In 1932, Lillian Millicent “Peg” Entwistle, despairing over her negligible movie career, leaped to her death from the “H” in the Hollywoodland sign. Her funeral at Strothers Mortuary at Hollywood Boulevard at Argyle Avenue was sparsely attended. That same year, a woman stepped off a streetcar with her small daughter, Jane. They chose a tiny apartment at 5555 Hollywood Boulevard, between Gramercy and St. Andrews, from where they started making the rounds of studios. Six years later, Jane Withers was the number six box-office movie star.
William Hays gained more clout as a movie censor, determinedly controlling Hollywood’s new glamour age. The movie moguls bowed to Hays after banker A. P. Giannini warned them at a gathering at Hollywood and Western’s Mayer Building to follow the censor’s code or find their movies unreleasable. After 1933, Hays’s assistant, Joseph Breen, kept permanent offices there, scrutinizing studio output and placing a seal of approval on films. (The Catholic Motion Picture League of America, affiliated with the Legion of Decency, had offices in the Taft Building to help keep Hollywood within the margins of good taste.) When fan magazines became obsessed with lurid Hollywood in the early ‘30s, the Hays office cracked down on them, compiling lists of acceptable writers and issuing cards that allowed them onto the movie lots.
Mayer, Zukor, and the other movie leaders also met in the Mayer Building to decide that their studio employees would have to take unilateral pay cuts during the Depression.
After two fires burned down the Pilgrimage Theater in 1929 and 1930, it seemed as if even the Almighty did not much care for Hollywood. The community rebuilt the Pilgrimage out of non-flammable concrete.
Mom in trend-setting slacks passes Warner’s Hollywood Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.
AVENUE OF THE STARS
Lupe Velez.
Lupe Velez regularly pedaled her bicycle down Hollywood Boulevard with her two Chihuahuas in a basket. Velez had come from Mexico City straight to Hollywood, landing a job dancing behind Fanny Brice in Hollywood’s Music Box Theater. Hal Roach saw her and hired her for his next picture. Lupe earned newspaper mentions when she traded blows with a starlet in the Montmartre’s powder room. Once, she climbed into the Legion Stadium ring to encourage a Latin fighter and revealed to the audience that she wore no underwear. Velez later made a career in B movies as the Mexican Spitfire.
Al Levy’s restaurant, next door to Warner’s Theater, had a constant stream of celebrities. Columnists on the Hollywood Citizen News mentioned it regularly, including a June day in 1932 when Ginger Rogers and the Marx Brothers lunched there.
Greta Garbo’s friend, screenwriter Mercedes de Acosta, recalled strolling on Hollywood Boulevard with Garbo after getting the star out of her ‘20s-style sailor togs and into slacks for a 1931 style update. Garbo caused a small scandal when photographs of her and de Acosta on Hollywood Boulevard came out in newspapers. “GARBO IN PANTS!” ran the caption.
Determined members of the “pants brigade” seen in Hollywood included Sylvia Sydney, Lupe Velez, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, and Barbara Stanwyck. When Bob Cobb of the Hollywood Derby refused to serve Marlene Dietrich because she was wearing slacks, two comedy writers hustled to the Broadway Department Store across the street and returned to finish their meal in dresses.
Lickter’s cigarette girls at the Chinese Theater store.
A fan magazine article described Cesar Romero’s lunch with Robert Taylor at the Vine Street Derby followed by his stroll down Hollywood Boulevard to buy six shirts. Hollywood agent Leland Hayward also liked to lunch at the Derby and then leisurely shop Hollywood Boulevard. Favorite destinations for men were the smoke shops like Lickter’s, Hollywood Smoke Shop, and John’s Pipe Shop (in Hollywood since 1908).
The Athletic Club at Sunset Boulevard and Hudson Avenue provided a drinking retreat and lunchroom for John Barrymore, Dick Powell, John Wayne, W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Clark Gable. In 1931, silent screen star Tyrone Power Sr. died in his room in the arms of his 17-year-old son Tyrone, Jr. Buster Crabbe served as lifeguard while training for the 1932 Olympics. A few years later, Cornel Wilde served as the fencing instructor.
Another gathering spot was Falcon Fencing Studio, founded in 1929 and relocated on Hollywood near Western in 1941. A member of the Olympic Fencing Teams of 1928 and 1932, Ralph Faulkner was “Swashbuckler to the Stars,” coaching Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Ronald Coleman, Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Cornel Wilde, and many other stars, creating a unique salon in the heart of Hollywood.
