amenities as steam heat, telephone service, daily maid service, vacuum connections, sanitary garbage chutes, electric refrigerators, and circulating ice water. Apartment living rooms were furnished with overstuffed furniture, chaise longues, and Colonial rockers, while Old English dining rooms filled with William and Mary furniture were outfitted in dark blues and mulberry reds. Built-ins and beveled mirrors decorated dressing rooms outside tiled bathrooms containing alcove tubs and showers. Singles were furnished with Jacobean furniture in English oak, along with moroccan leather and tapestries.

A postcard of the Garden Court Apartments, listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $9.99.

Movie magazine Photoplay called it the “largest and most beautiful apartment house in Hollywood,” drawing movie folk and celebrities to its elegant surroundings. Sam Fox, sheet music publisher, vacationed for months at the property with his family. Director King Vidor played tennis on its courts. Actress Julanne Johnston, theatre impresario Sid Grauman, photographer Frank S. Hoover, and director Sidney Franklin lived there in the 1920s, enjoying the Pryor Moore Dance Orchestra, along with classical concerts and voice classes. Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd filmed on the street in front of it, as silent film historian John Bengtson points out. The luxurious meeting space lured the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to hold lighting demonstrations of Mazda lights in May 1928, to cinematographers such as Tony Gaudio, Hal Mohr, Victor Milner, and George Barnes.

In a surprise move, businessmen C. E. Toberman and S. A. Hartwell leased the building for 99 years on Feb. 19, 1926, per the Los Angeles Times, retaining all staff. The new managers made few changes, but opened meeting rooms to more diverse uses, including rentals by groups offering Bhagavad Gita and yoga classes. Entertainers performed in its banquet room, with vaudeville performer Virginia Sale headlining her own sketch show in May 1933, which garnered fine reviews in Variety. By 1930, however, Toberman was forced to turn over the structure due to financial difficulties.

Though celebrities such as Mack Sennett, Jed Prouty, and others lived there in the 1930s and 1940s, the building began a slow decline, renting space to an eclectic series of groups to pay the bills. The Church of Ataraxia held meetings there under the direction of Rev. Pearl I. Barnes, who offered flower readings and medium services.

An ad in the March 10, 1948, Los Angeles Times noted the building’s vacant corner was available for commercial development, a harbinger of things to come. By the 1960s, Useful Metaphysics taught classes in the building, as did the American School of Dance. A recording and meeting studio occupied a small part of the space in the 1960s.

New owner E. H. Karz bought the building and performed some renovations in 1961, hoping for a turnaround, but none arrived. He purchased an ad in the April 4, 1967, issue of Variety announcing lease options on the Garden Court, stating that it “is suitable for the Hollywood Hall of Fame, museum, boarding consulate, school, office etc.” The building featured 180 rooms and 80 baths, 300 seat capacity meeting halls, carpets, drapes, 100,000 square feet, all with $60,000 annual depreciation. He also noted that $100 million in new buildings surrounded the property. Los Angeles Parks and Recreation considered the building as a possible home for its Movie Museum in August 1968, after plans fell through across from the Hollywood Bowl, but these ideas also failed to come to fruition.

Karz negotiated with Debbie Reynolds and her husband in 1970 about turning the building into a Hollywood Museum. He sued them for over $8 million in damages in December 1974 after the couple walked away, claiming they had reached an agreement in 1970 to share profits in a museum to house memorabilia furnished by Reynolds and renovated by her for $300,000. The Dec. 18, 1974, Variety reported that he stated she repudiated the agreement in January 1973, after secretly beginning negotiations with possible other locations. Soon the once glamorous apartment building became the decrepit Motel 7.

As the building grew shabby, film and television took notice, with Ed Lauter shooting a TV pilot, “Delaney,” about a 1940s-era “Bogart-like private eye,” along with other companies.

Tired of dealing with the decaying building, Karz sold out to C-D Investments, who intended to tear it down in the early 1980s and construct commercial property. Preservation groups like Hollywood Heritage, Los Angeles Conservancy, and Peter Gordon rallied behind the empty and desolate building, ensuring its nomination as Los Angeles’ Historic-Cultural Monument #243 on April 16, 1981. Hollywood Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson bypassed normal procedures to ask for immediate designation, but later shifted positions to support removing its historic designation and tearing it down. For years, owners had willfully neglected the building, allowing it to become dilapidated and an eye sore. The Dec. 29, 1981, Los Angeles Times noted the building’s historic nature and stated, “Dilapidation is no excuse for tearing down a building that may be of historic value.”

Preservation groups argued in favor of taking over the Garden Court and adaptively renovating it for other uses, but court battles and large public opposition failed to stop the city from removing it from the Monuments List and starting the process leading to demolition. Though the building was eligible for National Register Landmark status, C-D Investments denied any attempts to have it so named. As the building gained the name Hotel Hell, with transients, runaways, and drifters occupying it, a judge denied the last attempt by preservation groups to buy the building and restore it. Eventually the building was demolished March 15, 1984.

Since that time, the doomed location has hosted the Hollywood Entertainment Museum, Galaxy Theatre, and Knitting Factory, which all failed, and now serves as home for Fresh and Easy, DSW Shoe Warehouse, and others. What was once dramatic and outstanding architecture is now occupied by just another shopping center, a disposable commodity in this consumer-obsessed culture.

A postcard of Lookout Mountain, courtesy of Mary Mallory.

Long before the developers of Hollywoodland offered potential buyers the chance to enjoy the magnificent views at the top of the hill above their giant advertising sign, the real estate syndicate promoting Lookout Mountain Park smartly decided to construct a high-end resort at the top of the development. While Lookout Mountain Inn survived less than 10 years, it provided the grandest views of the Southland from its wide porches.

The Aug. 14, 1908, Los Angeles Times announced that a new real estate syndicate would soon start construction on a “pleasure resort” on the peak of Lookout Mountain, reached by scenic railway and automobile. Purchased for $98,000, their 280 acres of hill and mountainside loomed above West Hollywood with some of the most spectacular views anywhere around Los Angeles, ranking as one of its top tourist attractions. The newly formed Lookout Mountain Park Land and Water Co. would build a hotel and bungalows, develop and sell water, and reforest the hillsides with eucalyptus and pines.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

Lookout Mountain in the Los Angeles Herald, May 30, 1909.

Ads trumpeted the beginning of sales for the 745 lots in Lookout Mountain Park in mid-May 1909, each costing $250, for $5 down and $1 a week in payments. The Los Angeles Times noted in the May 23, 1909, edition that the “high-class resort and residential section” would attract residents from all over, with the location itself “world famous.” The easily accessible site with sweeping vistas offered visitors a chance to slow down and rest, and enjoy nature’s beauty. Visitors could take the Pacific Electric from downtown, switch to the Laurel Canyon car, and then travel by car to the summit. Construction of the new Sunset Boulevard would aid traveling to the spectacular location.

To help promote their development, the Lookout Mountain Park Land and Water Co. smartly produced and distributed postcards showing views of the inn and surrounding acres, a potent advertising tool for the virgin land.

The syndicate blanketed newspapers with advertisements in 1909-1910, offering hyperbolic praise for the beauty and uniqueness of the area. One such ad stated that “people of refinement and lovers of natural beauty who seek homes where the air is good, pure and healthful,” would find their perfect residence here.

The Oct. 2, 1910, Los Angeles Herald described how the neighborhood exploded from bare hillsides and rough trails into a well laid out development featuring outstanding views. The paper noted the large hotel and “many stately homes erected by capitalists” lining the hills. The 130-foot by 75-foot hotel featured wide verandas on three sides, offering unobstructed 270-degree views of Hollywood, Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, beach towns, Catalina and Santa Barbara Islands, Echo Mountain and other sights, as well as dining room and reception halls. These amenities welcomed newly arriving guests.

Lookout Mountain in the Los Angeles Herald, June 20, 1909.

For $15 room and board, one could stay a week at the inn’s elevation of 1,500 feet, soaking in clean air, enjoying peaceful rest and taking in the million-dollar views. A Times article describing outstanding mountain retreats on June 2, 1912, included the inn, stating, “This modern, luxuriously appointed hostelry is open throughout the year and caters to the votaries of Los Angeles’ most exclusive social circles. It is a favorite resort for banquets, dinner parties, and social functions, and is reached by one of he most beautiful automobile trips in the world.”

Filmmakers also sought out its secluded and virgin locations for shooting. Cecil B. DeMille and Oscar Apfel employed the Lookout Mountain Inn as a set visited by the wealthy Easterner played by Jane Darwell in the 1914 Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co.’s fourth film, “The Only Son.” Fan magazines noted that western star William S. Hart shot parts of his first Artcraft feature, “The Narrow Trail,” here in 1917, attracted by the narrow mountain roads offering great shots of chase sequences.

Stars gravitated to the inn as well, enjoying its somewhat private and secluded location as a perfect place to meet for Sunday breakfasts before riding horseback in the hills.

Automobile enthusiasts flocked to Lookout Mountain and its inn. Some enjoyed nighttime touring in 1914, while others sought out the steep roads offering dramatic challenges to the up-to-date engines and tires of their sports cars. Many enjoyed the thrilling adventure of racing their cars to the summit. Mrs. H. S. Carroll succeeded in driving her 1913 Henderson sports car to the summit, telling papers she attempted it for thrills, and hoped to do it again. Unfortunately, the first death occurred in 1914 when a drunk driver’s car drove over an embankment and flipped, killing passenger Mrs. Helen Newcomb.

