by James Roman
In 1970, the city government partnered with community leaders to form the Little Tokyo Redevelopment Project. It funded housing, retail and office development, including the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in 1980 and the Japanese American National Museum in 1992. These new nonprofits have grown in vitality, helping to make Nisei Week an exciting cultural festival for the entire city. And finally, in 1995, Little Tokyo was declared a National Historic Landmark District.
And that’s why the Japanese dance in the LA streets every August.
IN THE MOVIES:
The Bodyguard (1992), Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991), Brother (2000), The Crimson Kimono (1959) and many television episodes.
You’re invited to join the fun, too, starting with Japanese American Night at Dodger Stadium, plus beauties, babies, gyoza-eating contests, and the closing night’s ondo dancers. Visit: www.niseiweek.org for details.
CHAPTER 17.
ON THE AVENUE
JAZZ NIGHTS AT THE DUNBAR
1928—1948
In the early twentieth century, opportunities seemed to be boundless in LA, and those opportunities extended to the African American community, too. On the faraway island of Jamaica, John Somerville dreamed of pursuing California’s opportunities. He relocated to LA in 1902, then made history in 1907 as the first African American student to graduate from the University of Southern California. After earning his degree in dentistry, Dr. Somerville addressed the needs of the black community with another enduring accomplishment: He built one of the most celebrated hotels in America. It’s a National Landmark today, and Dr. Somerville is remembered as one of LA’s African American pioneers.
Unlike Dr. Somerville, African Americans came late to the party in LA. Fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves, most blacks still remained in the South. Hundreds of thousands found their way to Los Angeles after World War II, but the real pioneers of black Los Angeles were the daring souls who ventured to California before 1920. Nearly half of the state’s African Americans lived in Los Angeles then, though they were fewer than 20,000 people, just two percent of LA’s total population. They established a genuine black middle class; 36 percent were homeowners in 1910, the highest in the nation.
From left: Dr. John Somerville; Jazz musicians “Common Sense” Ross, Albertine Pickens, Jelly Roll Morton, Ada “Bricktop” Smith, Eddie Rucker and Mabel Watts outside the Cadillac Café, c. 1917
LA outlawed segregation, but “restricted” neighborhoods for whites only proliferated anyway, effectively segregating the small black community (with people from Japan, China and Mexico, too). In downtown LA, the black neighborhood began where the Japanese neighborhood ended, on Central Avenue. Poor folks lived down in Mud Flats, the two-square-mile neighborhood called Watts today, but the upscale scene for black Los Angeles was on Central Avenue.
That’s where Jelly Roll Morton, the father of stride piano, came to town in 1917, introducing jazz to Los Angeles at the Cadillac Café on the corner of 5th Street. Kid Ory and his Original Creole Jazz Band soon followed, as did their friends the Spikes Brothers from New Orleans, who opened a music store that flourished for decades on the corner of 12th Street, a major intersection for connecting streetcars. 12th and Central became the unofficial town square for the black community: a hub to buy music, meet a date, hear some gossip and change trains amid the shouts from newsboys and hotdog vendors who greeted every streetcar.
There were job opportunities for African American men in LA. They laid the tracks for the constantly expanding Pacific Electric streetcars, served as Pullman porters and cooks on the Southern Pacific Railroad, or became entrepreneurs who added new shops along Central Avenue. But the black community soon faced the same indignities in California that they faced in the South. Whites streaming into Los Angeles from Jim Crow states convinced the local government to enforce new restrictions. Even the Pacific Ocean was off limits. Blacks couldn’t frolic along the Santa Monica Pier; they were permitted into the “Ink Well,” the half-mile stretch of beach between Pico and Ocean Park Boulevards, and even that was challenged in court as the beach population swelled. Closer to Central Avenue, LA’s public swimming pools were restricted, too. Under pressure by voters in 1925, LA’s Playground Commission segregated the pools that were originally open to the public. Instead, one day a week was reserved for “International Day,” when non-whites were permitted to use the public pools—then the pools were drained.
