The Story of Hollywood

by Gregory Paul Williams

  To the embarrassment of many, Hollywood had nowhere to fly the flag. Harvey Wilcox had planned for parks, but they had never appeared. The Woman’s Club had their small triangular lawn in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, but that seemed inadequate. Jacob Stern offered to sell his Hollywood and Vine property at a low figure for a park, but the City of Los Angeles turned him down. Near the war’s end, officials found a place for the Honor Flag. It flew from the roof at Hollywood and Cahuenga Boulevard’s Creque Building.

  The movie studios kept the appearance of war readiness while concentrating on their booming business. They picked up war efforts when local Hollywood boys started leaving for Europe. No movie names appeared on the lists of those shipped to France, but the most famous and wealthiest served in the Lasky Home Guard.

  The Home Guard had all the appearances of being a real army unit: two hours of drilling each Wednesday night on the Vine Street lot, target practice on Sunday, and field maneuvers once a month on the Lasky ranch. They had uniforms, Winchester rifles, two machine guns, a marching band, and a leader in C.B. DeMille.

  Young men who flocked to Hollywood became conspicuous waiting for work at studio entrances. The Hollywood Board of Trade arranged a police roundup of loitering men. Hauled to Los Angeles City Jail, the loiterers waited for the draft. The best one-day haul of males took three trips.

  Erich von Stroheim became an instant star with his portrayals of Prussian officers. His mentor Griffith saw harder times, having erred with Intolerance. Audiences were not receptive to his moral lessons. The film flopped. With investors hounding him, Griffith left for England to shoot war footage for his next film, Hearts of the World. He returned to Hollywood and duplicated war sets among the walls of Babylon and filmed the remaining half of the project.

  Griffith added a new technician to his team, Henrik Sartov, a photographer employed at Frank Hoover’s Hollywood Prints. Sartov’s passport photo of Lillian Gish had a magical quality that got him hired as a collaborator with Billy Bitzer. A stung Bitzer claimed that Sartov photographed through the bottom of a beer bottle. Sartov’s filming of Gish remained in future Griffith projects.

  In the late summer of 1918, an influenza epidemic hit the United States, quickly reaching Hollywood. It weakened its victims until other diseases, principally pneumonia, killed them. Health officials closed schools, theaters and public places. Hollywood seemed empty. Most people stayed off the streets and many appeared wearing white gauze flu masks. The motion picture industry, with darkened movie houses nationally, operated part-time.

  Lillian Gish contracted the flu and suffered intensely. Five people at Griffith’s studio died. In Beachwood Canyon, Oscar Doolittle and his daughter Irene also contracted the illness. Irene lost all her hair and nearly died. Oscar did not suffer as much, but the flu left him severely weakened.

  November’s Armistice Day brought a double relief with the end of war and flu. Cars and bicycles with tin cans trailing behind them clattered up and down Hollywood Boulevard. A mob gathered at Hollywood and Cahuenga Boulevards and hung the Kaiser in effigy while two men played coronets.

  UP OR OUT

  In 1918, the Iris moved permanently to a thousand-seat theater at Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue. Although no movie palace, it rivaled the Hollywood Theater and was a big improvement on its former storefront. It opened with Griffith’s The Birth of A Nation.

  While Europe recovered from the war, the United States monopolized the movie business. Although producers made almost as many motion pictures in the East as they did in Hollywood, 1919 winter power shortages in New York gave added reasons to head west.

  Dr. Palmer, C.E. Toberman, and others pushed to transform Hollywood Boulevard into the Main Street of the movie business. Sidewalks now ran from Western to La Brea Avenues. Palmer set a goal to expand his Cahuenga business district to Hollywood and Vine.

  Conversely, after the flu, Oscar Doolittle had little stamina to run his stores. Selling Hollywood Electric and Music, he decided to pursue an outdoor life. He bought some cows and bees to produce milk and honey in upper Beachwood Canyon. The gift shop and restaurant at Krotona signed on as his first customers.

  In his beloved Ozcot, Baum suffered physically from the strain and disappointment of moviemaking. While writing The Lost Princess of Oz, he experienced severe attacks of angina pectoris, resurrecting a childhood heart ailment. His doctors advised removing his gall bladder. Baum refused until the constant pain became too intense. After his surgery, he spent a year in bed writing The Tin Woodsman of Oz. He had started Glinda of Oz when he died on May 6, 1919. “This is our house, Maud,” he told his wife. “I would like to think you are staying here where we have been so happy.”

