Reviews for Hollywood and Highland were unkind. The architectural critic for the Los Angeles Times wrote that it was a “formulaically designed mall and theater complex” and “a collage of Hollywood clichés … and that is something no amount of glitz can cover up.”
Number 22 Historic Marker and “something for the tourists” features the Brown Derby.
Two views of the Hollywood Boulevard at Argyle Red Line subway station.
Various views of Hollywood and Highland, including two giant white elephants, 2003.
Hollywood and Highland tenants expressed dissatisfaction that they did not have the financial windfall promised by developers. The Hollywood Independent reported, “On a recent Saturday afternoon, the multi-million-dollar complex looked more like a ghost town than a boom town.” Another mall, The Grove, had appeared at nearby Farmers’ Market. It proved a formidable and more successful competitor to Trizec-Hahn’s Hollywood and Highland.
The Kodak Theater opened in November 2001 to criticism for its poor acoustics. The theater got some unintended support when developers demolished the twenty-nine-year-old Shubert Theater in Century City for an office building. More support came from producers of the Fox TV show American Idol that staged its season finale in the theater.
The Kodak’s first Oscar ceremony in 2002 went well, although high demand for seats left about 275 Academy members without tickets. Academy officials strongly suggested that, for the event, the curious stay away. The Academy insisted on background checks for everyone seated in the bleachers outside the theater. An overwhelming police presence kept trouble to a minimum.
A year later, the 2003 Oscar ceremony came in the middle of the U.S. war against Iraq. The preshow red carpet ceremony was suspended and organizers removed the bleachers out front. The Academy flirted with postponing the event because of the war, but because a road tour of Scooby-Doo in Stage Fright was schedule to open in the Kodak the following week, the event went on as scheduled. Security was intense. War protests around the theater broke into scuffles and arrests.
Some residents found Hollywood and Highland a nuisance, as it closed off major streets for weeks at a time for events and movie filming. Residents also complained that mall employees parked in their streets and that the project violated parking, traffic, and design conditions. Los Angeles City Council continued to back the project, allowing developers to retain operation rights under special rules for twenty years as long as they kept the Academy Awards at the Kodak.
The mall’s new bowling alley, the street-level Lucky Strike, was the only bowling alley in Hollywood in 2001, after Los Angeles City Schools demolished the vintage Hollywood Star Lanes on Santa Monica Boulevard for a grammar school.
Debbie Reynolds had hoped to put her movie memorabilia collection into a museum at the top floor of Hollywood and Highland after her Las Vegas hotel had closed. In March 2003, she criticized the CRA at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon for delaying her project that never happened.
Hollywood and Highland’s underground parking structure, financed with city bonds, became a money-losing blunder. The city cut parking rates to draw customers while kicking in nearly $500,000 a month to cover the shortfall on the garage that had an entrance named Johnny Grant Way. After spending billions on a subway system, the city counted on people driving to the mall.
For the winter holidays in 2002, the seventy-first edition of the Santa Claus Lane Parade broadcast as the Blockbuster Hollywood Christmas Spectacular from the Hollywood and Highland mall. The parade had changed its format since television stations were reluctant to broadcast the event; more people viewed it in person than on television. LeAnn Rimes and Destiny’s Child sang selections from their holiday CDs. A stuntman fell off the mall’s ten-story building to promote the movie XXX. Poorly received, the parade went back to a full broadcast locally in 2003.
In September 2003, Twentieth Television signed a ten-year lease for the mall’s television studio. The new Los Angeles mayor, James K. Hahn, said Ryan Seacrest’s daily talk show was an economic coup for Hollywood. Seacrest said the location was important, as Los Angeles needed “a version of Times Square.” The show ran one year and then was cancelled due to lack of viewers.
By the end of 2003, Trizec-Hahn sold the mall to a local developer for two thirds of its cost. As one real estate analyst put it, all of the things that could have gone wrong did. The new owner planned to shift Hollywood and Highland’s appeal to local residents and hired an architect to make improvements for that purpose.
The one bright spot in the Hollywood and Highland project was the Renaissance Hotel that had taken over the Holiday Inn. Designers had beautifully remodeled the interiors, giving Hollywood first-class banquet and convention facilities.
