The Story of Hollywood

by Gregory Paul Williams

  NBC Radio City had opened in New York in 1933. Three years later, NBC built its Hollywood headquarters on Melrose Avenue between Paramount and RKO. Modeled after Radio City, although significantly smaller, the studio had two stages with seats for audiences. CBS followed in the same year with a studio at 141 N. Vermont Avenue. CBS also leased the abandoned Vine Street Theater and renamed it CBS Radio Playhouse. It became the new home to Lux Radio Theater and many other popular shows.

  Local stations boomed. When KNX jumped up to 25,000 watts in 1936, CBS bought the station, moving it to Sunset at Gordon. (The building had originally been an auto dealership that director Max Reinhardt had subsequently used as a rehearsal studio.) In 1936, KFWB built an advanced broadcasting studio in the yard of a former Hollywood home at Fernwood Avenue near Van Ness. KMTR, at the top of the storage building at Highland and Santa Monica, built a modern studio behind a mission facade at 1028 Cahuenga Boulevard. The station later became KLAC.

  KMTR/KLAC made an ersatz California mission for their station on Cahuenga Boulevard, 1936 (demolished).

  KNX, 5939 Sunset Boulevard, 1936. It became the Spaghetti Factory restaurant in the 1980s.

  KFWB built their station in the front yard of a former home on Fernwood Avenue (demolished), 1939.

  Opening night of CBS’s Columbia Square, April 30, 1938.

  CBS demolished Hollywood’s first movie studio for the new station.

  THE BIG BROADCAST

  With radio’s growing popularity, CBS and NBC needed first-class radio centers in Hollywood.

  CBS bought the entire northwest block at Sunset and Gower in 1937. By April, they had broken ground for a $2-million, up-to-date radio station. They demolished Hollywood’s first film studio lot, Nestor, then Universal, then Christie Studios. Broadcasting now far exceeded moviemaking in bringing money and glamour to the district.

  Designed by William Lescaze, the architect who introduced glass brick to America, CBS’s Columbia Square featured three buildings around a patio facing Sunset Boulevard. The main structure housed six studios plus staff and executive offices. Two of the studios were two stories high and seated one hundred people. All studios had booths for technicians and CBS clients. Floating walls everywhere prevented street vibrations. The middle building, set back from Sunset, housed the thousand- seat Columbia Square Playhouse. Many of the major CBS coast-to-coast shows originated here. The other two-story structure housed CBS management and Artists’ Bureau, a branch of Bank of America, and the popular Radio Center Restaurant. (CBS writing staff occupied bungalows on nearby Carlton Avenue.)

  Columbia Square’s forecourt led to the main playhouse.

  Interior of Columbia Square Playhouse, 1940.

  The northeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street.

  NBC lobby, 1938

  Not to be outdone, NBC announced they were leaving their studio on Melrose for a state-of-the-art, full-city-block radio center at Sunset and Vine.

  NBC’s Hollywood Radio City opened on October 2, 1938, with NBC Carnival starring Charles Boyer. The building had eight studios and a three-story office wing for executives, Artists’ Bureau and sales department. A three-story lobby had tall glass-brick windows and a concealed cone in the aluminum ceiling that let in daylight. A curved mural covered the inside northeast wall. It portrayed a genie of radio, feet on earth, head in the clouds, amid radio scenes from around the world. A five-foot modernistic clock hung opposite the mural. In the lobby, behind non-reflective glass, an operator at a control panel sent NBC programs across America.

  Audiences entered the four auditoriums from a terrace along Sunset Boulevard. Each studio was identical except in color scheme. Studio A had graded values of brown, sea-foam-blue seats, copper-rose carpet, a turquoise front curtain, and a rear curtain in egg blue.

  Behind the studios, the artist corridor ran along the length of the building to insure stars’ privacy and freedom from autograph hunters. Along the north wall of this corridor were four smaller nonaudience studios. One had an organ studio that was suspended within a larger room so that the organ’s heavy vibration did not rattle the walls.

  NBC looking southeast along Vine Street, 1938.

  Looking northwest along Sunset Boulevard at Argyle Avenue, 1938. The exterior was finished in a blue-green color to reduce sun glare. Aluminum strips decorated roof corners.

  NBC Studio A.

  An audience terrace along Sunset Boulevard.

