The Story of Hollywood

by Gregory Paul Williams

  After the 1937 premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Carthay Circle, Disney opened the film at the Vogue. For a party afterward, a friend offered a recently purchased shop he was remodeling into a restaurant. Disney sent Josh Meador and other animators over to paint murals of the Snow White characters on the walls and on a ceiling canvas, creating the Snow White Cafe.

  By July 1937, Hollywood Boulevard stores were fully occupied at rents equal to what they had been in 1929. The bargains and quality merchandise brought the shoppers. The stars brought the tourists. Nona MacAvoy, a local girl who had attended Hollywood High, recalled celebrities strolling the street as a usual thing. She often saw Jack Oakie and Clark Gable. The lure for tourists was described in Hollywood Magazine‘s May 1938 issue. “We drove slowly along Hollywood Boulevard and Mother marveled at the open-air market half a block in size. Imagine buying two bunches of carrots for a nickel right opposite the building where Greta Garbo’s tailor works!”

  Vern Alm’s on southeast Cahuenga Boulevard and Selma Avenue. Edward H. Bohlin, in background at left, was the saddlemaker to Western movie stars.

  The northwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Gower Street.

  Spectators watch a Chinese premiere from the Hollywood Roosevelt rooftop, 1935.

  MOVIES, PREMIERES AND BALLYHOO

  Although Hollywood had no lock on movie premieres, the publicity rituals seemed most appropriate on Hollywood Boulevard. The Chinese Theater held more premieres than any other Hollywood theater. Warner Theater and the Pantages ran close seconds.

  Otto K. Olesen, who lit the Academy Awards, only did an occasional premiere. George Gibson made lighting premieres his bread and butter. A born hustler, Gibson started in the ‘20s and ended in the ‘50s. If he promised fifty klieg lights and a studio publicist scanning the sky counted only thirty-five, George explained, “You gotta change wicks.” Gibson’s crowd control manager was an ex-Russian ballet dancer gone to seed, whose idea of crowd-control was a two-by-four in a bucket of cement. For years, Gibson touted his red-carpet treatment of stars. When he sold his business in the ‘50s, the carpet turned out to be a faded piece of red cotton.

  A crowd watches a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, 1931. Sid Grauman used the parking lot east of the theater to advertise the current picture in light bulbs.

  Shirley Temple at the American Legion Hall on Highland Avenue, 1936.

  A Gary Cooper premiere brings the fans to Warners’ Hollywood, 1941.

  Spectators at the premiere of Hurricane, 1937.

  After the premiere crowd clears, Gary Cooper and wife escape to a limousine waiting on Cahuenga Boulevard, 1941.

  Hours before a premiere, cars parked for blocks and tourists lined the street. Bleachers around the theater’s entrance filled early in the day. Fans brought picnic baskets, blankets and pillows. The rooftops across from the theater also filled with people craning for a glimpse. Stars poured out of limousines into a lobby filled with fresh flowers while a radio announcer called out their names in a frenzy of exploding flash bulbs.

  In the silent picture days, stars attending premieres greeted their fans from open cars or walked a wooden ramp down the center of Hollywood Boulevard. After the Hell’s Angels premiere, police began to beef up security, roping off the streets around the theater for crowd control. Policemen struggled to clear a lane for the limousines as screaming fans pressed closer to stars, who smiled and waved as they walked across a red carpet, but looked ready to bolt if anyone broke through the ropes. Getting home was an equally daunting task. Crowds of fans waited faithfully, even in the rain, to watch celebrities leave. Stars who were premiere veterans had their limousines wait at specified corners a block away from the theater. The actors then made their way on foot to that spot and escaped.

  When MGM’s The Wizard of Oz opened at the Chinese on August 15, 1939, the studio built an elaborate Munchkin land in the forecourt. L. Frank Baum’s widow, Maud, who still lived on Cherokee Avenue, attended.

  Marlene Dietrich and Henry Fonda, 1943.

  At Grauman’s premiere of The Wizard of Oz, Scarecrow Ray Bolger meets the original stage Scarecrow Fred Stone, 1939.

  Joan Fontaine and James Stewart team for their canopy walk, 1947.

  Paulette Goddard arrives with Charlie Chaplin at the Music Box Theater, 1936.