Deep tragedy struck Oct. 26, 1918, during a Santa Ana. A group of teenage boys enjoyed a sausage bake over hot coals, but failed to completely extinguish them. Glowing embers quickly erupted a few hours later, and a fire wall with flames 500 feet wide covered the hillside, moving at the rate of a mile in five minutes. Fire torched 200 acres, and completely engulfed the inn. Owner J. H. Hartwick and employees waited too late to save much of anything, and were lucky to escape with their lives.

Developers never rebuilt the inn, as home sales continued to climb in the area without it. Over the decades, many stars resided in this area, including Chester Conklin in his $70,000, 10-room mountain retreat, Jill Esmond and Laurence Olivier in a “rambling ranch house,” Bert Wheeler, Joan Blondell and George Barnes, John Carroll, Lew Ayres, Burl Ives, Edward G. Robinson, Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Ida Lupino, and Harry Houdini. Its soaring views still attract high-end customers.

Lookout Mountain still survives today as a high end, rustic residential section crisscrossed by winding and curving streets, minus the stunning inn and its dramatic vistas.

Georgette Bauerdorf, left, George F. Bauerdorf and Constance Ann “Connie” Bauerdorf Dillon in an undated photo, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

Although Georgette Bauerdorf, 20, was living by herself in the apartment at El Palacio, 8493 Fountain Ave., in the weeks before she was killed, she was not entirely unsupervised. She had regular contact with her father’s secretary, Rose L. Gilbert, who lived at 6450 W. Olympic Blvd.

Rose Gilbert’s apartment, 6450 W. Olympic Blvd., via Google Street View.

Wednesday, Oct. 11, 1944, was a pleasant autumn day in Los Angeles. We had the usual morning low clouds, warming up to a high of 75 after a low of 51.

American troops were engaged in a fierce battle for Aachen, the first German city to fall to the Allies, and MacArthur was about to return to the Philippines.

Aimee Semple McPherson’s family was fighting over her estate after the famed evangelist killed herself in September with an overdose of Seconol.

And Americans were deciding whether to celebrate Thanksgiving on Nov. 23 or Nov. 30 after President Roosevelt moved the holiday in 1939 to add an extra week of Christmas shopping.

On that Wednesday, the day before Georgette was killed, she and Rose Gilbert were together until 2 p.m., according to news accounts. They went shopping, had lunch and visited the beauty parlor. At some point, Georgette cashed a check for $175 ($2,365.01 USD 2014) and spent $90 ($1,216.29 USD 2014) on a plane ticket to El Paso, where she was to rendezvous with Pvt. Jerome “Jerry” Brown, whom she met in June while volunteering at the Hollywood Canteen.

Georgette Bauerdorf’s appointment book, from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner collection, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

Oct. 20, 1940: The Ann Meredith hair salon, 250 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, with 56 booths, a snack bar and a men’s department with a separate entrance. It was replaced by offices about 1957.

Georgette noted in her datebook that she had a 1:45 p.m. appointment at the Ann Meredith beauty salon and wrote: “June and I Canteen.”

To be continued

El Portal Theatre, courtesy of Mary Mallory.

For the first couple of decades of the twentieth century, construction of a grand, elaborately decorated motion picture theatre in a small town suggested either that the burg was developing rapidly into an economic powerhouse with money to burn, or that it hoped to grow into a larger and more sophisticated community by luring upscale individuals to patronize its businesses. The 1926 construction of the El Portal Theater in Lankershim demonstrates that the little farming community was on its way to becoming an economic driver for the San Fernando Valley.

Originally part of the San Fernando Mission lands, the area surrounding Lankershim was broken into ranchos and later sold almost as one piece to Isaac Lankershim and his Lankershim Ranch Land and Water Company. Large groups of settlers began making their way west after the Civil War, growing exponentially after the opening of the transcontinental railroad. The rich soil supported crops such as fruit, grains, and nuts. Lankershim began selling off large chunks to pioneers such as Weddington, Chandler, and Whitsett to subdivide the lands into farming plots, leading to small community areas like Toluca, renamed Lankershim in 1896. By the mid-to-late 1920s, this vibrant area once again exploded, as city folk moved to the Valley seeking a place of their own.

El Portal Theatre, photograph by Mary Mallory.

In 1891, W. C. Weddington bought 23 acres from the Lankershim Ranch Land and Water Company around the little town of Toluca, later Lankershim. The family gave the Southern Pacific the right of way to build railroad lines through their property and later build a train station as well. Pacific Electric streetcar lines came through in 1911. Soon after, the family allowed a bank and the United States Post Office to rise on land near the train station, with Wilson Weddington serving as the postmaster. Business sprang up around these town foundations, and along one of the major streets in the area, named Lankershim Boulevard after the family.

Large plots of cheap land in the bucolic San Fernando Valley lured city folk looking to own their first homes. As more people moved in, real estate prices for commercial properties around major streets like Lankershim exploded. In 1925, the Weddingtons jumped at the chance to gain huge dividends on property adjoining Lankershim’s business area.

The September 10, 1925, Film Daily announced that “the Weddington Investment Corporation leased the southwest corner of Lankershim Boulevard and Weddington Avenue to Hollywood Theatres, Inc. on a 99-year lease for $850,000 in rentals and construction.” The organization, affiliated with West Coast Theatres and led by Mike Gore, President, and Sol Lesser, Secretary, planned to build a $250,000 motion picture house. Initial plans called for a 100 by 210 ft. building seating 1500, with a stage large enough to support theatrical shows. The August 25, 1925 Los Angeles Times article noted the site was currently the location of Guy Weddington’s home, with construction slated to begin December 1.

The interior of El Portal Theatre, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

The March 28, 1926, Film Daily reported that “A contract has been awarded to A. V. Perkinson at about $200,000 for a two-story and basement brick theater, store, and office building…” at 5269 Lankershim Blvd. Construction began in June on the Spanish Renaissance building designed by architect Lewis A. Smith, before it opened on October 5, 1926 with the screening of the Fox film, “Blarney,” starring Ralph Graves. The formal opening, however, occurred October 18 per the October 30, 1926 Motion Picture News, with motion picture stars and celebrities in attendance. J. Leslie Swope, treasurer of Hollywood Theatres, Inc., introduced City Councilman Charles Randall, who spoke about how the opening of the theatre supported valley development.

While the exterior of the El Portal façade sported handsome carved reliefs of Spanish conquistadors and decorative scroll work, the house interior remained somewhat subdued and austere, with coats of armor and spears or portraits of new world explorers attached to walls throughout the 1348-seat theatre.

Though affiliated with Fox West Coast Theatres, the El Portal showed first run films from all the major studios from its beginning, starting with silents and moving into sound. On October 23, 1936, the Buck Jones oater, “Empty Saddles” premiered at the El Portal, “a typical small town neighborhood house,” per the Motion Picture Herald. In 1959, the El Portal hosted the West Coast premiere of “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” benefiting MEND.

The theatre also occasionally served as a preview house and tryout location for new entertainment possibilities. In 1937, the El Portal hosted a 15-20 minute news broadcast produced on its stage, which lasted but a short time. A one-reel audience participation movie short, “Movie Quiz,” ran in November 1941 as a test for possible pre-show entertainment. Narrated by actor Grant Withers, the game consisted of the audience watching “humorous and educational stock shots” to answer questions posed on screen, which they answered by pulling tabs off numbered cards provided in the lobby. The staff tallied the right answers immediately after the contest and could award prizes, if they so desired. While the audience seemed to enjoy the show, producers and executives perceived that audiences weren’t quite ready for pre-show entertainment, and neither did they desire to present prizes after every screening.

The lobby of El Portal, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

During the morning and early afternoon when no films screened, the El Portal hosted all types of groups to help pay the bills. The Los Angeles District of the Federation of Women’s Clubs held many local conventions there in the 1930s. A cooking school popped up now and again. Los Angeles Mayor Fletchter Bowron inducted actress Glenda Farrell as North Hollywood’s honorary mayor on December 8, 1938, on the El Portal stage. On December 5, 1945, the theater hosted a preview of the music revue, the Hollywood Jazz Jamboree, featuring such performers as Mel Torme and the Mel Tones, before it hit the road.

The El Portal did its part to support the war effort during World War II. The American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) sponsored a show raising funds for Greek war relief on April 21, 1941, with emcee Milton Berle introducing such performers as Harry Warren, Johnny Mercer, and James Monaco. All-night shows for defense workers began November 5, 1941, as a test for all Los Angeles theatres, checking to see if they would actually come to watch movies before or after their shifts. Bob Hope led a war bond rally at the theatre in September 1943, which raised $370,000.

After the war, Fox West Coast Theatres saw updates and renovations under the hand of Charles Skouras, adding tropic touches, swirls and twirls, shiny metallic silver, and curly-q adorned box offices out near the streets, which removed or destroyed many original interiors.

Christian Science lectures filled the theatre throughout the 1940s and 1950s, as did Jewish High Holiday services in the 1950s and 1960s. Pete Seeger even performed in a folk concert there on May 10, 1959. In the 1960s, the El Portal, along with Grauman’s Chinese and several other theatres, hosted closed circuit screenings of the Indianapolis 500, a forerunner to today’s mega revenue closed circuit boxing events and showcase film and opera screenings.

Some small-minded residents of course, complained about film screenings or even the neighborhood. One resident wrote the Los Angeles Times in 1935, complaining about the theatre screening the Marlene Dietrich film, “The Scarlet Empress,” and “When a Man Sees Red.” In 1941, the El Portal hosted discussions with local residents upset about low and stunt flying airplanes from the United States Army.

