by James Roman
Because viewers everywhere could understand the actions of a dog, Rin Tin Tin was one of the world’s first international stars, endearing to fans everywhere. He starred in 27 feature films and sired 48 puppies. Some of Rin Tin Tin’s descendants performed in sound films, a television series, and dog food commercials.
The performing dog was so beloved that when the ballots went out in 1928 for the very first Academy Awards, Rin Tin Tin earned the largest number of votes for Best Actor. Fearing an unfortunate precedent, the Academy had to specify that only humans could qualify.
When Rin Tin Tin died in 1932, his body was returned to France, where he is interred at the famous Cimetière des Chiens et Autres Animaux Domestiques in a suburb of Paris.
In Hollywood, Rin Tin Tin’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 1627 Vine Street.
CHAPTER 10.
HOLLYWOODLAND
THE NEIGHBORHOOD BENEATH THE ICONIC SIGN
1923
Blame it on the unholy alliance of William Shakespeare and two streetcar tycoons.
The tycoons were Eli P. Clark and his brother-in-law, M. H. Sherman. They bought 640 rugged acres of Beechwood Canyon, a natural passageway through the Santa Monica Mountains, in 1905. Then, in honor of the Bard’s 300th birthday in April 1916, silent movie star Douglas Fairbanks starred in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, presented under the stars in that rugged terrain, featuring a cast of hundreds that even included the Hollywood High School football team. Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler saw more than a play that night. He saw gold in those undeveloped hills.
Chandler formed a real estate partnership with Clark and Sherman at about the same time that the town was abuzz over the success of Windsor Square, a gorgeous new collection of costly mansions just a short distance down the hill. Chandler’s son Norman bought a residence there, and now even wealthy celebrities like Ethel Barrymore were moving in. The partners wasted no time; they expanded their syndicate to include the talented Windsor Square developers Tracy E. Shoults and S. H. Woodruff. Together, these partners envisioned a bright new future for their rugged canyon acreage. Forget about Shakespeare. They would call their new place: Hollywoodland.
Harry Chandler
The biggest expenses, they all knew, were bringing water, sewers and Mr. Edison’s electricity into the undeveloped canyon. Lacking today’s earth-moving equipment, there could be very little leveling of the rocky terrain. Instead, their houses would be built on top of little promontories or directly into the hillside itself, a radical new concept that was also its key selling feature. Unlike Windsor Square’s flat terrain, where capacious homes baked all day in the California sun, these quaint Hollywoodland houses would be nestled directly into the shady foliage, protected from the summer heat. Living in the Hollywoodland Hills would be cool, naturally.
The streetcar tycoons provided the land; the acclaimed developers brought credibility, but Chandler? He was in charge of publicity. It was Harry Chandler’s idea to build a sign 50-feet-high reading “HOLLYWOODLAND.” Constructed of sheet metal, pipes, wires, telephone poles and 4,000 20-watt bulbs, the first sign cost $21,000 to construct. Mules were harnessed to haul the sign to its dramatic precipice, where it could be seen for miles in every direction. Just to make sure that everyone knew this new unusual development came with modern amenities like electricity, the sign blinked in segments: HOLLY … WOOD … LAND. Then all together, HOLLYWOODLAND.
Chandler continued the promotional drumbeat in print. When the Hollywoodland opening was announced in the March 31, 1923 edition of the Los Angeles Times, where it was publicized as the first hillside residential development in the United States, 120 buyers committed immediately. Subsequent ads stressed, “Give the kiddies a chance … crowded boulevards, dangerous corners, unknown companions are an ever-present danger to the children of big cities. Come to Hollywoodland.”
The allure was unbeatable. Here were the Windsor Square developers, offering their newest product at a fraction of Windsor Square’s costs. Empty lots were available for sale, too, in Hollywoodland, starting at “$2,975 to $4,750 and up,” though every construction on an empty lot required approval by a design review board. Styles were restricted to “French Normandy, English Tudor, Mediterranean or Spanish.” Size was no concern; middle-class families lived beside wealthy ones throughout the canyon. Stones that were unearthed during construction were used to devise six communal staircases that connected some of the steepest streets. European stonemasons, who lived in tents in the canyon when they weren’t at work, constructed massive retaining walls along some roadways to support the houses on the streets above. They erected two stone towers, now city landmarks, to designate the Hollywoodland entrance on Beechwood Drive.