  Betty Davis mingles in the crowd at a Warners Hollywood premiere, 1936.

  William Holden and wife Brenda Marshall, 1941.

  Ingrid Bergman and David O. Selznick walk the canopy at a Grauman’s Chinese Theater premiere, 1939.

  Live theater continued sporadically. Carmen Miranda made her Hollywood debut on the Grauman’s Chinese stage. Henry Duffy at the El Capitan was overextended, running theaters in Hollywood, Los Angeles, Fresno, and the Bay Area. He faced union problems and could not pay the rent. He turned the El Capitan over to Toberman, who tried to boost faltering attendance with revues and road shows.

  The Hollywood Playhouse became home to the WPA Federal Theater Project. The 1939 WPA show, Memories of Two a Day, featured older stars of vaudeville and played a smash run. It was followed by the popular Meet the People. L.B. Mayer signed Virginia O’Brien after seeing her in the show that also gave career boosts to Dorothy Dandridge and Jack Albertson. A publicity ploy to keep the show running had look-alikes of famous people such as Aimee Semple McPherson walk down the aisles, shaking hands with the audience. Later, in the 1950s, many of the Meet the People cast members were pulled before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Some testified that the show had supported the Communist party line.

  A market on Las Palmas Avenue opened in 1936 as Hollywood Little Theater. It later became the Las Palmas Theater. The New Hampshire Playhouse north of Hollywood Boulevard, owned by Mae West, also offered local talent.

  The widening chasm between moviemaking and Hollywood, the district, came to the screen in Paramount’s Hollywood Boulevard (1936). Robert Cummings starred as a struggling screenwriter who falls for a has-been actor’s daughter. The film supposedly dealt with the Hollywood that intrigued the tourists. The movie only touched briefly along its namesake street before leaving for distant studios, the developing Sunset Strip, and Santa Barbara.

  Hollywood Boulevard’s claim to being movieland’s main street remained, in part, because of its many movie theaters. The area uniquely combined first- and second-run theaters side by side. As movie studios entered a second golden age, Daily Variety tracked theater grosses on Hollywood Boulevard to gauge film performances. The modernized Iris and Vogue Theaters were favorites for studio previews. In 1940, S. Charles Lee remodeled the defunct Henry’s Restaurant near Vine Street for the Admiral Theater which screened second runs.

  The Hitching Post across from the Pantages Theater showed serial westerns. A favorite Saturday matinee spot for neighborhood kids, an entrance sign asked patrons to leave their guns at the box office. Kid cowboys covered the counter with their toy guns.

  Robert Cummings and Marsha Hunt pose for publicity photos at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street for the movie Hollywood Boulevard, 1936.

  The Chinese and the Egyptian had a steady flow of first-runs. The Chinese continued to offer simple stage entertainment. Manager Grauman who loved puppets, hired Bob Jones to perform marionette shows in the theater’s forecourt for tourists. Walt Disney saw Jones performing here and later hired him as a consultant for his animated Pinocchio. The Egyptian, still known as a Grauman theater though Grauman now had nothing to do with it, had continuous stunts and exhibits in its courtyard. Fox West Coast crammed a candy counter into the lobby and installed one in the Chinese Theater.

  Warners Theater dropped the amenities of nurseries and lounges and also installed a candy counter. Double bills became a standard lure at Warners Hollywood, killing the stage shows in 1935. Warners also initiated Bank Night, a drawing with prizes, to bring in customers.

  Chaplin opened City Lights at the Mar-cal, 6025 Hollywood Boulevard, 1931 (façade demolished).

/>   When the Mar-cal Theater, on Hollywood near Bronson, changed hands, it began showing movies. Chaplin picked the Mar-cal for Hollywood’s first run of his silent feature City Lights (1931). By 1935, the Mar-cal had become a movie revival house for silent movies. The Mar-cal staged tributes to senior stars and featured retrospectives of silent film directors who appeared to meet the audience. A revival of D.W. Griffith’s Hearts of the World sold out on September 9, 1936.

  Hollywood Theater, 6766 Hollywood Boulevard, 1939.

  The Mar-cal celebrated the stars of the silent era. The event in the photograph took place in 1937.

