The Story of Hollywood

by Gregory Paul Williams

  Schindler designed Sardi’s stainless steel furniture.

  By 1934, Sardi’s had taken business away from the Derby as the two restaurants battled for celebrity customers. Motion Picture Magazine in 1935 recorded a lunchtime crowd at Sardi’s. Marlene Dietrich ate a chicken hamburger while Katherine Hepburn had a lettuce tomato salad and perpetual dieter Joan Crawford ordered prunes stuffed with cottage cheese. Maurice Chevalier enjoyed a bottle of Chianti.

  Sardi’s interior.

  Architect Richard Neutra made Carl Laemmle’s Coco Tree Café a fashionable eatery at the northwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.

  The Lon Chaney bench dedication at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street. Lon Chaney, Jr., stands behind bench at left.

  Brandstatter had swiped the name from the New York restaurant. Displeased, the owners of Sardi’s New York spent years trying to close down Brandstatter’s Sardi’s.

  At Hollywood and Vine, Carl Laemmle hired Richard Neutra in 1932 to design a sophisticated lunch room made of glass, chrome, linoleum, stainless steel, and chipped marble. Laemmle had dropped the idea of a movie theater, but included rental stores that rarely held a steady tenant.

  Neutra went into the project knowing that Laemmle wanted billboards on the roof to advertise Universal pictures. Neutra’s interior, however, was light and airy.

  Carl Laemmle’s Coco Tree Café opened in 1933. Business exceeded expectations.

  Laemmle installed a bench outside dedicated to the late Lon Chaney. The actor’s son, Lon Chaney, Jr., performed the dedication. This long-removed bench most likely started the myth that Lon Chaney’s ghost can be spotted at Hollywood and Vine.

  Jacob Stern induced Al Levy to leave his storefront café next to Warner’s Theater for Stern’s last building on his property. Levy was in his seventies when he made the move to 1623 Vine Street, across from the Derby. Al Levy’s restaurant continued to be a place to see stars. An investment partner arranged for Mike Lyman, a bandleader, to take over after Levy’s retirement. Through the ‘40s, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, and Walt Disney were regulars at Mike Lyman’s.

  James Cagney ate regularly at Mike Lyman’s. To Cagney’s left is actor Chester Morris.

  Vine Street’s Al Levy’s became Mike Lyman’s and continued as a celebrity restaurant at Hollywood and Vine.

  Hollywood and Highland chronically needed updating to correct the seediness that had overtaken the intersection. Mary Moll’s Bonnie Brier Hotel on the southwest corner and Toberman’s upper-floor apartments on the southeast corner had degenerated into flophouses. The 1933 Long Beach earthquake had not helped either structure. The Hollywood Hotel also sagged with age, but seemed untouchable due to its legend. Its long-time tenants were relics from silent movie days and mostly broke due to the Guaranty failure.

  The Bonnie Brier Hotel came down for an Art Deco Rexall Drugstore. The building had a huge concrete foundation to guarantee its earthquake safety. Toberman, in 1935, removed the top three stories of his corner building, ridding himself of shabby apartments with struggling tenants. He created a single-story conservative-style office for Bank of America (who now owned Toberman’s bank on the site). It was Bank of America’s second branch in the shopping district. The other branch was in the failed Guaranty at Ivar Avenue.

  The intersection of Cahuenga and Hollywood got a makeover in 1933 when the Creque Building added two additional floors and got a new, yet stodgy, facade of decorative brick. Cahuenga shook itself of City of Homes history when the former Hollywood City Hall and Fire Department disappeared. In 1934, Wilcox Hall came down for a Streamline Moderne medical building. The Beveridge family, whose Daeida Wilcox Beveridge had built Wilcox Hall, financed the project.

  Los Angeles decided conclusively to move the public library off Hollywood Boulevard. Contractors moved the building’s frame one-half block south on Ivar Avenue, where a more modern library appeared around it. This Hollywood Branch Library appears in the Humphrey Bogart film The Big Sleep. The library’s former corner at Hollywood and Ivar became a Streamline Moderne building.

  By the mid- ‘30s, Hollywood Boulevard was decked out in the latest architectural styles. If sightseers were disappointed to be barred from the movie studios, Hollywood Boulevard presented the closest thing to their expectations of movie land. It offered glamorous and famous restaurants, theaters, and now and then a movie star. Aldous Huxley’s wife, Maria, said the place reminded her of an international exhibition. Tourists streamed through record numbers. The three-thousand-plus hotel rooms in the neighborhood were sold out in 1935.

