Priscilla Dean and her tam, Photoplay, January 1921

The entertainment industry mastered the use of publicity and cross promotion from its very beginnings, creating elaborate ballyhoo campaigns to build word of mouth and huge box office receipts. It quickly realized that joining together with other organizations, businesses, and mass communications allowed a wider dissemination of the news to audiences at a much cheaper price, thereby helping both institutions or groups in the process.

Universal Feature Film Manufacturing Company deployed an extremely effective and relatively inexpensive cross promotional exploitation campaign in 1920 and 1921 for the Priscilla Dean film, “Outside the Law.” Employing a fashionable tam-o’shanter sold under the Pricilla Dean name, the stunt successfully spread the word of the film among female audiences, leading to high theatre grosses around the country.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

“Outside the Law” on YouTube.

Priscilla Dean reigned as one of Hollywood’s top female stars in the late 1910s and early 1920s, rising from one-reelers to serial queen to acting royalty. Dean joined her parents’ stage act as a child, gaining renown. She debuted in one-reelers at the age of 14, appearing in films for various companies including Biograph before being signed by Nestor, who co-starred her in a series of comedy shorts with actors like Eddie Polo and Lee Moran. In 1917, Dean moved to headline serials like “The Gray Ghost” for Universal, in which she displayed both her acting and stunt skills. Her winning smile, insouciance, and athletic derring-do won hearts, making her a star, and leading to certain promotional products with her name attached to them.

In 1917, Dean became one of Universal’s top stars, appearing in prestigious pictures which often bore her name above the title, many thrillers or action adventure stories. Several of these films were directed by Tod Browning, who often interjected a threat of menace. By 1920, Lon Chaney sometimes played important supporting parts in these films.

Priscilla Dean and her tam, Motion Picture Weekly.

The trio’s 1920 suspense thriller, “Outside the Law,” released early in 1921, represented one of Universal’s most prestigious pictures that year, released under its Jewel banner. The film tells the tale of Silky Moll (Dean) and Dapper Bill (Wheeler Oakman), a pair of jewel thieves working in opposition to gang leader Black Mike (Chaney), holed up in an apartment near San Francisco’s Chinatown. The film allowed Dean to show off her wide acting range, charisma, and physical skills.

Universal quickly realized the potential of producing a stylish hat under the popular Dean’s name, to help boost female attendance at her films. Beginning in fall 1920, Baer Bros. Manufacturing Company of Chicago served as the exclusive manufacturer of the Priscilla Dean tam, which ads proclaimed as mass manufactured of “suede-like” material” cleverly draped “with no harsh lines.” Available in every color, it made a “charming frame for a lovely face.” An elastic band allowed it to fit any head size. The Carbondale August 4, 1921 Daily Free Press claimed Dean designed the hat herself.

The Priscilla Dean Tam in a May 11, 1921, ad in the Bennington Banner.

A  Millinery Trade Review story in November 1921 stated it was selling strongly thanks to ads in diverse magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Ladies’ Home Journal, People’s Home Journal, Butterick, and fan magazines. Individual hats sold for $2.50 each, or a dozen could be purchased for $13.50 and be available in ten days. It also noted the release of the Priscilla Dean Hat for Girls three to twelve, which cost $1.95 each. The story explained this was one of the largest millinery advertising campaigns ever put together, helping get the word out to an estimated five million people, through exclusive sales and tie-ins in each individual town.

Besides the campaign in newspapers, which included a coupon to send directly to the manufacturer for the hat, Universal devised promotional campaigns in which local theaters could set up promotional campaigns with newspapers and local fashion, millinery, and department stores. Stores arranged elaborate window displays, models paraded around the streets wearing the hat, and ads in newspapers offered free gifts or discounts when purchasing a Priscilla Dean Tam.

Going one step further, Universal’s publicity and exploitation department concocted an elaborate “Mystery Girl “ campaign to get the film title into the public airwaves and sell more tickets at local film theatres. They created a campaign using the Priscilla Dean Tam as hook to get women into theaters through a promotion campaign with newspapers and local businesses.

As the August 4, 1921 Carbondale Free Press explained it, “Mystery Girls” wearing the colorful, stylish hats would parade around town and those who recognized her and approached her with the correct slogan would win a free hat. The July 26 Rock Island Argus employed a “Mystery Girl” wearing the hat to visit stores in the areas and give away tickets to a theatre showing the film.

The Priscilla Dean Tam in Motion Picture Magazine.

The “Mystery Girl” campaign revolved around newspapers employing one of their lady journalists to visit certain business sections in their local communities while wearing the Priscilla Dean Tam, after stories appeared on the front page of the paper explaining the generalized area in which she would appear and the procedure to follow to win a hat. The journalist would write a story explaining the stores she visited and the people she met each day, thereby giving free publicity to each business. To make the contest even harder, decoys wearing Priscilla Dean Tams also walked around town.

The procedure involved to win a hat required a woman to approach the “Mystery Girl” and hand over the newspaper column about the hat, and then utter the words, “You are Outside the Law You are the Mystery Girl.” She would receive a ticket to a local store giving her a free Priscilla Dean Tam.

Per Universal’s Moving Picture Weekly, several cities employed the campaign to excellent results, setting ticket sales records. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Akron, Ohio, St. Louis, Missouri, Chicago, Illinois, Lima, Ohio, and Vallejo, California were a few of the cities reporting great success. Akron, Ohio’s Allen Theatre broke ticket sales records for Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ “The Mark of Zorro.”

A Priscilla Dean ad in the Columbia Evening Missourian, Aug. 18, 1921.

Several newspapers and the trade book reported about the popularity of the Priscilla Dean Tam “Mystery Girl” stunt, with many pointing out that many women either forgot the correct ways to say or what they were to do, failed to produce the newspaper column, or were too shy to approach the “Mystery Girl.” Some stole envious glances at those wearing the tam. Others occasionally accosted the decoys and then became angry when they weren’t awarded free hats. The decoys began carrying free tickets to give out to those who failed to accurately follow the rules.

Showmen’s magazines in 1928 and Variety in 1939 pointed to the success of the stunt, still remembered as one of the most successful promotional campaigns in getting a film’s title in front of American moviegoers.

Universal spent little money in concocting the “Mystery Girl” stunt to trade off the success of the Priscilla Dean Tam, but earned great returns for their smarts. The Priscilla Dean Tam thus married fashion and motion picture exploitation as a giant ballyhoo campaign promoting both products to average consumers.

Mabel Normand in a Hartsook portrait, courtesy of Mary Mallory.

Hollywood’s public acts of charity often come with an ulterior motive. Such is the case with Republic Picture’s magnanimous naming of its gigantic new sound stage in December 1940 for beloved comedic actress Mabel Normand, who neither stepped foot on the lot nor ever shot a film there, per Brent Walker in “Mack Sennett’s Fun Factory.” While a wonderful remembrance of the gifted comedienne, the gesture served as a subtle promotional tie-in for Republic’s upcoming remake of a Normand film, “Sis Hopkins.”

Herbert Yates’ Republic Pictures began operations in 1935, when Yates merged production companies Liberty Films, Monogram Pictures, and Mascot Pictures. The newly formed corporation leased Mascot’s production facility, the former Mack Sennett studio at 4024 Redford Avenue in Studio City on which to produce films.

Republic Studios, courtesy of Mary Mallory.

By the late 1930s, Republic purchased the lot outright and announced a large expansion of facilities, adding new office space and up-to-date sound stages. Film Daily reported on December 13, 1940 that the $250,000 stage, the first under Republic’s new $1-million building campaign, would be named after comedy superstar Normand, in recognition of upcoming shooting on a remake of the Normand film “Sis Hopkins” starring Republic’s rising star Judy Canova.

The December 21, 1940 Showman’s Trade Review noted that the shrewd Yates decided to name the stage after Madcap Mabel in recognition of her pioneering film work with legendary comedy producer Mack Sennett, who first constructed the lot in 1928. The Los Angeles Times also pointed out in a December 12 story that Normand never worked on a sound stage. Yates’ personal assistant William Saal was organizing the special festivities, scheduled during a shooting hiatus for the studio, and trying to arrange a national radio hookup. Unfortunately many newspapers incorrectly reported that Normand worked for Sennett on this lot, a mistake most never seemed to have corrected. Mabel never walked on or worked on the lot because she made her last film in 1927 at the Hal Roach lot in Culver City, a year before the Sennett Studio was constructed in Studio City.

On the evening of December 27, 1940, Republic hosted hundreds of people at the grand dedication ceremonies inside the cavernous stage, including its own stars and executives John Wayne, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Judy Canova, George “Gabby” Hayes, Joseph Santley, John Waldron, Paul Guerin, M. J. Siegel, and Smiley Burnette.

A detail of the Mabel Normand plaque, courtesy of Marilyn Slater.

They invited a huge contingent of former Mack Sennett stars and employees such as Carole Lombard, Bing Crosby, W. C. Fields, William Beaudine, Eddie Sutherland, Ma. St. Clair, Eddie Cline, Louise Fazenda, Charlie Murray, Jimmy Finlayson, Chester Conklin, Heinie Conklin, Monte Banks, Jack Mulhall, Edgar Kennedy, Mae Busch, Polly Moran, Eddie Quillan, Eddie Gribbon, and Harry Langdon. Other industry executives and creative personnel such as Paramount’s Y. Frank Freeman, Jack Warner, Wesley Ruggles, Raymond Griffith, Frank Lloyd, Tay Garnett, Roy del Ruth, Charles Reisner, Lloyd Bacon, William Farnum, Wallace MacDonald, Charles Ray, Raymond Hatton, and Noah Beery also attended the grand festivities.

Republic’s own Harriet Parsons, daughter of gossip columnist Louella Parsons, shot the ceremony for inclusion in her one-reel newsreel, “Meet the Stars” Episode #8: “Stars Past and Present,” which is included as a bonus extra on Cine Museum’s recent Mack Sennett DVD set. Still photographers shot many photographs of Canova, Siegel, Fazenda, Sennett, Farnum, Finlayson, and Chester Conklin posing with the plaque. In this way, the studio could both celebrate the memory of gentle Mabel while promoting both the expansion of its growing lot and the forthcoming “Sis Hopkins.”

William Farnum, Mack Sennett and Judy Canova pose with the Mabel Normand plaque, Screenland. 

On December 28, the Los Angeles Times described the ceremony as “a novel observance,” one uniting past and present. Former silent star William Farnum served as Master of ceremonies, noting Normand’s kindness and generosity to those in need which rivaled her gigantic comedy talent. He was followed on stage by Republic executive M. J. Siegel and Mack Sennett. The veteran comedy producer referred to his former love as “the little girl with the golden heart.” Following the unveiling, a screening of Normand’s feature “Mickey” followed.