A few movie studios remained close enough to stoke Hollywood’s economy. Samuel Goldwyn bought the Pickford-Fairbanks lot and made expensive, quality pictures. When David Niven signed a seven-year contract with Goldwyn, he rushed to Hollywood Boulevard and bought a $500 Ford. Chaplin stayed on La Brea Avenue, but only produced one film in the decade. Universal found big success with monster movies like Frankenstein and Dracula. At Gower and Sunset, the Christie brothers produced short subjects. The Cohn brothers’ Columbia Studio, financed by A.P. Giannini, became a major movie business. Harry Cohn, too cheap to provide his employees with a studio commissary, made his workers go to neighborhood restaurants for meals. A favorite was Hollywood Boulevard’s Toad-in-the-Hole in the Regent Hotel. It was known for its thick steaks and baked potatoes. After the Vine Street Brown Derby turned Harry Cohn away at lunchtime for wearing shirt sleeves, a commissary opened on Columbia’s lot.
Powerful movie agents gave stars another reason to come to Hollywood. Losing its aversion for the West Coast in the face of talkies, New York-based William Morris Agency opened in the Warner Theater Building. Two of the agency’s biggest clients were Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor. There were seven talent agencies in the Taft Building by 1930. Another popular building for agents was the Cinemart near Highland Avenue.
Myron Selznick opened his agency in the Equitable at Hollywood and Vine in 1930. Selznick, brother of budding producer David, hated movie moguls. He thought they had ruined his father, Lewis Selznick, a former jeweler from Kiev who became a movie power in the early years but died broke in 1933. The angry, alcoholic Myron sought revenge using his clients as weapons. His roster of stars included Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Boris Karloff, Laurence Olivier, George Raft, Merle Oberon, Carole Lombard, and many others. Because of Myron Selznick, the once-stable salaries of movie stars rocketed.
Leslie Howard buys a raffle ticket in a Hollywood ice cream parlor, 1936.
Cornel Wilde (left) gets fencing lessons from Ralph Faulkner.
Hollywood Boulevard, looking west from Gower Street.
Left side to Hollywood and Vine: CBS Lux Radio Theatre at the Music Box, Regent Hotel, Strothers Mortuary, Taft Building, Broadway Hollywood.
Right side: Pantages Theater,
L. B. Mayer created competition for Myron Selznick, his nemesis. Charles Feldman had opened law offices in the Taft Building in 1928. Using the proximity of the Vine Street Brown Derby, he made himself attorney to several big agents. Mayer brought Feldman together with Ad Schulberg, whose husband B.P. Schulberg was the production head at Paramount. As Famous Artists, Feldman and Schulberg signed Charles Boyer, Claudette Colbert, and B.P Schulberg’s mistress, Sylvia Sydney. The agency maintained offices in Hollywood’s Taft Building, New York, and London. It later became the basis for the ICM agency. (Schulberg’s son, Budd, later captured the movie business in his novel, What Makes Sammy Run.)
Another of Mayer’s projects, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, moved into the Taft Building. Overlooking Hollywood and Vine from the top floor, they stayed over a decade. J. Stuart Blackton, a Vitagraph Studio founder who maintained production offices on Hollywood Boulevard, served as director. The collection of film history proved the Academy’s strength. They maintained their library and screening room two blocks south at Gordon Street, hiring Margaret Herrick as the full-time librarian in 1936.
Animated stars appeared at 5653 1/2 Hollywood Boulevard with the Harman-Ising Cartoon Studio. Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, two artists who had worked
with Walt Disney early on, now ran their studio over a cleaners. Financed by Leon Schlesinger, they struggled to sell their talking cartoons that ended with Bosko the Clown saying, “That’s all, folks.” Schlesinger sold the business to Jack Warner. After their Looney Tunes were a success, Harman-Ising created Merrie Melodies.
Hollywood-born Irene Wyman started working at Harman-Ising in 1931. Here, she met Bill Hanna, who went from a cel washer to the head of the ink and paint department. Hanna had arrived in Hollywood from Compton in 1929 as an apprentice structural engineer on the Pantages Theater. He realized there was more suitable work for him when his brother-in-law told him about the cartoon studio a few blocks away. He became half of the eventual team of Hanna-Barbera.
When Harman and Ising left for MGM in 1933, taking Hanna and Wyman with them, Jack Warner moved the remaining cartoonists to an old house near Bronson and Sunset. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck were born in a place that the animators called Termite Terrace.
