The Story of Hollywood

by Gregory Paul Williams

  When Home Depot arrived at Sunset near Wilton in 1994, it removed a block of vintage Hollywood, including the original home of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Stardust Ballroom, noteworthy for its big bands and radio broadcasts. The demolished structure had served for years as Fanchon & Marco rehearsal studios, where the dance team choreographed live shows for Paramount Theaters. Mary Martin had taught and rehearsed there. Fanchon and Marco had regularly displayed their show costumes in illuminated front windows. In the 1950s, Stardust became a popular roller rink. Home Depot replaced it with a huge block wall along Sunset, incorporating no hint of the past such as the Stardust neon sign.

  Large companies who remained in Hollywood invested locally. Panavision opened new Hollywood headquarters at 6379 Selma Avenue. KCBS (once KNXT) opened a videotape facility. Deluxe Labs expanded its laboratories. KCET and Hollywood Center Studios expanded and improved their studio lots. Eastman Kodak, at Santa Monica Boulevard and Las Palmas, initiated an $8.5 million expansion. Paramount Pictures, after demolishing two vintage buildings, Western Costumes and Nickodell’s on Melrose Avenue, expanded their lot. KTLA announced a $10-million digital revamp to make their Sunset and Bronson studio the first all-digital studio lot in the United States. Animators Klasky-Csupo, creators of the Rugrats, moved into the Mercedes building near Sunset and Vine after the dealership left Hollywood.

  The Nederlander Organization rented a storefront in the Pantages Theater to this short-lived social service, 1996.

  Dramatic preservation work came from volunteers. Matthew Lesniak saved the Mayer Building at Hollywood Boulevard and Western. The ‘94 earthquake had heavily damaged the structure. Squatters wreaked havoc inside. Although Jackie Goldberg supported demolition, Lesniak worked patiently with the two owners, guiding them through the restoration process. He obtained CRA funding and spent months securing the structure so that it would not disappear due to arson. His two-year effort made the building a key CRA restoration project.

  The CRA-owned Egyptian stood for months with its yawning earthquake-damage holes. Preservationists resorted to a newspaper campaign to tent the exterior before rainstorms. Shortly after that, Cinematheque, a nonprofit center for the appreciation of film and video, offered to restore the theater. Cinematheque had originally planned to move into the Pan Pacific Auditorium on Beverly Boulevard, but arson had destroyed it in two separate fires. Cinematheque got a $2-million CRA loan for the Egyptian renovation.

  A tilted tombstone and Tyrone Power’s resting place at Hollywood Forever, 1997.

  In 1995, the eighty-year-old YMCA on Hudson Avenue, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, was restored with $13 million. Comedian Tim Allen led the drive to refurbish it. Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves used the facility.

  As Hollywood Cemetery approached its one hundredth year, it lay abandoned. Its maintenance money had disappeared with its owner. Tombstones lurched at odd angles. The smell of death seeped from mausoleums. The graves of Peter Lorre, Peter Finch, Rudolph Valentino, Marion Davies, Douglas Fairbanks, Jayne Mansfield, and many more teetered in decay, along with Hollywood pioneers Harvey Wilcox, his wife Daeida, Arthur Letts, and the Gowers.

  The Cassity family, who ran a mortuary business, learned of cemetery’s plight on Entertainment Tonight. They bought the cemetery for $375,000. In the late ‘90s, changing the name to Hollywood Forever, they rehabilitated the cemetery and got it listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They also established innovations such as recorded information of the deceased on computer terminals around the cemetery.

  In 1994, social services invested $42 million in new Hollywood buildings. These included a Salvation Army senior residency on Hollywood Boulevard near Bronson that immediately filled with Russian seniors on welfare. AIDS Project Los Angeles took over the Don Lee/Mutual TV studios at Vine and Fountain using $4.5 million in CRA funds and $1 million from producer David Geffen. In May 2001, AIDS Project Los Angeles would sell the building to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for $20 million.

