While Lasky thought Glyn would appeal to the artistic sensibilities of Hollywood locals, the Hollywood church ladies swallowed none of this. They were not alone. The Federation of Women’s Clubs and Christian and Jewish organizations across the nation passed resolutions condemning the sinfulness of Hollywood’s movies. Hollywood, Illinois, petitioned to change its name so it would not suffer being confused with the awful suburb of Los Angeles, California.
The Pilgrimage Cross on the Cahuenga Pass overlook as seen from Hollywood Dell.
1922
Hollywood boosters worried that the bad publicity would hurt their investments. A Chamber of Commerce luncheon speaker urged that landlords remove “No dogs or movies” signs and studio employees stop dishing the dirt. A committee to offset the negative press adopted “SMILE” as the Chamber’s slogan for the year. The Chamber urged Hollywood Boulevard merchants to keep their shop windows lit after nine in the evening so the street would not look so dead.
As women owned and operated forty-two percent of the shops along Hollywood Boulevard, they formed the Hollywood Business and Professional Women’s Club. They met at the Highland Avenue real estate office of Mrs. Clarice MacQuarrie to promote Hollywood. (MacQuarrie had just sold a house in the hills to actor Noah Beery.)
The Pilgrimage’s Jesus and two Marys, 1928
It became a contest among the community who could praise Hollywood and its citizens the most. The publication of a book asking Can Anything Good Come out of Hollywood? extolled the community’s wholesome connection with the movies, answering its own question with a resounding yes. “The wealthy manufacturer hurries to find his tie for the bash the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is giving Mary and Doug, has to go next door to cowboy star, Bill Hart, and borrow his.” The book confirmed that movie stars “may be seen most any pleasant day at the corner of Cahuenga Avenue [sic] and Hollywood Boulevard telling stories or swapping cigars with some officer of the Hollywood Security Bank.”
Old-guard residents, priding themselves on their cultural aspirations, constructed the Hollywood Bowl in the former Daisy Dell Canyon after years of community fund-raising. The Symphonies under the Stars began that July.
One supporter, Christine Wetherill Stevenson, became annoyed that the Hollywood Bowl Association preferred pretty music to heavy religion. Wetherill bought land from Ivar Weid’s estate in the Pass opposite the Bowl. Building an outdoor theater, a larger version of Krotona Stadium, she planned a succession of dramas depicting the lives of great religious teachers. However, it was the Passion Play every Easter that established Hollywood’s piety. Residents pointed with pride to the Pilgrimage’s cross on the hill, claiming to have built a New Jerusalem in the Cahuenga Valley.
Hollywood Boulevard, west from Cahuenga Boulevard. The Hurd and Beveridge homes, anachronisms by 1922, are in the middle right.
The residential and business communities were too small numerically and financially to manage a lone defense of their reputation. The film industry, threatened by twenty-five state legislatures with movie censorship bills, needed Hollywood locals as a front of irreproachable morality. Both sides united to save Hollywood’s name.
In March 1922, the movie business formed the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and negotiated with Postmaster General William Hays to relieve the public of its moral responsibility over Hollywood. It took fifty contracts to get him to take the job. In June 1922, Will Hays posted orders for moviemakers that left regulation to them. Hays decided that a propaganda campaign across America, giving speeches about his work controlling the industry, would calm the nation. Both the movie business and Hollywood residents rallied around Hays at a Hollywood Bowl meeting on July 22. Fifty thousand people attended.
In spite of the scandal, investors continued to develop Hollywood. The Hollywood-Western Business Association formed. A building rush started along north Vermont Avenue with three banks bidding for a corner at Vermont and Hollywood. The Hollywood Vermont shopping district would be ready for customers by 1925.
Hollywood filled the newly graded Hollywood Bowl for an Easter sunrise service, 1922.
Robertson Company Department Store, northwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and McCadden Place, 1928.
Robertson’s Women’s Department, 1922.
Shoppers wait for Robertson’s to open on Hollywood Dollar Day, 1927.
The northeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, 1926.