  William Powell and Myrna Loy in Lux’s radio version of The Thin Man.

  George Burns and Gracie Allen.

  Bing Crosby and Kraft Music Hall cast with discarded script pages after broadcast.

  Hollywood’s two radio centers made the district every bit a rival to New York for radio production. By the end of 1938, daytime soap operas from Hollywood enthralled millions of listeners. One Man’s Family, the number-one soap opera, moved from San Francisco to Hollywood. New on CBS, Bisquick’s Hollywood in Person promised to bring Hollywood to noontime listeners. CBS also offered Stars over Hollywood, an early morning show that lasted thirteen years. Drama shows included CBS’s Sam Spade and NBC’s Inner Sanctum, brought to you by Carter’s Little Liver Pills.

  The biggest broadcasts of Hollywood network radio came in the evening, when established vaudeville and musical comedy stars transplanted from New York held forth. Their steady hold on the ratings cut across demographics. By 1938, Hollywood originated 90 percent of the personality programs. Edgar Bergen, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos ‘n’ Andy, and Kate Smith would have very long runs. The New Packard Hour offered Fred Astaire; Jack Haley stood in front of The Log Cabin Hour; Kraft Music Hall starred Bing Crosby; Eddie Cantor entertained for Texaco; Coco Malting sponsored Joe Penner; Jack Oakie and Benny Goodman sold Camel cigarettes to the college crowd. Burns and Allen broadcast from CBS Radio Playhouse. NBC leased Vine Street’s Hollywood Playhouse for Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks and other shows.

  A radio star and a movie star were often the same person. Paramount, with it studio so close to Sunset and Vine, signed most of NBC’s comedy talents to motion picture deals. Only Fred Allen, Phil Baker, and Rudy Vallee wanted to take their radio shows back to the East Coast when their pictures were finished. And only Fred Allen did.

  John Barrymore.

  CBS Radio Playhouse, formerly the Mirror Theater/Vine Street Theater. Al Levy’s/Mike Lyman’s is next to it.

  Comic Fanny Brice.

  Gary Cooper, Jeanette McDonald, and Eddie Cantor at the microphone.

  Comic Zasu Pitts.

  By 1938, Lux Radio Theater finished at the top of the ratings. DeMille was the show’s pillar. He came straight from the set in his riding breeches and boots. For a 1939 show, he arrived at CBS Radio Playhouse in an ambulance following an operation. When Gloria Swanson needed a career boost, DeMille hired her for a broadcast. Swanson wrote, “It was very successful with mobs of fans outside, but it didn’t get me back in pictures.”

  Young & Rubicam used CBS Radio Playhouse for their two movie-driven shows, Screen Guild Theater and Silver Theater. Conrad Nagel hosted Silver Theater. He had returned to New York in 1933 after killing his film career by appearing in too many talkies. Radio brought him back to Hollywood. According to Nagel, “C.B. and I competed for stars, material, plays, and everything else (for the radio shows). Competition was quite fierce among us.”

  Many movie studio chiefs remained wary of radio. The film studios’ 1938 advertising campaigns spent not one cent on radio advertising. When NBC and Pepsodent launched Bob Hope on the air in September 1938, Hollywood’s trade papers, Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety, did not review his show. L.B. Mayer, who preferred not to share seventeen- year-old Judy Garland’s popularity, pulled her off the air as Hope’s first female singer. (Gloria Jean, Frances Langford, and then Doris Day successively replaced her.)

  Radio shows were cheap to produce. One sponsor could pay the entire ten-to-fifteen thousand dollars for a single nighttime show. The tab for a Lux broadc
ast ran to $20,000. Makers of drugs, tobaccos, soaps, foods, and household goods paid $150 million to the networks and more millions to the talent in 1938 alone. The radio industry made 350-percent yearly profit on its investment.

  KFWB’s Al Jarvis proved the power of disc jockeys in 1937 by saving Benny Goodman’s career. Goodman was close to breaking up his band when he paid Jarvis five-hundred dollars to plug his records on the air. Benny Goodman’s next appearance at Palomar ballroom on Vermont Avenue had an overflow crowd. Playing band music on the radio to snare dance business became a standard practice.