Republic’s Judy Canova pulled the strings whisking the plaque’s cover away. The 200 lb. bronze plaque, designed by J. R. Savage of New York, contained the words, “We dedicate this stage to the memory of a lovable artist, Mabel Normand. May we never forget her – a great soul who pioneered and gave purpose to the early motion picture. Through this new art she brought laughter and beauty otherwise denied millions burdened with despair and drabness.”

After the filming of “Sis Hopkins,” Republic built a 90 by 150 foot ice skating rink in the stage for the film, “Ice Capades of 1941,” a rink 1/2 inch thick and costing $50,000, per Industrial Refrigeration in 1941. The soundstage went on to host taping of the renowned TV series, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” amongst others. The stage is still in current use on what is now called CBS Studio Center, with the plaque still visible to all who visit its hallowed space.

While the plaque honoring Mabel Normand remains mostly unknown today, it recognizes the wide talent, skill, generosity, and big heart of one of cinema’s greatest pioneers.

Laura La Plante in a photograph by Jack Freulich, Motion Picture Classic. 

History is written by survivors, so those who die young often seem to recede into memory, forgotten or ignored as time passed them by. While often great artists, their contributions are overlooked while those who achieve longevity are praised and promoted, though sometimes not as talented.

Jacob (Jack) Freulich has seen his integral part in shaping early film stills photography virtually overlooked because of his death in 1936, barely a generation after he started the Universal Studios stills department in 1920. A talented man with a keen eye for character and detail, he photographed virtually every major Universal picture star from 1920 until his death in 1936, including Lon Chaney, Erich von Stroheim, Boris Karloff, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Lew Ayres, Hoot Gibson, Margaret Sullavan, and Bela Lugosi, to name a few. Many people mistakenly credit his younger brother Roman with the rich body of work he left behind.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

Anna May Wong, photographed by Jack Freulich, Motion Picture Magazine.

Born September 11, 1880 in Czestochowka, Slaskie, Poland to Isaac and Nisla Freulich, Jacob was the oldest of five children, spread eighteen years apart. Little is known of his early life, but he appears to have immigrated to the United States around 1901, a driven young man eager to get ahead. By 1909, “Jack” Freulich set up his own studio in New York and joined the major New York photography agency Underwood & Underwood as a portraitist in 1911.

Transferred to Washington, D. C. in 1914, he shot foreign dignitaries and American political and social leaders for the camera for one year, before returning to New York to head the photographic department. In later years, he considered Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as one of his best subjects, along with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. While Freulich’s work appeared in virtually every magazine and newspaper around the world, none appeared in his name.

Fiery and rugged, Freulich also produced portrait shots for leading entertainers of the period, including early film stars like Valeska Suratt. In fact, David Shields in his book, “Still: American Silent Motion Picture Photography,” describes how Jack Freulich “photographically channeled Theda Bara’s dangerous femininity” in a series of stills presenting Bara as the preeminent female vampire: wicked, sensual, and alive, for her star making role in “A Fool There Was.” Every major portrait studio and film studio began courting him to head their departments.

Jack Mulhall photographed by Jack Freulich, Stars of Photoplay.

Universal chief Carl Laemmle lured talented Freulich to California in 1919 to head the photography and still department for the studio with a nice increase in salary to $100 a week and most importantly, name recognition and credit. The studio head found a connection with the portraitist due to their shared Eastern European background and Jewish heritage. Freulich’s job was to give a lustrous sheen and allure to Universal’s stable of stars at a reasonable price, while adding credibility and respect to the budget conscious company.

Times were changing in portrait photography as stars moved from sessions with independent studios and photographers to exclusive work with studio publicity departments for specific films and campaigns. As Freulich recounted in a wire story published in the Rushville Republican on January 29, 1931, stars sat for portraits once a month or more with portraitists in the teens, ordering several hundred or even several thousand at a time to send out themselves to the media. By the 1920s, studios took over this function, establishing stills departments to shoot myriad types of photographs mailed out in bulk to newspapers and magazines, controlling the timing and theme of these images.

Freulich established a rapport with his subjects, helping put them at ease by playing music in his studio, the first to do so per a September 13, 1925 Los Angeles Times story. The music helped stars relax into mood, drawing out their natural character and emotions. Freulich’s portraits show vitality as well as gravitas, etched like marble with light, full of shadow and definition. He employed lighting instead of scenery in his work, focusing on faces surrounded by textured fabrics or patterned textiles.

Ginger Rogers photographed by Jack Freulich, Modern Screen.

The cameraman recognized the importance of publicity stills, telling International Photographer in 1934, “Stills are the direct selling factor for the picture. They are used as advertising ‘come-on” in the lobby of the theatre, good stills will pack a house, that is if they are arranged to attract attention.” He described portraits as selling tools for stars and films as well, sent out to magazines, newspapers, advertising products, window displays, and to fans. “The publicity department, a very important cog in the motion picture industry, uses thousands of these stills for mailing lists to theatrical managers and newspapers; it is their way of building up a new picture.” In this way, studios blanketed the country with images of a film and star, building name recognition and word of mouth for their products.

As the number of required stills expanded, Freulich hired family members to help produce the required output. He hired both his son Henry and his younger brother Roman to shoot production stills for the company, while he focused on portraits and character studies. Freulich later employed future photography stars Ray Jones and Bert Longworth as well. Jones served as his assistant, shooting portraits in Freulich’s absence when the department head visited his family in Europe.

Erich von Stroheim photographed by Jack Freulich, Motion Picture Magazine.

When new leadership took over Universal in 1936, they cleaned house of veteran employees like Freulich, replacing him with his quick young assistant Jones in May 1936. Freulich felt emasculated and stripped of respectability with the loss of his passion and mainstay, committing suicide on October 17, 1936.

Because of Jack Freulich’s early death, many people mistakenly credit his outstanding work to his younger brother Roman, though portraits by the two can be differentiated by style as well as signature. Freulich’s keen eye captured the allure and sexiness of Universal’s film stars, helping shape the iconography of Hollywood’s glamour photography for years to come.

The Hollywood Chamber of commerce in an undated pamphlet.

I n 1925, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce recognized the need for a stylish permanent home in which to promote the business and life of their fair city. Said headquarters should be fashionable and up-to-date without too much sizzle, an elegant representative of a classy and growing city.

Begun in 1921, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce lacked a settled home base. The organization first rented space at 6553 Hollywood Blvd. in 1921 after its formation, right in the heart of Hollywood. The Chamber later moved to 6530 Hollywood Blvd. in 1923 while it considered locations and opportunities and carried on the work of promoting business in Hollywood, organizing drives for better roads, transportation, and infrastructure.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, as shown in the Dec. 6, 1925, Los Angeles Times.

George, Coffin, President of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and member of the Los Angeles Realty Board, hunted appropriate locations on which to construct a handsome home for the 1100 member organization. The April 1, 1925 Los Angeles Times notes that a committee was organized to discuss size, location, and cost of the building, composed of people like Coffin, Carl Bush, Secretary of the Chamber, Gilbert Beesemyer, Parker Foster, and George Eastman, among others. In late 1925, the Chamber acquired 6520 Sunset Blvd. on which to build their striking new headquarters, hiring renowned Los Angeles architectural firm Morgan, Walls, & Clements to design a suitable structure.

On November 3, 1925, the William Simpson Construction Co. applied for a building permit to construct a 50 x 150 foot, two story $40,000 Class C building at 6522 Sunset Blvd. (later 6520 Sunset Blvd.) for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The two story building would rise from a concrete concert foundation and be composed of wood, with composition floors in the concrete and wood interior.

The December 6 newspaper reported that the building, located across the street from the Hollywood Athletic Club, would contain offices, stage, and auditorium on the first floor, with a large assembly room on the second floor in which it planned to screen daily motion picture exhibitions of “Hollywood municipal activities.”

The company applied for an altered permit on December 11, stating that the side walls would be constructed of 13” brick instead of 12” reinforced concrete, with steel beams constructed between the H. columns to carry the weight of the upper half of the walls. The rear wall and side wall returns would also be constructed of brick instead of concrete, at 17” instead of 13” like the sides. This permit claims the building to be one story, and now 50 x 145 feet.

To add pizzazz to the somewhat simple structure, the architects designed an elaborate Churrigueresque ornamental pediment over the front entrance to the Chamber Building. Emerging as decoration in Spain in the late 17th century in the Spanish Baroque style, it featured elaborate sculptural and decorative elements over the entrance to the front facades of buildings, composed of garlands, cornices, shells, and broken pediments, all meant to attract attention. The style was revived in the mid-1910s when Mission Revival and Spanish Revival architecture exploded around the Pan Pacific Expositions in San Diego and San Francisco.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce organized a dignified opening ceremony on July 14, 1926 for its grand new headquarters. The large banquet featured Hollywood Methodist Church pastor Dr. Willis Martin delivering the welcome and dedication, with Chamber President Frank Galloway presiding over festivities in the $75,000 building’s large auditorium. City, county, and state officials would give short talks, along with past presidents of the Chamber. The Hollywood Athletic Club Orchestra, Rotary Club quartet, and pianist Celeste Nellis Ryus would provide entertainment.

6520 Sunset Blvd., via Google Street View.

Once ensconced in its new home, the Chamber worked to support local organizations, charities, and businesses in their daily activities, as well as promote the city of Hollywood as the ultimate tourist destination and film capital. The group pushed for widening streets such as Cahuenga, La Brea, and other major thoroughfares to help disperse growing traffic problems. They advocated for a tunnel to better connect Hollywood with the San Fernando Valley and to help alleviate the congested conditions in the Cahuenga corridor. The group planted trees to beautify the city and helped construct parks to add recreational opportunities. The Chamber worked to clean up the film business by reporting and closing bogus movie schools, “talent” firms, and writing scams.

The Chamber’s headquarters at 6520 Sunset Blvd. opened its doors to virtually every local organization to hold meetings in its auditorium, which could seat 400 people. The Chamber hosted a screening of King Vidor’s “The Jack-Knife Man for the Hollywood Film Guild on October 9, 1926. On January 1, 1927, the building hosted the Hollywood Business Men’s Club, which sponsored a presentation about constructing a proposed Mission Playhouse in San Gabriel. Several religious groups met in the auditorium, from Buddhists to Uplifters to Lutherans to Humanists.

From February 19 to March 16, 1935, the Chamber hosted an art exhibition free to the public. May 10, 1939, the Chamber hosted a presentation by actor/director Irving Pichel and writer Michael Blankfort on the history of motion picture production. On December 9, 1939 the Chamber’s auditorium hosted a rally Against Nazism, with the consuls of Czechoslovakia and Poland appearing, along Reverend Peter Samson of the Unitarian Church.