  The honor society American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) maintained their headquarters in the Guaranty Building until 1936. They moved to a large Mission Revival home one block north of Hollywood Boulevard on Orange Avenue. It was the former home of silent actor, Conway Tearle, who had sold it when his career dried up.

  Vine Street’s Filmarte, pictured on the right, showed French films in the ‘30s with long, successful runs. Just south of Fountain Avenue, it became a revival house in the ‘40s after Fox West Coast Theaters acquired it. In the ‘60s, Steve Allen did a syndicated TV talk show from here (It was later demolished).

  The Iris Theater, 6508 Hollywood Boulevard, 1942 (remodeled).

  The Hitching Post, Hollywood Boulevard’s south side, between Vine Street and Argyle Avenue, 1941 (demolished).

  ASC, Hollywood’s cinematographers’ society established themselves in the former home of a silent movie star.

  Coca Cola’s billboard on Hollywood Boulevard was a fixture for years.

  The Hollywood American Legion hosted a 1936 national convention with a parade down Hollywood Blvd. and at their Legion Hall on Highland Avenue.

  When 70,000 American Legionnaires held a convention in Hollywood in 1936, they packed local hotels. They paraded down Hollywood Boulevard and met Shirley Temple in the Highland Legion Hall (built in 1929) along with movie-star Legionnaires like Clark Gable and Gene Autry.

  With movie theaters selling Cokes at their new concession stands, the Coca-Cola Company celebrated its boost in profits with a splashy neon sign shaped like the United States. A neon message alternately read “All Roads Lead to Hollywood … Drink Coca-Cola … The Pause That Refreshes.” The lights then changed into a bottle cap.

  In 1937, Hedda Hopper rented a seventh-floor suite in the Guaranty Building with five rooms. At age 52, she proudly announced, “I’m the only (movie) columnist with an office on Hollywood Boulevard and a listed phone number.” MGM backed her as competition to Louella Parsons. The Los Angeles Times picked up Hopper’s column in 1938. She turned out to be as punishing and controlling as Louella and as conservative and prudish as a Wilcox-era resident. Though Hopper lived in Beverly Hills, her Hollywood offices became a stop for actors with a scoop or a handout, mothers with talented children, or specialty acts ready to perform. The Vine Street Brown Derby became home to her celebrity interviews.

  Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck out for the evening.

  STAR PARTY

  Important movie people no longer lived along Hollywood Boulevard. Sam Goldwyn moved his family out of Hollywood to Beverly Hills in 1934. To the public, Beverly Hills was the finest residential section in Southern California. The movie elite continued pushing westward through Holmby Hills, Westwood, and Bel Air, and toward new developments in Brentwood. The movie crowd could not move any farther west when they hit the shoreline. After William Randolph Hearst built a mansion for Marion Davies in 1930, many made their homes on Santa Monica’s beach. It was a close commute to MGM. Ad Schulberg built the first house in Malibu, a summer resort until 1931, when stars began to live there, too.

  Universal and Warners had abetted a stampede of stars to the San Fernando Valley where land was comparatively cheap. Owning a ranch became a popular getaway. Toluca Lake, with its golf course, grew popular. Bing Crosby lived there. Bob Hope made it his permanent home. Movie magazines called these clusters “film colonies.”

  William Powell and Carole Lombard with Jimmy Manos, maitre d’ of the Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove.

  Hollywood was more often a place for stars to drive through, eat and drink, place a bet, and head home. The Masquers hit a peak in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when Barrymore and Flynn hung at the bar, that was packed solid from noon to late afternoon. Nostalgic show business dinners became a staple at the actors’ club. The Masquers honored Mack Sennett in March 1938. The Keystone Cops attended in their original uniforms.

  Stars bought acres of the San Fernando Valley for homes and as investments.

  Barham Boulevard leads to Warner Bros. Studios and the San Fernando Valley. The cars are parked due to a bridge washout over the L.A. River in the storm of 1938.

  Drinks at the Masquers Club. From left to right: W.C. Fields, writer Gene Fowler, John Barrymore, John Carradine, Jack LaRue, artist John Decker.

  The female version of the Masquers, the Dominoes, also established themselves on Sycamore Avenue. Members included Myrna Loy, Una Merkel, Thelma Todd, Barbara Stanwyck, and the wives of Edward G. Robinson, Cecil B. DeMille, Reginald Denny, William de Mille, and Harry Cohn. (As SAG founders belonged to both clubs, a whispering campaign at the Masquers and the Dominoes abetted SAG’s struggle to organize.)