Hollywoodland realty office. Developer S. H. Woodruff stands in the center, with bow tie, 1923
But the good times couldn’t last. When the Great Depression pummeled the partners’ investments, they ceased all new construction. No additional roads were paved, and even the approved lots remained undeveloped. The giant sign became a constant nuisance. Never intended as a permanent fixture in the California landscape, its flimsy materials required frequent maintenance. A heavy storm or a broken branch meant hoisting the letters back into place and rewiring the electricity.
On the night of September 18, 1932, the Hollywoodland sign came to symbolize more than just the collection of houses assembled below it. Twenty-four-year-old actress Peg Entwistle was so distraught by the turns in her career that she climbed the letter H with a workman’s ladder and jumped to her death. Though Entwistle’s suicide is largely forgotten, the sign was immortalized; it suddenly represented the dreams and nightmares associated with the entire entertainment industry in LA, a reputation the sign and the city have never shed. More iconic than the California sun or the Pacific beaches, the sign remains LA’s most distinctive monument.
From left: Hollywoodland sign, 1923; Peg Entwistle
In 1949, the sign’s ownership was transferred to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Since it no longer promoted the sale of new Hollywoodland properties, the sign’s final four letters were permanently removed. By then, vandals had destroyed or stolen every light bulb, the landscape was eroding and the original construction materials had deteriorated. Restoration of the Hollywood sign became a cause célèbre among movie stars with each passing decade. Actress Gloria Swanson spearheaded a makeover to coincide with the sign’s 50th anniversary, but that repair didn’t last for long. In 1978, when the sign nearly collapsed, another unholy alliance was formed to build a permanent new sign. This time, the disparate team comprised rockstar Alice Cooper, singing cowboy Gene Autry, easy-listening Andy Williams and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, among many others who financed the sign’s literal replacement. In 2000, Panasonic installed a state-of-the-art alarm system, and in 2010, another alliance including Tom Hanks, Norman Lear, Tiffany & Co., the Walt Disney Company, Hugh Hefner and others, pooled their resources to purchase the land behind the Hollywood sign for $12,000,000, guaranteeing that no additional real estate development could encroach on the famous icon.
Today, stewardship of the sign is shared by three agencies: The City of Los Angeles owns the land, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce controls the licensing rights and the Hollywood Sign Trust repairs and maintains its structure. The sign is now guarded, fenced and alarmed to make certain that no more suicides or publicity stunts mar the sign that is revered by so many.
Meanwhile, the value of Hollywoodland real estate soared. Over the decades, those quaint houses have been home to a Who’s Who in the entertainment industry. A partial list includes Doris Day, Bela Lugosi, Humphrey Bogart, Bugsy Siegel, Anne Francis, Vincent Price, Richard Thomas, Edward Everett Horton, Ned Beatty, Connie Sellecca, bandleader Paul Whiteman, conductor André Kostelanetz, singer Melissa Manchester, author James Cain, even Peter Tork of The Monkees. Even the smallest houses routinely sell for a million dollars today.
The sign’s fame ended the quaintness of Hollywoodland.
Now, visitors come from around the world to hail the iconic site in Beechwood Canyon. Its lasting acclaim would surely persuade streetcar tycoons, Chandler, Fairbanks, Shakespeare, and probably even Julius Caesar to take a long, theatrical bow.
IN THE MOVIES: Earthquake (1974), Day of the Locust (1975), Pretty Woman (1990), Bugsy (1991), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Independence Day (1996), Hollywoodland (2006), Argo (2012), Gangster Squad (2013), and dozens more.
Beechwood entrance to Hollywoodland subdivision, with S. H. Woodruff in foreground
CHAPTER 11.
SISTER AIMEE
LOS ANGELES GETS RELIGION
1922—1944
Los Angeles was one helluva party in the 1920s! Flappers and flivvers, bathtub gin, booming real estate, swimming pools, movie stars, movie moguls, movie studios; there was just one element missing. Los Angeles needed an evangelist to shout above the din and remind everyone they were on the road to eternal damnation.
Aimee Semple McPherson seized the opportunity. Arriving in LA in 1922 with two children and $100, Sister Aimee, as she was lovingly called, raked in more than one million dollars in three years (almost $13 million today) by praising the Lord at the Angelus Temple, her 5,300-seat auditorium that she filled three times a day. She called her Pentecostal enterprise the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. As a theatrical production, it had no equal. Accompanied by one of the nation’s largest theater organs, services included a brass band that mixed military pomp with the excitement of a circus, followed by a women’s choir, and then radiant Sister Aimee herself, in flowing red tresses and a shimmering white gown. She raised the Good Book and promised redemption. She spoke of a loving God, with arms outstretched. The lower middle-class couldn’t get enough of it.