The El Portal also attracted former or pre-celebrities to its midst. Actor Wheeler Oakman, who starred in Selig Studio films as early as 1909 before becoming a reliable villain in 1930s serials and B-pictures, ended his career as assistant manager at the theatre in 1949. Supposedly actor Alan Ladd worked there as an usher in 1933, while living and going to school in the area. Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony attended the theatre as a kid, catching regular Saturday matinee screenings of Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger, and Roy Rogers’ films. Actress Kim Darby also attended the El Portal as a child, long before she starred in “True Grit” with John Wayne.

While North Hollywood grew steadily for decades, by the 1960s and 1970s, residents began moving further north out to new suburbs. The El Portal saw its patronage decline, as it turned from first run into an independent and later Spanish theatre. Threatened with demolition several times, it was named Historic-Cultural Landmark #573 of Los Angeles in 1993 to help preserve it and turn it into a legitimate theatre. The 1994 Northridge Earthquake caused major damage, however, leaving it red-tagged at one point. Funding was raised to finally convert into a multiple house legitimate theatre, which it remains today.

The El Portal Theatre represents the grand beginnings of the San Fernando Valley, as it began its ascent into the economic driver of the Los Angeles area it is today. One of the last vestiges of 1920s-era life in North Hollywood, the El Portal reflects the stylish grace and elegance of that bustling decade.

Sorry, Ashbury Park Press (a Gannett publication), there is nothing to show that anybody was killed at the Sowden House. There is only nonsense about  Buster the Wonder Dog  reacting to something or other. And, for the record, Elizabeth Short wasn’t dismembered. She was cut in half.

“For the Defense” is one of the old Paramount films now controlled by Universal.

As part of its pre-code marathon, TCM recently aired “For the Defense,” a 1930 Paramount film starring William Powell and Kay Francis.

And at the 10-minute mark we find this exterior of a fancy hotel with a doorman and a revolving door.

William Powell and Kay Francis with our mystery revolving door.

Here’s another shot showing the front of the hotel – not so mysterious now.

Could it be?

No doubt about it.

It’s the Olive Street entrance of the Biltmore Hotel.

Image of the Biltmore via Google Street View.

Mae West in her boudoir at the Ravenswood, Life magazine, Feb. 19, 1940.

Built during the early years of the Great Depression, the luxurious Ravenswood Apartment building at 570 N. Rossmore Ave. stands as one of the best examples of upscale apartment living in Los Angeles the 1930s. A gorgeous Zig Zag Streamline Moderne building, the Ravenswood features elegant decorations, adornments, and amenities, attracting many celebrity and discriminating residents.

Financier Maurice Feigenbaum obtained a permit for an eight-story, 240 room apartment building costing $350,000 in early June 1930, per the June 8, 1930 Los Angeles Times. He hired Max Maltzman, one of the few Jewish architects in Los Angeles at the time, to design an upscale structure. Originally from Boston, where he opened a draftsman’s office in 1923, Maltzman arrived on the West Coast in 1927, working as a draftsman for architect Leland A. Bryant. By 1929, Maltzman opened his own shop at 704 S. Spring Street, designing elegant apartment buildings throughout mid-Wilshire and the surrounding area. Feigenbaum, unfortunately, was indicted along with eleven others by a Federal grand jury November 18, 1931 for attempting to defraud more than $5 million through the U. S. mail.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

A postcard of the Ravenswood, courtesy of Mary Mallory. .

Upon completion, the Ravenswood attracted refined citizens of Los Angeles and discerning high-end visitors looking for cultured short-term accommodations. The luxuriously furnished building featured commissary, subterranean garage, lounge, tennis courts, and up to three bedroom apartments, based on advertisements during the period. East Coast and Midwest visitors seasoned at the Ravenswood, escaping harsh winters or enjoying sunny summers.

Celebrities arrived early. The June 20, 1931 Los Angeles Times reported that actor Clark Gable and his wife, Ria Langham, were residing at the property, after a second marriage making their union legal. “I Don’t Care Girl” Eva Tanguay resided in the building after multiple blood transfusions in October 1932, with the Times describing her as virtually penniless. Actor Lyle Talbot lived at the Ravenswood in the early 1930s, per his daughter’s recent biography. Other 1930s residents included bandleader Paul Whiteman and director George Sidney. Mary Wickes and Ethel Merman also later resided at the Ravenswood.

The Ravenswood gained their most famous resident, curvaceous sex symbol Mae West, in 1932, when Paramount Pictures signed her to a long-term contract. New York resident West requested the studio find her appropriate housing near the lot, per author Charlotte Chandler in her Mae West biography, “She Always Knew How.”

The studio furnished her apartment in what author Emily Leider, author of “Becoming Mae West,” describes as “early French candy box.” Decorated in a rococo, over-the-top artificiality, apartment 611 featured various shades of white and gold accentuating West’s fair complexion, as carefully crafted as any movie set. A canopied and draped bed embossed with the letter “W,” surrounded with pale pink brocade edged with lace, and featuring a quilted, pale pink headboard, dominated her lavish bedroom. Mirrors surrounded the bed and hung over it.

Over time, West would add a nude marble statue of her slinky figure by Gladys Bush as well as a Florence Kinzel painting depicting her nude, lying on her back as important decorations in the apartment. In a 1969 interview with Life magazine, West described her apartment by saying, “Everything has proportion, nothing is jarring. Everything is symphony.”

Mae West in her apartment, Life magazine, Feb. 19, 1940.

The Ravenswood changed hands many times over the decades, both because of costs and new owners looking for investment opportunities. The May 30, 1937, Los Angeles Times reported that the George Pepperdine Foundation acquired the stately structure for $1.5 million. Pepperdine, president of Western Auto Supply, promoted “educational, charitable, and religious work” through his foundation, providing support to a boys’ home, home for underprivileged girls, and the proposed new George Pepperdine College at 79^th Street and Vermont Avenue. In 1938, the foundation sold to apartment manager Lloyd Harriman and a San Francisco-based organization.

The Times reported on May 16, 1943, that Continental Realty bought the seven-story, 95 unit Ravenswood from San Francisco businessman Albert Ichelson, and immediately resold the building to dancer Theodore Kosloff for $750,000.

On March 7, 1954, the Times announced that the owners of the nearby El Royale had purchased the stately Ravenswood from Chicago owner Edward Glatt for more than $1 million on February 17. After spending more than $200,000 to install an 18 x 44 swimming pool, lanai, and make other improvements, the company touted their work in a November 21, 1954 story in the Los Angeles Times. They ran ads in 1955 calling it the “new Ravenswood,” announcing newly furnished bachelor through two-bedroom apartments with model kitchens, disposal, and garage from $125 a month.

By December 30, 1956, however, the company turned around and sold the structure for more than $1.4 million to the Ravenswood Apartments Corporation, a syndicate operated by Jack Kessler, John Halperin, and Joseph H. Sugarman

The property turned over again, as Mr. and Mrs. William Pereira sold the Ravenswood to James Ladicos, Robert Shamlian, and William Backamis for more than $1.3 million, per the January 30, 1972 Los Angeles Times.

Named Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument #768 in 2003, the Ravenswood Apartment Building still regally stands along Rossmore Avenue, a stylish reminder of glamorous living in the 1930s.

After I posted a photo of Ann Dvorak’s Duesenberg in the 1932 film “Three on a Match,” John Bengtson noted that the school scenes were filmed at Los Angeles High School on Fort Moore Hill. “Three on a Match” is, of course, set in New York.

A postcard showing Los Angeles High School, listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $5.19.

That looks like Los Angeles City Hall in the background.

The Bryson Apartments, via Google Street View.

Considered by many to be one of the most attractive apartment buildings in Los Angeles, the regal Bryson Apartment Building at 2701 Wilshire Blvd. stands as a lovely example of 1910s high end apartment living, a stately survivor reflecting the optimistic, go-getter attitude of early Los Angeles residents. Combining superb construction, elegant looks, and luxurious decoration, the Bryson stands as a glorious monument to its builder, Hugh W. Bryson.

Community leader Bryson believed in constructing affordable large scale residential developments filled with beauty and taste. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, August 1, 1868, ambitious Bryson strove for excellence from a young age. After graduating from high school, he worked as clerk for a cotton brokers, working in banking, and selling real estate, before arriving in Los Angeles in 1902. Bryson joined leading contractor, F. O. Engstrum Co., and within a few years, married the owner’s daughter, Blanche. He was named a general manager and director of the company in 104, focusing on major projects. Recognizing the large migration of East Coast and Midwest residents to sunny LA, Bryson began financing and his own projects under his Concrete Appliances Company.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

The Bryson Apartments in Architect and Engineer.

From the beginning, Bryson’s hyperbolic publicity played up the special quality of the proposed building. The first announcement for the project appeared in the May 19, 1912 Los Angeles Times, proclaiming Bryson’s intention to erect a classical style building with dramatic entrance, gardens, and fountain. Conveniences and amenities would include a ground floor power plant, elevators, staff residences, vacuum and telephone hook-ups in every suite, hot/cold water and steam heat for every apartment, along with maid service. The building contained all luxuries and comforts of a personal residence without maintenance, in a way, an early example of a condominium building.

The June 1, 1912, Los Angeles Times reported the construction start on the ten-story reinforced concrete apartment building at 2701 Wilshire Blvd., the largest apartment building yet built in the city. Under the title, “Finest Apartment House West of New York City,” the clip noted the fire-proof, elegant building’s construction and furnishings would cost $750,000, with 320 rooms and 96 apartments available around a central courtyard. Suites as large as twelve rooms could be assembled by opening contiguous apartments. “The building occupies one of the sightliest corners in the fashionable Wilshire residential districts,” available after Bryson purchased four homes on the property and tore them down.