Meanwhile, there was a Harlem Renaissance going on back East, uniting black authors, artists and musicians with a new political voice. Harvard-educated W.E.B. DuBois founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as a watchdog group on a national scale. Observing the West Coast scene, DuBois chose Los Angeles as the site for the 1928 NAACP Convention. Delegates from East Coast cities would cross America to see the West for the very first time; it would be the largest gathering of African Americans LA had ever seen.
Dr. Somerville was ecstatic! As a founder and board member of the local NAACP branch, he hoped to focus a national spotlight on LA’s restrictions, but the local board members soon confronted a more immediate problem those restrictions caused. In a sprawling city dotted with restricted neighborhoods and restricted hotels, where would all those black delegates sleep? Central Avenue needed a grand hotel.
To Dr. Somerville, the challenge was an opportunity. Through the NAACP branch, he kept company with LA’s small, black elite: the lawyers, doctors and professionals regarded as community leaders. Though not exactly wealthy, they were accepted as reliable references. Somerville secured a bank loan for $100,000 and assumed the responsibility for constructing a hotel in advance of the delegates’ arrival.
He knew that the hotel had to be on Central Avenue, but he also knew that he couldn’t afford to put it on 12th Street. The Hotel Somerville was built far afield on a large empty lot at 42nd Street. Employing black contractors, laborers and craftsmen, the Somerville Hotel was completed just two weeks before the start of the NAACP Convention. When the conventioneers arrived, some were even moved to tears.
Dunbar (Somerville) Hotel on Central Avenue, c. 1930
Nobody had ever constructed an upscale residence for African Americans before. As Somerville put it, his clientele “did not have to wait for white people to wear off the newness.” The hotel was a knockout; not just new, but elegant. The lobby soared two stories high with a massive Art Deco chandelier. Decorated in the Mediterranean style that was popular throughout LA, the 115-room hotel featured a Spanish-style courtyard, decorative arches and tilework, plus wrought-iron staircases that ascended to a mezzanine level. DuBois was stunned, calling the hotel “a jewel done with loving hands.” He added, “We were prepared for, well, something that didn’t leak. Instead … we entered a beautiful inn with soul.” The Somerville Hotel was front-page news in African American publications across the country.
The convention was newsworthy, too. Thirty-five hundred delegates from 44 states packed Philharmonic Auditorium to hear (white, Republican) Mayor George Cryer swallow hard as he welcomed this rare delegation to Los Angeles for seven days of consciousness-raising discussions. DuBois was thrilled by its success. “The boulevards of Los Angeles grip me with nameless ecstasy,” he wrote in the NAACP newsletter. It was an invitation for African Americans to head west.
Suddenly, 12th and Central was off the radar. Somerville’s hotel became the new hub for black Los Angeles. More than a personal triumph, Somerville’s efforts reshaped the boundaries of the black community. Within six months, every empty lot between 12th Street and 42nd Street was occupied along Central Avenue. The Club Alabam opened next door to the hotel, bringing jazz (with chorus girls) to the new neighborhood. Even wealthy whites from the west side, seeking the authentic new music that could only be found in the black part of town, found their way to the new clubs that opened near 42nd and Central, which was soon simply known as “The Avenue.”
Heartbreak followed. The Great
Depression destroyed the black middle class. Somerville went bankrupt. His hotel, once a symbol of black achievement in America, was foreclosed and sold to white investors. They renamed it the Dunbar Hotel, in honor of poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the name that remains on the building today.
The white owners were shrewd: They secured a cabaret license for the dining room. Though the cabaret experiment lasted for just a few months, it cleared the way for something far more magical. As racial tensions escalated in the 1930s and ‘40s, glamorous Hollywood movie stars wanted to dance to jazz bands in restricted clubs like the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel. Black bandleaders like Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway earned a fortune for those nightclubs, but when closing time came, black musicians were ushered out the back door. There was no room for them in those fancy hotels. Instead, they stayed at the Dunbar. Every black celebrity from Billie Holliday to Lena Horne, every jazz luminary from Louis Armstrong to Count Basie, checked into the Dunbar when they performed in Los Angeles. Then, in the wee hours after places like the Cocoanut Grove had closed, those musicians slipped into the empty dining room at the Dunbar for spontaneous jazz sessions. Some of the most inspired jazz emerged from their impromptu gatherings at the Dunbar. There were no tickets and there were no patrons, just friends who jammed, establishing an unforgettable legacy at the Dunbar. Thanks to that cabaret license, even the mezzanine was used as a rehearsal space for Duke Ellington, as witnessed by the celebrities who stayed in the classy hotel on The Avenue.