Smaller groups also conducted meetings or luncheons in other rooms at the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, or even set up offices. The Los Angeles Realty Board honored real estate man Harry Culver with a luncheon March 9, 1927. The Hollywood branch of the Los Angeles Realty Board began operating a office in the building September 8, 1926. The State Railroad Commission presented Los Angeles area hearings in the organization’s headquarters.

On December 9, 1939, the county tax assessor opened one of 34 branch offices in the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The IRS opened an office here in 1947 in which to assist Hollywood residents in completing their tax returns. The USO operated an office out of the facility during World War II, while the building hosted the Veterans Service Center in 1946. In 1951, the Hollywood Committee for Civil Defense operated out of the building.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce even allowed a wide variety of entertainment related labor groups to hold meetings or rallies in their auditorium 6250 Sunset Blvd., including the Screen Writers’ Guild, the American Society of Cinematography, the Screen Directors’ Guild, Local 659 of Cameramen, Motion Picture Engineers, OPEIU, and IATSE. The Chamber seemed to operate as an equal opportunity facility.

On May 1, 1965, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved spending over $100,00 to lease larger space in the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Building for the County Tax Assessor for 10 years.

The Hollywood Chamber decided in 1976 that it would be more economical to lease office space rather than to own their headquarters. They decided to sell, allowing a new company to come in and adaptively reuse the space. On June 27, Schaeffer Photo and Camera Supply Co. purchased the facility and opened it as their new Hollywood branch. The company developed film, sold supplies, repaired equipment, mixed chemicals, processed motion picture film, all with a staff of 20.

As film faded away, Larson Studios, a post production audio mixing facility, moved in. They recognized the impressive facade could lend an historic and luxurious ambiance to their business.

These examples of adaptive reuse show the resilience and strength of older buildings – eye-catching architecture that still serves a purpose. If such a building possesses some type of landmark status, owners can receive tax rebates through the Mills Act to restore and rehabilitate the buildings, a win for everyone.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Building at 6520 Sunset Blvd., constructed during one of the premier architectural booms in Hollywood during the 1920s-1930s, reflects the confidence and ambition of the period. The building demonstrates how glorious design continues to inspire those who enter it, even today.

Picture City, as shown in Exhibitors Trade Review.

The madcap Jazz Age bubbled with possibility, exploding mores and conventions as it raced to the next new thing, the next adventure. After the harrowing days of the Great War and the economic depression that followed, America dropped inhibitions and often propriety, during the Roaring Twenties, drinking, dancing, and gambling away the blues.

Schemes and scams mushroomed as people scrambled to double their money and ride the wave of prosperity. Real estate rode the peaks and valleys of land booms and bubbles, developments skyrocketing in popularity one day, and bankrupt the next.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

  Picture City advertised in Variety, 1925.

The state of Florida exemplified the real estate boom, exploding in population in the early 1920s, fed by land speculation. Americans who now possessed disposable income visited the Sunshine State, enjoying its sandy beaches and relaxing resorts. Dog and horse racing fueled rising gambling profits, and the repeal of state income and inheritance taxes drew large numbers of new residents. Real estate speculators employed Florida’s rising popularity to devise elaborate themed developments which employed popular architecture and industries as their hooks. These hooks would draw land gamblers looking for their next jackpot.

In 1925, developers launched Picture City, Florida, as the East Coast’s answer to motion picture mecca Hollywood. Taking over Malcolm Meehan’s 8,000 acres of the former Gomez Grant land in Hobe Sound, Florida from the Olympia Improvement Corporation, New York investors Charles Apfel and Felix Isman envisioned a grand Xanadu of film occupying the site, one filled with giant studios and mega stars.

The promised land, the former Gomez Grant, Fruita Salerno property, and Olympia Investment Corporation, just twenty miles north of Palm Beach, spread four miles along the Atlantic Ocean, the highest point between Key West and Jacksonville, Florida, surrounded by three railroad stations and a further two on the way, and boasted river frontage, the Dixie Highway, and abundantly sunny weather.

Olympia’s proposed development featured avenues graced with Greek god names, but Apfel and Isman renamed their sunny streets after famous movie stars and studios to gild the prospects of their fledgling enterprise. They employed the old razzle dazzle in ballyhooing their project far and wide. Billboard magazine reported on July 18, 1925 that the magnates were blanketing the motion picture industry, stars, and newspapers with maps of Picture City or Sun City.

On July 26, the Syracuse Herald featured a story listing all the celebrity street names of the proposed town. Studio Boulevard, the main thoroughfare, delivered drivers to streets devoted to studios, like Paramount Place, Fox Place, Christie Drive, First National Drive, Goldwyn Drive, Pathe Place, Metro Drive, and Universal Drive, as well as top Hollywood movie stars: (John) Barrymore Drive, (Betty) Blythe Avenue, (Lon) Chaney Drive, (Charles) Chaplin Drive, (Betty) Compson Circle, (Douglas) Fairbanks Drive, (Thomas) Ince Drive, (Pauline) Garon Avenue, (D. W. ) Griffith Avenue, (Harold) Lloyd Drive, (Thomas) Meighan Drive, (Alla) Nazimova Avenue, (Marshall) Neilan Drive, (Olga) Petrova Circle, (Mary) Pickford Avenue, (Norma) Shearer Avenue, (Constance & Norma) Talmadge Avenue, (Alice) Terry Drive, and (King) Vidor Avenue. Pickford Avenue, Fairbanks Drive, Chaplin Drive, and Talmadge Avenue circled and bisected each other, some of the largest streets in the project.

The Hide-A-Way RV Resort on Chaney Drive in Ruskin, Fla., via Google Street View.

In August, the New York Times described the property as America’s new Deauville, an exclusive seaside resort with property costing $1,500 an acre for six days before rising to $1,750 an acre, with 10% down required upon signing a contract. The developers blanketed New York and New England newspapers with huge advertisements promoting their Shangri-La, noting their modern improvements, transportation opportunities, breathtaking views, and affordable homes costing $11,000 and up. The Philadelphia newspaper played up the modern facilities soon to be erected: ice plant, light factories, water facilities, up-to-date infrastructure, turning Picture City into a winter playground for snow-bound Easterners.

On September 2, a newspaper wire story reported that such celebrities as Fanny Hurst, writer, William McAdoo, former United States official, Governor Martin of Florida, and leading professors from Columbia, New York, and the University of Georgia, and leading sports figures had all purchased plots in the development.

Film Daily announced on September 16 that producer Lewis J. Selznick believed great things would come out of the area, taking over 250 acres in the former Olympia property on which to construct a world class, high visibility motion picture studio, one to put any Hollywood studio to shame.

On October 10, Billboard stated that Ossinow Brothers of New York and Philadelphia would serve as contractor, with Charles G. Hancock serving as engineer and Leo P. Keene serving as publicity director. Stephen Gooson, former art director for Pickford and Talmadge Studios, would serve as architect for the elaborate stage. Workers would soon stake off boundaries for the large sate, with the foundation to be laid in a few weeks in order to complete construction and open in June 1926. Many more studios were planned to follow.

Selznick, in financial straits due to following the dying practice of selling states’ rights to films instead of establishing his own distribution network, hoped to use the project as a lifeline to revive the family’s flagging production interests and reestablish them as major moving picture players. Selling himself and the project for dear life, his hyperbole suggested grand possibilities for Picture City, and for the producing prospects of he and his sons Myron and David Selznick.

“We are to have the largest studio in the world and we plan to start taking motion pictures early next summer. We will have also a modern and fully equipped laboratory. I can safely predict that Florida will in time be the real motion picture center of the country.”

Vidor Avenue in Sun City, Fla., via Google Street View.

While Selznick talked a great game, his finances were imploding, sending the family into monetary morass. By December they were out. At the same time, the real estate market began crumbling in Florida as over speculation and virtual pyramid schemes blew up day by day. Railroads could not keep up with building material delivery, cost of living prices soared, and an abnormally cold winter deterred many potential buyers.

On November 30, New York real estate magnates reorganized the real estate scheme with capitalization of $20,000 at their offices at 522 Fifth Avenue, announcing they intended to carry out the construction plans for building the huge studio. They acquired the full 10,000 acres in the area, including Jupiter School. Lawyer Charles Apfel would continue to serve as president, though newspaper reports were hinting that former law partners threatened to sue him. Felix Isman continued to serve as an executive, K. B. Conger acted as Construction Supervisor, and Joseph P. Day served as salesman.

Isman feverishly promoted the project to keep money flowing. He told the December 13 Los Angeles Times, “The boom in Florida and California lands is a matter of climate. The American people at last recognize the beauty of perpetual summer and perpetual sunshine. A land where there is no winter. What happiness!”

Within months however, gloomy sales darkened the Florida real estate market, causing ballooning land sales to burst. Large investors pulled out what they could while small investors lost much if not all of their bets.

By July 27, 1926, the Los Angeles Times described abandoned and overrun Florida real estate developments, virtual cemeteries of broken dreams. Ghost towns, most sat desolate, with only real estate billboards filling their horizons. The Times noted that billboards promoting Picture City remained, exclaiming, “Prize Development, and “You are now entering Picture City.”Once considered glamorous and elegant, Picture City sat empty of buildings, but contained an abundance of palm and pine trees, along with 6,000 empty lots.

Picture City reverted to the Olympia Investment Corporation, losing any hope of becoming America’s new film capital. The area is now virtually fully developed, but devoid of any entertainment industrial production or connection, save for a few celebrities who live nearby. While never constructed, it still reveals America’s fascination with glamour and celebrity, still popular branding tools to this day.

Maurine Watkins, in an ad promoting Fox studios’ writers in the Motion Picture Herald. 

Journalism and screenwriting have one thing in common: telling a good story in order to get the audience hooked. Both depend on excellent observation, character development, and a telling phrase to really keep readers’ and viewers’ interest. Maurine Watkins learned a lifetime of storytelling skills in her six months as a crime reporter for The Chicago Tribune in 1924, talents she would employ as screenwriter for various Hollywood studios in the 1930s and 1940s after writing one of the most important plays of the 1920s, “Chicago.”

Born July 27, 1896 in Louisville, Kentucky, prim, pretty Maurine Watkins, the daughter of a preacher for the Christian Church, excelled in her schoolwork. Disciplined and precocious, she wrote her first play, “The Heart of God,” at 15, and co-founded her high school newspaper. She entered Transylvania University, affiliated with the Disciples of Christ to study Greek and Latin languages and the Bible, before graduating from Butler University. Watkins next entered Radcliffe for graduate work in the classics before switching to playwriting under long time professor George Pierce Baker.

Phyllis Haver in “Chicago.”

He suggested students use their talents to make the world better in some fashion. Maurine dropped out of school and decided to combine her writing skills with her Christianity to gently preach morality, hopefully at a major newspaper covering the crime beat. Taking her chances, she wrote a strong letter to Tribune city editor Robert M. Lee, who scheduled an interview with her, though most women in journalism at the time covered only the female angle. Stunned at her old-fashioned and simple appearance though Impressed with her gumption and strong moral fiber, Lee hired her February 1, 1924 for the police beat, believing her soft vulnerability and petite size would help grieving families open up and confide telling details of their loved ones to her.