Edgar Rice Burroughs returned briefly to Pinehurst Road north of Hollywood Boulevard, where he wrote another Tarzan novel. His previous book, Tarzan and the Lion Man, had the ape-man come to Hollywood, stay at the Roosevelt Hotel, lunch at the Brown Derby, and attend a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Tarzan even tested for the lead in a Tarzan picture, but didn’t get the part.
KOOK TOWN
Hollywood was a two-class town. A few amassed fortunes while the rest scrounged for an existence. Marion Davies and Al Jolson periodically took over Hollywood Boulevard cafeterias to feed the unemployed. William de Mille wrote that old Hollywood had disappeared. “In its place stood … a more terrifying city full of strange faces, less friendly, more business-like, twice as populous and much more cruel.”
In March 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt shook the country by declaring a bank holiday. Depositors waited nearly two weeks for the banks to reopen. That year, Mary Pickford, now divorced from Douglas Fairbanks, made her last movie and became more reclusive.
Bank of America, the renamed Bank of Italy, put pressure on C.E. Toberman to pay them $200,000 or be thrown into involuntary bankruptcy. A. P. Giannini stepped in and insisted his employees give Toberman all the time he needed to repay his debts. For Toberman, 1933 was the start of a long, hard road back. It took him thirteen years to pay off his outstanding Depression debts.
One thing Hollywood had had since its stagecoach days was its location. Now a hub for mass transportation, a large bus depot on Cahuenga Boulevard between Hollywood and Sunset served as the transfer point for commuter buses and ten intercontinental lines. The Santa Fe Railroad, the way for stars and moguls to make a three-day trip to New York, maintained a ticket office on Hollywood Boulevard, as did Union Pacific.
Hollywood Boulevard became a travel hub in the ‘30s. Pictured is the northwest corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga Boulevards.
The Lido at Wilcox Avenue and Yucca Street was one of many apartment buildings that provided high-density housing for renters.
Peter the Hermit pitched his tent on a vacant lot in Laurel Canyon. He rode his burro in Hollywood parades.
When commercial air travel began in 1932, offices for the Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport (now Van Nuys Airport) opened in the Security Building at Cahuenga. By 1934, TWA, from an office on Hollywood Boulevard, sold tickets for a twenty-four-hour, bumpy, coast-to-coast flight. By 1937, all the airlines had Hollywood ticket agencies.
Hollywood Boulevard became the perfect place for those who wanted to be noticed.
Now easily accessible, Hollywood swarmed with kooks and weirdos. Coining a name for all this humanity became a press pastime. Two favorites were Hollywoodians and Hollywoodites. In a work of fiction written during this era, Queer People by Carroll and Garrett Graham, the authors describe the junction at Wilcox Avenue and Cahuenga Boulevard as an unconsciously phallic intersection with its base at Hollywood Boulevard. It was Hollywood boiled to its essence. Once the domain of de Longpre and Daeida Wilcox Beveridge, old City of Homes residents now rubbed elbows with producers’ whores. “Between these streets,” wrote the Grahams, “one can find actors, authors, artists, acrobats and astrologers, coon-shouters, chorus girls, confidence men, comedians, camera-crankers, Christian Scientists and call-houses, directors, gagmen, song writers, sadists, psalm singers, soothsayers and sycophants, press agents, pugilists, policemen, perverts, pickpockets, panhandlers, pimps, playwrights, prostitutes, parsons and playgirls (both unfrocked), bootleggers, bandits, bookmakers and Babbitts, remittance men, radio announcers and realtors, Jews, Gentiles, Mohammedans and Rosicrucians, Mormons, manicurists, mannikins, misanthropes, misogynists and masochists, women of all sexes and men of none.” The authors had omitted numerologists and nymphomaniacs.
Some Hollywood apartments, like one near Hollywood and Western, were devoted to booze and broads. (This at a time when the industry began to hold its stars to contractual moral clauses.) Jack Warner’s masseuse and stooge, Abdul, got his sexual relief by driving his sports car to Hollywood and Vine. “I see a good girl, put her in car and drive to Hollywood Hills,” he told his boss. He made sure his twenty bucks was good for three times.
Walking billboards advertise the cross-dressing movie. “Charlie’s Aunt,” 1930.
A driverless auto demonstration at Hollywood and Cahuenga Boulevards, 1934.
Two celebrants outside Perry’s Brass Rail.