  D.W. Griffith was back on top. Though critics had lambasted his Hearts of the World, audiences loved it. Griffith fired everyone at the studio, deciding to focus on his own features. Sick of the money men who battled him, Griffith wanted out of Hollywood. He felt he had no privacy. After making one last hit at the studio, Broken Blossoms, he left for a New York estate where he created several more masterpieces.

  Griffith suggested that his palace of Belshazzar still towering over Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards become a tourist attraction. That brought little enthusiasm from Hollywood’s business community. Neighborhood children now climbed through the set and played their own imaginary scenes. For the national press traveling on Sunset Boulevard to Hollywood, the dominating presence of Griffith’s decayed set inspired a new nickname for the place, Hollywood Babylon.

  The new Iris Theater near the southwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox, 1918.

  The ruins of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance set became a stop for tourists and a playground for neighborhood children, 1919.

  Hollywood Boulevard west of Cahuenga Boulevard (circa 1923). Kress Drug Co. is on the northwest corner. The Beveridge home and yard is at the end of the block.

  Out where they say,

  let us be gay,

  I’m going Hollywood.

  I’ll ballyhoo

  greetings to you.

  I’m going Hollywood.

  Arthur Freed

  CHAPTER 4 MAIN STREET OF THE MOVIES

  Hollywood Boulevard looking east to Cahuenga Boulevard. John’s Cafe is in Wilcox Hall at center right. 1919

  SEE THE STARS

  From the first roar of the 1920s, Hollywood crawled with newly minted movie stars. The output of motion pictures within the district’s boundaries reached an unsurpassed 854 features in 1921. The East Coast financiers reinvested movie profits into permanent Hollywood studios. At Fox Films on Western Avenue, neophyte director John Ford assembled films so fast that, starting in 1919, Fox had dozens of famous faces on the lot, including Tom Mix, Buck Jones, and John Gilbert. In his imperial Paramount-Lasky office at Selma and Vine, Cecil DeMille signed a struggling Gloria Swanson to star in daringly risqué marital comedies. The films made Swanson one of the reigning stars of the silent era.

  The famous faces walking Hollywood Boulevard caused pedestrians to do double takes. Movies were now part of the national consciousness and the silent stars were semi-deities. In 1918, Englishman George Westmore came to establish himself in the movie makeup business and rented an apartment on Cahuenga Boulevard. Westmore’s evening meals at John’s Restaurant brought him in thrilling proximity to many silent stars: William S. Hart, Charles Ray, Norma and Constance Talmadge, Chester Conklin, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford.

  Cecil B. DeMille in his office at Lasky Studios, 1916.

  Another good place to spot stars was Sam Kress’s Drugstore at Hollywood and Cahuenga. Opened in 1919 when Kress arrived in Hollywood, the drugstore offered cloisonné, leather goods and imported perfumes. Kress set up a mirror where “the light was just right” behind his counter so that Lon Chaney, now a star, could test theatrical makeup. The lunch counter served as a social center and a casting office. Kress claimed that the many Western players at his soda fountain gave birth to the p
hrase “drugstore cowboy.” (Other Hollywood druggists could probably make the same claim.)

  Hollywood resident and actor, Conrad Nagel, recalled when a propman from Paramount needed a distinctive bottle of perfume for important scenes in a Swanson/Nagel picture. He walked to Kress’s drugstore and “bought a little black bottle, very oddly shaped, of perfume called Christmas Night.” Nobody had ever heard of it. After the picture came out, the American public bought a million bottles.

  On Hollywood Boulevard, the clattering red cars bulged with tourists, eyes peeled for a movie star. When reaching the Hollywood Hotel, all riders went on alert, scanning the front porch rockers to see if a famous person was sitting there.

  The hotel offered a cornucopia of faces to ogle. Before and after the war, the Thursday night dances brought out Alla Nazimova, Swanson, Mabel Normand, John Gilbert, Mary Miles Minter, Clara Kimball Young and Wally Reid. Rudolph Valentino, a guest at the hotel after a sojourn in New York, taught the tango to an influential screenwriter and studio executive, June Mathis. Mathis insisted Valentino play a leading part in Metro’s war picture, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It made Valentino a movie star.