During this time, Chicago newspapers competed for the most readers by featuring the most scandalous, attention-grabbing stories and headlines they could spread across the front page. If a little added color or spice could jazz the story, more was even better. The toddling town was drowning in crime at this time, not only from rival gangs gunning down others over alcohol smuggling but also from red hot jazz mamas shooting their lovers/boyfriends/husbands in cold blood.

Watkins spent her first few weeks covering petty crimes and car crashes at local police stations, but hit it lucky one night when twice-divorced saloon singer and socialite Belva Gaertner was hauled in after shooting her lover to death in her car, an empty gin bottle and gun found at his feet. Drunk after a night of partying, Gaertner was found with blood-soaked clothes in her apartment, admitting she was drunk but couldn’t remember what happened. Watkins would thus describe Belva, “”whose pursuit of wine, men, and jazz music was interrupted by her glibness with the trigger finger.”

She joined several other women on murderer’s row in Chicago’s main jail, all locked up for murder. A few days later they were joined by stunning Beulah Annan, a young but manipulative married woman who shot her lover in cold blood in her own apartment while both were drunk and while a jaunty tune played on the Victrola. Annan confessed three times in less than 24 hours, each a different telling of who did what, coldly calculating.

“The Strange Love of Molly Louvain,” Photoplay.

Her good looks earned her the most important slots on Chicago’s front pages, as well as the most publicity of all the women in the joint, taking away Gaertner’s role as top dog. Watkins called her “…the prettiest woman ever accused of murder in Chicago.” When Annan realized her story was pushed off the front pages by another woman’s crime, she conveniently claimed she was pregnant. The jailed women quickly learned how to play the game of publicity, flirting with journalists, dropping telling phrases, employing makeup and fashion consultants, all to gain the most news space in a state where juries contained only men, hoping to win themselves freedom with their beauty, brains, or braggadocio.

Watkins quickly found the entire journalism and legal systems rotten to the core – publicity hungry inmates, shyster lawyers, corrupt police, the sob sister press, and sex-crazed juries out for their 15 minutes of fame. Fame seemed to be an aphrodisiac in Chicago at the time – with all members of these dirty little circles addicted to keeping their names in print. She played up these aspects in her front page stories. As she wrote after Annan was first arrested, “Thursday afternoon Mrs. Annan played ‘Hula Lou’ on the phonograph while the wooer she had shot during a drunken quarrel lay dying in her bedroom.”

From the moment she realized the sleaziness of the crime game in Chicago, Watkins employed her strong writing skills to puncture the hypocrisy and sordidness of the situation, hoping to open readers’ eyes to a better way of living. Unlike most female crime reporters who focused on the poor little victim, the murderer sitting in jail, Watkins saw through the superficial charms of Annan and Gaertner, playing up their unsympathetic natures. She used derision of those who chased notoriety and sensation rather than what really mattered. With male reporters, she put down the women murderers as “little sisters of Lady MacBeth, Salome, and Lucrezia Borgia,” as reported by the book, “Girls of Murder City.”

Ann Dvorak in “The Strange Love of Molly Louvain,” Picture Play.

Her sarcastic, cynical tone played up the cunning, black cores of Annan and Gaertner, and Watkins was stunned when the all male juries bought the incredulous stories of the two women, freeing them. Though she covered a few more trials, including Leopold and Loeb’s, Watkins was transferred to movie criticism after only six months on the crime beat.

Soon tiring of that, she moved on to the newly opened Yale School of Drama, studying playwriting under Baker, her old professor. Watkins had already begun a ripped from the headlines version of Annan and Gaertner’s trials, which she was calling “The Brave Little Woman.” Watkins liberally quoted from her own stories, employed testimony and dialogue straight from the trials, even copying some of the telling details about the two women, now called Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly.

Impressed with Watkins’ final product, Baker sent it off to top theatre producer Sam Harris, who quickly bought it and changed the name to “Chicago.” The dark satire earned rave reviews on Broadway and played to packed houses when it opened in 1926. Novelist Rupert Hughes considered it an important work, a story both profound and powerful for how it captured the zeitgeist of the period, with its hilarious but pointed zingers hitting the ugliness of society right on target.

A female Billy Wilder, Watkins sometimes bitter, sometimes cynical words slashed the hypocrisy and and calculation of all involved, employing the sometimes gutter language of participants, a rarity at the time. She herself acted as an extra in courtroom scenes in the show, and even understudied some of the roles. Her first play became a cultural phenomenon.

“Chicago” played to standing room audiences in its namesake, earning accolades as well as knowing winks from audience goers. The play ran 11 weeks at Hollywood’s Music Box Theatre in March and April 1927, with a young Nancy Carroll starring as the plotting Roxie and a young Clark Gable making an appearance.

The March 25 Los Angeles Times described it as “bristling with wicked satire,” featuring beautiful women “getting away with murder,” and stated its satire focused on people “famous for being famous,” celebrity paparazzi, sob sister press, publicity mad jurists and attorneys, all reveling in the orgy of notoriety. Times also wrote, “The public is treated to a caricature of itself as a nation of gum-chewing, sensation-seeking addicts who must incessantly be fed faked pictures and hysterical interviews,” all long before Confidential, National Enquirer, Entertainment Tonight, and TMZ came on the screen.

An ad for “Up the River.”

Cecil B. DeMille bought the rights to the play, producing it under the direction of Frank Urson and shooting it in Chicago itself. Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty Phyllis Haver enacted the role of the soused but sordid Roxie Hart, this time abandoned by her strong, upstanding husband, a part rewritten for the screen. Haver called it one of the best of her career, a meaty part unlike any she had been given before. While some reviews pointed out the cleaning up of the role, others found the movie bracing and stinging, with some calling it “the sensation of 1928.”

Unfortunately, Watkins’ attempts at further playwriting fell flat. Her adaptation of Samuel Hopkins’ novel, “Revelry,” “…the story of political corruption, …showing the disastrous consequences which can befall when chance and the democratic catapult a small-time politician into the Presidency,” per Alexander Woollcott’s March 6, 1927 review in the Los Angeles Times, closed on the road. Many called it flat and odd. She stopped working on other adaptations, too overloaded. No play of hers ever reached Broadway again. Watkins turned to short stories in solace.

She soon found a way to turn what she knew of the criminal justice system, journalism, and human nature into a profitable enterprise – writing for the screen. The Fox Film Corporation brought Maurine Watkins to the West Coast in May 1930 to adapt “Up the River,” a dark but hilarious melodrama off prison life starring new to the screen Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy, directed by John Ford. Film Daily stated it contained sparking dialogue in a story about criminals escaping from prison to help a former prisoner in trouble. Reviews called it “a clever and amusing satire” as well as “refreshingly different from all the others.”

Watkins began adapting others’ plays as well for the screen. She adapted “Doctors’ Wives” for Frank Borzage at Fox, which Film Daily called “Original as sin and as rare as virtue,” a good “gin and tonic” for the soul, and also worked on reshaping Preston Sturges’ stage play, “Child of Manhattan.”

Watkins continued to write plays, only to see them purchased by studios for adapting into films. Warner Bros. acquired her play “Tinsel Lady,” before eventually retitling it “The Strange Love of Molly Louvain.” Young sensation Ann Dvorak was cast in the lead opposite fast-talking Lee Tracy, as a scandal-sheet reporter in the story of a woman who falls for the wrong men and almost fails in the attempt to make something of her life before a reporter saves the day. It too once again featured brash, sarcastic reporters fighting tooth and nail to nail top stories, even if it required fudging the facts or inventing juicy details.

“Play Girl,” in Screenland.

Maurine worked freelance, moving from studio to studio whenever one purchased her works or hired her to rewrite others into a more cynical, hard-nosed style. Over the next several years, Watkins adapted or wrote for the screen such works as “No Man of Her Own” starring Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, “The Story of Temple Drake” starring Miriam Hopkins, and “Search for Beauty,” featuring a young Buster Crabbe and Ida Lupino. Her sarcastic and snide words perfectly fit the Pre-Code era, in which most people sought to get themselves ahead at any cost, damn the consequences.

In 1933 Watkins wrote “Professional Sweetheart” for RKO, which featured Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster in a black hearted look at the radio industry. The story burlesqued radio sponsored shows that employed artful publicity to create myths about the show’s performers which actually contradicted their real lives. Rogers played “The Purity Girl” for Ippsie Wiippsie Wash Cloth Radio Hour, a perfect lady who neither smoke, drank, partied, or even dated. She vows to break her contract unless given the opportunity to find a real sweetheart and live an independent life. The show sets her up with the man who becomes her sweetheart, which leads to all sorts of complications before the happy ending.

In 1936, MGM hired her to help write the “Libeled Lady” screenplay, in which another fast talking newspaperman fending off a possible libel suit hatches a scheme with his jilted fiancee and lawyer to arrange sham marriages. Four of MGM’s top names – William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, and Jean Harlow – starred in the film, a breezy, witty story of deception, love, and romance. Motion Picture Daily called it a “semi-sophisticated, hokum-tinged farce comedy, noting its brisk, fast, sparkling fun. Watkins artfully employed what she knew of the journalism and legal fields to skewer both reporters and attorneys who worked to manipulate the system.

Over the next few years, she helped adapt “Saratoga” and “Too Hot to Handle” for MGM before penning “I Love You Again” for MGM, another frothy concoction combining love, romance, mistaken identity, and amnesia featuring MGM’s top romantic couple on screen, William Powell and Myrna Loy.

At the same time, Fox began remaking some of her earlier work. In 1939, the studio remade “Up the River,” this time with Preston Foster, Tony Martin, and Slim Summerville. Their 1942 version of “Chicago,” called “Roxie Hart,” cleaned up the story to pass the Production Code, converting Roxie into an innocent, put up victim and making her husband the cold-blooded killer. Though Ginger Rogers and Adolphe Menjou give fine performances, the film turns the real story on its head.

“The Story of Temple Drake,” in Close Up.

Slowly over the years, Maurine Watkins reached the conclusion she didn’t fit in in Hollywood. Her politics and values differed from most of the people in the industry. Writer Tony Slide’s book, “It’s the Pictures That Got Small,” a compilation of screenwriter Charles Brackett’s diaries, reveals that on May 8, 1936 he asked her about joining the Screen Writers Guild. Watkins replied she’d better not, as she was “a rabid Nazi and Jew hater.” She might have used black humor to evade the situation or indeed indulged in deplorable values.