In May 2001, AIDS Project Los Angeles sold the Don Lee Television Studio on Vine Street to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Photo taken in 2003.
With the CRA taking tax money away from city street services, the Hollywood Beautification Team, a quasi-social service, began cleaning Hollywood streets. Run by a former grocery cashier, HBT received street cleaning funds from Goldberg’s council office, the MTA, the BID, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, the L.A. School Board under Proposition BB funds, and county and federal funds. The HBT got free rent, free parking, and free employees supplied from the court system. In 1996, the HBT had cleaning contracts around Hollywood worth over $1 million and had never experienced an audit.
With the CRA taking incremental tax money away from the city’s police department, the Hollywood BID began paying for additional security along Hollywood Boulevard. Green-shirted private guards packing guns and Entertainment District logos patrolled the street. A study by the private security firm itself said that policing was unnecessary after 10:00 p.m., so that’s when the private guards and their guns went home.
The most private security could do, however, was push problems elsewhere. Downtown’s redeveloped Pershing Square had lost some luster when security guards roughly drove out vagrants. The difference between the police and private security was that the Hollywood BID directly employed security officers, so property owners could be sued for personal and property damages.
With the police and private security enforcing loitering laws, homeless youth found themselves aggressively pushed out of Hollywood. While businesses welcomed this toughness, the youth said they were being pushed away from Hollywood’s social services. The Entertainment District’s BID director assured concerned social service counselors that Hollywood didn’t want to push too hard. The new face of Hollywood, according to the director, allowed “glam restaurants” to mingle with the tourists from Toledo and the “grunge” street youth. Even the boosters now acknowledged that Hollywood’s “gritty edge” would never go away.
Hollywood had always had bars, nightlife and music. They had always run from classy to tawdry. Catalina Bar & Grill at 1640 Cahuenga Boulevard (later moving to Sunset in 2003) continued as a primary venue for jazz. Bobby Short played engagements in ‘98 and ‘99. Jumbo’s Clown Room had booze and strippers. Courtney Love once worked as a stripper named Cristal.
The Palace on Vine Street became Hollywood’s finest music club. Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails used it as a warm-up for national tours. In 2003, new owners hoping to brand a national chain of nightclubs changed the Palace to the Avalon, a name that matched clubs in New York and Boston.
Former fashion designer Michele Lamy raised the glamour with her second Hollywood restaurant, Le Deux Café on Las Palmas. An immediate hit with stars, Lamy ushered in a new era of glamour restaurants in Hollywood.
People were coming back to Hollywood for late-night revels.
Bars, restaurants and nightclubs sprang up in the new Hollywood. Hollywood developers applied for multiple liquor licenses. Jackie Goldberg had approved dozens of liquor licenses for friends and associates. Glamour-grunge had arrived. The Trizec-Hahn project had eighteen liquor licenses. Pacific Theater’s Dome project anticipated eight liquor licens
es, including one for the health club. A notice to serve alcohol appeared on the unopened Max Factor Museum across from Hollywood High School. The bar from the TV sitcom Cheers on display at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum began serving liquor, prompting one local resident to tag the place a “boozeum.”
The liquor disputes that arose over these new clubs recalled a century-old Hollywood battle. Local residents felt that too many liquor outlets disturbed the neighborhood’s peace and that the area’s alcohol-related arrests came from liquor law violations in bars. Local residents, old-timers, blamed the 1960s liquor stores for the degeneration of the Yucca corridor. The developers and club owners felt bars increased the area’s social and economic health.
When the Little Country Church held its last Sunday service on April 27, 1997, Reverend Hogg’s daughter, Martha, played the organ as she had since the church’s beginning. The Hogg sisters sold the Argyle Avenue church to an investor who announced a restaurant and bar on the site. The congregation and neighbors waged a three-year battle to stop the development. The Country Church went back on sale at a higher price.