  Another local radio success, MacGregor, started in 1941 on Vine Street when an entrepreneur figured he could produce flawless radio shows on records and sell them for national syndication. He lined up Skippy Peanut Butter as a sponsor. Skippy in Hollywood, recorded on disks complete with commercials, became one of radio’s most prosperous syndicated shows.

  Bazooka Bob Burns and Louis Armstrong.

  Vine Street in the early morning, looking north from Sunset Boulevard, 1939.

  ON THE STREET

  Radio comics cracked jokes about Hollywood and Vine. Across the nation, glued to Magnavoxes and Philcos, listeners thought Hollywood bustled with big names and big deals. Radio days proved them right. Hollywood matched its reputation.

  At the top, the ad agencies funded the shows. The Taft and Equitable Buildings were favorites, so close to the radio studios. Giant agency Williams Esty & Company in the Equitable spread Camel cigarette money across radio.

  Radio production filled offices. Shows required thirty-nine weeks of fresh material and employed a dozen writers per show. Massive unemployment lingering from the Depression brought ambitious people fresh out of college. They found twenty-four hours a day of work. The Taft housed Jack Benny’s writers and Stars over Hollywood. George Burns had offices at the top of the Hollywood Plaza Hotel. Bob Hope installed his writers in the Guaranty Building where his attorneys, Gang and Copp, worked. As Hope’s writing staff logged long hours, oncall twenty-four hours a day, the Guaranty offices were usually open to three o’clock in the morning.

  Most network shows required four to five days of rehearsals and rewriting. Dress rehearsals on the day of the show were followed by two broadcasts, one for the East Coast and Midwest, and the other, three hours later, for the West Coast. The West Coast broadcasts were often funnier than the earlier ones. Some of the cast drank their dinners during the break. For alcoholics, this only exacerbated a problem.

  Radio brought hundreds of talented actors who, on really good days, would squeeze in three or four broadcasts within walking distance. Thousands of ingenues, not-so-good actors, and mothers with talented children hit the production offices and advertising agencies. They begged for auditions, making the rounds of Hollywood and Vine in a couple of hours.

  CBS and NBC used artist bureaus as talent agencies. Actors flocked to them too. As agent for the artists, the networks kept wages low and took a ten percent commission.

  Same view as top of page 259, at night, 1939.

  A coffee demonstration outside CBS Radio Playhouse on Vine Street, 1938.

  A technician’s view of The Jack Benny Show at NBC 1939.

  Organizing radio workers, the American Federation of Radio Actors (AFRA) appeared in Hollywood Boulevard offices. Fighting network practices, the union’s initial campaign charged members one dollar to fund the fight. Anti-union Cecil B. DeMille refused to pay and waged a court battle with AFRA that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. When DeMille was told he had to pay the union one dollar, he left Lux Radio Theater in January 1945.

  Radio Actors Exchange operated on Selma Avenue as a private Central Casting for radio performers. The organization’s Rate Boards in popular places informed actors when radio jobs opened. CBS’s Radio Center Restaurant had a Rate Board. So did NBC.

  Musicians with instrument cases became familiar sights in Hollywood. Lux Radio’s Louis Silvers’s orchestra employed twenty-five musicians. NBC and CBS had orchestras, plus the Phil Harris and Benny Goodman bands, and many more. Even dramatic shows had their own orchestras.

  The biggest crowds in the area were the spectators who trooped by the thousands in search of free entertainment. Almost all shows broadcast before live audiences. Throughout the country, radio show tickets were a must for those visiting Hollywood. All tickets were free. Radio actress Mary Jane Higby described daytime audiences struggling into the night shows “weighed down with chocolate bars, cake mixes, and peanut butter” from the daytime shows.

  Martha Raye rehearses an NBC radio appearance, with composer/conductor Victor Young in the center.

  Nickodell, northeast Selma and Argyle Avenues.

  The interior of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street’s Melody Lane.

  Audiences lined up outside studio doors before broadcasts. If there were not enough people, network ushers handed out show tickets on the sidewalk or borrowed audiences exiting other shows.