Mrs. Houdini and magicians at the Knickerbocker Hotel, 1938.
Minnie Mice pose on Argyle Avenue to promote a show at the Pantages Theater. The empty Bartlett estate is behind them.
Hollywood Boulevard swarmed with swamis, psychic healers, transcendentalists, and osteopaths. The Temple of Health at Hollywood and Vermont offered fitness appliances invented by Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek. Mystics opened shop to serve those who had lost their life savings or their dreams. Skirting a Los Angeles ordinance banning fortunetelling, they placed “church” signs in their front windows. An open-to-the-public Church of Spiritualist Science occupied a Hollywood Boulevard storefront. So did a Metaphysical Library. Nine Christian Science practitioners had offices in the Taft Building. Noted psychic advisor Cheiro settled into a large home on the western end of Hollywood Boulevard, where he gave interviews to fan magazines. His collection of seekers included Colleen Moore, Ramon Novarro, and Ina Claire. A disciple of his, a former actress from New York, ran Hollywood Boulevard’s Gypsy Tea Room where she specialized in tea-leaf readings and sometimes used a crystal ball. Among her clients were John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, and Louella Parsons, who publicized her predictions once in a Sunday column. The Reverend Mrs. Violet Greener was pastor of an occult church on Highland Avenue and lived in Hollywoodland. She called herself the Ghost of Hollywood. Not a few “film luminaries” attended her church who, as Greener assured, were more interested in romance and health than in financial matters.
Vagrants arrived too. Peter Howard, known as Peter the Hermit, was, in his prime, a strikingly handsome, muscular man. Hollywood’s most famous ascetic, he lived with pet greyhounds and burros in a tent on a vacant Laurel Canyon lot. Looking like Moses, he trod Hollywood Boulevard barefoot or in sandals. He wore a tattered cotton shirt and pants, slung a white bag over his shoulder, and carried a long walking stick. As famous as Aimee Semple McPherson, he got reams of free publicity. Tourists bought postcards of him in Hollywood shops.
Equally odd was would-be actor John Carradine, who had come to Los Angeles on a boxcar of bananas. In his worn clothes, Carradine strode Hollywood Boulevard, declaiming Shakespearean soliloquies and startling pedestrians. Carradine starved in Hollywood for five years. His movie break came from director John Ford, who loved to hire eccentrics.
After Carradine made it, he bought a custom-built Duesenberg. Peter the Hermit, however, got an eviction notice after eight years. His landlady, who had once written poetry about him, cited his ungentlemanly and unsanitary behavior. Resettling in the Cahuenga Pass hills, Peter grew stooped and old walking Hollywood Boulevard.
Hollywood Boulevard became the place for self-promotion. Walt Disney sent a car full of Minnie Mice stopping in restaurants for cheese rations. Warner Bros. marched a line of Gold Diggers to the Chinese Theater for a 1933 premiere. The widow of magician Harry Houdini regularly staged magic conventions at the Knickerbocker Hotel.
Walter Winchell arrived in 1933 to write a screenplay based on a disguised story about Ruby Keeler’s affair with a New York bootlegger. During Winchell’s stay, the only place he felt at home was Bob Perry’s Brass Rail on Hollywood Boulevard, frequented by fighters, wrestlers, their promoters, movie stars, and Broadway types.
Many remembered the Friday night at Legion Stadium when Al Jolson had attacked Winchell while Ruby Keeler looked on. Jolson had won Keeler’s hand when she had come to Hollywood for an appearance at the Chinese Theater. The entertainer did not like Winchell’s screenplay. In the pandemonium, Winchell’s wife hit Warner’s executive, Hal Wallis, on the head with her shoe. The crowd cheered Jolson, applauding him after Winchell left the arena. Winchell wrote of Hollywood, “It looks like the front of the Palace used to look … The same agents, actors, hangers-on, lobbyglows, phonies, front-putter-uppers. Strange, too, seeing so many false faces.”
Aline Barnsdall became more eccentric. Offering her property and house to the city as a park and art center, she demanded that no soldier or war monuments be built on it. The city, and her patriotic neighbors, opposed her. As the argument continued for a while, Barnsdall threatened to give the place to radical groups as a leftist center. She posted protest signs on the hill around her house. Some of her billboards supported California gubernatorial candidate Upton Sinclair, who faced intense opposition from the movie studios and the Hays office. Others supported the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and supported sparing the life of the man who had bombed the Los Angeles Times.
The Story of Hollywood Page 20