After the travesty of the 1942 “Roxie Hart,” Watkins abandoned Hollywood and screenwriting, moving to Florida to live near her aging parents. A practicing Christian her whole life, she began promoting and providing scholarships in Greek and Bible studies to various universities. She never married, enjoying her independence and believing she wasn’t the marrying type. Over the years, Watkins turned down various individuals seeking to buy the rights to “Chicago” for new theatrical productions. Several years after her death, her family finally sold theatrical rights to Bob Fosse, who recognized the biting look at societal mores, realizing how little had changed. He created a splendid musical version of the work, one which revealed the cold-hearted values of the two female killers, a musical considered a classic today.

Maurine Watkins attempted to use her writing talents and spiritual values in her works to point out society flaws and suggest a better way of living. She achieved lasting fame with her play, “Chicago,” one which zooms in on the gullibility and immaturity of people seeking out sensation and notoriety, and those who lust after the superficiality and nothingness of these matters instead of focusing on real life issues.

   “Take Your Girlie to the Movies,” as recorded by Billy Murray, 1919.

Popular songs often speak to issues of the period in which they are written, providing commentary on political, social, and cultural issues. Most of the songs in the early twentieth century focused on themes in the zeitgeist: the Great War (World War I), Hawaii, Egypt, communication, transportation, entertainment, and even suffrage. Some combined these topics, often in humorous ways.

In the summer of 1919, people had much to celebrate. The Great War had finally ended on November 11, 1918 and the world was slowly adjusting to a hard fought peace. After more than a year, the Great Influenza Epidemic had run its course after killing more people worldwide than all those lost in battle over the previous four years. On June 4, 1919, the United States Senate passed the Suffrage Act, better known as the Anthony Amendment following the House of Representatives’ action a few weeks earlier. The Amendment passed on to state legislatures, finally ratified a year later.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

Movies saw huge crowds return to theaters after many were shut down during the Flu Epidemic. Many people finally felt free and relaxed enough to laugh after struggling through years of war and health scares. At the same time, vast numbers of couples saw moving picture theatres as a popular courting site, free of family and friend interference.

Before the War, courtship was strictly managed by families. Men called at a girl’s home to spend an evening visiting her, while her family remained to chaperone activities. Until just a few years before, even social events outside the home featured supervision to ensure girls remained chaste and pure. Possibly walking to or from an event might be the only time a young couple could steal a few quiet moments alone to enjoy a quick kiss or embrace. With more young women gaining independence after the war, attending movies often became a way to enjoy a little physical romance of the petting persuasion.

Composers Edgar Leslie and Bert Kalmar combined romance and movies in their hit comedic song, “Take Your Girlie to the Movies” in the summer of 1919. Leslie, a writer-for-hire, worked with many other musicians to create songs such as “For Me and My Gal” and “California and You.” Vaudevillian Bert Kalmar drifted into composing in 1911 to help write songs for his comedic act, long before he began his long, fruitful association with Harry Ruby.

Popular illustrator Albert Barbelle designed a catchy and ironic sheet music cover, showing two romantic couples eying a loving pair onscreen at a local movie palace. While the onscreen Romeo puckered up for a kiss, the two sheiks in the audience tightly embraced their red hot mamas in preparation for a little loving.

The humorous lyrics play up the film theatre’s darkness as the perfect petting opportunity.

Take your girlie to the movies,

If you can’t make love at home;

There’s no little brother there who always squeals;

You can say an awful lot in seven reels;

Take your lessons at the movies,

And have love scenes of your own,

When the picture’s over and it’s time to leave,

Don’t forget to brush the powder off your sleeve;

Take your girlie to the movies,

If you can’t make love at home.

The problem of “petting,” as explored in the New Castle News of New Castle, Pa., Nov. 5, 1925. 

To help set the mood, Leslie and Kalmar introduce popular cultural elements throughout the piece that play up movies as well as newspapers. Their patter begins with the name of Beatrice Fairfax, one of the first advice columnists of her day, a hook employed by the Wharton Brothers in 1916 in their episodic moving picture serial entitled “Beatrice Fairfax.” Near the end, they mention attractive young actress Billie Burke, who we now know as the Glenda the Good Witch in “the Wizard of Oz.” They also feel free to joke about the flu, writing the line “Don’t catch influenza kissing in the park.”

“Take Your Girlie to the Movies” quickly caught on with the American public rising to the top of the charts, both in sheet music and in records, through September. Columbia Records’ advertisements in a wide variety of newspapers note its availability at music stores and department stores, with promotions running through the fall of 1920.

Vaudeville performers quickly began performing it, liking its catchy lyrics and melody. Edna Goodrich and Harry Watson Jr. performed it in a revue at the Palace Theatre June 19, 1919 in a section called “Topics of the Day.” The act consisted of a few popular songs followed by a film monologue and then the song, “Take Your Girlie to the Movies.” The Avon Comedy Four employed it as part of their act in 1920 as part of a skit called “At the Movies.” Muriel Hudson and Wilson & Larson performed the song as well.

The New York Evening World quoted the title in a November 27, 1920 story about the housing shortage, describing families and others cooped up in residences and boarding houses, thanks to more working girls heading off on their own. Because of this, the most private place for a makeup session was often a dark motion picture theatre.

In 1922, Syracuse, New York banned the song when the Syracuse Theatrical Management Association “decreed local picture houses as a lovers’ retreat is taboo and forbidden.” Exhibitors issued instructions to managers and ushers “to put the lid on mush.” Some suggested creating signs or making announcements before screenings about not practicing what you see on screen simultaneously.

“Take Your Girlie to the Movies,” recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford, listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $12.49.

The November 5, 1925 Newcastle News mentioned the song in a ironic take on petting and romance among young couples, noting how film theaters were sometimes the only place where a couple could find a little privacy for romance, describing how standards were loosening and changing. “The youth of today are an experimental lot. They are eager to discover the things they should have been told. Petting parties are experiments, delving deeper and deeper into the realms of the senses until caution hangs out the danger sign.”

Over the years, more problems with couples petting and making out arose, with the December 4, 1937 Showman’s Trade Review reporting a problem of necking in film theatres, something many surrounding patrons found annoying. They suggested ushers inform their managers, who would then approach the offending couples to suggest they dial down their actions.

Some people quickly realized the great publicity bent of the song in attracting audiences to the movies. Hyman Potts in a February 7, 1926 letter to Variety called it “a singing commercial for the movies,” noting how many radio stations were employing it in catching jingles promoting moviegoing.

Variety reported in a December 2, 1930 story that Detroit’s Fisher Theatre created a pre-show ad featuring performing Lou Kosloff describing bringing a girl to the movies by singing the song, followed by large production number featuring a chorus performing to the song. Kay Kyser’s band recorded “Take Your Girlie to the Movies” in 1935 in what Variety called “his ultra-modern jazz style,” leading several theatres to use a short clip in radio ads promoting their upcoming shows. In the 1940s, some claimed the song had stimulated more business than any song ever written.

While a few more groups recorded “Take Your Girlie to the Movies” in the 1940s and 1950s, the song was virtually forgotten by the 1960s. A piece of nostalgia for some, the tune happily joins movies and romance, something that carries on to this day.

Las Palmas Market, 1259 N. Las Palmas Ave., via Google Street View.

While architectural styles have changed over the centuries, the use of buildings has remained virtually unchanged, meaning an older bank building can still function as a bank, a restaurant can remain a dining establishment, and so on. Most retail and commercial buildings can remain financially viable for centuries, operating as originally intended or by adaptive reuse into other businesses, thus revealing history at the same time. Grocery stores most often seem to continue operating for decades, serving the neighborhoods around which they were constructed. Two 100 year-old markets continue to serve their neighborhoods here in Los Angeles, just as they did when first opened.

Las Palmas Market, built in 1912 and located at 1259 N. Las Palmas Ave. in Hollywood as part of the Strong and Dickinson’s Hollywood High School Tract, still serves as a local market. When first constructed at the intersection of Las Palmas and Fountain Avenue two blocks east of Highland Avenue, it served the tiny community of citrus farmers which surrounded it known as Colegrove. More prosperous residents resided in the more upscale community of Hollywood, just a few blocks north. The approximate 1000 square foot wood frame structure was built at a cost of $1,500 per the Los Angeles County Tax Assessor’s site, with the store located on the first floor and a residence on the second. The original owner remains unknown. As with most small markets, the store sold meats, dry goods, home products, and produce to patrons.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

The market continued to serve the growing and evolving neighborhood over the years, as what had been farm land was subdivided to construct residences for persons flocking to Hollywood. Small bungalows, duplexes, and bungalow courts sprung up around it as a wave of immigration descended on Hollywood thanks to the burgeoning motion picture industry. Many rented the small homes, while others purchased a residence for the first time.

In 1923, Eugene B. Charbonneau operated the market and also sold meats per the Los Angeles Telephone Directory, while also operating a store at 1153 N. La Brea Avenue. By 1925 he sold to William F. Schanbacher, and in 1928, Frank Wentzel operated the market.

Bob’s Market appears in the background in “L.A. Confidential.” From Left, Ed Exley (Guy Pearce)  and Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) question a boxer played by Robert Barry Fleming. 

The little market remained virtually intact until 1936, when the Board of Health required the original wood floor to be replaced with concrete, per a 1936 building permit. The store front was also slightly altered by owner Shirley Klier per the permit application. Per a November 22, 1937 permit, new owner Sam Winecoff installed an awning out front of the Class D structure. In 1940, Winecoff replaced some of the wood exterior and plaster interior and squared the facade as he continuing making improvements to better serve the needs of customers. A 1947 permit to add 2.6’ x 26’ storage structure to the side of the building noted that the structure had served as a store for over 25 years. The 1976 Daily Variety noted that the building operated as the Las Fountain Liquor Store for a time.

While small alterations or improvements have been made over the years, the 104 year-old 1259 Las Palmas still serves the public as a market. While records don’t appear to exist to indicate whether it appeared in a motion picture in its early years, the store did appear in a 2012 episode of “Southland,” serving as an inner city market under its own name.

Bob’s Market, 1230 Bellevue Ave., via Google Street View.

At 1230 Bellevue Avenue, Bob’s Market still continues as an Angelino Heights grocery store after 103 years in operation. One of Los Angeles’ first suburbs, Angelino Heights is one of the few intact neighborhoods in the city from the Victorian era. Developed by William W. Stilson and Everett E. Hall on a hill two miles northwest of downtown in the 1880s, Angelino Heights served as a respectable, upper middle class neighborhood for genteel, upwardly mobile people, a veritable melting pot almost from its beginnings.

The September 20, 1902 Los Angeles Times notes a nine-room house costing $1,000 for sale by Mitchell, Black & Co. at 1234 Bellevue Avenue, the original address for the site. Big Orange Landmarks states that owner Mrs. Ella Jane Millen hired architect George E. Colterison in 1913 to design a Mission Revival store with some Oriental touches at the six-point intersection, past which wagons, trolleys, streetcars, and even automobiles passed, replacing the demolished home. Contractor Peter A. Holmberg constructed the $3,500, 36’ x 72’ building composed of “two stoors (sic) and flats” of six rooms, per the original permit.