  Nearby restaurants and bars kept busy day and night. Gotham Delicatessen regularly delivered sandwiches to the radio shows and staff meetings. Nickodell’s, at the northeast corner of Selma and Argyle Avenues behind the two network stations, became an indelible part of Hollywood’s radio days. Owner Nick Slavitch had run a popular Hollywood restaurant, The Grotto, on Melrose Avenue since 1928. After selling that, he waited five years before opening Nickodell’s. It was immediately popular with radio and advertising people. With its wide selection of entrees at modest prices and its own Rate Board for job seekers, it had standing room only in the late afternoon and into the night, especially in the bar. Nick had a policy that any announcer who came in and said, “I’ve only got one hour,” would get immediate service.

  When Carl Laemmle died in late September 1939, so did his Coco Tree Cafe at Hollywood and Vine. Pig ‘n’ Whistle manager Sidney Hoedemaker took over the building and removed every trace of Richard Neutra’s architecture. His Melody Lane, one in a chain that Hoedemaker started across the basin, served a fancy lunch for seventy-five cents. Hoedemaker ran a small Pig ‘n’ Whistle in the same building.

  Bob and Dolores Hope at the Derby. Bing Crosby is in the next booth.

  Red Skelton and his wife at the Derby.

  Broderick Crawford signs autographs on Hollywood Boulevard, 1949.

  The Vine Street Brown Derby remained the district’s leading restaurant. In the radio days, the Derby had a full house every night. Ozzie Nelson wrote that he and Harriet always had dinner with Red Skelton at the Derby between performances of NBC’s Red Skelton Show. “On many occasion I have seen him (Red) pour water over his head or butter his hand and the sleeve of a good suit to get a laugh.”

  Bandleader Ozzie Nelson and his wife Harriet Hilliard had gotten a big break with the show, part of NBC’s Tuesday night line-up of Fibber McGee and Molly, then Bob Hope, and finally Skelton. Harriet was the show’s singer and Skelton’s comic foil. The Nelsons could now afford a home. They found a large one on Camino Palmero north of Hollywood Boulevard. They moved in November 1941.

  The Vine Street Derby introduced phones at the tables and loudspeaker paging. (The idea had come from C.B. DeMille, who had had a telephone at his private dining room table at Lasky’s studio in 1922.) The Hollywood Derby had phone jacks in every booth. Enterprising agents, lawyers, and advertising men used the Derby for an office during meals. Would-be actors had themselves paged. The two telephone exchange girls knew everybody. Telegrams, mail, and packages that arrived at the Derby for film and radio personalities were always delivered to the recipient.

  When the Derby’s owner, Robert Cobb, bought the Hollywood Stars baseball team, he only had to turn to his friends and customers, Bing Crosby, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, George Burns, and Walt Disney to invest with him.

  Retail stores in the area boomed during the radio days. Alexander’s Stationers opened in 1935. Growing with the radio industry, it moved into a larger store on Vine Street. across from NBC. Customers included radio stars,
who walked in for pens and stationary. (When the store finally shut its door in 1998, it was at 1531 Cahuenga Boulevard.)

  Radio brought Hollywood more golden days than the movies ever had. With local stations growing in wattage with clear channels, people as far as Colorado were listening regularly to local Hollywood stations and thinking, “If I ever get to Hollywood …”

  Hollywood Hotel, in center, northwest Hollywood and Highland, 1948.

  One Hollywood casualty of the radio boom was the ramshackle Hollywood Hotel which saw no boost in prestige with Louella Parson’s Hollywood Hotel radio show. Her Hollywood Hotel movie had not helped either. With Ronald Reagan in the cast, the film was terrible; a sobbing Parsons had to be escorted from the theater after its first screening. When radio performers’ guilds made Parsons quit paying performers with soup, Hollywood Hotel went off the air. The real hotel, celebrating its thirty-fifth anniversary in 1938, now seemed totally devoid of authentic Hollywood glamour.

  Vine Street’s Radio Room in the Hollywood Recreation Building, 1539 Vine Street.

  Florentine Gardens, 5951 Hollywood Boulevard.

  A show number from Florentine Gardens show.

  Florentine Gardens advertisement photo.

  IT’S MUSIC CITY

  When nighttime radio audiences emerged onto the streets, Hollywood waited for them. Brilliantly lit with neon signs, it was filled with a vibrant crowd with somewhere to go. Sophisticated nightclubs and restaurants operated into the wee hours. According to entertainer Bobby Short, “the truly hip had endorsed Manhattan, Chicago, and the Coast.”