From left: the Dunbar lobby in earlier times; the mezzanine of the hotel, where many of the top jazz performers of the day could be seen, 1928
The Club Alabam, 1945
Then it all faded away. When the Supreme Court invalidated all the racially restrictive covenants in 1948, African Americans no longer needed to cluster along The Avenue; there were so many unrestricted parts of Los Angeles to explore (now including the Pacific Ocean!). The Dunbar was sold to a black gambler, but as barriers slowly toppled, his Dunbar fell into disrepair; African American visitors could check into hotels all over town. Dr. Somerville recovered his finances and continued his political activism, but never pursued the hotel again. He became California’s first African American delegate to the Democratic Convention; he died in 1973 at age 91. During those years, LA County’s black population exploded, from 63,000 in 1940 to 763,000 in 1970.
The Dunbar was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The city’s Housing Authority combined the Dunbar with adjacent new construction to create 82 apartments in 2013, a $30 million restoration. No longer open to the public, the once-grand hotel is now a private residence for fixed-income senior citizens. Recalling the hotel’s heyday, they revel in the legacy of Dr. Somerville’s opportunity.
Making a night of it at the Club Alabam, c. 1945
IN THE MOVIES:
Central Avenue can be seen in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), A Place in the Sun (1951), Hit Man (1972). The Dunbar Hotel is shown in Dolemite (1975) and The Human Tornado (1976). Central Avenue and the Dunbar Hotel of the 1940s are recreated in Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), actually filmed inside the Ambassador Hotel and along South Main Street in LA.
CHAPTER 18.
LOVE ON THE LOT
ROMANCES AT THE STUDIOS DURING HOLLYWOOD’S GOLDEN AGE
1930s—1950s
Fame has its consequences. As movies filled the studios’ coffers, movie stars’ careers rose. Their successes also spawned a publishing industry: The Hollywood Reporter and a slew of fan magazines highlighted movie stars’ activities (even though the studios’ publicity departments planted some of those stories and photos in an attempt to control or fictionalize the lives of stars under contract). Privacy was impossible for even remotely successful actors. The press and the fans were everywhere.
In that claustrophobic environment, where could an eligible young movie star meet a potential mate? The studio lot. Countless actors and actresses found romance within the studio walls while working together on a new movie. They might eventually step out in public, at a place like the Cocoanut Grove or Chasen’s in Beverly Hills, where rival gossip columnists like Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons pounced, quick to publish the news about Hollywood’s newest couple, regardless of the truth. Here are some memorable Hollywood romances that started on a studio lot.
Humphrey Bogart’s career was on the upswing when he met his third wife, Mayo Methot while filming Marked Woman in 1937. She was already an established star on both coasts, having appeared in Broadway musicals with George M. Cohan, introducing the classic ballad “More Than You Know” on Broadway, and now under contract at Warner Brothers. And, like Bogart, she loved to smoke and drink. The couple wed one year after the film’s release.
The press dubbed them “the battling Bogarts.” Mayo Methot was charming when sober, but violent when drunk. She stabbed Bogart with a knife, pointed a pistol at him during a party, and even set the house on fire, always in a jealous rage. Bogart humored the press by saying “I wouldn’t give you two cents for a dame without a temper,” but this relationship couldn’t last. To keep the peace at home, when Bogart filmed Casablanca in 1942, he barely spoke to his co-star Ingrid Bergman. “I kissed him, but I never knew him,” is how Bergman dismissed their classic romance on screen.
The Bogarts separated and reconciled several times during their seven-year marriage. During their separation in 1943, Bogart filmed To Have and Have Not on the Warner Brothers lot, where he fell head-over-heels in love with his dazzling, 19-year-old co-star Lauren Bacall. Methot filed for divorce in Las Vegas on May 10, 1945—Bogart wed Bacall on May 21.