Bryson originally intended to construct a smaller, six-story building right to the street, but after neighbors complained about how this look would disrupt the layout of the residential neighborhood, he set the apartment back 100 feet on the lot at the same distance from the sidewalk as neighboring homes. The builder ended up with a more substantial project possessing a large front lawn, gardens, and room for tennis courts. From higher floors, the building offered unobstructed views of the hills, mountains, and Wilshire and Westlake Districts.

Desiring only the best for his project, Bryson hired leading architects Frederick Noonan and Charles Kysor, designers of attractive new apartments throughout the neighborhood and downtown. Noonan had created plans for upscale homes and an Alhambra school building, and with Kysor, drawn plans for handsome hotels and apartments.

Bryson Apartments in The Architect.

Owner Bryson employed his own company, F. O. Engstrum Co. as contractor, with the business completing construction in record time for a reinforced concrete building, finishing in early January 1913, with a formal opening in the middle of the month. Bryson’s own company, Concrete Appliance Company provided the concrete. A large story in the Los Angeles Times described the luxurious surroundings, which included an interior finished with tile, African mahogany, and Italian marble. Cut glass chandeliers and upholstered mahogany furniture graced the lobby and reception room, with tile floors, stairs, and wainscotting constructed of marble. The top floor included such extras as music room, billiard room, a three-wall, glassed-in loggia, and a 45 x 60 foot ballroom. Suites, elegantly and expensively furnished,” ranged in size from one bedroom to four. Beaux Art exteriors featured classic finishing in various colored tile., with a grand entrance augmented by two regal lions welcoming guests. Final cost for the project equalled $550 a square foot.

A large advertisement in the May 30, 1913 Times proclaimed the building, “not excelled by any apartment in the world,” contained extra large furnished dining, living, and dressing rooms, tile baths with showers for all, tile floored kitchens, hard wood floors, and steam heat, “…constructed for people of refinement and desiring a homelike atmosphere with beautiful surroundings. No extra charge for telephone, gas, electricity, or daily cleaning.” Later ads promoted Marshall and Stearns folding beds in every room, offering both convenience and space.

Making a quick profit, Bryson leased the building October 1, 1913 for ten years, to F. S. Wise and W. H. Millspaugh for $660,000. On November 28, 1913, Bryson sold the building for $950,000 to millionaire O. S. Weston, along with 550 acres just west of Torrance, per the November 29, 1913 Times. In less than a year, Bryson had covered his costs and earned almost $900,000 in profits.

At least one filmmaker recognized the classic beauty of the building not long after opening. Mack Sennett’s Keystone filmed in front of the Bryson sometime during the week of February 1, 1914 for their short, “A Film Johnnie.” The gorgeous building stood in for the Sennett Studio, with star Charlie Chaplin standing in front of the Bryson, with a printed sign placed to the side of the entrance visible behind him. Film historian John Bengtson points out in his blog, Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd Film Locations that Chaplin later employed the building as location for his short, “The Rink,” co-starring Edna Purviance.

A postcard showing the entrance to the Bryson Apartments, listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $4.31.

On December 11, 1915, F. W. Braun purchased the apartments from Weston at a cost of $1.25 million, with Wise and Millspaugh’s lease now costing $55,000 a year. Booming growth in Los Angeles brought eager new residents to rent the elegantly furnished rooms.

Proud residents and local organizations rented public space to hold women’s club meetings, society gatherings, afternoon teas, balls benefiting the Red Cross and War Relief, as well as fundraisers benefiting underprivileged children. The Zoellner Quartet performed a Los Angeles recital August 20, 1918, premiering new music. A small art gallery also occupied a small part of the building.

Aspiring new citizens and upper-middle class residents occupied the building. Belgian Count and Countess Jacques de la Lalaing lived in the structure for several months in-between embassy jobs. A young Tina Modotti resided for a short time in the Bryson in 1918, before moving to cheaper quarters. Mr. and Mrs. Bryson also occupied a suite in the apartment building.

By October 1, 1921, Paul Paris acquired a 12 year lease for the building and furnishings totaling $1 million, with intentions to upgrade. The journal, California Real Estate, called it the largest apartment building in Southern California in a 1922 story announcing the $900,000 sale of the lease by Paul Paris to John Hernan, formerly of the Hotel Coronado and Alexandria, including furnishings. They opened space for some commercial activity, with Kramer’s School for Dancing offering lessons in 1923, and Mae Shumway, Harpist, announcing her availability for programs and recitals. New owners and lessees lasted only a short time at the apartment hotel, perhaps unable to cover costs or bringing in only small profits. Newspapers also offer less stories about the building in the 1930s.

Actor Robert Stack notes in his autobiography that he and his mother moved in to the Bryson upon their return from Europe in the 1930s.

Turnover became more frequent after 1940, as newer and fancier apartments replaced the fading glory building. Los Angeles attorney and Director of the Los Angeles Apartment Association, Thomas D. Mercola, purchased the lease for only $500,000 on October 3, 1943 from F. W. Braun. His grand plans failed to materialize, however.

The Bryson Apartments in American Builder.

Daily Variety noted on September 14, 1944, that actor Fred MacMurray bought the Bryson from Herbert Lissner of Chicago for $600,000, but he probably soon began regretting his decision. In 1947, Irving Link, an apparel manufacturer, sued MacMurray for $3024,90, claiming violation of rent ceilings and overcharge from February 1946 through April 1947 on three apartments he rented one at a time in the building. The August 1, 1948 Los Angeles Times reported that Mrs. Mary A. McClosky sued MacMurray for $50,000 for injuries she claimed to have received when an elevator began moving upward before she completely stepped out of it. The newspapers, unfortunately, do not reveal the disposition of the cases. MacMurray asked the city for a reduction in the property’s value around the same time, and later, sold the building.

The Bryson’s dramatic rooftop sign and classic look attracted the attention of writer Raymond Chandler in the mid-1940s. Calling it “a white stucco palace” in his 1943 novel, “The Lady in the Lake,” the author noted that intelligent, lovely Adrienne Fromsett lived in room #716.

Dramatics continued at the Bryson. On March 12, 1964, 25-year-old Evelyn Brown stood on her ninth floor balcony, preparing to jump to her death. A police officer prevented her suicide by leaping from one ledge of another apartment onto her balcony.

Sliding further into genteel poverty, the building saw 121 units become senior housing on March 22, 1974. Some parts set abandoned or unused, with the formerly grand top floor serving as storage by 1977.

Preservation groups worked to gain recognition for the Bryson’s history and lovely classic architecture, seeing it added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 7, 1983. Los Angeles recognized it as #653 on the city’s Historic-Cultural Monuments list in 1992.

The Bryson’s somewhat sad look and reputation at this point served it well for the filming of “The Grifters,” with the apartment complex standing in for a decaying downtown hotel.

A real estate syndicate purchased it in 1985 for $5.5 million, intending to update it, but they entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1988. New owners began renovations in 1999.

Once again standing regally at the intersection of Rampart and Wilshire, the classy Bryson Apartment Building provides a classic representation of early luxurious Los Angeles living.

The Elks Temple in an undated photo.

Long a glamorous, outstanding example of Neo-Gothic Architecture and the powerful force of fraternal organizations, Los Angeles’ Elks’ Temple #99 still stands proudly at 607 S. Park View St. across from MacArthur Park. Now mostly an empty shell, the striking building once housed a busy Elks’ Temple that hosted all manner of social groups, an almost holy place that exalted the power of fraternal groups to better living conditions, educational skills, and the ongoing life of their surrounding communities.

The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks” Lodge #99 was one of Los Angeles’ premiere fraternal and charity organizations, founded in 1888 in downtown Los Angeles. The organization allowed men to gather together in friendship as well as providing services to the community such as allowing children to grow and thrive, feeding and clothing the needy, culturally enriching their neighbors, and honoring American veterans. Originally housed on South Spring Street, the organization outgrew its location in 1908 and moved into a larger, more elegant facility on Third and South Olive Street at the top of Angels’ Flight. By 1920, the organization once again was searching for a new home, and considered buying a couple of properties over the next couple of years.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

A postcard showing the lounge of the Elks Temple, listed on EBay as Buy It Now for  $15.99.

On October 8, 1923, Michael Shannon, President of the Elks’ Building Association, announced that the organization intended to construct “an imposing temple” costing more than one million dollars at Sixth and Park View Streets. The group paid Mary Newman and Lange & Bergstrom $262,000 for the property, which adjoined Otis Art Institute holdings on Wilshire Blvd. Planned facilities included public and private dining rooms, social halls, an auditorium to seat more than 1500, social lounge, billiard rooms, and a swimming pool.

The Elks finally hired Aleck Curlett and Claude Beelman as architects for their grand headquarters, announcing in a March 9, 1924 Los Angeles Times story that final plans had been approved for the building that “will rank with the best in the country and will be one of the architectural beauties of the Southland” when finished. The architects visited other luxurious clubhouses around the country to facilitate their designs, incorporating the latest conveniences and flourishes into their plans. In the interior and exterior designs, “…a typical Grecian and Syrian architecture dominates.”

The grand lobby entrance to the building would soar fifty feet high and twenty five feet wide, in scale with the 156 foot tall building. Each of the public rooms would impress with their size. The memorial room extended fifty two feet in diameter and forty feet high, and the 1500 seat lodge room would be 136 feet in length, seventy seven feet wide, and fifty five feet high. The banquet and ballroom would provide accommodations for stage presentations as well.

A matchbook showing the Elks Temple, listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $4.24.

Handball courts, fully equipped gymnasium, and other recreational facilities would occupy the second floor, with band and glee club rooms, directors’ rooms, seven private dining rooms, grill, billiard, and card rooms on the third floor. Two private roof gardens on top of the north and south wings would provide excellent views over the entire district.