  Marie De Carlo brought daughter Yvonne from Canada, figuring Yvonne could be a star like Baby Peggy. On a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard their first day, Yvonne saw a real movie star, “Pat O’Brien riding past in the back seat of a limousine. I was thrilled.” Marie hunted for a photographer for Yvonne’s publicity pictures. The first one they met took pity on them and pushed them out, saying confidentially that it was a gyp joint.

  C.E. Toberman returned to his favorite occupation, making money. He reneged his vow not to enter the world of finance when the US Government announced, in 1934, its willingness to invest in federally chartered savings and loans. Toberman, and associates, created First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Hollywood. It was located on the ground floor of the struggling Montmartre. Hollywood would develop again.

  Julian Medical Building, southeast corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga Boulevards, 1934.

  Hollywood’s new post office at Wilcox and Selma Avenues in 1936.

  The Hollywood library’s former site became a commercial building, 1940.

  The new library at Ivar Avenue prepares for its opening. Light display by Otto K. Olesen, 1936.

  Toberman had sold his storage building on Highland Avenue south of Hollywood Boulevard to Max Factor in 1928. Factor moved his thriving movie-cosmetic business out of downtown Los Angeles. Hitting a financial gold mine in the ‘30s with his idea of “Color Harmony” (a way to sell average women multiple mak-up products), Factor hired S. Charles Lee for a quick remodel. Lee turned the warehouse into a veneered, glamorous Art Deco beauty factory. At the 1935 reopening, Jean Harlow dedicated the room for blondes; Claudette Colbert did the room for brunettes. Ginger Rogers opened the redhead room.

  Architect S. Charles Lee redesigned a storage building on Highland Avenue into the fashionable Max Factor’s, 1935.

  In 1935, the Westmores opened their Hollywood beauty salon and barbershop on Sunset Boulevard near Highland Ave. Perc and Ern Westmore had made wigs for Max Factor. Their father, George, had run the MGM makeup department. A mile away, in a separate building at Sunset and Gordon, the Westmores ran a cosmetic plant.

  Between the Westmores and Factor, Highland Avenue became a spot where the famous got hair and makeup styles that influenced the nation. Regular clients included, on a short list, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Blondell, Carole Lombard, Myrna Loy, Rosalind Russell, Dolores Del Rio, Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, and Judy Garland. Not surprisingly, the Rexall drugstore, at the southwest corner of Hollywood and Highland, became a star-watching spot and a good place to buy makeup.

  C.E. Toberman, 1944.

  Whitley Heights, 1935.

  The surrounding middle-class neighborhood still attracted famous people. Whitley Heights had the homes of Ronald Reagan, Jean Harlow, Rosalind Russell, Janet Gaynor, Carmen Miranda, and Jack Haley. Frequent mover Bette Davis resided in Whitley Heights when she hit stardom at Warner Bros. Davis lived with her first husband, Harmon “Ham” Nelson, who worked as bandleader at the Roosevelt Hotel. When Ham suspected Davis of having an affair with Howard Hughes, he ran home from work and caught the two in bed. Mae West lived at the Ravenswood on Rossmore Avenue. Paramount Studios put Charles Laughton and his wife, Elsa Lanchester, on La Brea Terrace. Fay Wray lived on Selma Ave. Character actress Una Merkel lived in the Garden Court Apartments. Popular writer/director Preston Sturges picked a spacious, tree-shaded home in the Ivar foothills. Charlie C
han’s Warner Oland, Dolores Del Rio, and Bela Lugosi lived in the finally completed Outpost Estates. So did the developer, C.E. Toberman, after selling his Camino Palmero house in 1936 to pay off his debt.

  Carole Lombard poses in her new Hollywood Boulevard home. Ex-movie star, Billy Haines designed the interiors, 1933.

  Carole Lombard, Hollywood High graduate, class of 1926, bought a Hollywood Boulevard house east of Laurel Canyon in 1933, after her divorce from William Powell. Lombard redecorated with the talents of ex-movie star William Haines. Haines did Lombard’s house in seven shades of blue. Living here, the actress started an affair with Clark Gable, but they discreetly met at a room at the Roosevelt Hotel. In 1937, after Gable proposed to Lombard in Booth 5 of the Vine Street Brown Derby, the actress moved out of the house. She owned it as a rental until her death in a plane crash in 1942.