  Social services had arrived in Hollywood early in the twentieth century with the Studio Club for young women. Its Lodi Avenue building, designed by architect Julia Morgan, remained a local landmark. Although a real estate agency, the CRA put out money along with the federal government to bring nonprofit social service agencies to Hollywood. Before the CRA, there were approximately thirty social services in Hollywood. During Goldberg’s tenure, the number grew to over one hundred and fifty, including dozens of homeless food centers and runaway shelters.

  By 2005, the Free Clinic on Hollywood near Bronson would have homeless parents with children sleeping in the alley. Despite all the money going to social services in Hollywood, there was no other place for them to sleep.

  Home Depot replaced the Stardust Ballroom with a long cinderblock wall along Sunset Boulevard at Wilton Avenue, 1994.

  A new facility for Paramount Pictures on Melrose Avenue.

  A restored structure for Kodak at Santa Monica Boulevard and Las Palmas Avenue, 1999.

  YWCA Hollywood Studio Club, 1215 Lodi Avenue, 2000.

  C.E. Toberman had stressed that the residential areas around Hollywood Boulevard were key to rehabilitating the district. CRA-funded social services played a large hand in restructuring the neighborhood in the last two decades of the twentieth century. City Council member Goldberg’s administration fostered dozens of government-funded low-income housing projects. For one across from the YMCA on Selma Avenue, the CRA used eminent domain to remove a small independent auto shop. Before the CRA, six auto shops operated near Selma and Hudson (Schraeder). None remained in 2002. The CRA treated auto shops as blight.

  At the intersection of Hollywood and Western, an $11-million complex for low-income families appeared south of the subway station. Pre-condemnation began when the CRA focused on acquiring La Paula Apartments on the property. Tenants had trashed the place. La Paula’s landlord was sentenced to live briefly in the building. After the 1994 earthquake, the CRA got La Paula at less than fair market value. The CRA also acquired the two parcels south of La Paula by eminent domain, driving two elderly women from their homes. One was hospitalized over the shock. At the dedication of the new low-income housing, a Goldberg aide asserted, “This project will not be allowed to become a slum.”

  In 1995, the West Hollywood Homeless Organization planned to relocate to Gower south of Hollywood Boulevard in a building vacated by Social Security. The organization planned to spend $1 million in public money for renovation. City officials said the project would get homeless adults off Hollywood Boulevard and revitalize it. Local residents and business people disagreed.

  The issue reached a boiling point at the Hollywood Community Advisory Council (CAC). (As part of Goldberg’s campaign promise, this group had replaced Woo’s previously appointed CAC with an elected council.) CAC member Aaron Epstein, son of Pickwick Books’ founder, wrote, “The majority of those who opposed the new [homeless] facility were those that either lived, worked or owned property in the area while the majority … who favored the facility were from the outside area.” The disagreement led to the resignation of nine CAC members, all affiliated with CRA-funded social services. After the Hollywood Chamber’s board voted unanimously to withdraw their director from the CAC, citing the council’s bad manners and habit of making fun of people, Goldberg disbanded the public panel. Local activists then persuaded the building’s owner to refuse to lease it to the homeless agency.

  Next, a mental health facility opened on Vine Street against neighborhood wishes. The principal of a nearby elementary school cited an ongoing battle with people urinating and defecating on school property. Goldberg got a zoning variance to help the facility open. She said it would get the mentally ill off the street. When a nearby fifty-four-unit apartment house was concurrently rehabilitated for homeless adults with mental disabilities, the nonprofit group said their greatest resistance came from the neighborhood.

  In 1997, a soc
ial service organization asked three cities, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and West Hollywood, to fund a homeless shelter in Hollywood at Vermont and Beverly Avenues, near a new subway station. One of the backers of this project said Hollywood and Venice Beach were areas where “homeless people feel they fit in.” Jackie Goldberg found $250,000 for the project.

  Upgraded stores in Hollywood found that newly installed plate glass windows were immediately acid-etched with graffiti, requiring total replacement. A local entertainment businessman told a reporter, “Anyone talking about Hollywood’s rebirth hasn’t had to wade through the night crawlers after dark.”