One of the first tenants to occupy part of the site in 1914 was tailor Levon Melkonian, a refugee from the Armenian Genocide. Frank E. Sandberg operated a grocery at 1234 Bellevue in 1916, soon replaced by Erik Holmen in 1917. By 1921, Lewis Vogel ran a market at this location, in partnership with Schelle in 1925. Like the Las Palmas Market, it sold dry goods, produce, meats, and the like.

In 1926, Abram Koper and his wife Miriam took over operations, running the bodega through 1936, with minor alterations like installing accordion doors to the front of the structure in 1930 and adding a screen porch in back in 1932. Some time in this period, Fred and Nelly Baalberger conducted a cleaning business in the half formerly occupied by Melkonian, taken over by the Kopers in 1934 as well.

While the Kopers continued owning the building, Abraham Kroman and his wife operated the market from 1938 until 1942, when it served as Harry Weiner’s Fairview Market. In 1947, Miriam Koper applied for a permit to remove the partition separating the two stores, and the structure has operated solely as a market since that time. Permits note M. J. Shifrin as owner in 1950, and by 1954, Earl Childers ran the grocery, all under the name Fairview Market. The Los Angeles telephone book notes a change in name to Ben’s Market in 1960 after purchase by Ben Nakasone. It now operates as Bob’s Market, after its purchase in 1965 by Bob Nimura and his wife Keiko.

On June 6, 1979, Bob’s Market was named Los Angeles’ Historic Cultural Landmark  No. 215 for its many decades of service as a grocery store/market, with little alteration to the main building.

As with the Las Palmas Market, Bob’s has appeared onscreen as well, first in the movie “Los Angeles Confidential” and “Salton Sea,” then most recently as the mom and pop Toretto’s Market in the first “The Fast and the Furious” installment, run by Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his sister and where they meet the character played by the late actor Paul Walker.

With proper care and attention, older buildings can continue to function and serve the public as attended, just like Bob’s Market and Las Palmas Market. These stores also show how small businesses built to serve a niche in a local community still remain important to those areas today. This is what historic preservation is all about, not only revealing a city’s historic past, but keeping a building economically viable for future generations.

Ida Lupino promotes Easter in 1934, with the Zahn building in the background.

What was intended strictly as a publicity photo promoting young actress Ida Lupino celebrating the Easter season on a large rabbit outside Desmond’s Department Store leads to a fascinating history regarding the building seen in the background. Some buildings are remembered for their gorgeous architecture, others for the influential people that visited the structure, and some for life-changing events that occurred inside their doors. The H.N. Zahn building, still proudly standing at 5480 Wilshire Blvd., is remarkable for how its owners pushed what today is called spot zoning, a scourge on current development around Los Angeles.

Zahn’s father, Johann (J. C.) Zahn, was born in Prussia in 1822. He studied medicine and earned a fortune before immigrating to Australia and establishing a mission there, giving it to the state. After making another fortune, he and his wife immigrated to San Francisco and later came to Los Angeles, independently wealthy. He invested in real estate in California, Nevada, and Utah, and founded churches, such as the First German Methodist Episcopal Church downtown.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

An artist’s concept of the building, Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1930.

Hector Nathan, the youngest of five sons, was born August 8, 1878 on Spring Street, in what later became the site of the Title Insurance and Trust Building. He worked for the family’s corporation in various places like their mining company in Utah and Camp in Nevada over the years before beginning investing in real estate himself, in and out of the courts over various land matters over the years.

The Los Angeles Times reported on January 26, 1904, he was sued by Grant Burkett, who claimed that Zahn “alienated the affections” of his wife, asking for $25,000 from both Zahn and his mother, before asking that she be dropped from the suit. Burkett claimed Zahn took unchaperoned buggy rides with his wife, gave her gifts, and the like. Zahn stated on the record that Burkett was a “heavy drinker” and abused his wife. Hector eventually married Kathryn after the Burketts divorced and they had him arrested for perjury, claiming that he had asked for money before filing the suit, which was dropped by the courts.

Zahn began purchasing real estate around Los Angeles, including acreage along what would become Wilshire Boulevard, stretching from Cochran to Dunsmuir Avenues. At this time, grand homes lined Wilshire, a veritable “Millionaires Row,” but development was gradually overtaking residential closer to downtown.

On October 18, 1921, the Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance creating five types of building zones, indicating what types of structures could be constructed in each zone. Zone A provided only the construction of single-family homes, Zone B allowed hotels, dwellings, apartments, Zone C proscribed only retail/wholesale establishments, Zone D allowed industries and factories, while Zone E was devoted to any lawful use. The Zahn/Ross land lay outside the boundaries of Los Angeles at this time.

The Zahn building, as shown by Google Street View.

The City Council annexed the tract in this area to the city on February 28, 1922, and amended the ordinance in September, placing most of the land in this area to Zone B, and putting land around La Brea Avenue in Zone C.

Ross and Zahn filed an application with the city to declare an exemption to their property in this tract and allow it to be zoned for commercial purposes. The Public Works Commission turned down their request, stating that “we believe that Wilshire Boulevard is destined to become a show street when widened and beautified as contemplated and the encroachment of business upon this boulevard is at this time unnecessary and would be a great detriment to the future residential development of this thoroughfare and we therefore recommend that the request be denied and filed.” The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved their recommendation.

On July 25, 1923, the two men applied for a permit to build a one-story retail building on their property. Zahn petitioned to the City Council, requesting an exception to build his commercial structure, while A.W. Ross petitioned them to allow commercial construction along Wilshire west of La Brea Avenue. The city refused, keeping the area zoned B, a decision supported by the majority of residents in the area.

Zahn and Ross appealed to the California Supreme Court who referred the case to the Appellate Court, claiming the city’s actions were illegal in that “Its operation amounts to confiscation and taking away of property without due process of law,” per the August 23, 1923, Los Angeles Times. This was a test case regarding a city’s right to establish zoning throughout its boundaries.

The Appellate Court ruled the city’s zoning laws valid, and Ross and Zahn appealed to the State Supreme Court, which ruled for the city, per the March 28, 1925 Times, “that the zoning of its territory for building purposes is a proper exercise by the city of its police powers.” The two men requested a rehearing, denied by the Court.

Ross and Zahn appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled for the city of Los Angeles May 16, 1927, stating that cities had the right to enact zoning restrictions throughout their municipalities.

Zahn tried anything to turn the districts into commercial areas, even trying to prevent Los Angeles residents from voting on the matter. On July 30, Zahn filed an injunction to prevent City Clerk Dominguez from distributing a referendum allowing citizens the right to vote on whether Wilshire Boulevard between Western Avenue and Rimpau Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard between Detroit and Carson Avenue be converted to business districts. He, along with Fred H. Luth, felt only owners of property in these districts be allowed to vote.

Amarillo Sunday News and Globe, May 29, 1927.

After all the court wins, the city unexpectedly made a complete turnaround and meekly approved Zahn’s request, giving him an exception and allowing him to build a commercial structure on this property. By so doing, Los Angeles began practicing the policy of spot zoning, allowing exceptions for mismatched or oversize development in areas where it was forbidden often, for a price. This practice subverted and stepped around the referendum process allowing Los Angeles residents a say on matters concerning development.

On October 13, 1927, Zahn filed a building permit to construct a four-story apartment and office building 56 feet high at what the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety called 5466-8-70-2-4-6-8-80 Wilshire Blvd. The permit estimated a cost of $80,000 to build the 36-room building in which 14 families would live.

Per the permit, brick would cover the exterior walls, the foundation would be composed of poured concrete, the roof would consist of tile and comp. The permit listed Frank M. Tyler as architect, renowned throughout the city for his elegant homes for such people as George A. Ralphs as well as the Woman’s Twentieth Century Club of Eagle Rock. Architect Tyler signed an agreement October 11, 1927, stipulating that the building would be erected at least five feet back from the property line in accordance with city policy.

When completed, Zahn’s new structure featured lovely Spanish Colonial architecture, with elegant detailing on the top floor of each section of the building, along with a decorative fan underneath the fire escape ladder. On the ground level, the Dunsmuir facade featured tile on the bottom third of the first level, with matching detailing above and around the curved and decorative windows

This first floor contained a furniture store with mezzanine displaying further product and other small businesses occupied the one-story commercial structure east of the 4-story tower. Over the years, this almost one block building featured such businesses as Mandel’s Department Store, a dime store, Colburn’s Furs, Bel Paesa restaurant, Albert Allardale Women’s Fashions, Filmax Camera Shop, My Lady Fashions, Burnett’s Art and Architecture Shop. Ritza Russian Restaurant, New York Millinery, Grayson’s, D. F. Robertson World Tours, N. S. Harieff Custom Persian Rugs, Everbest Business Machines, and other small proprietorships.

Over the years, however, “improvements” to the building ended up removing the elaborate decorative windows on the Dunsmuir facade, along with the destruction of the Spanish detailing on the lower floor.

Zahn ended up making a fortune on the block he owned extending from Cochran to Cloverdale along Wilshire Boulevard upon which the Bank of America now stands. The Los Angeles Times reported that he received $600,000 in cash November 17, 1929 from the Dominguez Estates Company for the entire city block, even after the crash and disaster of the New York Stock Market a couple of weeks previously. A gorgeous Art Deco building was constructed and remains to this day.

While intending to only shoot a publicity still, Paramount Pictures ended up documenting the H.N. Zahn building and its original Spanish Colonial design, preserving it for posterity. On March 22, 1934, Paramount Pictures posed young British actress Ida Lupino atop a giant decorative rabbit display promoting the Easter holiday on the Dunsmuir sidewalk side of the majestic Desmond’s Department Store. The still’s original caption states, “BIG BUNNY BUSINESS – In preparation for Easter, Ida Lupino, young Paramount player, puts finishing touches on a huge Easter rabbit designed to impart a festive holiday touch to one of the screen colony’s fashionable streets.” By this time, the street was becoming known as the “Miracle Mile” in this area of mid-Wilshire.

An ephemeral piece of advertising, a simple movie still, can often present the only documented look and design of historic buildings and places, offering us a nostalgic time capsule back into classic Los Angeles and Hollywood as well as indirectly recording a place that changed the very design of the city.

Babe Ruth in “Babe Comes Home,” Motion Picture News.

Play ball! This week sees the start of another baseball season in the United States, once the most popular pastime of average Americans and considered as American as motherhood and apple pie. The sport jumped from the major leagues to national hearts in the 1920s thanks to radio broadcasting, advances in the game, and the batting prowess of George Herman “Babe” Ruth Jr.

