Hollywood Boulevard looking west from inside the Taft Building, 1925.
Advertisement for the Guaranty Building, 1924.
THE RAIN OF MONEY
Investors from the northern and eastern United States wanted Hollywood Boulevard property. As property prices mounted to breath-taking sums, Hollywood Boulevard owners realized they had invested in a gold mine.
When the public library’s book collection outgrew its Carnegie-funded building at Hollywood and Ivar, many asked, “A $50,000 library on a million-dollar site?” Again, Jacob Stern offered land around his home but stipulated that a park had to be included. Again, he was rebuffed. Daeida Beveridge had stipulated that the library’s corner would revert to her heirs if it was not used as a library. Officials reluctantly moved the old structure off the site (to West Hollywood, where it was later demolished) and built a Spanish-style library in its place.
The churches amid their scrambling vines were unable to say no to those who wanted Hollywood Boulevard property for skyscrapers and fancy stores. St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church buckled first at Hollywood and Ivar. The property donated by Daeida Wilcox Beveridge had no restrictions and sold quickly. The congregation built their new sanctuary up Yucca Street, and moved later to Yucca and Gower Streets. Business boosters celebrated when Schwab Men’s Store (not associated with Schwab Drugstore) opened on the church’s site in 1922. For many years, males who hit it big in Hollywood headed to Schwab’s for all their sartorial needs, from spats to purple pajamas.
Hollywood Christian Church at Hollywood and Gower abandoned their cozy bungalow to investors. They rushed a new sanctuary in 1922 on Gramercy Place, just north of Hollywood Boulevard. The church’s former house was demolished and the property lay vacant while the Vine Street Improvement worked to extend retail businesses to Gower Street. In 1925, the Christie brothers bought the site for $200,000. On the opposite northwest corner, the Muller brothers bought and demolished the home on it. Both parties built business buildings after the city widened Gower Street that year.
Blessed Sacrament at Cherokee Avenue, hidden in its park-like foliage, sold its property in 1923. Rumors flew that Alexander Pantages had played poker for the site with another theater magnate, bidding the property as high as $300,000. In truth, the new owner was a Detroit capitalist who had no specific plans for the property. He told the local papers that since Hollywood was woefully lacking in parks, he would maintain the trees and shrubbery for the time being.
It took three years for the Blessed Sacrament to build its new sanctuary two blocks directly south on Sunset Boulevard. In 1927, the wreckers removed the last of the old church. In its place came five separate retail and office buildings, the cornerstone of which is the Cherokee Building.
Using their profits from a housing tract along Hollywood Boulevard between Ogden Drive and Fairfax Avenue, the Taft brothers bought the Hollywood Memorial Church at Hollywood and Vine in 1923 for $125,000. They razed the church and built the first twelve-story, height-limit building in Hollywood, the Taft Building. From basement to roof, it appeared in the record time of sixty-five days. The 1924 opening had motion picture stars in attendance. Jack Dempsey made a special appearance. Otto K. Olesen lit the building for the event. The Wampas Club Orchestra played in Sam Kress’s new drugstore in the corner retail space. Steady tenants in the Taft tended to be doctors, dentists, and lawyers. A struggling actor named Clark Gable had his dentures made here.
The Methodists, the center of Hollywood morality, sold their site at a record price to Gilbert Beesemyer. They shunted their clapboard sanctuary one half block up Ivar Avenue so Beesemyer could build Hollywood’s second height-limit skyscraper, the Guaranty Loan Building.
The Taft Building, southeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, 1924.
The new Hollywood Public Library on its Hollywood Boulevard and Ivar Avenue site in 1923 (demolished).
Cherokee Building, northwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee Avenue. The Cherokee had a courtyard and a fountain and predated Bullock’s Wilshire with an elaborate rear entrance for cars.
Sid Grauman and Anna May Wong drive in the first rivet for the Chinese Theater, 1925.
When Fox West Coast Theaters offered to buy the Egyptian, Sid Grauman could not refuse. Remaining as manager, Grauman discovered that the money did not compensate for the joy of owning his own theater. After toying with the idea of heading to Paris, in June 1924, he and Toberman leased the land and demolished the former home of Francis X. Bushman. At groundbreaking ceremonies with Lon Chaney and other stars, Grauman announced that, with Toberman, Grauman Senior, and Joe Schenck, he would build a theater that replicated a Chinese city. The plans had scaled down by November 1925 when actress Anna May Wong drove the first rivet into the steel girders of Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
The Federal Building (Hollywood Post Office.), 1717 Vine Street. (demolished)
The Hollywood Professional Building, 1925.