  Shoppers strolled from store to store for several blocks along Hollywood Boulevard, 1937.

  DOLLAR DAYS

  Merchants pushed Hollywood as a world style center in league with New York and Paris. In the early ‘30s, the Hollywood Boulevard Association tried to offset the stock market crash by promoting Hollywood as the “World’s Largest Department Store.” Starting in 1934, the merchants participated in a semi-annual fashion show held at the Warner Hollywood Theater that featured the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel dance band, entertainers, and professional models.

  The Hollywood Citizen-News had run the masthead “Shopping’s good in Hollywood” since 1925. The long-running campaign hatched by the newspaper, “Dollar Days in Hollywood,” had started in 1921 and ran for twenty years, twice a year, in August and February. Stores opened one hour earlier, at 8:00 a.m., with one-dollar bargains. Dollar Days congested streets and sidewalks, cleared stores of old stock, and brought in new customers. By 1935, merchants had added Thrift Wednesdays to the district’s promotions.

  At the Broadway Hollywood, management increased elevator capacity in 1936. The executive penthouse became the “Skyland Auditorium,” offering fashion shows and children’s matinees. In June 1937, Broadway leased the land to its west and demolished the brick retail store on the site. In its place, the company built a six-story International-style building connected to the original store.

  That year, the national department store chain J.C. Penney leased the defunct Robertson’s and modernized. All four floors and the basement became an up-to-date store.

  As in every downtown across the country, five-and-tens, with their staggering array of low-price items, formed the rock of local retail. Five-and-ten shopping entailed a leisurely store-to-store stroll. Children walking into Kress’s in Hollywood never forgot the display of tropical fish, the colorful wall of hair ribbons, or the piano on the stairway where a man played sheet music for sale. Besides Kress’s, Newberry’s, and Woolworth’s, there was an F & W Grand and several independent five-and-tens.

  Dollar Day early bird shoppers on Hollywood Boulevard, 1935.

  Broadway Hollywood and its International-style addition.

  Two bargain hunters check out the local advertiser.

  Schwabs Men’s Store, 6358 Hollywood Blvd.

  Dollar Day fashion show at Warners Hollywood, 1937.

  Stromberg’s sidewalk clock, 1944.

  Regional and national clothing chains such as Roos Brothers and Lerner Dress Shops opened stores. Hollywood-based retailer Betty Blanc Company ran five women’s stores in Hollywood: Nancy’s, Mimi’s, Henré’s, Marlene’s, and Betty Blanc’s. Each store handled entirely different clothing lines, with the main office in the Palmer Building at Cosmo where Nancy’s was located.

  Hollywood stores made the most of their star connections. A Hollywood Citizen News society columnist reported that Norma Shearer did her early-morning shopping in Hollywood.

  The Warners specifically sought a jeweler as a tenant for their new theater. William Stromberg, a native Russian, had found the jewelry business flat in Cleveland, so he settled in Hollywood. The Warner brothers offered him rent-free space in exchange for ten percent of his gross sales. Stromberg found his connection with the studio lucrative. Once a week he would load his coat with rings, watches, and other pieces and head to the Warner’s Burbank lot, where his regular customers included all the contract players: Cagney, Ann Sheridan, George Raft, Bogart, and Bette Davis. When business picked up considerably, Stromberg regretted his deal with the Warners. He would have made more money with a set rent. Stromberg placed a pedestal clock on the sidewalk in front of his store to attract pedestrians to his business.

  Costume designer Irene Lentz continued running her own dress shop, now on North Highland Avenue. Carole Lombard had Myron Selznick insert a clause in her contracts that Irene would design Lombard’s wardrobe. Irene became Hollywood’s first costume designer to have a line of clothes carried nationally in department stores.

  At McIntosh Tailors on Hollywood Boulevard, workers made the cassocks for Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald for Going My Way and twenty-seven baseball uniforms for Williams Bendix as Babe Ruth. McIntosh was also the personal tailor to Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd.

