The Story of Hollywood

by Gregory Paul Williams

  Trizec-Hahn’s proposal had something for everyone. A Babylon Court paid homage to the D.W. Griffith epic film Intolerance. (In reality, Intolerance was Hollywood’s first mega-flop.) A “Fred and Ginger” staircase offered a site for tourists to take photos. Upscale retail shops on the multi-level mall would recall the district’s glamour. Two floors of movie theaters, clubs, and restaurants were for local residents.

  A former Disney executive led the Trizec-Hahn project. After working on Disney’s New Amsterdam Theater in New York, the executive had tried to persuade Disney to redevelop historic streets like Hollywood Boulevard and Chicago’s State Street. Disney turned him down, saying his projects were more about real estate development than entertainment.

  The Trizec-Hahn project demolished the two Chinese annex theaters and Toberman’s Hollywood First Federal building. that had replaced the Hollywood Hotel. The developer bought the Holiday Inn to the north for approximately $35 million, half of what the Promenade developer had paid for it. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences agreed to rent a new 3,300-seat theater for its Academy Awards, the developer declared the mall an authentic piece of Hollywood.

  Initially the CRA insisted that no public money would go for the $385-million project. By the time the city council approved it however, Los Angeles taxpayers kicked in nearly $100 million. The city gave the Canadians all the business, utility, sales, and transient occupancy taxes for the project. No struggling small business in Hollywood had ever received such exemptions. Two council members questioned the wisdom of taking general city funds to pay a wealthy private developer. Los Angeles taxpayers would take the brunt of the default if or when the development failed.

  A Los Angeles Times article revealed that Trizec-Hahn topped the list of city lobbyists that spring, spending $105,327 on political contributions. (Trizec-Hahn also gave $250,000 each to neighboring Hollywood Heights, Whitley Heights, and Outpost homeowners’ associations to assure their cooperation.)

  Trizec-Hahn’s proposal for the Academy Awards later became the Kodak Theater, 1998.

  As hoped, the project enticed more developers into Hollywood. Three companies jostled for the Hollywood and Highland corner (formerly Lee’s Drugs) opposite the Babylon-themed mall. On Vine, a Beverly Hills developer announced the Hollywood Marketplace to replace the burned Celebrity Theater. This $70-million “urban village” designed by mall architect Jon Jerde was to contain Mann movie theaters, stores, and restaurants. Jerde’s plans called for the demolition of the still-intact facade of the Celebrity Theater.

  When preservationists took the issue of the Celebrity Theater demolition to Los Angeles Cultural Affairs, both Riordan and Goldberg opposed saving the façade. So did a board member of the Los Angeles Conservancy who the developers had hired as their attorney. The Cultural Heritage Board refused to award landmark status to the structure. One board member chastised the applicant for wasting the board’s time on a burned building. Later, a tour of the structure convinced the CRA that the concrete-and-steel facade was salvageable. It was incorporated into the design.

  At the border of West Hollywood, developers began the La Brea Gateway. This multi-story mall had the same components as other developments: large chain stores, multiple-theater cineplex, and restaurants. Intended to cure the blight in the area, $10 million of the estimated $86 million needed for construction came from the federal government. A West Hollywood official told a reporter that the intersection was ready for this transformation, as prostitution, once prominent in the area, had been pushed into Hollywood.

  City and redevelopment officials insisted these block-long “landmarks” would erase blight, bring back moviegoers and shoppers, and spread success. Both the Hollywood Marketplace and the La Brea Gateway announced Borders Bookstores.

  North on La Brea from the Gateway, the Charlie Chaplin/A&M Records studio became home to Jim Henson’s Muppets. Universal had closed A&M Records in a 1999 corporate cutback. Joan Armatrading, Bon Jovi, Cheap Trick, and Michael Jackson were only a few who had recorded in the La Brea Avenue Studio.

  The former Charlie Chaplin Studios on La Brea Avenue became home to Jim Henson’s Muppets.

  A proposed hotel for the southwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue would demolish a Mary Moll commercial building and the Art Deco Lee Drugs.

  A proposed integrated hotel/condominium and commercial development for Hollywood Boulevard and Argyle Avenue (second from bottom) and Vine Street.