Bogart and Bacall’s romance became a Hollywood legend; and their onscreen chemistry was palpable. They made four films together, and Bacall gave birth to a son and a daughter. Cigarettes brought the romance to a crashing end. After twelve years of marriage, Bogart died of esophageal cancer at age 57. Bacall was 33. Her later work earned her a Golden Globe, a Tony Award and an honorary Oscar. Mayo Methot’s career never recovered. She died of acute alcoholism at age 47, six years after divorcing Bogart. A forgotten movie star, her dead body wasn’t discovered for days.
To Have and Have Not, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, 1943
Clark Gable first married his acting coach 15 years his senior. When that didn’t work out, he married a Texas socialite who was even older. When he made the film No Man of Her Own in 1932, he met beautiful Carole Lombard. He was so confused, he didn’t speak to her for four years. She thought he was a “stuffed shirt.” He was put off by her boisterous humor and unladylike talk. But when he saw her again in a chic white gown at a formal affair in 1936, Gable was smitten. In white tie and tails, he invited her to dance by reciting a line from their movie: “I go for you, Ma,” to which Lombard replied on cue: “I go for you too, Pa,” the first spark of their romance together.
Separately, they were already regarded as Hollywood royalty. He had an Oscar for Best Actor in It Happened One Night. Lombard would soon earn a Best Actress nomination for her role in the screwball comedy My Man Godfrey. Her annual salary of $150,000 (during the Great Depression) made Lombard one of the highest-paid women in the world. In private, when these actors stopped acting, their vulnerabilities were exposed. Gable was shy. Lombard talked tough to avoid the politics of the casting couch. Each had a tenth-grade education, then quit school to take a chance on show biz. Together, Gable and Lombard were a perfect fit; each one’s strength complemented the other partner’s soft spot.
Aware of Gable’s love for fancy cars, Lombard bought a jalopy for $15. For Valentine’s Day, she had it painted with big red hearts, then it was delivered to Gable at MGM where he was filming San Francisco. He laughed and invited her to dance at the Trocadero that night. With her stunning figure wrapped in a beaded gown, her jaw dropped when Gable came to pick her up, not in his shiny Duesenberg, but in the painted jalopy! Chugging their way down the Sunset Strip 15 miles-per-hour, the jalopy introduced Hollywood’s newest couple.
Their affair lasted 39 months while Gable’s second wife wrangled over money and property. Gable eventually paid nearly a half-million dollars to free himself; a chunk of that money was advanced from MGM, locking Gable into a new contract. When the divorce was issued in March 1939 while Gable filmed Gone With the Wind, the lovers eloped. With press agent Otto Winkler acting as driver, witness and best man, Gable and Lombard were married in Kingman, Arizona, 400 miles from the Hollywood spotlights.
When the U.S. entered World War II, many movie stars joined the Hollywood Victory Committee to promote the war effort through the sale of U.S. Defense Bonds. Gable was elected committee chairman. Lombard recommended that Gable enlist in the army, but MGM wouldn’t risk one of its most lucrative stars. Instead, Gable suggested that Lombard use her celebrity in her native Indiana to launch that state’s campaign, a life-changing decision he would regret forever. Traveling by train with her mother and Otto Winkler, they rallied support and raised money in Salt Lake City, Chicago, and Indianapolis. Aiming to raise $500,000 on January 15, 1942, Lombard’s appearance in Indiana that day set a record, bringing in more than two million dollars. In a last-minute decision, she canceled her final stops in Kansas City and Albuquerque to fly home and surprise Gable. The plane crashed into Table Rock Mountain near Las Vegas. Everyone aboard was killed.
Gable was inconsolable; the entire nation mourned. President Roosevelt awarded a posthumous medal to Lombard: “the first woman to be killed in action in the defense of her country.” All movie productions ceased on January 19 in tribute, as Taps was played at every studio. Gable buried Lombard in Forest Lawn Cemetery. When he died of a heart attack in 1960, he was buried beside his beloved wife.