Though a successful left-handed pitcher in the 1910s, Ruth’s slugging skills with a bat brought him international fame and cemented his place in American folklore and sports history. Beginning in 1918, the Babe tied or established home run records that would stand for decades. HIs dominating skills at the plate helped usher in power and high scoring into baseball, driving its popularity.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

“Babe Comes Home.”

By 1921, thanks to superstar Ruth, the “Sultan of Swat,” and the power hitters of their roster, the New York Yankees would be established as of the greatest sports dynasties with their domination of the baseball post season for decades to come. The team would win seven pennants and four World Series after Ruth joined the team, establishing attendance records that required the construction of a new stadium in 1923, “the house that Babe built.”

Capitalizing on the Babe’s popularity, Ruth’s manager and advisors sought out extracurricular ways for the hitting machine to earn extra cash. Ruth endorsed products, barnstormed around the country performing in exhibitions, and even starred in a feature film as himself called “Headin’ Home.”

As his celebrity status grew during the 1920s, so did his batting prowess, as the slugger established records for home runs, runs batted in, and slugging percentage. By the 1920s, the Babe ranked as one of the world’s greatest superstars, thanks to his athletic skills and his larger than life personality.

In 1927, First National motion picture executives approached his manager and former journalist Christy Walsh, negotiating a deal for the Babe to star in another film as himself, per the January 22, 1927 Los Angeles Times. Based on the short story “Said with Soap” by the late sports journalist Gerald Beaumont, “Babe Comes Home” would show the sports hero falling in love and dealing with the possible loss of his girl due to his use of chewing and spitting tobacco. Ruth would earn $76,000, almost what he earned playing for the New York Yankees.

Babe Ruth with Col. Rupert, announcing “Babe Comes Home,” Motion Picture News.

First National bought out his vaudeville contract with Alexander Pantages and pushed for a February 4 start date in order for Ruth to complete his scenes in three weeks before the start of spring training. The contract specified that filming would not detract from Ruth’s training or off-season preparation.

The studio borrowed director Ted Wilde from Harold Lloyd, and hired Wid Gunning to serve as producer/production manager for the film. Photographer and cinematographer Karl Struss handled camera work. Actress Anna Q. Nilsson reluctantly signed to play his love interest, with actors such as Ethel Shannon, Louise Fazenda, and Arthur Stone filling out the main cast.

A four-year-old Helen Parrish landed her first acting gig as Ruth’s daughter, before she would move on to success playing against Deanna Durbin at Universal. The LA Times notes that three ballplayers, James Gordon, James Gradbury, and Big Boy Williams (later gaining fame as actor Guinn “Big Boy” Williams) would round out the cast. First National filmed at LA’s famed Wrigley Field in south Los Angeles for actual game scenes.

An ad for “Babe Comes Home” in Motion Picture News.

During production, Ruth completed his scenes and departed Burbank on the train February 26, working with his trainer Artie McGovern to condition himself for spring training. Complete filming wrapped on March 8. The studio rushed to finish post-production and ship the film to theaters during the baseball season, especially as Ruth was setting home run records left and right.

To help drum up publicity, Ruth spoke to reporters in New York before a May game. The Brooklyn Standard Union on May 6 quotes Ruth as stating “I like the movie much better than I expected,” and describing filming it as great fun. He claimed they shot a sequence where he crawled under a bed chasing a rat twelve times until it came out just right.

“Babe Comes Home” opened June 24 at Los Angeles’ Uptown Theatre, earning mediocre reviews from an uncredited Times’ review. It states that “knocking ‘homers’ and spitting tobacco juice prove that it takes more than an act to make a movie star.” The review cynically suggests the studio produced the film solely to capitalize on Ruth’s name recognition, calling it a series of loose jointed scenes. They described an elaborate amusement park sequence as the film’s standout, and included only because “it happens to be the most amazing episode” in the whole picture. Wilde’s work was described as perfect for a Harold Lloyd film, just not for this one.

Promotional items for “Babe Comes Home,” Motion Picture News.

Educational Screen trashed the film, calling it “worthless” in their ratings system and finding it “Pretty vulgar stuff as a whole.” Photoplay reviewed it as “not much of a comedy but an ingenuous and moving performance by Babe Ruth helps it over.” The magazine felt Ruth’s “good-humored, never quite grown up personality” shown through.

Many others praised “Babe Comes Home,” with the June 5 Film Daily stating “Babe Ruth Hits a Home run and Scores Some Laughs.” The film earned enough laughs not to disappoint fans, and felt the strong cast surrounding Ruth helped provide him a good screen opportunity.

Per Exhibitor Herald, small towns seemed to love it, with exhibitors writing the film packed audiences and gained lots of laughs, a good family film. To help score up huge box office tallies, exhibitors arranged to bring in little league players and tie-in with local ball games.

First National also devised elaborate baseball displays to help drum up advertising. Life-size cutouts of Ruth decorated many a sporting goods store, along with colorful lithographic posters and pennants.

Babe Ruth leaves for the East after completing “Babe Comes Home,” Motion Picture News.

A censor outside of Chicago however banned it from showing in that city’s suburbs due to Ruth’s spitting of tobacco, requiring artful negotiations by the studio.

New York’s Longacre Theatre booked “Babe Comes Home” to run in conjunction with a new film audio system called Voca-Film in late June. Exhibitors Herald described Voca-Film as a disc system with a horn in front of the screen. Problems with the system delayed synchronization until July 25, when the sound process failed on its opening night. After many delays, problems with some musical numbers barely audible, some blaring, and some numbers out of sync, the system finally worked with the film. Unfortunately only half of the audience remained after grumbling gave way to chuckles and then uproarious laughter, much like the disaster of the sound synchronization sequence in “Singin’ in the Rain.”

Babe Ruth set not only box office records that season but also baseball records, slamming 60 home runs in 1927, a record which stood 34 years until Ted Williams remarkable 1961 season overwhelmed Ruth’s record.

Though Ruth would make an hilarious cameo in the 1928 Harold Lloyd film, “Speedy,” and appear in several more shorts, the Home Run King never starred in a motion picture again. Collectors pay top prices for posters and lobby cards for “Babe Comes Home” when they appear at auction, the only surviving artifacts from the movie, as the film is no longer believed to exist.

The Pirate’s Den, Radio Television Mirror.

During the height of Hollywood’s Golden Age, colorful and elaborate restaurants and nightclubs filled the scene. In the 1920s, programmatic architecture flourished in California, providing automobile passengers giant iconic representations of the foodstuffs available inside. By the 1930s, the fanciful, elaborate elements moved inside, with eating or entertainment establishments virtual playgrounds of fun. The show had moved from the sidewalk to the interior, providing decorative ambiance.

Many celebrities capitalized on the craze, with stars like Raymond McKee and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle building or lending their names to businesses in hopes of raking in profits from the whimsical atmosphere. A group of celebrities followed suit in 1940, pooling their resources to open the Pirate’s Den at 335 N. La Brea Ave., helping a friend in need in the process.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

335 N. La Brea, via Google Street View.

Don Dickerman, now down on his luck as a film extra, was spotted by Rudy Vallee while working on a picture. Vallee owed his career to Dickerman, the former proprietor of New York’s Heigh Ho Club, who had given the young singer his start as a crooner and band leader, from which he gained his signature salutation, “Heigh Ho Everybody!”

Dickerman operated a series of successful nite spots in New York during the 1920s, until the stock market crash and ensuing financial disaster overtook his businesses. An early presenter of themed restaurants, Dickerman’s eateries included the Blue Horse Tavern, as well as Pirate’s Den clubs in both New York and Miami.

These early Pirate’s Den niteries featured lusty wenches and sneering, rascally “pirates” serving food and drink to customers in a dark paneled room with “cells” and chains replicating the interior of a raggedy pirate ship. Radio Digest called him “one of the most strait-laced night club proprietors,” who because of Prohibition served non-alcoholic drinks. In a February 1931 article, the magazine stated, “His clubs are scrupulously clean in food, entertainment, music, and general atmosphere.” In other words, what we would now call a Disneyified version of pirates.

Vallee approached friends and fellow stars to throw money in a kitty to help Dickerman establish a Pirate’s Den in Los Angeles. The April 7, 1940 Variety reported that the new eatery would replace the White Elephant at 335 N. La Brea Ave., thanks to the help of stockholders Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Fred MacMurray, Valley, Jimmy Fidler, Ken Murray, Tony Martin, Johnny Weissmuller, and Vic Erwin. They selected Dickerman, Bo Roos, Samuel S. Zogos, Winifred Van Lear, and Frances Fegelman to serve as directors.

The group remodeled the building, which had served as the home for such restaurants and clubs as Casa Brea, Three Little Pigs, El Mirador Cafe, and Sebastian’s Cubanola since 1929. On May 8, 1940, the Club celebrated its grand opening, with gaudily dressed pirates and wenches serving drinks and sandwiches to patrons. To add a touch of authenticity, Dickerman brought in Matey, a swearing parrot, who soon became a popular part of the Pirate’s Den.

RKO-Pathe shot this formal grand opening, releasing it to theaters November 15, 1940 as part of the “PIcture Play #3” newsreel, showing such celebrities as Gary Cooper, W. C. Fields, Ralph Bellamy, and other enjoying festivities.

Though the club featured strong entertainment, stockholders often performed at the Pirate’s Den, with Vallee himself almost functioning as house singer. It quickly became popular, thanks to generous free press in Fidler’s Los Angeles Times’ gossip column, with mentions of celebrities coming for a little atmospheric entertainment in the evenings.

The Pirate’s Den, Photoplay.

Dickerman often threw welcome home parties for stockholders when they returned from filming or trips, with Fidler and other gossip columnists playing up these reports, which brought crowds as well. The Pirate’s Den seemed to serve as a popular spot for college age students to celebrate special events, as well as couples bringing friends coming or going from trips. An added special attraction the club offered included special dances created by renowned dance instructor Arthur Murray, who created “Walking the Gang Plank” for the club.

The Pirate’s Den threw a lavish celebratory first anniversary party on June 1, 1941, with Bob Hope headlining the show, which also featured several of the other famous stockholders.

Thanks to its showbiz connections, the Club received plenty of free film play besides the RKO newsreel. “Screen Snapshots #5” released January 25, 1941 broadcast the club’s first anniversary party, with Hope performing stand-up and introducing Jerry Colonna, Cobina Wright, and Brenda, members of his radio show. An invisible master of ceremonies pointed out show biz guests to the camera, including Roy Rogers, Andrea Leeds, and Harry Ritz of the Ritz Brothers.

A juke box short, “I’d Like to See Samoa at Samoa” prominently featured the club and its headline performers, the Shamrock Boys. On October 26, 1941, the Pirate’s Den served as host for the premiere of ten juke box films, which featured red carpet and klieg lights, showing the talents of people like Vallee, Gertrude Nissen, and Jack Beekman.