The upper seven floors of the twelve story building would house the hotel for out of town guests, with 175 hotel rooms, each with private bath. A two-story garage housing 350 cars would also possess ten handball courts on its roof. The basement would contain six bowling alleys, haberdashery, men and women’s dressing and shower rooms, Turkish baths, and swimming pool.

The Elks stated it was the intent of the organization and designers “to construct a building on a scale so large that it will dwarf the human figure to a remarkable degree,” or as the LA Times, headline called it, “a Monumental Edifice.”

Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company helped the Elks arrange financing, loaning the Elks’ Building Assocation $900,000 to construct the building on May 14, 1924.

Elks rejected the first bids by construction companies on September 25, 1924, but did hire Scofield Engineering and Construction Co. to build their temple.  On October 27, the group announced they would break ground on the facility for their 4300 members at 8:30 pm Wednesday, with the United States Naval Reserve Band and the Elks’ band and glee club performing and various speakers saying a few words, including several former Past Exalted Rulers and lead speaker, United States District Judge Paul McCormick.

Dec. 28, 1926: The Times writes about the Elks Temple organ.

Working day and night, construction workers laid the cornerstone March 25, 1925. Grand festivities included performances by the Elks’ lodge bands, glee club, drum and bugle corps, and drill teams, seven distinguished elks speaking, and Isidore Dockweiler acting as principal speaker.

The Board unanimously approved adding the Golden Rule on a tablet above the fifty foot arch at the building’s main entrance, along with other phrases to line the building, which the group would not make public. They hired Anthony Heinsbergen to design and create murals and other elaborate paintings for the interior.

They issued several press releases during the construction of the building, noting in particular that over 6.2 million pounds of reinforced concrete filled their “Home of Hospitality.”

On May 12, 1926, the Elks dedicated their luxurious $2.5 million dollar temple, a place to worship and serve together as brothers. Over 3000 Elks attended the event, spilling out of the ballroom and into the halls, stairway, and entrance of the building. Organist Sibley Pease played special music suitable for the occasion. Chaplain Herbert Kincaid noted that not one worker was injured or died during construction of the building. The Memorial Hall was dedicated to Spanish American and World War I veterans who gave their lives defending their country.

Broadway Department Stores placed a full page ad in the Los Angeles Times May 13, noting they designed and supplied the elaborate interior furnishings for the temple, including luxurious carpets, drapes, curtains, and Oriental rugs. Simmons furniture filled each of the comfortable bedrooms. They described the magnificence and grandeur of the interior: “It is cathedral-like in its dignity—palatial in its spaciousness—rich, luxurious, colorful, and comfortable in its appointments.”  The ad noted that, “This monumental edifice will long command admiration for the beauty and distinctiveness of its superb architecture.”

A detail from an ad for the Elks Temple, May 13, 1926.

Upon completion, the Elks’ Temple included a main dining room, kitchen and patio on its lobby floor, along with ladies’ parlor, lounge, barber shop, check room, cigar stand, coffee shop, writing office, and hotel and executive offices. The second floor contained publicity offices, the banquet and Memorial Halls, Lodge room, and women’s lounge. The third floor featured fully-equipped gymnasium and handball courts, with the fourth floor containing private dining rooms, billiard rooms, parlor, reading room, and other special rooms. The hotel occupied the upper floors of the building.

Photographs of the gorgeous building filled the Times, noting its monumental and striking architecture and special features like crystal chandeliers. On December 28, 1926, a photo of the $50,000 Elks’ organ was featured in the paper as well

From its’ beginnings, the spacious temple hosted all manner of activities for its’ members, including special balls, teas, dances, and bridge tournaments, along with opportunities to participate in such sports as bowling, basketball, baseball, water polo, handball, golf, aviation, and yachting. Special talks, educational opportunities, and service commitments also occupied members’ time. Thousands of members belonged to the organization, and continued to join, hoping to be a part of a group that gave so much to others. Of course, the Elks hosted national conventions of their organization as well, giving them a chance to show off their glamorous surroundings.

Important social organizations immediately booked the facility for their special events. The  Los Angeles Realty Board, Southwest Branch, held their June 1926 graduating exercises and balls in the dominating temple. Los Angeles Theatre Organists Club were allowed to practice on the organ to help promote it to the general public.

Memorial and funeral services occurred in the building as well, led off by services for James Keeler, a former Civil War veteran and internationally known newspaper man, who suffered a stroke in the hotel. On June 2, 1927, a full police honors funeral service was held for Assistant Police Chief A. W. Murray, featuring fireman’s band, drill teams, and honor guards. Actor Theodore Roberts’ funeral was held at the Temple December 18, 1928, with over 2000 people attending, including director Cecil B. DeMille. Actor George Fawcett gave the main eulogy, and actor Conrad Nagel sang at the services.

Cultural organizations scheduled performances in the glamorous building as well. Shakespeare scholar Frederick Warde gave a series of speeches and performances in 1926 and 1927 highlighting the works and life of William Shakespeare. Organist Pease gave a series of organ concerts showing the dramatic range of the console.

The Elks offered special events for children as well, holding dance recitals and classes for local children. They would of course offer charity events at Christmas and Easter for those less fortunate as well.

On February 24, 1928, radio station KNRC of Santa Monica set up a remote control line to broadcast radio programs from the Elks’ Temple. Opening night entertainers included the Zoellner Quartet, the Elks’ Band, actor Ford Sterling, emcee Charlie Murray, and the Bavarian Yodelers. Regular broadcasts began emanating from the dramatic building. Later, radio station KMC took over the broadcasting facilities of the organization.

During the 1932 Olympics, the Elks’ Temple hosted some indoor swimming events like water polo.

A postcard showing the Elks Temple, listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $9.99.

Many women’s groups over the years booked events at the Temple, including Daughters of the American Revolution, Daughters of the Confederacy, women’s social clubs, charity groups, book and theatre groups, and the GOP Women. Contract bridge groups held competitions, both local and national.

Religious groups booked the facility as well, with everything from local Protestant organizations and churches holding events to the Moslem Association in 1958. The Sister Kenny Foundation hosted doctors and others to discuss how to treat the medical needs of the less fortunate.

The Elks took great pride in trying to meet the needs of the community, and they gave needy or lonely children an opportunity to celebrate various holidays over the years. For many years they held Easter egg hunts or events, Christmas parties, or Halloween events. On December 16, 1951, the Elks hosted 3500 children with a visit to Santa, followed by a vaudeville and clown show and presents.

A few unsavory events occurred over the years as well, such as the vice squad raiding the Temple May 17, 1948 and confiscating ten illegal slot machines that some members were operating. a 72-year-old member was accosted in the restroom on April 1, 1950, and it appears his attacker was never caught. Despondent 65-year-old Maurice Finklestein committed suicide October 17, 1950, shooting himself.

By the 1950s, the Elks saw declining membership as older members began dying off and fewer younger members joined. More opportunities for children became available at schools and sports leagues, and fathers began focusing their extra free time there. Less people joined fraternal organizations, concentrating on their churches or other social institutions. As the neighborhood changed, many members moved away, dropping membership rolls as well.

Though events continued, it became more difficult for the Elks to meet expenses in maintaining the facility. Ads in the August and September 1966 Los Angeles Times note that the building would be placed up for auction Monday, September 19, 1966. Advertisements pointed out that the facility possessed frontage on Sixth Street, 159 hotel rooms with baths, and over 175,000 square feet, offering many opportunities for buyers. Baur Properties purchased the Temple November 26, 1966 for $700,000 from the Elks, giving them the opportunity to lease it back.

By the 1970s and 1980s, the Temple held punk rock concerts, served as a youth hostel, operated as the Masque Theatre, and continued operating as the Park Plaza Hotel. The building earned Historic Cultural Monument landmark #267 from the city of Los Angeles in 1985, while being leased for a variety of activities.

The Park Plaza building today mostly rents out its large social halls and spaces for location filming, appearing in such films as “The Mask,” “The Fisher King,” “Inspector Gadget,” “Flags of Our Fathers,” and “Gangster Squad.”

Various groups have suggested restoring the building and reopening the structure as a boutique hotel or social outlet, instead of the rental facility it appears to have become. Now mostly leased for special events, corporate outings, weddings, and location filming, the Elks’ Temple and its eye-catching facade represent the early power and draw of fraternal organizations to make a forceful and positive impact on their local communities, generously supporting and encouraging the less fortunate.

In case you don’t follow the Daily Mirror’s Twitter feed, here’s a story we like, by Roger Vincent, who covers commercial real estate for The Times. With great photos by the one and only Gary Friedman.

Motion Picture Magazine, 1925.

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.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywood land: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

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.

The Zulu Hut, courtesy of Mary Mallory.

Thanks to California’s inventive motion picture industry, eccentric, eye-catching examples of vernacular architecture took off in the 1920s. Though around for decades, vernacular or programmatic architecture hit its stride in the 1920s and refers to commercial buildings or signs designed to resemble what they are selling, particularly to those driving by in automobiles. Popular models here in Southern California included the Pup Cafe, the Brown Derby, Ben Hur Coffee, and the Jail Cafe, well documented in Jim Heiman’s colorful book, “California Crazy and Beyond.”

Actor-comedian Raymond McKee constructed the first example of roadside vernacular architecture in what is now Studio City in 1924 when he constructed the Zulu Hut. A long time performer, McKee began acting in films as early as 1912, working for such companies as Lubin, Edison, Kalem, Goldwyn, and Fox, to name a few. Brent Walker, author of “Mack Sennett’s Fun Factory,” states that McKee joined Mack Sennett in 1924 as Alice Day’s leading man, before moving on to play the young father “Jimmy Smith” to little Mary Ann Jackson in the “Smith Family” Series for several years. Besides investing in oil and real estate in the 1920s, North Hollywood resident McKee ( he lived at 11107 Sunshine Terrace), decided to open a restaurant near his home.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

The Zulu Hut, courtesy of Mary Mallory.