The Guaranty opened during Hollywood’s Beesemyer Week in January 1924, “A time of recognition of a fine, big clean business success.” Gilbert Beesemyer personally greeted everyone in the lobby where a nine-piece orchestra played. Olesen searchlights scanned the sky. Refreshments were served on the roof with balloons for the tots. Many in Hollywood put their savings into Guaranty the next day. Beesemyer had $2 million in deposits in two years. Rudolph Valentino and Rambova, returning from New York, opened their production offices in the Guaranty Building.
The Hollywood Professional Building on the southeast corner of Hollywood and Sycamore opened with hand-rubbed walnut-paneled offices. Originally five stories, three more stories were added by the same architect in 1929. Sam Kress leased the downstairs for another drugstore in his Hollywood chain.
Dr. Palmer helped finance the 1925 Federal Building on Vine Street north of Hollywood Blvd. Part of the Vine Street Improvement Association project and built by Beesemyer’s Guaranty, this was Hollywood’s main post office for over a decade. The upper floor was designed as a ballroom, but the partners omitted much of the detail when the building opened. The upstairs became a commercial space with a succession of tenants (Walt Disney used it briefly for his animators), the longest being the Hollywood Secretarial School.
Working from palatial new offices below the Montmartre in 1925, C.E. Toberman built more brick retail buildings along Hollywood Boulevard. He also started a successful paper box company in the designated Santa Monica industrial area. His ambitions to become a film mogul produced his only debacle for the year. The movie he financed, The Lying Truth starring Wallace Beery, bombed. He absorbed the loss with his banking venture.
Toberman’s Federal Trust and Savings Bank at Hollywood and Highland, with millions in deposits, was a smashing success. Within three years of opening, it caught the eye of Amadeo P. Giannini, who ran the San Francisco-based Bank of Italy.
Giannini had already opened a branch of the Bank of Italy at Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee Avenue in 1923. (C. B. DeMille not only served on the board of directors but had a desk in the bank, where he made financial decisions such as lending his friend Sam Goldwyn $200,000 to start an independent production company.)
In 1925, Giannini began acquiring stock in Toberman’s bank for a hostile takeover. Toberman turned to Joe Schenck, who also began buying stock. When Schenck controlled two thirds to Giannini’s one third, Toberman managed to retain control. Bank of Italy got seven directors on the board to Toberman’s fourteen, who included Mary Pickford, Norma Talmadge, Douglas Fairbanks, Sid Grauman, and Louis B. Mayer. Schenck persuaded Giannini to let the bank remain independent for two years before absorbing it. Toberman vowed to stick with real estate after that.
Gilbert Beesemyer had no reservations competing with major banks. With his associates, who now included Sam Kress, Beesemyer leased the northeast corner of Hollywood and Vine at a record price for his one-story Bank of Hollywood.
Hollywood now rivaled New York in glorifying instant wealth and success. Investors poured twent
y-million dollars into Hollywood in 1925. A majority expressed amazement like Dr. Palmer, who wrote, “This advance from an orange orchard to a metropolitan business section in a little over five years was purely the result of intelligent cooperative effort.” Lillian Gish found that “money was abundant. Luxury was everywhere. Shoeshine boys and cab drivers played the stock market.”
Toberman and Dr. Palmer displayed their wealth with large homes on the new Camino Palmero off Hollywood Boulevard. Toberman’s estate had an enclosed swimming pool, tennis courts and a small golf course. With a staff of gardeners, maids, and cooks, his household expenses ran $10,000 a month.
As money from the movie business washed over Hollywood Boulevard, no one questioned whether these enterprises and edifices financed mostly by inexperienced investors were excessive. Anyone knocking progress was eyed suspiciously. Across the country, big-time boosters pushed relentlessly to enrich themselves, pulling in their wake thousands of small investors. This was especially true in Los Angeles, a perpetual dreamland of growth and prosperity.
Bank of Hollywood, northeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street. The Bartlett estate is in the background, 1927.