Sister Aimee feared no risk. By the time she arrived in LA, she had already survived a colorful past. As teenaged Beth Kennedy from Ontario, Canada, she married missionary Robert Semple at the Salvation Army in 1908. They embarked on a mission to China in 1910 when the young missus was six months pregnant. Three months later, Robert Semple was dead from dysentery. Twenty-year-old Aimee buried Robert in Hong Kong, gave birth to Roberta Semple and returned to the Salvation Army in New York. That’s where she met and married Harold McPherson in 1912. Their son Rolf McPherson was born in 1913, but the marriage didn’t last. Husband Harold was an accountant who soon wearied of life in the “Gospel Car” while Aimee evangelized in tents across America. His divorce, on grounds of “abandonment,” was granted in 1921.
Aimee with her first love and spiritual mentor, Robert Semple
Now she was in LA, where shopkeepers, car mechanics, barbers and seamstresses flocked to the Angelus Temple not just for the sermons but for the network. It was a meeting place, literally, where Angelenos came to convene with people like themselves and find new friends from all over town. A visit to Sister Aimee was an affirmative experience that further strengthened everyone’s bonds to her. And when Sister Aimee told her congregation that “faith heals,” they threw down their crutches and walked. Sister Aimee’s faith healing sessions reached such emotional highs, and such national notoriety, that she was investigated by the American Medical Association. Its verdict: Sister Aimee’s healing was “genuine, beneficial and wonderful.” Other documentation from the era confirms tens of thousands of very sick people came to Sister Aimee, blind, deaf and crippled. She would point to heaven, praise Christ the Great Healer, and take no credit for the results. Witnesses reported the lame walked; maybe it was temporary for some, but others were healed forever.
An astute businesswoman, Sister Aimee promptly franchised. She opened a school that graduated new missionaries; they eventually expanded her Foursquare Gospel to 450 branch churches in the U.S. and nearly 200 overseas. She established a nursery for the many abandoned babies left on the Angelus doorstep. She reached out to migrant workers, and welcomed Spanish speakers into the fold. When she built radio station KFSG in 1924, Sister Aimee became the second woman in history to be granted a broadcast license. Her gospel programs were soon heard around the world.
Production values increased, packing the Angelus Temple beyond capacity. The Red Car Line added more trolleys; extra police were needed to direct the traffic around Sister Aimee’s theatrical church. In staged vignettes, she could be costumed as a police officer sounding a siren on speeding sinners, or as a football star that would “carry the ball for the Foursquare Church.” The lavish presentations frequently involved animals, even a live camel. Then out came the collection baskets, and Sister Aimee would chide, “No coins, please.”
Though she seemed to radiate purity, this divorced mother of two yearned for a carnal life, too. When she attempted a respite from the spotlight, it ended badly.
On May 18, 1926, Sister Aimee went swimming at Ocean Park Beach in Venice, California. When she didn’t come back up for air, everyone thought that Sister Aimee had drowned, and her body swept out to sea. As search teams scanned the ocean, thousands flocked to the Venice beach, dropped to their knees and prayed for Aimee’s return or her entrance into heaven. William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper The Los Angeles Examiner mourned the tragedy by publishing a poem by Upton Sinclair. Aimee’s mother took over at the Angelus Temple, ending her sermons with, “Sister is with Jesus,” reducing the parishioners to tears.
From left: The Angelus Temple, c. 1920s and Sister Aimee’s service at the temple
Crowds at a train station awaiting the return of Aimee Semple McPherson from Douglas AZ, 1926
Then on June 23, 1926, Sister Aimee stumbled out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a town in northern Mexico. She claimed that she had been kidnapped, chloroformed and tortured; she escaped by walking for 13 hours across the desert.
What followed next was surreal. Embarking from Douglas, Arizona, Sister Aimee, perfectly coiffed and attired in a radiant white gown, traveled by train back to Union Station in LA. Planes flew overhead, dropping flowers on the rails as the train approached LA. A carpet of red roses marked Aimee’s path on the station platform, where an estimated crowd of 50,000 awaited. The brass band from the Angelus Temple led a parade in their snappy white uniforms for Sister’s triumphant return to LA. Airplanes dropped flower petals on the parade route, while politicians tripped over each other to welcome Aimee back home. White-robed flower girls surrounded her, two dozen cowboys escorted her, and the Los Angeles Fire Department donned their dress parade uniforms to welcome her. Bigger than any movie star or politician, the newspapers would report that the delirious crowd attending Sister Aimee’s homecoming set a record for the largest gathering in the history of LA.