  At Hollywood and Vine, developers planned a hotel, condo, and retail center over the subway station. The giant project would cover the site of the demolished Vine Street Brown Derby. Another developer announced the demolition of a commercial block in the Historic District’s center. That unrealized Deco-style mall with stores, theaters and restaurants would have displaced, among others, the last bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard, Book Citywhich would close in 2005.

  Rhetoric about Hollywood’s comeback piggybacked the rebounding real estate market. After decades of revitalization attempts, publicity machines trumpeted that Hollywood had turned a corner. News services pumped out headlines like “Burnt-out Boulevard’s Latest Remake Clicking.” The Wall Street Journal printed that the new development was “all about the street and shouting out ‘Hollywood.’“ A CRA official said, “The market is hot.”

  The real estate boom recalled the early ‘20s. The big difference was that Hollywood no longer had a financial center beyond its real estate market. The entertainment industry’s executive and administrative headquarters were now mostly in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and Burbank. Movie production headed to Canada.

  Glendale went from a sleepy town to an overbuilt metropolis in the 1990s. In 2001, the Glendale City Council approved a $2-billion Disney Campus with twenty-five acres of production units on the former Grand Central Air Terminal. Manhattan Beach, considerably south of Hollywood, received one of the largest independent production facilities on twenty-two acres. Mayor Riordan facilitated the building of soundstages at an abandoned corporate site near downtown Los Angeles. The North Hollywood CRA announced new soundstages for their area.

  KABC-TV moved from Hollywood to a strategic freeway spot in Glendale. Local television station KCOP left with KTTV when Newscorp bought both stations.

  Other business defections within the district included the music giant BMG moving to Beverly Hills from the former RCA Building at Sunset and Ivar. In 1997, after a long stay on Hollywood Boulevard, the performers’ union, AFTRA, moved to the “new Hollywood” on Wilshire Boulevard. Otto K. Olesen left Ivar Avenue for Burbank.

  Some defections came from corporate changes. After seventy-five years on Hollywood Boulevard, Woolworth’s closed in 1997 because the company stopped running dime stores. Washington Mutual bought Home Savings and Loan, taking over the Sunset and Vine structure that had replaced NBC. The radio collection of Pioneer Broadcasters housed in the basement moved to a library in Thousand Oaks, California.

  C.C. Brown’s, the inventor of the hot fudge sundae and an authentic part of Hollywood for over seventy years, closed its ice cream parlor in 1996. The site where Elvis Presley had bought Natalie Wood hot fudge sundaes became a souvenir store. Brown continued making its fudge sauce in copper kettles, selling it over the Internet.

  Across Sunset Boulevard, Pacific Theaters announced a massive redevelopment of the Cinerama Dome. The plan featured more restaurants, stores, a fifteen-screen multiplex and a health club. When Pacific announced they would completely alter the landmark Dome including its “hideous” mustard-colored ceiling, preservationists, led by Doug Haines, put up a year-and-a-half battle to save the theater. Pacific Theaters’ executives learned in the process that the Dome was one of the few Los Angeles movie houses that people attended specifically for its auditorium. They agreed not to put in multiple screens in the theater and a take-out chicken restaurant in the lobby. Neighbors protested the size of a massively scaled, nine-story, CRA-financed, $44-million public parking garage, reducin
g the structure to seven levels.

  Pacific scored a success with the Hollywood Arclight. A higher ticket price got stadium seating and good sound. Local resident-friendly, there are also a café and gift shop. The dome continues to screen first runs under its honeycomb ceiling.

  Pacific Theater’s Arclight, the proposal and the completed development in 2004.

  1770 Vine Street at Yucca Avenue, 1934.

  1770 Vine Street renovated as part of Capitol Records campus, 2002.

  Capitol Records threatened to leave their landmark building, making the CRA spend over $4 million to keep them in Hollywood. The CRA bought the Jean Swartz Building at 1770 N. Vine Street, north of Capitol Records, and planned to demolish it for an undetermined expansion.