  Some social services spun out of control. KCBS ran a story of three Knickerbocker managers accused of taking $1500 kickbacks from Russian immigrants, who used U.S. government money to bribe their way onto the hotel’s residency list. The managers evicted an eighty-seven-year-old American citizen, Bud Berman, so a Russian could take his apartment. Berman, a former photographer on the Jack Benny radio shows, found shelter in a local resident’s home.

  Residents of Whitley Heights spent eleven years trying to gate their community from the poverty, crime, and drugs in the historic district. They started building gates in 1983 with the L.A. City Council’s permission. In 1991, neighbors who lived below Whitley Heights protested and sued. The L.A Superior Court ruled in 1993 that the gates had to go.

  In October 1999, council member Jackie Goldberg dedicated a part of east Hollywood Boulevard as Thai Town for the Thai community between Western and Normandie Avenues. The designation motivated the local Armenians to have Goldberg designate a larger overlapping area as Little Armenia a year later. An activist for Little Armenia told the Hollywood Independent, “We’re kind of taking ownership of the neighborhood.” Thai Town promoters felt Little Armenia watered down their identity. The Hollywood Independent (published on Wilshire Boulevard) called it “the balkanization of Hollywood.”

  The Filmarte TV studio (pictured 1937) burned in the late ‘80s. A mental health clinic took its place on Vine Street ten years later, 2000.

  The Salvation Army tower for senior citizens on Hollywood Boulevard west of Bronson Avenue, 2000.

  Michael Jackson with Johnny Grant (left) and Bill Welsh (right) at the dedication of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 1984.

  A crowd gathers around Grauman’s Chinese Theater for Michael Jackson’s Walk of Fame ceremony, 1984.

  THE HOLLYWOOD TREATMENT

  To the general public, celebrity-style shopping belonged to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills where Procter & Gamble, after closing Max Factor in Hollywood, kept its presence with Giorgio Beverly Hills. Fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger opened a short-lived flagship retail store on Rodeo in the mid-90s. Both Procter & Gamble and Hilfiger featured Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in their product advertisements.

  Still, tourists flocked to Hollywood. A commissioned visitor-tracking study counted 9.1 million visitors in 1994. The incoming Hollywood Chamber of Commerce president that year, the first woman in the position and a lobbyist for the Vine Street Derby’s demolition, urged readers of the Chamber’s August newsletter to befriend tourists who seemed lost or dazed. “Tell them your favorite restaurant and make yourself the highlight of the trip.” At a special conference in Palm Springs, the Chamber’s board set itself three goals: to make Hollywood safer, to retain and attract business, and to organize a “Hooray for Hollywood” campaign.

  The Walk of Fame, with over 2000 names, was the only landmark, besides the Chinese Theater, that held boosters’ interest. Designated in 1986 as Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Monument number 194, whenever a celebrity with a Walk of Fame star died, the Chamber hustled a bouquet to their sidewalk marker. Stars who came for dedications included Barbra Streisand for her husband, James Brolin. Critics noted that Hollywood founder Daeida Wilcox Beveridge never got a star, but then she wasn’t in show business. Rules, however, had loosened to allow Bugs Bunny and other cartoon characters sidewalk stars.

  When a New York Business Improvement District (BID) transformed Times Square from seedy to a sanitized mass-merchandising outlet, representatives from New York’s Times Square came to Hollywood to cheer revitalization. Local boosters spoke of making Hollywood Boulevard the West Coast’s Times Square.

  Los Angeles had Business Improvement Districts in its garment district, San Pedro, the mid-Wilshire area, and Westwood Village. Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade and Old Pasadena were admired local BID successes.

  A few Hollywood Boulevard blocks from McCadden Place to La Brea Avenue formed a BID in 1996. Upon approval, property owners assessed themselves to pay for more frequent trash removal, tree planting, repaving of streets, and security guards. This compensated for the tax money that the CRA took from public services; BIDs supplemented the city’s missing funds. The first year’s $600,000 collected was a small sum, especially given the high administrative costs. The $100,000-a-year starting salary for the BID executive director went to a former realtor. The Hollywood BID, named the Hollywood Entertainment District, later expanded to Gower.