Then the newspapermen studied her alibi more closely. Evidence told another story: Sister Aimee spent the month in Carmel-by-the-Sea in a beach shack with a former radio announcer she had hired. Newspapers pounced, writing wild and lurid conjectures of what really happened, with no disclaimers or retractions. The clergy pounced, incensed that Aimee’s theatrics had reduced the Christian bible into a series of vaudeville sketches. Then the politicians pounced. Sister Aimee was arrested and charged with providing false information designed to hinder the due process of law. She faced 42 years in prison.
The legal wrangling dragged on for two years. Sister Aimee took to the airwaves to defend herself, while the Christian clergy collected petitions and passed resolutions condemning her, and the newspapers published whatever sold copies. In the end, charges were dropped; the government conceded that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. What was the crime? Nobody goes to jail for adultery, especially in Hollywood.
Sister Aimee with KFSG radio engineer Kenneth Ormiston, with whom she was rumored to have engaged in a scandalous affair
Sister Aimee resumed her services at the Angelus Temple. With the alleged hoax unresolved, she was mocked in the media for years, but the scandal did not diminish her popularity. The trial’s judge was impeached instead. In January 1927, Sister Aimee traveled America on a “Vindication Tour,” continuing her spiritual work. Durin
g the Great Depression, she opened a commissary that fed an estimated 1.5 million people. She convinced doctors, dentists and nurses to donate their services for free at her Angelus clinic. Mahatma Gandhi honored her with a sari. Then, on September 27, 1944, an accidental overdose of sleeping pills killed Aimee Semple McPherson at age 53. Though the Foursquare Gospel Church was worth millions at the time, when Sister Aimee’s estate was sorted out, she had just $10,000 to her name.
Her body lay in state at the Angelus Temple for three days while approximately 45,000 worshippers waited in line for hours to file past her casket. Cars were double parked on every street within a one-and-a-half-mile radius. Eleven trucks were needed to transport all the flowers to Forest Lawn Cemetery, where Sister Aimee was laid to rest.
Rolf McPherson took charge of the Angelus Temple, presiding there for 44 years, until he finally retired in 1988. As the progenitor of America’s mega-churches, the Angelus Temple was inducted into the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
CHAPTER 12.
GREYSTONE MANSION
DOHENY AND THE TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL
1921—1929
Penniless when he arrived in Los Angeles in 1891, Edward L. Doheny was the wealthiest oilman in the world by 1920. But, when the prosperous Doheny built a 55-room limestone mansion in Beverly Hills as a gift to his son, the world witnessed his dynasty’s epic collapse. That gift, the sad but beautiful Greystone Mansion, is a national landmark today, an empty reminder of the scandals and murders committed there.
Even before prosperity arrived, Doheny’s private life in LA was overwrought with drama. Just weeks before he struck oil, his seven-year-old daughter died of heart failure. Barely one year later, his still inconsolable wife gave birth to “Ned,” Edward L. Doheny Jr., on November 6, 1893. Frustrated by her husband’s long absences in pursuit of more oil, she abruptly ended the marriage in 1899, taking Ned to live in San Francisco. Despite his Catholic faith that forbid it, Doheny agreed to a divorce. Then he fell in love with the voice of the telephone operator who placed his long-distance business calls. On August 22, 1900, just three months after their first acquaintance, Edward Doheny married Estelle Betzhold in a splendid, new railroad car that would serve as their first home. Four weeks after the wedding, the ex-Mrs. Doheny swallowed battery acid and killed herself. Doheny regained custody of Ned, buried his ex-wife beside his dead daughter in LA’s Evergreen Cemetery, and the new Mrs. Doheny became the delighted mother to an equally delighted seven-year-old son. The family relocated to 8 Chester Place, an exclusive enclave of 14 mansions; their neighbors were the power elite of the West. For the rest of their lives, Edward and Ned Doheny would infer that Estelle was Ned’s birth mother, but on Memorial Day each year, Estelle returned to Evergreen Cemetery to place flowers on Ned’s mother’s grave.