The Cinegrill returned as a nightclub in the ‘90s when Eartha Kitt set a record for sold-out performances, unmatched since Mary Martin opened the place in 1935. Ten years later, the Cinegrill closed, changed locations within the Roosevelt and opened as Feinstein’s at the Grill in April 2003 with Michael Feinstein as the opening act. A year later, Feinstein’s name came off the place.
In 2002, new owners of the Henry Fonda Theater pulled out the main floor seats, turned it into a hip music club and adopted the original name, Music Box, as well.
The enterprising owner of the Beauty Bar on Cahuenga crossbred a beauty parlor and a bar. Finding success, he then opened Star Shoes on Hollywood Boulevard, a bar that posed as a shoe store. The newly restored Pig ‘n’ Whistle, once an ice cream parlor, transformed into Nubar at night, with beds in the back for lounging. The same own-then opened the Sunset Room on Cahuenga Boulevard (once a camera rental business) with acrobatic acts as a floor show. The same owners opened White Lotus at 1734 Cahuenga, formerly Crush (a dance club) and a Continental Bus station before that. By 2005, the Sunset Room had reformed itself into a high-priced steak house.
The Little Country Church on Argyle Avenue held its last service April 27, 1997. New owners tried to convert it to a restaurant and bar.
Jumbo’s Clown Room, 5153 Hollywood Boulevard.
Deep, 1707 Vine Street.
A notice of a liquor license application at Hollywood and Highland.
Two South African entrepreneurs opened three Hollywood hot spots back-to-back in 2002: the Havana-inspired Nacional on Wilcox, Paladar, a Cuban fusion restaurant next door, and then Ivar, the renovated Schwab’s Men’s Store on Hollywood Boulevard. The Ivar plans called for five bars and a capacity of one thousand. Above the Ivar, a developer and partners opened CineSpace, a twenty-first-century supper club featuring a restaurant, bar, and screening room.
Deep opened in the former Coco Tree Café/Hody’s building at Hollywood and Vine. A Los Angeles Times nightlife reporter described the club as “a wee bit cheesy and plenty sleazy, a perfect combination for the famed corner of Hollywood and Vine.” Dancers in overhead Plexiglas cases allowed patrons to look up at them. “Like the figurative hooker with the heart of gold, Deep offers a safe-sex haven for those who can’t get no satisfaction.” Another Times article said, “Deep is about excess and hedonism, truly titillating, madly decadent, deeply voyeuristic.” The restaurant’s walk-in freezers became VIP rooms.
In 2001, the Los Angeles Times nightlife reporter wrote, “Hollywood is on the brink of another great era, when the planets of money, celebrity, and great live music all come into perfect alignment.”
New clubs lined Hollywood’s streets. The old clubs prospered. The sixty-one-year-old bar Boardners, on Cherokee, got a $250,000 remake that doubled its size. Youthful and hip crowds came to play until dawn.
Bars and clubs appeared close enough together that patrons could stroll from one to another. Some had style; others were old dumps with new names. Many had no signage. Most had high cover charges, expensive drinks, and, if they were considered hot, terse, beefy security guards in black suits who kept paying customers on the sidewalk behind red ropes while the VIPs walked past them.
The national tabloids fed off the star roster visiting Hollywood’s new clubs. The celebrity guest list for Deep included Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Dustin Hoffman, Helen Hunt, and Hugh Hefner. U.S. President George W. Bush’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Jenna, made a National Enquirer headline when she entered Deep using a fake ID, sat in the VIP section, and allegedly drank alcohol with her friends. (The legal age for drinking was twenty-one.) A subsequent Los Angeles Times article had the head of security denying this. Over at Joseph’s, formerly Van de Kamp’s on Ivar, the tabloids reported Britney Spears heartbroken as ex-beau Justin Timberlake flirted with Christina Aguilera. Leonardo DiCaprio also hung out there.
Club owners became hip-hopping hosts recalling Hollywood’s days with Eddie Brandstatter. For the second anniversary of Deep, owner Ivan Kane produced an animated invitation for his A-list partygoers. Kane’s second club, Forty Deuce on Melrose Avenue, featured strippers and was inspired by the strip clubs on New York’s 42nd Street that Kane used to visit when he cut school.
New Hollywood nightclubs for the twenty-first century.