  The Hollywood Hotel gained notoriety when Valentino impulsively married actress Jean Aker in the lobby days after meeting her. On their wedding night of November 5, 1919, Aker locked her new husband out of their honeymoon suite. Similarly, during a Thursday night dance, movie queen Mae Murray appeared from her wedding ceremony. To the applause of her peers, she and her new husband, an international gambler and playboy, made their way up the main staircase. Two hours later, the bridegroom kicked his moviestar bride down the stairs. Murray fled the hotel. No one ever found out what happened in either incident.

  Hollywood Boulevard in 1920 runs through the middle of photo. Hollywood and Vine is at center left with the church on the southeast corner. Paramount/Lasky Studio is in the foreground.

  Pola Negri, Mae Murray, David Divini, and Rudolph Valentino at Divini and Murray’s wedding, 1925.

  Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House for Aline Barnsdall, 1922.

  The hotel remained the first stop for newcomers like caustic ingenue Tallulah Bankhead. Movie mogul Joe Schenck put his entire company including his movie star wife, Norma Talmadge, at the hotel while moving his studio from New York to Melrose Avenue and Gower Street. In 1924, a foreign actress registered incognito, even though no one had heard of Greta Garbo.

  Movie stars moved into private Hollywood homes by the droves. Gloria Swanson, too broke to live in the Alexandria Hotel with her extravagant husband Herbert Somborn, moved to Wilcox and Yucca. Joe Schenck and Norma Talmadge bought a Hollywood Boulevard mansion. Mary Pickford lived locally with her mother and siblings. So did movie heartthrob Rod La Rocque, who worked at Paramount-Lasky while living in a bungalow on Orchid Avenue. Ronald Colman lived on Argyle.

  Nazimova’s Garden of Allah, a center of local bohemia, stood where the foothills turned wild at Sunset and Crescent Heights Boulevards. (In 1926, overwhelmed by a financial crisis, Nazimova developed her home into a hotel. Unfortunately, with dishonest partners, she saw no profits from the popular Garden of Allah Hotel.)

  Edgar Rice Burroughs moved to North Wilton Place in 1919. Burroughs finished writing Tarzan the Untamed in his new home. He used the old Baum studios at Gower Street and Santa Monica Boulevard for a successful run of Tarzan pictures starring Elmo Lincoln. Burroughs’ observations of the local community inspired his subsequent novel, The Girl from Hollywood, which critics panned. By the time it came out, however, Burroughs had moved to Tarzana.

  Oil heiress Aline Barnsdall arrived in 1919, buying the 36 acres of Olive Hill. She commissioned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who, though experiencing lean years both personally and professionally, was in his most inventive period. Wright designed the house named for Barnsdall’s favorite flower, the Hollyhock. Two years later, Wright would build the Storer House on the opposite end of Hollywood Boulevard.

  Japanese houseboys became the local rage. The Japanese Workers of Hollywood, located on Cahuenga Boulevard since 1918, provided maids, cooks and gardeners. In 1919, they participated in the local prosperity, giving themselves a nickel raise.

  Home of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Schenck (Norma Talmadge), 7269 Hollywood Boulevard, 1922 (demolished).

  Home of Harry Langdon, 7206 Hollywood Boulevard, 1922 (demolished).

  GOING HOLLYWOOD

  Los Angeles encouraged population growth. Hollywood developers profited in a post WWI building boom, vastly over-supplying the area with private homes at the expense of apartment houses. To compensate, many homeowners raised shabby apartments in their front yards. Two-story commercial buildings along Hollywood offered upstairs rooms as bachelor apartments. The new owner of the de Longpre house chopped the home into sixteen units renamed the DeLongpre Courts.

  Jesse Lasky and investors bought a corner at northwest Hollywood and Hudson from Dr. E.O. Palmer. They built the Hillview Apartments to assure local housing for movie actors. Clara Bow stayed at the Hillview when she first arrived in Hollywood.

  The Garden Court Apartments opened in 1917, although the official opening came after the war. Considered one of the most beautiful apartment buildings in California, the residential hotel was a marvel of craftsmanship and luxury. Designed around a private courtyard of tall palms along a sunken pool, the building’s suites had teak and mahogany paneling, thick oriental carpets, baby grand pianos, and original oil paintings. A tennis court stood west of the building. West of that, a garage catered to the residents’ cars. It also served as Hollywood’s agent for Rolls Royce.