  At the start, the BID committee poured out ideas. One suggestion dressed the street cleaners like movie characters. “What property owners want people to see is what people expect when they come to Hollywood,” the president of the Chamber told a reporter. “Glitz, glamour and excitement.”

  The Hollywood Entertainment Museum was a BID favorite. First proposed by California State Senator David Roberti in 1984, it outlined a $45-million museum in the vacant Pacific Theater (Warner’s Hollywood) at Wilcox Avenue. The museum’s president, a former aide to Roberti, received $1 million in state money and $3.5 million from the CRA to buy the theater in 1991. (Her husband was an attorney for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and original chairman of the Hollywood PAC.)

  Four years later, the museum had not bought Warner’s Theater. The subway sinking, the president said, had damaged the theater too much for restoration. She hinted that Hollywood might not be the home for the Hollywood museum. Having consumed public funds with nothing to show for it, the museum came under an investigation by the state attorney general.

  Citicorp, desperate to find a tenant for the failed Galaxy, donated funds to lure the Hollywood Entertainment Museum there. The CRA declared the ten-year-old Galaxy blighted and renegotiated the millions spent on Warners Theater. The CRA added another $2 million for the Galaxy site. What boosters saw as a sorely needed attraction, critics said amounted to a $5.5-million rehab of the failed Galaxy.

  As part of California Governor Pete Wilson’s 1998 state budget, the museum received $2 million in education funds. One of the museum’s missions was to train at-risk youth “for future employment in the Hollywood entertainment community.” The Hollywood Entertainment Museum offered personal shopping services during the 2000 holiday season, with half the money going to the museum’s educational program, With celebrity used clothing for sale, items like Angelina Jolie’s suede pants were priced at twelve hundred dollars.

  A Beverly Hills developer received nearly $2-million from the CRA to restore the Max Factor building into Hollywood’s second entertainment museum. (This developer held an advisory seat on the Hollywood BID.) At the museum’s press party in 1997, Mamie Van Doren, Johnny Grant, and other guests viewed Johnny Weismuller’s Tarzan knives and some Mae West jewelry. Chasen’s Restaurant agreed to open a fourth-floor restaurant in the Highland site with performing robots of Marilyn Monroe and Liberace among the attractions, but later backed out. Ironically, Max Factor’s original makeup exhibits now belonged to the Hollywood Entertainment Museum.

  Other Historic District museums in the ‘90s included the Museum of the Weird, Hell House (at 6666 Hollywood Boulevard) and the Museum of Death on Ivar Avenue. With graphic and grisly displays, the Museum of Death set a record in January 2001 when nine people reportedly fainted looking at the exhibits. These museums all had a lifespan of less than five years each.

  The Hollywood Entertainment Museum in the Hollywood Galaxy, 7021 Hol
lywood Boulevard, 2000.

  Two renderings of Trizec-Hahn’s proposal for the northwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, once the site of the Hollywood Hotel and then Hollywood First Federal Savings and Loan.

  More Photos: pg. 375

  At re-election in 1997, Mayor Riordan decided to make Hollywood a priority again, pledging to bring about a “Hollywood renaissance.”

  For her re-election, Hollywood’s City Council Representative Goldberg ran unopposed after a court ruled that her opponents had too few petition signatures. In one of the lowest voter turnouts in city history, 7,500 voters re-elected her.

  Riordan and Goldberg formally announced the Hollywood Economic Development Strategic Plan in October 1997. Two hundred city employees and business people came to the Hollywood Entertainment Museum to hear the Mayor declare that the “renovation of Hollywood will play a critical role in continuing to build prosperity for Los Angeles and California.” With a budget of $1 million, their plan tackled everything from tourism to business retention. One program outlined taking homeless people off the streets, giving them housing, and training them in food preparation. The plan even had a slogan: “Hooray for Hollywood.”

  The CRA asked fifty developers to propose, once again, a project for the northwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, the site of the Hollywood Hotel and the unrealized Hollywood Promenade. The CRA selected Trizec-Hahn, a billion-dollar, Canadian shopping-mall developer’s plan to usher in the new era.