The larger chain stores arrived. F.W. Woolworth’s came first in 1922, taking over Heywood’s dry good store below Toberman Hall, removing the wooden shelves and installing new fixtures and electrically lit display counters. Kress Five and Dime (no relation to Sam Kress) came a year later. With C.E. Toberman’s help, Kress demolished a simple wooden grocery store for a new brick building at 6606 Hollywood Boulevard.
Toberman had amassed enough land at Hollywood Boulevard and McCadden Place to own the intersection. He had secured it when a local developer named McCadden floundered financially during WWI and begged Toberman to take the property off his hands. Toberman rushed a four-story department store on the northwest corner for an August 11th opening. C.R.S. Co., later Robertson’s Department Store, followed the Chamber of Commerce dictates that Hollywood Boulevard stores reflect the quality of those in the East. It had forty-three departments, including beauty and hair salons, a first floor finished in marble, two high- speed elevators, and a circulating library in the mezzanine with writing desks and free stationary. An October fashion show set a standard unknown before in Hollywood.
Toberman also built a hotel across Hollywood Boulevard from Robertsons with partner H. H. Christie, who had financed Toberman’s storage business. Snubbing the Hollywood Hotel by claiming to be the first luxury hotel in Hollywood, the Christie Hotel was Hollywood’s second skyscraper. A two-story street-level building to its west, now a parking lot, opened with a jewelry store that boasted a million-dollar gem display. The Greenwich Village Café opened in the hotel’s basement, indicating the strong local urge to emulate New York.
Always competitive, Dr. Palmer announced a four-story department store on his corner at Hollywood and Vine. He enticed a Pasadena-based store chain to lead the venture. They sold stock in the project to local residents so that everyone could point to it as “our” department store.
The Vine Street Improvement Association persuaded owners between Vine Street and Cahuenga Boulevard to pay for more upscale streetlights to match the ones running from Cahuenga to Highland Avenue.
The Masonic Temple on Hollywood Boulevard, west of Highland Avenue.
Architectural rendering of the Hotel Christie.
Together the Vine and Highland factions participated in a brand-new Masonic Temple to replace the simple brick lodge at Highland Avenue. Faced with granite, the new structure signaled another notch up in Hollywood social life. Toberman played a large part in its construction. Designed by architect John C. Austin, who would later design Los Angeles City Hall with associates, the lodge rooms, social hall and clubrooms had elaborate beamed ceilings and carved balconies with furniture donated by Arthur Letts. Another lodge here, the 233, had mostly actors as members. The 233 performed for community causes in the upstairs theater, maintaining a symphony orchestra that presented free monthly concerts.
It stung many that the movie capital of the world had no first-class movie theaters. Downtown Los Angeles had several, mostly orchestrated by a father-and-son team named Grauman working with Paramount. In 1922, Fox Theaters announced-it was replacing the Beveridge home at Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue with a three-story marble-faced movie theater, but it never happened. (Daeida Wilcox Beveridge’s home on the corner had stood vacant since Philo Beveridge’s death in 1920. His son-in-law, C.B. Brunson, now ran the Beveridge estate, successfully closing it in 1925.)
Toberman focused on the late George Stevenson’s land on the southeast corner of Hollywood and McCadden, the last remaining lemon grove in the business section of Hollywo
od Boulevard. Toberman so persuasively courted the Graumans that the son, Sid, quit his partners and teamed with Toberman for Hollywood’s first movie palace on the site. They decided a Spanish-village theme would reflect the area’s local history.
From years of running theaters in San Francisco with his father, Sid Grauman had known most of Hollywood’s major names before they became famous. Jack Warner, Fatty Arbuckle, Jesse Lasky, and Charlie Chaplin felt a strong bond with Sid Grauman. Grauman’s father had been kind to them at the start of their careers, even nicknaming Mary Pickford “America’s Sweetheart.” As an independent exhibitor, Sid Grauman was one of the few men who could survive the cutthroat business solo. His personal connections with neighboring movie producers ensured a steady flow of first-rate films from Fox, Paramount-Lasky, and, soon, MGM.
Sid Grauman proved the perfect man to unite the movies and Hollywood residents, wary of the movie business but worshipful of art. He talked of “the mystic veil of the future … the commingling of Art, Drama, and Beauty … beauteous architecture that antedates even the dawn of history.”