  Designed in the early 1930s by local architect H.L Gogerty, the building had great local color. It had housed the first offices of the Screen Cartoonists Union in the early 1940s. Later, it became Rainbow Dance Studio, run by the husband-and-wife vaudeville team of Tracey & Hay, the Dancing Jewels of America. The dance studio served as a rehearsal space for Milton Berle, Debbie Reynolds, and Phil Harris, among others. In the 1960s, a downstairs guitar shop sold Eric Clapton and the Doors their instruments. The Swartz was the last vintage two-story commercial building on the Hollywood and Vine corridor, the majority of which had fallen (and, in many cases, burned) during the CRA’s redevelopment.

  Initially the CRA intended to demolish the building. Volunteer preservationists protested. Riordan and Goldberg supported demolition. The CRA and Capitol hired a local architectural historian to testify at a Cultural Affairs meeting that the building was unrestorable. However, when Capitol executives saw early photographs of the building, this Gogerty building was spared and incorporated into expansion plans.

  At this time, the Cultural Affairs Department of Los Angeles restored some of Hollywood’s historic neon signs. This included the radio towers on the empty Warner’s Hollywood that Pacific Theaters had considered demolishing until USC took it over for a digital cinema laboratory.

  Schwab Men’s Store Building after renovation, 6358 Hollywood Boulevard, between Ivar and Cahuenga, 2001.

  Hollywood Ivar Market on Sunday mornings brings out the locals, 2001.

  Preservation of vintage Hollywood got some support in the private sector. The Los Angeles Times offered, “The new-found potential for profit in aging buildings has turned many developers into Hollywood history buffs” and “Hollywood is akin to an archeological site waiting to be rediscovered.” Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, k.d. lang, and Beastie Boy Mike Diamond moved in to vintage buildings on Cahuenga Boulevard. (Concurrently, Cahuenga lost its last camera store, Lloyds Camera, in January 2001. Camera rental businesses once filled the area between Cahuenga and Wilcox, Hollywood Boulevard to Melrose.)

  Hollywood Boulevard’s Schwab Building underwent a restoration by a willing owner. This disproved an entrenched, official stance that vintage buildings, once remodeled, were unworthy of historic designation and preservation. The building’s first tenants opened a dance club, Ivar, downstairs, and a screening room and restaurant, Cinespace, upstairs.

  Prices rose so fast on vintage apartments at the end of the twentieth century that Hollywood housing finally headed for mixed income levels. Investors tapped out much the value of local vintage residential buildings by 2001. These great surviving structures featured larger spaces, better construction, and quality details. Upscale renters looking for “character buildings” preferred them to the newer ones.

  Many in the entertainment business continued to live in the Hollywood Hills. The neighborhoods were popular with stars like Madonna, Brad Pitt, Bridget Fonda, Diane Keaton, and others. In 1997, Vogue Magazine dubbed Los Feliz “the hot ‘hood on the Left Coast” and the “SoHo of L.A.”

  Glamour and grunge replaced glamour and glitz to define the new era. Nicholas Cage told Women’s Wear Daily that he preferred a home in Hollywood because “I probably have a fascination with the darker side of things. There are things going on here that you don’t get in other areas like Brentwood and Santa Monica.” Jackie Goldberg told a reporter, “Hollywood has always had a Raymond Chandler-esque side to it and we’re not discouraging it.” In 2003, under the headline “Hot All-Ages Venues,” the Los Angeles Times suggested late-night Badlanz at 602 Cahuenga Boulevard: “The scene on Cahuenga Boulevard is not unlike the video games inside this spacious Internet gaming lounge with transvestite hookers and various degenerates stumbling down the street.”

  Independent pockets of prosperity continued to be Hollywood’s best hope. Outside the CRA zones, areas of free enterprise blossomed. Pocket neighborhoods at Franklin Avenue, near Bronson, and along Hillhurst Avenue thrived. Vermont Avenue found a renaissance with eccentric stores and restaurants. The 1996 movie Swingers made Vermont’s Dresden Room a known hot spot.

  Roll-down doors became a common daytime sight fifteen years after the arrival of the CRA. Painting celebrities on them seemed the best way to glamorize them. This set is at southwest Hollywood and Wilcox, 2003.

  Stores with hooker clothing flourished on Hollywood Boulevard, 1999.

  ForPlay sells sexy clothes and toys at two locations on Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox. This store is at 6434 Hollywood Boulevard, 2003.