The November 17, 1924 Los Angeles Times notes that McKee’s quaint little restaurant at 11100 Ventura Blvd. opened on November 16 just three miles from Hollywood, bought and constructed during McKee’s vacation. The Zulu Hut was what could he described as a somewhat racist example of programmatic architecture, associating black savage Zulus with fried chicken. The roadhouse was described by New Movie Magazine as “picturesque” and “thatched with palms…where a Zulu savage dances and jabbers French and you eat chicken with your fingers in the light of candles thrust in antique whiskey bottles.”

Thatched from palms, the small eatery was basically a giant circle containing artificial coconut palms and either African-American servers or Caucasians in blackface wearing grass skirts greeting guests in the parking lot and opening their car doors, before running inside to perform a wild Charleston. Primitive, the cafe featured dirt floors and served beef, barbecue, and chicken, but was famous for its fried chicken served on cardboard plates with no utensils. Guests sat on rough benches in front of even rougher tables without cloths, per Motion Picture Magazine. Picture players quickly flocked to it, which lured civilians as well. Trades also state the restaurant was featured in the film short, “Hollywood the Unusual” in 1927.

Unfortunately, the Zulu Hut’s flimsy construction made it susceptible to dark incidents. The December 31, 1925 Los Angeles Times notes that hot water apparently became overheated and one wall caught fire, but the Lankershim Fire Department quickly extinguished the blaze.

In early 1926, the establishment was robbed twice at gunpoint. On January 7, 1926, two young bandits wearing gloves and with silk handkerchiefs covering their faces held up patrons at pistol point around midnight, collecting nearly $2,000 in cash, watches, and jewelry from patrons and $352 from the cash register before escaping. A second burglary occurred February 19, 1926, when four young men robbed the Zulu Hut of $407. One robber was caught by police after a gun battle erupted when he was stopped for a traffic violation. The main instigator of the incident, Lyle Christie, who had also robbed the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Ambassador, and other high end establishments, was sentenced to five years in San Quentin on July 29, 1926.

North Hollywood, also saw its share of coyotes in 1927, as ten-year-old Ralph Smith Jr. trapped a coyote in the hills before selling it to McKee on October 22, 1927 to exhibit at the restaurant.

Like everyone else, McKee began suffering financial problems in 1929 thanks to the stock market crash, but also because of bad business decisions. The Los Angeles Times notes he owed the Internal Revenue Service large sums for failing to pay enough income tax for several years. McKee placed his first legal note in the December 28, 1930 Los Angeles Times stating that he no longer owned the Zulu Hut; Flora Johnson purchased the restaurant from the actor a few days earlier.

On March 1, 1931, a massive fire erupted at the cafe, as terrified patrons sped from the burning restaurant. Firefighters fought to kept the blaze from spreading to nearby buildings. The quickly moving fire, which started in the left wing, quickly engulfed the ramshackle structure. The Zulu Hut was no more.

McKee would go on to compose music, act in vaudeville and in sound films, and write scripts for radio shows. By the 1950s, he and his wife, former actress Marguerite Courtot, retired to Hawaii.

Though not as memorable or as striking as still standing programmatic buildings as the Brown Derby, the Idle Hour Cafe, and the Tamale, the Zulu Hut helped interject a entertaining dash of color to the rural San Fernando Valley, and lead the way for more celebrity eating establishments in Studio City.

6208 Franklin Ave., via Google Street View.

Hollywood’s population exploded during the early 1920s as motion picture production soared, thanks to studios moving their production facilities westward from New Jersey. Land values soared, and businesses and developers rushed to keep up with the growing need for residential and commercial space. Many of Hollywood’s most elegant office towers and theaters were erected during this period, as were some of its most striking bungalow courts and lavish apartment buildings.

Many of these upscale structures emphasized their luxury appeal with names like the Castle Argyle, Trianon, the Fontenoy, the Chateau Elysee, and La Belle Tour, with sparkling French Normandy or Classical-style architecture to match their catchy names. Their sophisticated look and style drew celebrities as well as high society or ambitious clientele.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

Located at 6200 Franklin Avenue, La Belle Tour was the last of these grand apartments erected, opening not long before the stock market crash in 1929. Surviving financial upheavals and changing times, La Belle Tour has survived thanks to its prominent look and location.

The March 10, 1929, Los Angeles Times reported that Henry Hersh and Edward Kohn would erect an eight-story, Class A apartment building featuring 52 units with three, four, or five rooms each costing $300,000. Architects Cramer and Wise would design a French Renaissance Chateauesque-style building financed by Finance Brokerage Company, with J.C. Bannister listed as contractor.

Though the March 24 Times reported that Bannister had requested a permit to erect an eight-story, 145 room apartment building at the location, the actual permit for the building at what is listed at 6208 Franklin Ave. is dated April 20, 1929, with the May 5 Times now stating that $250,000 would be spent in building the structure.

Per the April 20 city permit, the eight-story, reinforced concrete, Class A building would employ 210 tons of reinforced steel and 19,200 sac (sic) cement for constructing the building, employing concrete for exterior foundation, walls, and floors, n.o. plaster board on steel studs for interior walls, and concrete, compo, and asbestos shingles for the roofing material. Two L-shaped wings, one 53 feet by 120 feet, and one 53 feet by 77 feet would extend from a central tower, which at its highest point would reach 110 feet, six inches. Sprinklers were required for the building. The city of Los Angeles issued the final certificate of occupancy February 19, 1930, approving a subterranean garage as well. The building opened just months after the stock market crash of 1929 and the deep dive of American economic interests. Ads appeared almost immediately in the Los Angeles Times noting rates and availability, and would run almost regularly through 1936.

The December 15, 1929, Los Angeles Times announced that the Stillwell Hotel Company had acquired a twenty-year lease costing $700,000 for the building, which they intended to operate as a deluxe apartment house. The owner and his wife purchased fine furnishings from Barker Brothers to complete the units, which were rented furnished to tenants, famous or non-famous alike. Whatever their social rank, La Belle Tour would offer sleek, gorgeous surroundings and atmosphere, appropriate to a gracious style of living.

The first classified ad on January 31, 1930, states, “Now opening, Class A building, ‘Each apartment is a beautiful home,’ doubles or four room suites with best accommodations, all extras included, complete service maintained.”

Not much is known of celebrity residents, but there were a few. Young writer Cornell Woolrich and his young bride Gloria Blackton, daughter of film pioneer J. Stuart Blackton, lived in the building by December 1930, with a December 9 Los Angeles Times story reporting the twenty-four-year old writer and twenty-year-old bride had married December 5 after a courtship of less than a year. They were still waiting for her parents’ blessing. The item noted they had met a mere month after Woolrich moved to Hollywood for his new job as staff writer at Paramount, after penning short stories and novels.

Opera star Tito Schipa maintained an apartment in the building as well as two residences, one in Beverly Hills and one on Los Feliz Boulevard, in the early 1930s, and actress Noel Francis lived in the building in 1932 when arrested for speeding. Perhaps actor Colin Clive resided in the building as well, as a studio photograph shows him posing on the roof with the Hollywoodland Sign visible to his north. Actress Virginia Mayo lived in the building when she announced her engagement to actor Michael O’Shea, per the July 7, 1947, Los Angeles Times.

La Belle Tour is sold, July 25, 1937, in The Times.

Some staff members listed themselves in the Los Angeles City Directory in the 1930s. Mrs. Bee Dragani served as manager in 1934, before going on to serve as a manager at other Los Angeles-area apartment buildings and as an officer in an apartment managers’ organization. In 1936, Cecil Bline served as houseman, and in 1938, Cooze DeCamp served as assistant manager.

On July 25, 1937, the Times reported that Albert Louis and Marie Louise Wilcox, South American investors, purchased the eight-story property for $300,000, including complete furnishings, from Michael Tauber, which enjoyed a central roof garden available to all tenants and private roof gardens for penthouse apartments. By November 26, 1939, however, a story in the Los Angeles Times stated that Justus P. Seeburg of Chicago paid $250,000 to G.E. Kinsey for the building, meaning that perhaps Kinsey had purchased the building in a private sale from the Wilcoxes earlier. Some time during 1942, La Belle Tour’s name was changed to Hollywood Tower, as the building is listed under both names in the 1942 city directory.

The huge building was expensive to maintain, and perhaps was prohibitive to owners. On June 7, 1953, the Los Angeles Times announced that Joshua Pintel had sold the 52-unit Hollywood Tower and other buildings to Sam Gutlin for $642,000. Gutlin ran regular ads for the building throughout the 1950s.

By 1981, the Hollywood Tower had become mostly an apartment house for seniors, which suited owner Deseret Properties and Dennis Ballard just fine. Ballard told the May 17, 1981, Los Angeles Times that seniors paid their bills regularly and on time and caused no problems. He began renting primarily to seniors earlier in the year, “offering them reduced rents, no move-in fees or security deposits and all utilities paid;” he was also thinking of starting complimentary Saturday continental breakfasts and once-a-week limousine service to go shopping or see a movie. The company had spent $50,000 to refurbish the building.

The Hollywood Tower, June 7, 1953, in The Times.

At that time, bachelor units contained hot plates and singles featured kitchens. The building featured one- or two-bedroom units as well, with rents ranging from $185 to $400.