On September 5, 1924, thirty-thousand stockholders filled the Hollywood Bowl to hear C.C. Julian, founder of L.A.-based Julian Petroleum, win back investor confidence after questions about his honesty surfaced. (Julian’s publicized fistfight with Charlie Chaplin in the short-lived Petroushka Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard did not help his reputation.) Familiar to all newspaper readers with his splashy, Barnum-style ads for oil wells around the basin, Julian unveiled his latest scheme at the Bowl event. The audience responded by buying three-million dollars worth of stock.
Hollywoodland. Humphrey Bogart lived in this house in the early ‘30s.
Julian celebrated his new wealth with a large Los Feliz Boulevard home on 4.5 acres. He added nine more rooms, a gymnasium, a heart-shaped swimming pool, waterfalls, a gold-lined bathtub, and a library full of rare books.
In 1925, Julian Petroleum turned out to be a pyramid scheme. The scandal nearly ruined the reputation of investor Louis B. Mayer.
Real estate speculation here, as across Los Angeles, resembled the stock market craze. People bought homes as a step toward riches, and for much of the decade, enjoyed skyrocketing values. From 1921 on, busses lined Hollywood Boulevard to take eager, inexperienced investors to new subdivisions.
Housing developments ran riot through the world’s architectural past, from haciendas to castles to pagodas. Toberman, the master developer with thirty-three tracts by mid-decade, headed west toward bean fields at Beverly and Fairfax. A developer in the Guaranty Building became a millionaire with Hollywoodvale, even though it was located in the San Fernando Valley.
Local realtors considered the large estates in Hollywood a poor alternative to smaller lots close to the shopping district. These businesses cheered in 1925 when Gurdon Wattles subdivided the acreage around his home into Wattles Park subdivision. C.E. Toberman, regretting the sale of Casa Don Tomás to Jesse Lasky, went to the producer’s offices and bought back the land for $275,000. After combining it with land from Myra Hershey, he subdivided into Outpost Estates. Arthur Letts subdivided his estate Holmb into small lots and sold them for a tremendous profit. He moved to his new and wealthier subdivision west of Beverly Hills named Holmby Hills. There, Letts built an even bigger mansion and grounds.
Thomas Ince’s estate at Franklin and Bronson Avenues sold in 1924 after Ince died on William Randolph Hearst’s yacht. Ince’s burial at Hollywood Cemetery came amid rumors that he was shot by Hearst, fueled by circumspect witnesses like Louella Parsons and Elinor Glyn, who were on the yacht at the time. The truth seems to be that Ince had died of his own excesses. Ince’s house disappeared for the elegant apartment hotel, Chateau Elysées.
The Hollywood hills saw steady growth from those who preferred to live away from traffic and have a view. Lots in Hollywoodland and Los Feliz Heights went up for sale in 1923.
HOLLYWOOD HANGS OUT
At the Joe Schenck house on Hollywood Boulevard, Norma Talmadge finally got her divorce. Schenck moved to Beverly Hills, but Talmadge lived in Los Feliz for two years before she followed westward. Schenck rented their Hollywood house to German film star Emil Jannings, a heavy set man who, like Chaney, was a master of make-up. Jannings filled the house with dogs, monkeys, and birds.
Marie Dressler, finding movie fame in her sixties, lived in Whitley Heights. Erté, the designer, rented an elegant house in Beachwood Canyon so he could indulge in solitary walks. Sam Goldwyn moved with his new wife, Frances, into a corner home at Hollywood Boulevard and Camino Palmero. He later moved up the street into an even grander place. Joan Crawford lived in Nichols Canyon.
Valentino chose to live in Whitley Heights. Rambova deemed his home on Wedgewood Drive too cramped for a movie star. She refused to live there, but she did decorate the house outrageously in red and black. Valentino finally agreed to live elsewhere. Heavily in debt from failed investments, he borrowed money from Joe Schenck to build an estate for himself, Falcon’s Lair, in Beverly Hills.
Transplanted New York actors formed the Masquers Club in 1925 to recreate East Coast private theatrical clubs. They started in a large house on Yucca Street near McCadden. Two years later they moved to a bigger house on Sycamore, one half block above Hollywood Boulevard, originally the home of silent movie star Antonio Moreno.