  NEW HOLLYWOOD

  In the year 2000, stores in the Historic District that sold hooker, stripper, and fetish clothes flourished. In 2003, former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss opened a clothing store called Hollywood Madam. Fleiss planned to put cameras hooked to her Internet website in a few dressing rooms. The store closed in October 2004.

  Before the CRA, there was one tattoo parlor in the historic district. In 2000, there were five. Buxom celebrity Anna Nicole Smith got a tattoo on her lower back at a Hollywood tattoo parlor.

  Roll-down doors on many retail stores remained resolutely shut even during business hours. The nonprofit Hollywood Beautification Team initiated a project funded by the Hollywood Historic Trust to paint monochrome celebrity portraits on the roll-down doors. The artists who did the paintings later charged that they were not fully paid and were forced to sign nondisclosure agreements to receive final payment. By 2005, the Hollywood BID had decided to replace roll-down doors with more open security grills.

  The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, along with the BID, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and the MTA, installed famous-place markers along Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in 2000. Redevelopment interests had demolished many of the sites over the years, including the Garden Court Apartments, the Hollywood Hotel, the de Longpre house, the Vine Street Brown Derby, NBC Radio, and Music City.

  At Hollywood and Argyle, the MTA’s $56-million subway station debuted with a style that author William Fulton called “Toon Town Urbanism.” Theme-park art replaced real urbanity. A Brown Derby bus shelter saluted the Wilshire Derby and ignored the Vine Street Derby. Instead of any reference to radio or television history, the station’s art saluted lowriders. Cruising, however, had moved to West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, now lined with clubs, restaurants, and discos.

  A fourth major fire damaged Vine Street’s former Celebrity Theater in January 2001. A fifty-foot section of the roof collapsed in a blaze that required seventy-five firefighters to extinguish. A male transient was treated for minor injuries and released. The Hollywood Roof Ballroom was then demolished. While no preservation organization came forward to protest this or any of the building’s fires, the Hollywood PAC suggested that building owners pay the firefighting costs as they had repeatedly failed to secure the two historic structures, homeless squats since 1995.

  In any case, plans for the site changed when Mann Theaters dropped out and reorganized under bankruptcy protection. After the original developers dropped out too, basketball star Magic Johnson brought his investment company and others to resuscitate the development into a five-story residential complex with retail stores at street level. People had not lived at Sunset and Vine since the Jacob Stern days. Capitalizing on the
income from signage, the building offered sixteen-hundred square-feet of outdoor advertising.

  The signage plan for the cornerstone for Hollywood’s renaissance, Hollywood and Highland, drew protests from nearby homeowners whose associations had approved the project. Thirteen large advertising signs were planned for the facade, along with a 150-foot tower for advertising. Another 6-by-170-foot video sign would advertise entertainment only. More signs protruding from the structure included two 30-foot billboards along Highland. In spite of the protests, the Los Angeles City Council approved the signage with one council member insisting, “We are looking to create in Hollywood … a Times Square.”

  In June 2001, organizers of the Hollywood Economic Summit concluded that Hollywood was almost ready for its close-up. In April, a report by the Urban Land Institute praised the preservation of historic Hollywood. This nonprofit, Washington-D.C. think tank sent a panel to Hollywood for a week to meet with city officials, developers and local people. The institute lauded the efforts of politicians, businesses, and developers and encouraged government to continue supporting efforts to remake Hollywood. Goldberg received praise, although the caution came that her departure could represent a problem. Term limits had forced her out of City Council. She had moved on to the State Assembly, leaving her Hollywood term unfinished. Eric Garcetti took her place in the next election.

  Trizec-Hahn found the timing of their mall inauspicious. Retail businesses went into a crisis during a severe economic downturn in 2001. Malls, in general, were losing their appeal to adults, attracting mostly teenagers. Closing many of its retail operations in Europe, and with its Desert Passage in Las Vegas in bankruptcy, Trizec-Hahn took a $400-million write-off on Hollywood and Highland, one of the largest in memory. The company’s stock lost much of its value. A Forbes Magazine article, April 2, 2001, disclosed that Trizec-Hahn had quietly announced their divestment of “glitzy retail projects” to focus on U.S. office buildings. (They had demolished Toberman’s First Federal office building for the Hollywood retail project.) The company would focus on office leasing just as the office market experienced a downturn.