  Costume designer Irene Lentz had dress shops and offices all over Hollywood. She stayed longest in this commercial complex at Highland Avenue and Cahuenga Boulevard, 1941.

  Eva Tanguay, the “I Don’t Care Girl” (her signature song) of the Ziegfeld Follies, opened a gown shop on Hollywood Boulevard in March 1935. Once a dynamic performer, she had lost her large savings and her eyesight. (Sophie Tucker had paid for an eye operation.) Tanguay, known for her daring stage costumes, displayed a few of them in her store, including a $2,000 coral gown with a headdress of white vulture feathers. The store soon closed. By 1939, Tanguay was crippled with arthritis and bedridden in her Hollywood home on Lexington Avenue. She died in 1947.

  A leading man of silent films, Reginald Denny, settled into talkies as a character actor. He lived in the Vine Street foothills. Denny turned his hobby into an eponymous model shop that occupied various storefronts in Hollywood. His most memorable location in the ‘30s was a former real estate bungalow on the north side of Hollywood between Taft and Wilton. Model enthusiasts or fans could find Denny there regularly.

  Mattson’s, a Hollywood clothing store for decades, made itself a fixture on the northwest corner of Wilcox Avenue. It had started as an army surplus store across the street and developed into a healthy business. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard bought Western clothes there. The founder, Matt Silvers, recalled, “During the ‘20s and ‘30s, there wasn’t a day when three of four stars wouldn’t come into the store.”

  From La Brea to Western Avenue and a few steps up and down the cross streets, a Hollywood Boulevard shopper could find 13 florists, 9 furriers, 10 furniture stores, 30 women’s clothing and 20 men’s clothing shops, 8 men’s hat stores, 20 women’s hat stores, 9 dress shops, 6 dressmakers, 23 tailors, 3 button and stitching shops, 5 hosiery stores, 4 importers including South American linen and Italian leather, 22 jewelers, 2 knit goods shops, 6 leather goods shops, 11 gift and novelty shops, 5 perfume stores, 3 pleating businesses, 4 shirtmakers, 24 shoe stores, 2 silk shops, 2 sporting goods shops, 2 stationery stores, 13 barber shops including the one-chair shop in the Taft Building, 12 cosmetic stores, and 50 beauty salons.

  Brooks Brothers display window on Hollywood Boulevard.

  Dollar Day pet store sale, 1934.

  Roos Brothers Clothing, 6320 Hollywood Boulevard, 1932, (demolished).

  Reginald Denny’s Hollywood model shop on the northeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Wilton Place.

  In the same area, a shopper found 30 drugstores, 32 markets, 16 bakeries including a Van de Kamps windmill café at Ivar Avenue and Yucca Street, 31 car dealerships, 12 car rental agencies including a popular one directly across from the Vine Street Brown Derby, and 16 garages.

  Van de Kamp’s coffee shop at Ivar and Yucca Avenues, 1938. The relocated Methodist Church is on the left.

  The Tick Tock Restaurant first opened on Wilcox Avenu
e and Yucca Street (demolished) before settling on Cahuenga Boulevard north of Hollywood Boulevard.

  Ralphs Market at northwest Hollywood Boulevard and Wilton Place (demolished).

  The restaurants that catered to Hollywood shoppers thrived for years. Johnson’s Tick Tock established itself originally at Wilcox and Yucca. Gloria Swanson was a regular there. In 1934, against the advice of Depression-wary bankers, the Tick Tock owners moved into a former 1912 Ford agency on Cahuenga. A month later, lines formed around the block for the Tick Tock’s huge, homemade, sixty-five-cent dinners. It became a Hollywood tradition (closing in 1988) to munch on white rolls smothered with cinnamon sauce before, with, or after meals amid clacking cuckoo clocks.

  Frederick’s Market at 6565 Hollywood Boulevard shared the shopping district with upscale retail stores.

  In 1937, the former post office on Vine Street became the Ontra Cafeteria, part of a Los Angeles chain that served good food at reasonable prices for decades. Retired vaudeville entertainers who lived in the area ate regularly at the Hollywood Ontra. According to Conrad Nagel, a youngster could soak up the art of the performer by hanging around and listening to the regulars there.

  Gas and service stations throughout Hollywood ran from modern to folksy. Vern Alm, on Cahuenga Boulevard, had an old pioneer wood structure on his lot that was one of Hollywood’s original churches.