The Spanish-style theater plans disappeared when an Egyptian craze swept the country after the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. Grauman’s Egyptian started at the street with a long avenue of casbah-like shops leading to the front door. Female ushers dressed like Cleopatra. Egyptian sentries walked the parapet and called the faithful to matinees. Two “supreme” shows screened daily in a gorgeously decorated theater whose “Aisle of the Stars” had movie star signatures on each seat.
The Egyptian’s October premiere of Douglas Fairbanks’s Robin Hood was tame compared to Grauman’s future openings, but the theater and the film were huge successes. Robin Hood drew steady crowds for over a year.
Grauman’s prologues made the theater famous. The prologue for Robin Hood started with an orchestra playing the overture from Aida, followed by an organ solo on the giant Wurlitzer. A lavish stage show came before the intermission, after which the feature film played. For Robin Hood, Grauman staged a scene at the court of Richard the Lionheart with fifty actors and dancers in $250,000 worth of costumes.
Grauman set the style for film presentation everywhere. The Hollywood Egyptian was the queen of silent movie palaces, the best-known movie theater in America.
Hollywood business was very grateful. A few days before the opening, the Chamber of Commerce had a heavily publicized luncheon in honor of Grauman, Toberman and Douglas Fairbanks whose Robin Hood sets near Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea Avenue had dominated that intersection.
Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre forecourt in 1923.
Sid Grauman, 1928.
The Robin Hood premiere at Grauman’s Egyptian, 1922.
The Robin Hood set at the Pickford/Fairbanks Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard and Formosa Avenue.
Both the sign and the dot lit up at night in the Hollywoodland tract sign. Residents of the tract enjoy a ride on one of the trails, 1926.
The year nearly killed C.E. Toberman. Everything he touched during those twelve months was a success. He built five housing tracts, breaking his old record. He presided over and owned his own bank, Federal Trust and Savings Bank on the southeast corner of Hollywood and Highland, bringing 104 new accounts in the first hour. He was, however, severely ill due to overwork.
Dr. Palmer closed the year with disappointment. The company building his department store fell into bankruptcy, losing all $200,000 of the investors’ money. To cheer himself, he eyed a huge sign overlooking Hollywood that read Hollywoodland. It advertised a housing development that promised to bring upscale shoppers to his new business district. The huge dam proposed to go with the project, however, dampened much of this pleasure.
City Engineer William Mulholland planned to submerge Holly Canyon for the new dam. Residents felt threatened and joined an outraged Dr. Palmer and film director David Horsley, who lived below the proposed project, in fighting it. Neither the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce nor the Hollywood Citizen could dissuade the L.A. Bureau of Water Works (the future Department of Water and Power) from creating a picturesque reservoir in the canyon.
Many locals also sneered at the Mulholland Highway, a long dirt road winding across the top of the mountains. While real estate people drooled over the high-priced new hilltop property, old-timers called Mulholland Highway “the road to nowhere.”
The year closed with a scandal. Wally Reid, Paramount-Lasky’s star of sparkling romance pictures, collapsed on his set. At first, the studio protected their million-dollar player, claiming it was exhaustion. His drug addiction, however, became widely known. In December, he entered a sanitarium and died January 18, 1923. Ten thousand people attended his funeral.
Fatty Arbuckle’s third trial trailed to an acquittal. Hays announced that as “an act of Christmas forgiveness in the spirit of our Lord,” Arbuckle was to be forgiven and the scandal forgotten. Hays dropped this news the day he departed from Hollywood, leaving some outraged people. The Hollywood Woman’s Club, with its 1300 members, stood squarely and publicly against Arbuckle’s comeback. Fatty was finished as an actor.
Still, Hays had saved the motion picture industry from censorship. Only five or six states kept their bills. The movie studios continued an uninterrupted cash bonanza.
Before 1922 ended, the land under Griffith’s Intolerance sets sold for $100,000. Decayed Babylon fell for a housing tract and a movie theater at Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards, the 900-seat Bard’s Playhouse, now known as the Vista Theater.
The Mulholland Dam in Holly Canyon.