The Las Palmas, formerly the Las Palmas Theater, 1642 Las Palmas Avenue.
Vinyl, 1650 Schrader Boulevard, the site of a Labor Day 2001 riot.
The newly restored Pig ‘n’ Whistle, 6718 Hollywood Boulevard, provided beds in the back room for dining patrons.
White Lotus, a former Continental Bus Station on Cahuenga north of Hollywood Boulevard, 2003.
Joseph’s on the southwest corner of Yucca and Ivar was once a Van de Kamps coffee shop. The windmill sat where the dome is, 2003.
Paladar and Nacional Bar are side by side at 1645 Wilcox Avenue, 2003.
The Knitting Factory, Galaxy mall, 7021 Hollywood Boulevard, 2003.
The Beauty Bar, a bar posing as a beauty salon at 1638 Cahuenga Boulevard.
Star Shoes, a bar and a shoe store, June 2003.
Bar owners lauded Goldberg’s deputy of economic development, Roxanna Tynan, for encouraging them to come to Hollywood. The daughter of critic and celebrity journalist Kenneth Tynan, she told a reporter that the bars were good, packing Hollywood at night, increasing revenue and patrons. “Abandoned areas cause crime,” she said. Bars made “Hollywood a safer place.” Longtime property owner Aaron Epstein disagreed. He felt that problems arose with too many liquor outlets.
Disney’s Buena Vista Theater, Inc. bought the Hollywood Masonic Lodge next to El Capitan Theater in 2000. (They had rented it regularly from 1991 for parties after premieres.) In 2001, Disney turned it into a television studio with an open bar for the late-night Jimmy Kimmel Show. For Kimmel’s first show, guest George Clooney came on with a bottle of vodka that he passed around. Disney soon closed the open bar after a member of the audience vomited in her seat while a high-ranked Disney executive sat nearby. “They thought it was out of control,” said the show’s executive producer.
In the six months including the summer of 2001, Hollywood police closed three clubs for violations, including excess noise and lack of dance permits. Another club got its license to serve liquor after midnight revoked because of repeated violations. Captain Downing, commanding officer of LAPD Hollywood Division, worried that his officers were stretched thin. The Chamber of Commerce suggested an organization of bar owners to meet these concerns.
In 2003, dance club deaths in Chicago and West Warwick, Rhode Island brought fire inspectors to Hollywood’s clubs. An inspector found fire code violations in seven of the nine clubs he visited. The crowds around the front doors that owners loved created safety hazards. At White Lotus, the inspector pointed out safety violations to the owner while Bruce Willis left through a back door and Toby Maguir
e sneaked in a side door. The inspector made the Ivar open their empty VIP room to relieve the crowd on the main floor.
Every club faced the same Hollywood problem that clubs had faced since the end of prohibition: keeping their cachet alive. Getting celebrities to attend was key. The hipsters who followed famous faces proved as fickle. The once-hot Sunset Room became a predominantly Latino club by 2004 when celebrities flocked to White Lotus. Deep customers moved to Nacional and Ivar. The nightclub Highland at Hollywood and Highland brought Persian and Armenian clientele. Owners scrambled to remake themselves; the owners of Sunset Room contemplated becoming a steak house. By 2005, Deep had changed owners and had become Basque.
Resident Joe Shea wrote in the Hollywood Independent, “Anyone who goes down Hollywood Boulevard and sees the crowds outside these clubs knows that drug dealers are working the margins of the crowds.” Some clubs offered volunteers to examine customers’ street drugs for purity. In late 1998, television’s Fox Files filmed illegal drug sales at a Hollywood Boulevard liquor store near Highland. No arrests were made. Captain Downing told the Vine Street Improvement Association at a July 2001 luncheon that surveillance cameras were returning to Yucca Street. Downing had recently witnessed, at 4:00 a.m., drug peddlers on all corners of Hollywood and Highland as people drove up and down the street to buy dope. In early 2003, the FBI became a regular presence, making a major drug bust in May at Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea Avenue. Hollywood streets had wholesale narcotics trade that crossed state lines and national borders.
The Story of Hollywood Page 40