For decades, the Masquers Club served as offices, library, card room, billiard room, crash pad, betting shop, loan office, and retreat. Members working at various studios would come by for lunch in costume and makeup. The club served dinner every evening, and on Thursdays, spontaneous entertainment was performed. The bar in the basement, an actual English pub shipped to the premises along with its nude mural, was popular during and after Prohibition. Membership over the years included the Who’s Who of Hollywood: Gene Autry, William Demarest, Errol Flynn, Stan Laurel, W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, Abbott and Costello, John Wayne, and many others.
The Masonic show biz lodge, 233, tried to raise a monumental fraternity house with thirteen stories on northeast Hollywood and Vine (Beesemyer’s Bank of Hollywood site). When that failed, 233 moved into the Masquers’ abandoned house on Yucca Street.
The Masquers Club (demolished).
A Masquers Club invitation, 1923.
Other abandoned homes in Hollywood became headquarters for show-business clubs. The Writer’s Club used a large house on the southwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Las Palmas Avenue. Writers, directors, and players came here from the studios for lunch and dinner on the veranda. The Screen Industries Club briefly occupied the Letts/Giroux mansion on Franklin Avenue between Gower and Carmen in 1924. After that, the large estate became a monastery.
Writer’s Club, southwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Las Palmas Avenue, 1922 (demolished).
Rudolph Valentino’s home in Whitley Heights (demolished).
The Troupers theatrical club catered to vaudevillians far from stardom. Midgets, acrobats and jugglers no longer had to wander like gypsies now that movies provided work in a permanent location. The Troupers occupied a Victorian home on La Brea Avenue just south of Hollywood Boulevard where, in a backyard auditorium, they performed their variety acts.
A motion picture club briefly considered the Japanese-style Bernheimer house, closed on the death of its owners, as a clubhouse. When that idea failed, the house re-opened for public tours.
Chauffeurs and limousines wait as their employers shop at I. Magnin’s on Hollywood Boulevard where Ivar now continues south, 1928.
JUST LIKE NEW YORK
A boom of retail stores allowed boosters to ballyhoo that Hollywood Boulevard was becoming the “Fifth Avenue of the West.” Detractors like Anita Loos sniffed, “I used to fear falling under the cultural blight of Hollywood. My only warning came when I went shopping and began to think the dresses looked chic.”
In the retail development on Jacob Stern’s property
, I. Magnin’s built a store directly opposite where Ivar Avenue meandered down from the hills and ended on Hollywood Boulevard. When the city eventually graded Ivar south of the boulevard, Magnin’s lost two-thirds of its western wing, remodeling southward along the new stretch of street. Virginia Dee, a local resident and a sales clerk at the store, recalled that most female stars in Hollywood shopped here. Shearer, Crawford, Lombard, and their peers would sit on couches and sip tea while models showed the clothes.
Local business and movie people invested together in retail stores. Hollywood Hosiery Mill’s financial participants included the head of scenario at Universal, the general managers of Universal and Warner Bros., director Louis Milestone, and two Hollywood businessmen. The store’s several knitting machines, including one in the window, manufactured stockings on the premises.
Investors jumped into a hotel-building spree in the mid-1920s. Any skeptic who laughed at the huge size of the Garden Court Apartments in 1918 was dumbstruck at what followed.
First attempts, and there were many, fizzled. The 1923 Hollywood-California Hotel was proposed when Mr. Brokaw decided to develop his 3.5-acre farm on Hollywood Boulevard’s north side between Gower Street and Bronson Avenue. Dr. Palmer, Hal Roach, A.Z. Taft, Jr., Charles Christie, Fred Niblo, and William de Mille joined Brokaw for a proposed twelve-story, four-million dollar hotel with 717 rooms, five banquet halls, a ballroom to hold 2,000 people, three restaurants, a 1400-seat theater, and a roof garden. A 1924 investor group that included Jesse Lasky, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Joe Schenck planned a hotel at Hollywood and La Brea that also never appeared.
Jacob Stern beat everyone with the Hollywood Plaza on Vine Street. Begun in 1924 and finished in 1925, Stern built the hotel, which had a street-level ballroom, in his front yard. His son, Eugene, who was chairman of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s Hotel Bureau, managed the business. Recreating the character of East Coast hotels, the Plaza was popular with visiting vaudevillians.
The Story of Hollywood Page 15