  Many Hollywood stars, like John Gilbert, Tom Mix and, later, Marilyn Monroe, lived in the Garden Court. Saturday night dances in the full-sized basement ballroom rivaled the Hollywood Hotel. Irving Thalberg often escorted Carl Laemmle’s daughter, Rosabelle, to these affairs until he decided not to marry her and ended his career at Universal.

  The Hillview Apartments were built to accommodate movie people.

  The Garden Court Apartments lobby, 1926.

  The Garden Court Apartments at Hollywood Boulevard and Sycamore Avenue (demolished).

  Armstrong & Carleton Cafe, 6600 Hollywood Boulevard (demolished).

  Frank’s François Café became Musso and Frank’s.

  Wearing down the resistance to the movie business took a long, slow time, and was abetted by money. In ten years, Hollywood Boulevard property rocketed from $50 per front foot to $750. By 1921, even the staunchly old-guard Holly Leaves had a regular column, “What’s Doing at Lasky’s,” listing the pictures currently in production. One editorial stated “the motion picture community in Hollywood has proved the biggest asset … and will no longer be held as it often has been in the past, as a community liability.”

  No less than seventy-five local businesses capitalized on the name Hollywood. The Hollywood Secretarial School, opened in 1919, offered day and night classes with a scenario class for those aiming at studio work. Janet Gaynor, new to Hollywood, entered the school to become a stenographer. She decided, however, to become an actress instead.

  Since the early studios did not have commissaries, entrepreneurs opened restaurants. At noon, actors converged onto Hollywood Boulevard. Dr. Palmer wrote of seeing Christie Bathing Beauties rushing down Hollywood Boulevard to their favorite restaurants. Mrs. Mabel Cameron, a leading caterer for the local elite, opened a restaurant in a stately old mansion at 6611 Hollywood Boulevard. Tea rooms also became popular from 1915 on. Run by local businesswomen, they offered home-cooked lunches and early dinners.

  The popular Armstrong Carlton Cafe, called the ‘Blue Front’ for its distinctively colored facade, established itself as a favorite Hollywood Boulevard lunch spot. Actors from Paramount-Lasky came in make-up and costume. A passerby could spot Gloria Swanson, her costars, and often C.B. himself with a sandwich and a glass of milk.

  In 1919, François, better known as Frank’s French Café, opened to instant success. When Frank’s wife, who worke
d as cashier, admired customer Charlie Chaplin’s Panama hat, he gave it to her, along with the fake mustache that he had forgotten to remove at the studio. In 1923, the restaurant became Musso & Frank’s.

  Local residents still held some resentment over the dilapidated, fly-by-night studios at Sunset and Gower, Hollywood’s first hint of urban blight. C.E. Toberman, still smarting over Chaplin’s studio across from his Hollymar tract, proposed that all future studios confine themselves south of Santa Monica Boulevard, on land put together from Hancock holdings. Zoning ordinances easily won a consensus between voters who hoped to capitalize on the movies and those who wished them off the face of the earth. Voters not only banned future studios from the vicinity of Hollywood Boulevard, but also lumber yards, planing mills, blacksmith shops, and the freight depot between Ivar Avenue and Cosmo Street. The area south of Santa Monica Boulevard, Seward to La Brea, became Hollywood’s industrial area and home to many film laboratories. Toberman put his money into an independent studio there, later known as Hollywood Center Studios at Las Palmas Avenue.

  The de Longpre residence became an apartment house in 1919.

  The intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, a.k.a Poverty Row and Gower Gulch. The Blondeau/Universal/Christie Bros. corner is at top. The Paramount-Lasky back lot is above that.

  Sunset Boulevard runs diagonally from top to bottom with Lasky/Paramount Studios on Vine Street at the bottom and the Beesemyer Ranch on Bronson Avenue at the top, 1922.

  William Beesemyer, a Hollywood pioneer, skirted the new restrictions. Beesemyer had cobbled his ranch between Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards, Bronson and Western Avenues, from government land stakes and purchases in the late 1800s. He sold a large chunk of his ranch to the four Warner brothers, who built their first Hollywood studio. They immediately began making movies.