By the 1980s, the building, like many other once luxurious apartment buildings in the area, was becoming run down and threatened. In early 1988, it was named to the National Register of Historic Places.

The Hollywood Tower’s imposing look supposedly inspired Imagineers at the Walt Disney Company in designing the look for the Tower of Terror attraction at Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim.

In 2007, the Hollywood Tower was sold for $34.5 million to Alliance Residential, which eventually built additional units across Vista del Mar Street.

While perhaps not as glamorous as its 1930s heyday, the imposing Hollywood Tower still projects power and authority today.

6626 Franklin Ave., via Google Street View.

Hollywood, California, exploded in population during the late 1910s and early 1920s with the influx of moving picture companies arriving in town and people looking to work in the industry following suit. Originally a quiet, rural, farming community, Hollywood quickly grew more urbanized, with an increase in density.

Many people did not own their own homes during this period, renting single-family residences as well as apartment units from others. Subdivisions in the foothills began opening to cater to the more affluent new residents. Bungalow court apartments opened, appealing to middle-class singles and couples looking for somewhat independent living. Apartment houses were rushed into construction, replacing the family boarding houses that had dominated the scene.

Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.

A postcard for Chateau des Fleurs, listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $9.95.

As Hollywood became a mecca both for bi-coastal actors and upscale tourists, it required more luxurious rental opportunities. Developers began constructing elaborate, lavish apartment-hotels to appeal to these people, offering long-term rentals for those looking for something more permanent, or a pied-à-terre while visiting the city. Among these establishments in Hollywood were such pretentious sounding buildings as the Fontenoy, La Leyenda, Hollywood Tower, Chateau Elysee, and the Chateau des Fleurs.

The Chateau des Fleurs, located at 6626 Franklin Ave. at the top of Cherokee Avenue, grew out of the investment needs of Carl and Winifred Raab as a way to diversify and grow their saving. Carl Raab, born February 5, 1873, was the first white child born in what is now South Pasadena, son to German immigrants who established a successful dairy and creamery. Raab worked as the manager of his family’s creamery. After the death of his first wife, he married his second wife Winifred and saved his money.

In the mid-1920s, the Raabs began looking for a way to draw more income by investing their money in real estate. They purchased a residence at 6626 Franklin Ave, the former home of directors Jack Conway and Howard Hawks, upon which to construct a regal apartment hotel. Per the February 2, 1927, building permit, Raab intended to build a $275,000 four-story, fifty-unit apartment hotel, with concrete foundation and exterior, wood and plaster interior, wood floors, and slate roof. Twenty-five tons of steel and 500 bags of cement would be needed for construction of the 96’6” x 149’6” building, sixty feet tall at its highest point.

An ad in The Times, Sept. 23, 1927.

Architect Meyer-Radon Brothers designed a French Normandy-style Class C building containing 137 rooms and 50 units to be constructed by John A. Platt Construction Company at the former location of an eight room, two-story house.

The July 17, 1927, Los Angeles Times featured a story on the soon-to-open building, describing how its interior and setting evoked the French Norman style through furnishings, decorations, and natural stone fireplaces. All of units contained electric ranges and refrigerators, along with complete soundproofing. An August 10, 1927 advertisement called it “the ultimate in luxurious comfort, smart distinction, and perfection in service.” It noted that a descriptive booklet was available for those looking for more information.

On September 24, The Times announced the grand opening that day of the one month delayed building, with a reception featuring music and refreshments from 2 p.m. through 11 p.m. Manager William Danielsen, experienced in running French and continental European hotels, saw to every resident’s need. The story noted the “elegantly furnished apartments” and “luxurious hotel accommodations,” combining old world charm with up-to-date amenities. Each of the fifty units, a combination of single or double units, featured its own exclusive furniture and design in the French Normandy style, with authentic carvings of peasants. Drawer pulls and hardware were authentic reproductions of peasant art as well.

Guests entered through an outdoor patio landscaped with flowers and shrubs containing an open fireplace and an ornamental pool lit up at night. The interior lobby featured a rough wood-timbered ceiling and a large fireplace. The club and music room adjoined the lobby, with an elaborate grand piano decorated in the Normandy style.

Each unit contained electric ranges and refrigerators, with each refrigerator containing a water cooler holding twenty glasses of water. Electric heat operated by a button in each apartment warmed the units. Water softeners provided soft water at all times.

Some apartments contained natural fireplaces and singles contained “disappearing” twin beds. Units featured oak floors, decorated ceiling beams, and carved wood knobs and pulls. All apartments contained tiled bathrooms, with separate compartments for bath, shower, and toilet.

A canopied rooftop garden beckoned residents, featuring both sleek landscaping and outstanding panoramic views in each direction. A separate but fully enclosed children’s playground adjoined the terrace.

An ad for Chateau des Fleurs in The Times, Aug. 10. 1927.

The Chateau des Fleurs ran its own hyperbolic ad trumpeting the grand opening of the magnificent and plush building, stating, “Discriminating people who seek a home place that is delightfully different..where every detail of arrangements, appointments, furnishings and service is moulded into a consummate whole of infinite satisfaction and enjoyment.” They also noted all the companies who contributed to its opening, like Meyer-Radon Brothers, John A. Platt Construction Company, furniture from Roy Wertheimer & Co., landscaping by United Nurseries, linens and bedding from Pullman Linen Co., upholstering by Davis Upholstery Co., floor coverings by Thomas L. Leedom Co., draperies by Vermillion’s Drapery Studio, and bedroom, dinette, and living room furniture by the McClellan Manufacturing Co.

By January 25, 1928, the Chateau des Fleurs saw a change in management as they promoted themselves to the public. Their ad read, “Hollywood’s Most Exclusive Apartments – Beautiful Singles and Doubles of French Norman Design – Moderately Priced With Daily Service of Every Description.”

The building featured a large staff for guests over the early years, with many listed in the telephone book. Mrs. Nellie Valentine managed the building in 1929 and 1930, Chester Coldwell ran the hotel in 1934, Mrs. Ethel Brooks managed in 1938, with Mrs. Gretchen Warner managing in 1942. Sami Powers acted as engineer in 1928, with Mrs. Emma Krueger serving as housekeeper in 1929 and 1930. Ilene and Minne Baling served as maids in 1930, with Dorothy Haman acting as telephone operator, O. H. Stenzel as engineer, and L. Weiland Jeide and Donald McIver as clerks.

Celebrities, the affluent, and middle-class residents occupied the building over the years. Cinematographer Karl Freund resided in the building in 1930, per the Journal for the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. Diana Wynward occupied the building in 1932, as did Bramwell Fletcher, who often invited his friends like Ronald Colman to tea, per the Los Angeles Times. Actor Ian Keith somehow accidentally slashed both his wrists while performing a trick with a straight razor for friends on November 25, 1936. Photographer Man Ray lived in the building with Juliet Brower in 1940, per “Man Ray: American Artist.”

Ambitious showgirls and actresses like 1934 WAMPAS Baby Star Mary Wallace. Jean Fursa, and Velma Greschan also lived in the building, trying to impress with the residence as well as their beauty. Some, like music teacher Claude Fleming and Feodor Gontzoff, tenor, offered singing and music lessons out of their apartments. The People’s Opera Company operated out of the building in 1932 as well. The Chateau also advertised to those coming to visit the Olympics in 1932, as well as those coming for the winter from the East. By the late 1940s-early 1950s, many press representatives lived in the building.

An ad for Chateau des Fleurs in The Times, Sept. 24, 1927.

There were a few instances of notoriety at the Chateau des Fleurs. In 1931, resident and Hotel officer R. B. McConogue attempted to practice what Tom Lehrer preached in the song, “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” when he applied to the Police Commission for a permit to do just that, per the September 2, 1931, Los Angeles Times. The Commission turned him down flat. Mrs. Ruth Levi, visiting the building from New York in 1946, climbed out of her bathroom window and jumped down a ventilation shaft to her death on August 19, 1946.

Ownership flipped over the years, and management attempted to keep up with changing interests, times, and tastes. On October 15, 1939, the Los Angeles Times reported that the J. E. Benton Management Company had been employed by Deposited Bonds and Shares Corp. to operate the Chateau Des Fleurs, along with other luxurious hotels in its portfolio like the Ambassador Hotel, The Gaylord, and the Park-Wilshire.

A 1942 ad listed singles for $60 and doubles for $75, calling the Chateau Des Fleurs a luxuriously furnished abode, noting the building featured spacious rooms, all outside exposure, beautiful gardens and patio, modern roof gardens, and switchboard as amenities.

As Hollywood changed over the next several decades, so did the building and its clientele. The building was not as immaculately maintained as it had been in previous years, beginning to acquire a somewhat aged dowager look. While some still worked in entertainment, most were just regular middle class people. Newer, more hip buildings arose around it.

A 1978 ad for the building lists singles at $235 and one bedrooms at $275 plus utilities, calling the Chateau “an old classic building.” By April, the estate of Victor Nichols sold the building at auction in probate court to A. P. Lopez for $1.3 million, with the building now containing 16 singles, 23 one bedrooms, and one large bedroom plus den for the owners unit. A problem for more contemporary audiences , the story reported the building contained only 21 parking spots.

The Chateau des Fleurs still stands at 6626 Franklin Avenue, a proud, gorgeous grand dame awaiting a refurbishing to return it to its glory days of the 1920s and 1930s.

Somewhere in Los Angeles, young men with too much testosterone and spray paint are spending what is apparently their abundant spare time vandalizing an abandoned church.

Judging by my Instagram feed, abandoned classrooms, theaters, auditoriums and other unsecured sites in Los Angeles receive similar treatment. But this is really infuriating. Can anyone identify this location and alert whoever is supposed to be in charge of it that it is being wrecked by idiots?

