Old Hollywood

Came across these photos of some of the old Hollywood hotspots. I especially like the Memetic architecture (buildings shaped like whatever it was they were selling). Great site. Some of the sites are still there. But most, like the Garden of Allah, are long gone.

http://www.martinturnbull.com/?page_id=993&paged=1



• thanks for posting this. that site is full of great old hollywood photos and stories. it shows the only time i would ever have wanted to live in los angeles.

• Old Hollywood looks so foreign and exotic....

  anon

• Wow that is quite a skimpy outfit for Alla in that Eye for Eye picture. Nice figure too. Definitely pre-Hayes.

• Wow, what a crime that the Garden of Allah was torn down. Fucking assholes. What's there now?

• R4 A mini mall.

  https://maps.google.com/maps%3Foe%3Dutf-8%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26q%3D8152+Sunset+Boulevard%26ie%3DUTF-8%26hq%3D%26hnear%3D0x80c2bec1ce9d2611:0x9bbfcb9b5029f08d%2C8152+Sunset+Blvd%2C+Los+Angeles%2C+CA+90046%26gl%3Dus%26ei%3Dgpq_UNmJM4nFrQGSxYGAAg%26ved

• I hate developers R5.

• My grandmother used to take us there for a treat. She had met Herb Somborn through a mutual friend of her and Gloria Swanson, and even though Swanson wouldn't have anything to do with him after the divorce, he was always "Uncle Herb" to us. One time Grandmother ordered a Cobb Salad and they replaced the chives with green scallions. She complained, the waiter insisted they had done it right, and she wouldn't stop until Mr. Cobb himself came into the dining room. He apologized and said that someone had made an error, and of course she was correct. And she told the waiter, "If Mr. Cobb would have told me things were okay, I would have accepted it. Maybe he changed his mind. It's his salad, after all. But now that you've got it right, please bring me a fresh salad, and put the chives where they belong." I assumed she had an extra ingredient in her dressing when it came back, but I didn't say anything. I used to hang out in Chinatown with a friend and we saw what the cooks did when someone complained.

• So if you stayed in the hotel, you got your picture taken?

• This is interesting. Sounds like a trick gone wrong to me: [quote]Red Skelton was staying at the Garden of Allah during WWII when it was considered the patriotic thing to do for film stars to pick up servicemen and take them home for a meal or a drink. When Red picked up a marine on Sunset Boulevard and brought him back with him, they discussed firearms and Red showed I’m a German lugar that he owned. The marine examined it and asked “Is it loaded?” “Yes,” said Red whereupon the marine pointed the gun at Red and robbed him of his watch, wallet and escaped, taking the revolver with him. I bet Red thought twice about doing that again.

• Ditto r1. You couldn't pay me to live in LA today because it's so overcrowded, the traffic is a nightmare and large swaths of the city have been turned into a Third World shithole, but back in that era LA seems like a rather nice place to live.

• I read once that back in the 1930's the thing that dazzled visitors to LA more than anything else was the neon. Apparently it was a wonderland of neon, both for signs and to illuminate the buildings themselves, in every color of the rainbow, and flashing and cycling on and off in fantastic patterns of color and motion. WWII made it vanish overnight because of the blackout, and after the war was over it never came back.

• [quote] I especially like the Memetic architecture (buildings shaped like whatever it was they were selling). So you could buy hat at the Brown Derby?