  Another spot for movie stars to unwind was the Russian Artcraft Club on the east end of Hollywood Boulevard. It served as a communal home for Russian performers who had flocked to Hollywood after the Russian Revolution.

  The Hollywood Chess Club, in the same Hollywood Boulevard building as SAG and the Writers Guild, was another popular spot. Directors Joseph von Sternberg and Ernst Lubitsch, after battling while Lubitsch briefly headed Paramount for one year, became friends playing chess.

  Nighttime socializing became an essential way for actors to get free publicity. Hollywood movie stars had to live up to the sophisticated wit and lifestyle that filled movie screens. Though working stars did not have much free time, they dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns, made appearances at clubs for the press, and then went home to bed with 6:00 a.m. set calls. A few partied on coffee and pharmaceuticals. On weekends, everyone went out.

  Sunset Boulevard, lined with orchards and outside the Los Angeles city limit, was the direct route for stars driving home to Beverly Hills. The area’s first nightspot opened in 1924 as a country roadhouse. La Boheme came next, a more sophisticated operation with illegal gambling downstairs. When La Boheme transformed into the Trocadero in 1934, Hollywood had a glamour spot to which both stars and hopefuls flocked. The Sunset Strip was born.

  Movie stars mostly appeared in Hollywood after dark at a premiere or a nightspot. Although nightlife in Hollywood was sedate compared to New York, a few popular places like the Vine Street Derby and Sardi’s stayed open into the early hours. Commercial interests in Hollywood clearly felt it was necessary to foster as many first-class watering holes as possible.

  Movie stars became selective in their patronage; their favorite spots changed randomly. If a couple of stars dropped into a club, publicity did the rest. Star watchers spent fortunes at clubs they had read about in the movie magazines, only to learn too late that the place was “out” and filled with nobodies. One evening, Marlene Dietrich dined with her husband and Maurice Chevalier at the Hotel Christi’s Club New Yorker (formerly Greenwich Village Café). She did it to end the gossip about her marriage to Chevalier. The incident made movie magazines and the club prospered briefly.

  The Cinegrill brought nightclub life to the Roosevelt Hotel.

  Russian immigrants opened a nightclub in the Plaza Hotel ballroom on Vine Street, 1936.

  Clara Bow took over the Plaza ballroom for her “It” Café, 1940.

  A group of Russians left the Sunset Strip after their roadhouse burned down. They moved to the Hollywood Plaza Hotel ballroom where their Russian Eagle did better than it had on the Strip. The waiters wore fezzes. The doorman was a former Cossack calvaryman. The cashier on the stool in the hot kitchen, making c
hange for waiters, was the Princess Xenia Shadhowskoya, who also sang sad songs out front. She told a reporter that she was “catching up the torn and raveled threads of my life and twining them together once more.” Garbo loved to eat caviar in a dark corner. Dietrich visited often too. When movie magazines reported this, the Russian Eagle became a hot spot for a while.

  The Roosevelt Hotel redid the Blossom Room in Persian style and reopened it New Year’s Eve, 1934. In 1935, they remodeled the souvenir shop into the Cinegrill. The new club featured jazz entertainment and opened with a sold-out run for Mary Martin. That year, with Carole Lombard officiating, the Vine Street Derby opened its cocktail lounge, the Bamboo Room.

  When the Russian Eagle closed in 1935, the Plaza Hotel opened Cinnabar. Plans to turn the outdoor area, the remains of Jacob Stern’s palm grove, into an old Mexican street with barbecues, caballeros and dancing señoritas died with Cinnabar in less than a year. In 1937, Clara Bow, now a faded movie star, took over the room and opened the “It” Café. Managing it with her husband, Rex Bell, Bow slimmed down for the opening and promised to appear at the club three times a week. Following the birth of her second son, her weight ballooned and she lost interest in her club. She pulled her name, though the place continued a while longer.

  In the late 1930s, Carmen Miranda arrived and Hollywood began to rhumba. The downstairs of Vine Street’s Hollywood Rooftop Ballroom became La Conga and provided rhumba instructors. Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, and Martha Raye attended during the first months.