These photos are from the Instagram feeds of Los Angeles and acer._

The Ambassador Theater, as shown in the Exhibitors Herald, 1921.

On February 9, 1919, the Los Angeles Times reported that the California Hotel Company would soon begin construction on a luxurious hotel on twenty one acres adjoining Wilshire Boulevard between Catalina and Eighth Streets. This resort-like property would cater to the upper classes, with bungalows, ballroom, billiards, card rooms, swimming pool, and an arcade of shops catering to every whim of the wealthy clientele. Often overlooked in the hostelry’s many high-end amenities was the plush Ambassador Theatre, intended both as rental facility, host to conventions, and movie theatre.

D. M. Linnard, owner of the California Hotel Company, announced on April 4 that architect Myron Hunt had been employed to design something along classic Italian lines for the $5 million project. The proposed design showed buildings in a giant H shape with a combined 1000 rooms between the main building and annexes. The proposed project also included tea house, casino, and a convention hall with pipe organ and stage. Construction began in June 1919 for the massive project after demolishing the former Ruben Schmidt farmhouse on the property. The hotel’s name changed from California to Ambassador in March 1920 as well.

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

On June 27, 1920, the Los Angeles Times reported that architect Myron Hunt was designing a large movie theatre, garage, and servants’ quarters at the west end of the hotel to cost $250,000. Guests would enter the theatre through the west lobby, beyond the grill and arcade of stores. The up-to-date screening facility would include pipe organ, artistic lighting elements, and comfortable seating for 575-600 people. On October 9, 1920, Motion Picture News announced that Gore Brothers and Sol Lesser had signed a deal to operate the Ambassador Theatre, and negotiated an agreement with Associated First National for the theatre “to serve as a world premiere house for all First National attractions.”

Art Smith, supervising projectionist for the Gore Brothers, chose the projection equipment of two “S” Simplex projectors and a signal system in conjunction with the house lights installed between them. Each projector was ventilated through the roof as well for security and safety issues. A special electrical installation allowed control of spot and stereo optical lights as well as projectors. The projection booth consisted of three adjoining rooms: one with motor and generator, another with projectors, and the last a cutting room, thereby reducing a fire hazard. Special rewind machines and cabinets in the cutting rooms were installed making it a top of the line system.

Finishing preparations for the theatre took longer than anticipated, requiring that the Ambassador Theatre open February 5, 1921 rather than January 1, 1921, as did the glamorous Ambassador Hotel. Crews worked double shifts to make the February opening, which included wiring it to allow fanciful lighting effects in seven different colors and combinations. The elegant Theatre rivaled the beauty of the striking hotel, containing large, leather- upholstered overstuffed arm chairs set back from other rows and aisles. It would feature refrigerated air in the summer and heat in the winter.

On January 21, 1921, the Times stated that the sleek, Italian Renaissance-style theatre painted in dove gray would contain a lounging room with luxurious furnishings, stylish light fixtures, a twelve pipe organ, a moveable floor allowing grotto and mountain effects, an eighteen foot screen, and mural paintings on side walls highlighted by beams and draped in velvet, which would be pulled aside after the audience was seated, revealing the glamorous paintings beneath.

They hired S. Barret McCormick, formerly Toledo, Ohio’s Rivoli Theatre manager, to supervise and run the Theatre in December 1920, along with creating artistic prologues based on classical music to match the essence of the movie’s theme to kick off programming. The Ambassador Theatre would present the best moving pictures from all the studios in one week runs, with the December 1920 Motion Picture News stating, “It will be the releasing place for the great test pictures, and the Ambassador production is to be to the picture world what the Metropolitan is to the opera.” McCormick also called it the “National Art Theatre of the Screen,” per Exhibitors Herald.

Photos of an Ambassador Theatre prologue, Motion Picture News, 1921.

The theatre would host twice daily screenings with a matinee cost of 75 cents and evening screening with $2 admission, all seats reserved. very high as compared to regular prices. They hired top musicians, dancers, and acts to fill out the prologue portion of the program, accompanied by twelve piece orchestra. All up-to-date processes would be employed in providing audiences top-notch presentations. Motion Picture News claimed they were the only cinema located in a hotel but catering to outside audiences. The theatre would produce the Ambassador Weekly Magazine to highlight screenings, each with unique cover, and present preview screenings on Friday night.

Advertisements trumpeting the theatre employed the slogan “Toward the Ultimate” in describing their special programs featuring a musical prelude, stage prelude, prologue, and the film, along with a beautiful artistic booklet. As Motion Picture News stated, “The Ambassador Theatre will present each week the most noteworthy of screen productions, giving them in nearly every instance their world premiere several weeks before their presence in other cities…”

The Ambassador Theatre premiered February 5, 1921 with a screening of the Pola Negri film, “Passion” with an elaborate prologue designed by McCormick called “Clay,” featuring a thirty five member cast wearing contortionable masks by Alexander Hall in a show based on a poem by Omar. Choreographer Marion Morgan supervised and created symbolic dances to follow the avant garde sets. These featured bright, vivid trees against pitch black backgrounds. “Short and chic and bobbed hair” usherettes wearing stylish uniforms assisted patrons. Operators admitted to the newspaper that they expected to lose money, but hoped to cover costs of the entertainment and show.

The Ambassador Theatre screened Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” soon after, which brought out scalpers who corralled most of the tickets, selling out the venue a week in advance. While it was good for the theatre’s business, it was bad for the general public.

A prologue for “The Passion Flower,” Motion Picture News, 1921.

The Louis B. Mayer organization employed the Ambassador Theatre as one of two picture houses to host the premiere of his film, “The Woman in the House” on February 12. A few weeks later, Variety reported that the film played to only six people in one screening., calling the theatre a flop on February 25, stating that it appealed to only the high brow because of its location in the hotel, with a deluxe charge that millionaires didn’t want to pay and too high for middle class patrons. Management needed to think of something fast to maintain cash flow.

The Bakersfield Morning Echo reported on March 13, 1921 that management was now adding a series of one-act plays stated in conjunction with first-run films, replacing the more elaborate prologues. These would be staged by Frank Egan, formerly of Figueroa Street’s Little Theatre, in the style of Paris’ Grand Guignol. The “Ambassador Players” consisting mostly of film stars would act in these productions seeing as curtain raiser before the intermission, overture, and screening of the film.

Egan premiered “Fancy Free” as the first stage play, starring film actors Crane Wilbur, Mary McLaren, and Kathleen Clifford. Later one-acts featured cinema players Helen Jerome Eddy and Gaston Glass.

On September 10, 1921, Arthur L. Bernstein, formerly manager of the Fanchon and Marco Revue took over operations, devising ways to bring in revenue. During the daytime dark hours for the theatre, social and charity groups employed the space for meetings and special occasions. Mary Miles Minter performed in support of disabled ex-servicemen April 27, 1921 in support of the Assistance League’s efforts to help veterans. The Assistance League took over the theatre each Wednesday in support of a different charity.

The Ambassador Hotel now has a movie theater, Motion Picture News, 1921.

While changing up programming helped for a time, management was forced to consider changes in scheduling by 1922. It began renting out the facility to other groups for meetings and presentations in order to help pay the bills. The newly formed Wilshire Boulevard Congregational Church began holding services January 1, 1922 while they raised funds to locate a permanent location.

In the March 15, 1922 Los Angeles Times, the Ambassador Theatre noted that the week of March 22 they would become “the National Preview Theatre of the Screen,” showing previews three nights a week at 8:15 pm with opinion cards distributed to audience members. Regular screenings on other nights and Saturday’s all comedy night would continue. Such major attractions as the “Merry-Go-Round,” Jackie Coogan’s “Oliver Twist,” “The Lost World,” and others screened during the silent era.

On September 27, the Ambassador hosted the world premiere of the stereoscope film “The Power of Love” employing the Fairall Process using “eye screens” for film executives, exhibitors, directors, cinematographers, projectionists, optometrists, and scientists. “The Greatest Menace,” a film delving into the evils of drug use, premiered February 23, 1923.

Uncle John and the stars of KHJ (The Times radio station) are mobbed at Ambassador Auditorium, Sept. 8, 1925, Los Angeles Times.

By the 1930s, the Ambassador Theatre functioned more as a trade and press screening location, hosting screenings for journalists who needed to submit reviews to their magazines and newspapers. Colleen Moore’s film “Smilin’ Through” played in 1929, followed through the years by such films as “Pinocchio,” “This Gun For Hire,” “Pride of the Yankees,” in which many of the press shed tears at the screening, “Random Harvest,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and “Anchors Aweigh.” “Citizen Kane” previews the week of April 10, 1941 at the Ambassador, with Terry Ramsaye calling it “a magnificent sleigh-ride” of a picture.”

Over the next several decades, social, charity, nonprofit, and community groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, Confederation of Women’s Clubs, California Women of the Golden West, Matinee Music Club, Opera Reading Club, and Assistance League held meetings and presentations, while groups like the Nine O’Clock Players and Hollywood Opera Company presented recitals, concerts, and the like. Groups hosted lectures and food demonstrations in the theatre, and such organizations as radio, optometrists, exhibitors, and even morticians presented conventions.

By 1954, no more advertising appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the theatre appears to have shuttered, with entertainment focusing on the Cocoanut Grove.

The Los Angeles Unified School District took over the former Ambassador Hotel property to eventually construct schools in the 2000s, demolishing the buildings rather than remodeling and renovating them for a repurpose. While the Ambassador Theatre is no more, it operated as a high class, sleek screening facility during the hotel’s glamorous heyday of the 1920s through 1940s.