Hollywood Boulevard east to Wilcox Avenue. The Hillview Apartments are on the left at Hudson Avenue. The roof of the Hurd house is in the center. 1924
DOWNTOWN MOVIELAND
From pioneers and orchardists, Hollywood passed into the hands of flappers and slick-haired Vaselinos. The party could not be stopped. In spite of the reform organizations, films continued to cater to an era of wild and reckless youth. Colleen Moore became an instant star in Flaming Youth as the flapper with the Dutch Bob hair.
According to Moore, “The flapper clothes started in Hollywood, made by a young dressmaker just out of school who had a cubbyhole shop on Hollywood Boulevard. Her name was Irene.” Irene Lentz had started her business working for families like the DeMilles. She eventually became MGM’s chief costumer from 1942-49.
The Wampas Frolics, a precursor to the Academy Awards, was the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers’ yearly ballroom dance. The event presented starlets like debutantes at the new and fashionable Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire. The Wampas’ ticket office was on Hollywood Boulevard. Colleen Moore was a Wampas Baby Star (1922), as were Joan Crawford (1926), Fay Wray (1926), and Clara Bow (1924).
Colleen Moore, pictured with her husband, producer John McCormick, became a movie star as Hollywood’s first flapper, 1925.
1929 Wampas Baby Stars: Jean Arthur, Sally Blane, Betty Boyd, Ethlyne Clair, Doris Dawson, Josephine Dunn, Helen Foster, Doris Hill, Caryl Lincoln, Anita Page, Mona Rico, Helen Twelvetrees, and Loretta Young.
When movie star Pola Negri arrived from Germany to work at the Lasky studios, she found Hollywood a little disappointing, describing it as a “sleepy small town of squat, undistinguished buildings.” After a short stay at the Hollywood Hotel, she moved into a Hollywood Boulevard home west of La Brea Avenue.
Swanson wrote, “Movie magazines that fall told readers across the nation that all the females on Hollywood Boulevard were clearly divided into two camps. The Pola Negri bunch wore white faces and red lips, and my team used no powder at all and wore a single earring. Pure nonsense.”
Despite its self-conscious stab at becoming a glamour center, Hollywood Boulevard remained a small town main street where everyone knew everybody. The scandals had made stars more discreet in public. Actors strolling along the street now wore dark glasses bought from drugstores.
Photographers opened studios taking actors’ portraits or, like Evansmith, specializing in children’s phot
ographs for the Casting Directors’ Album of Screen Children. Dance schools were equally popular, with classes held in Wilcox Hall and Toberman Hall. Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn taught in the wooden American Legion Hall on El Centro Avenue.
A sure sign of urbanization, a self-proclaimed “Do-Nut King,” opened the first doughnut shop in Hollywood near Whitley Avenue, with an automatic machine in the window that cut and fried 12,000 doughnuts every eight hours.
The Jewish movie moguls living in the neighborhood and Jewish proprietors of Hollywood stores established Hollywood’s first synagogue, Temple Beth-El, at 1714 N. Wilton Place in 1922.
Gotham Delicatessen, southwest Hollywood Boulevard and Sycamore Avenue (demolished).
Gotham Delicatessen opened in 1924 and soon superseded the first kosher restaurant at Hollywood and Vermont as Hollywood’s most popular delicatessen. Gotham attracted transplanted New Yorkers and even Greta Garbo, who often came for an early dinner.
Though a café society blossomed in New York and downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood offered nothing similar until Valentino financed the first nightspot. The Little Club opened June 1922 at 7016 Hollywood Boulevard across from the Garden Court Apartments. A nine-piece orchestra accompanied the show. Dancing went until midnight. The Little Club also offered businessmen’s luncheons with dancing. The movie crowd was ready for it; the opening night had a large list of reservations. The club, however, annoyed the early-to-bed residents in nearby homes who complained that the music kept them awake. The place folded quickly.
Ironically, it was non-drinking Toberman who financed the first successful café in Hollywood the following year. He rushed to complete a building next to Robertson’s department store and talked restaurateur Eddie Brandstatter into opening the Montmartre on the second floor.
The Story of Hollywood Page 13