In the summer of 1941, the club almost saw itself shut down after a Superior Court judge contacted the Police Commission about what he considered overcharges by the club on his tab, claiming the club charged $6 for three beers and sandwiches for him and his two friends. On July 8, 1941, the manager testified to the commission that the club normally charged 50 cents a beer at the bar and $1.50 each at tables during the week, and charge $1.25 a beer on Sunday nights. Dinner normally cost $1.25 to $2.50 a person, as the club focused on a higher end clientele.

The Commission approved the show permit application July 22, 1941, after the club removed the “No Cover Charge” sign, allowing them to continue operating as before.

Like any club, business fluctuated, especially during a time of war. As new clubs became the hits of the moment, attendance declined at the Pirate’s Den. In the summer of 1945, the club began calling themselves the Pirate’s Den Music Hall, offering strong music performances, including such people as Dorothy Dandridge. These shows were produced by Don Hankey, Leroy Hillman, and George Beatty. Ads mentioned dining, dancing, and floor shows.

By late 1945, the party was over, with consumers moving on to more popular and “hot” establishments. Over the next few years, a couple of middle brow nightclubs opened at the location, neither lasting long. The Club Donroy opened in late 1945, a more middle brow nitery. Closing within months, it was replaced by the Track in 1946 with ads proclaiming that girl jockeys would race on “horses” around the tables.

The Motion Picture Relief Fund purchased the building in early 1951 in order to combine their headquarters, medical and social service offices, and pharmacy into one convenient location. In this way, they could better provide for the care of ailing and elderly members as a way to give back for all they had contributed to the industry. In 1971, they opened the Cinema Glamour Shop in part of the space to help raise money for older veterans of movies and television.

In the 1970s, the Motion Picture Relief Fund acquired property in Woodland Hills on which to build the Motion Picture Country Home, while continuing to operate a small medical office at 335 N. La Brea. They still offer health services today at this location, now called the Bob Hope Health Center.

Hazel Glab

In later life as Hazel Stoddard

This is Part 2 of the story of Hazel Glab, flamboyant flapper, whose husband, John, died under mysterious circumstances June 18, 1928, at 12744 Ventura Blvd., in Studio City. Murder charges against her were dropped for lack of evidence.

The Case of the Clicking Heels, Part 1.

Hazel Glab disappeared from the scene until tragedy once again brought her name into newspaper headlines in 1935. Wealthy Los Angeles manufacturer Albert Cheney, 65, died of a heart attack March 13, 1935, in Las Vegas, only 10 days before he and his fiancee, Hazel, who was 36, were to wed. Newspapers reported on April 22 that the former Mrs. Glab would return to Los Angeles to enter into probate a will handwritten in purple ink on hotel stationery, which left almost his entire $400,000 estate to Hazel, with only his home and furnishings at 15 Berkeley Square left to his daughter, Mrs. Taylor.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

Hazel Glab, in trouble again, Ogden Standard Examiner, May 19, 1935.

During testimony in probate court, the will was declared a forgery, and Cheney’s daughter filed suit contesting the validity of the will. On October 25, 1935, Hazel Glab was sentenced to jail in lieu of $10,000 on charges of forging Cheney’s will. Sheand her co-defendant Mrs. Clara Steeger were brought to trial December 18, 1935, charged with Mrs. Glab in forging the will and Mrs. Steeger and her husband witnessing it. Mr. Steeger admitted his guilt, gaining probation in exchange for testifying in the trial.

Witnesses testified to how Hazel plotted to meet Cheney, and then once a couple, kept him intoxicated most of the time. After his death, the will was forged by using chemical and abrasive erasure to remove all but Cheney’s signature from hotel stationery, and writing out the document above it. On December 27, 1935, Hazel Belford Glab walked from the defense table to the witness stand, her high heels clicking on the wood floor, to testify that Mr. Cheney gave her the will, and denying any forgery.

The former Mrs. Glab was convicted December 28 of forging the Cheney will and preparing false evidence, receiving a one- to seven-year sentence for forgery and one to five years for the false evidence charge. Publicity around this case led the police to once again open the Glab murder case.

Los Angeles police detectives question Hazel Glab, Ogden Standard Examiner, May 19, 1935.

On January 9, 1936, District Attorney Buron Fitts announced that seven witnesses had been called to testify before the grand jury in a reinvestigation of Glab’s death, with one witness’ name withheld. He stated that in October, new information had emerged about certain persons who knew “important facts” regarding the case but had not been thoroughly questioned during the investigation. These new facts helped the police construct a new timeline for the event, blowing the alibi of “the suspect who was never prosecuted.” The police once again searched the former Glab home on Ventura Boulevard for clues, and through an arrest in another investigation, the suspected murder weapon came into police’ hands. This gun was the one seized after Herbert Franzelle employed it in beating Mrs. Glab, a .32-20 revolver.

Hazel Belford Glab’s trial for murder convened March 2, 1936, with prosecution aiming to prove that Mrs. Glab left the room where she was playing cards to accost and kill her husband outside for threatening to leave her the next day, before slipping back into the house. Detective Floyd Oden would testify about disarming her at the 1931 party, and a former neighbor would also testify about seeing her outside the home the evening of the murder.

The March 4, 1936, Los Angeles Times described how carefully prepared, detailed maps would reveal the directions and layout of the murder, showing that Mrs. Glab and her niece actually returned home in the car, from which Mrs. Glab sent her niece to ask her husband to meet her outside. Once there, she shot him, and when she ran toward the house, she saw her maid leaving her quarters. Mrs. Glab therefore ran into the garage, hid the gun in a secret compartment of the other car, and slipped into the house by a side entrance.

The click-clacking of high heels on the street introduced a powerful line of argument according to the March 5 paper, witness Mrs. W. S. Goodrich testified at the grand jury that she heard the clicking of a woman’s high heeled shoes as she saw a woman flee from the car towards the Glab residence.

New testimony the next day also threw a damper on Glab’s claims of innocence. Jack Heater testified to the fact that a month before Glab’s death, Hazel Glab offered $500 to anyone who could kill her husband for her. Investigator Jack Southard found two secret compartments in the Glabs’ other car in which the murder weapon could have been hidden.

Hazel Glab, April 24, 1958, in The Times.

On March 6, the jury, attorneys, Judge Frank Smith, and Mrs. Hazel Glab visited the former Glab residence to see prosecutors trace the route Mrs. Glab followed after killing her husband, hiding the gun and returning to the home.

Hazel Glab herself testified March 16, 1936, denying that she had murdered her husband. She did admit that she nicked W. R. McIntyre in the neck in February 1926 before her marrying Glab, after an argument when she informed McIntyre she intended to marry the druggist. Her story differed in many ways from the testimony of prosecution witnesses. Unfortunately for Mrs. Glab, her niece Miss Kaser, who had provided her an alibi in 1928, did not testify when the defense could not serve her with a subpoena.

The jury spent many hours in deliberation. After 24 hours’ deliberation, the jury asked to rehear testimony about Mrs. Glab’s movements, and were deadlocked at 9-3. The jury finally convicted her of second-degree murder on March 20, 1936 after 27 hours’ deliberation. She was sentenced to seven years to life, to be served in the women’s prison at Tehachapi.

On April 2, 1936, Hazel Glab, along with several other defendants, made their way to San Quentin, where mug shots were produced and profiles written, before they were shipped off to their final destination. Mug records reveal that Hazel recorded as prisoner  No. 58878. Over the next few years, she asked for parole several times, only to be denied. Her appeal of the murder sentence also fell on deaf ears.

12744 Ventura Blvd., via Google Street View.

Hazel Glab was paroled secretly on November 29, 1941, and ended up living with a family in Long Beach. They asked for her arrest January 22, 1942, believing she had stolen the family car after being denied permission to drive it. When she returned to the home shortly thereafter, charges were dropped. In September 1945, Mrs. Glab was accused of being intimate with a policeman on the night of his marriage to another woman. Mrs. Estelle Speers testified that Mrs. Glab possessed loose morals and disrobed in front of both her and her husband before engaging in relations with Mr. Speers in her presence.

For more than a decade, Hazel Belford Glab remained out of trouble before notoriety once again crossed her path. She married actor Alfred Judge, before divorcing in 1955. Needing cash after a few years, she resorted to desperate measures. Police hauled her to court April 24, 1958, on a charge of pandering, accused of recruiting and employing a 27-year-old woman to act as prostitute out of her home. The woman reported she had earned $500 for less than two weeks’ work before police stepped in. Hazel was convicted June 10, 1958, and sentenced to six months in jail.

Hazel Glab auctions off her home and furnishings, Nov. 1, 1930.

In 1965, a former cellmate at Tehachapi, Mrs. Ione Selman, hauled the 61-year-old Hazel Glab Stoddard into court on a charge of obscene calls. Mrs. Stoddard contended that Mrs. Selman stole private papers from her. Both denied the other’s accusations. Before going into the courtroom, the women settled the case, with Mrs. Selman agreeing to return the papers if Mrs. Stoddard never called her again. Hazel told the October 27,1965, Los Angeles Times that the papers “were to be the basis ‘of a book about the people in my life.’” Reporters Howard Hertel and Jerry Cohen unrolled the notorious and colorful back story of Hazel Glab Stoddard in the article, titled “The Click of Her Heels Reveals Her Jazz Age Escapades.”

Seeking fame and fortune, Hazel Belford Glab Stoddard instead earned only notoriety and jail time for her lurid and self-serving past. The lovely Spanish style home at 12744 Ventura Blvd. therefore stands as an ironic reminder of sensational Los Angeles’ crimes and misdemeanors, a silent witness to colorful and sad events.

“Weegee, Weegee, Tell Me Do,” courtesy of Mary Mallory.

What we know as the game of Ouija evolved out of spiritualism practices into a major fad of the early twentieth century. While some denounced it as a form of devil worship, others enjoyed its entertaining qualities or ties to their spiritualism practices. Its ability to answer questions or possibly foresee the future were employed as gimmicks to sell popular entertainment to audiences in a variety of fields.

Born out of a need to connect with the souls of departed loved ones and friends, spiritualism helped its practitioners feel at peace and ease in the world by asking questions of these spirits. It sprung out of potentially supernatural events at a Hydesville, New York farmhouse in 1848, when the Fox family experienced mysterious raps in the night. Youngest daughter Kate Fox challenged the ghostly spirit to repeat in raps the number of times she flipped her fingers; thus establishing a form of communication, these raps were employed as a way to answer questions.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

By the 1860s, the practice of speaking with spirits through sittings was popular, particularly in France and England, and eventually led to the formation of its own spiritual organization. Opposition from those who compared it to witchcraft or necromancy led to condemnations and even violence.

Elijah H. Bond developed a game based on the practice of mediums communicating with spirits in 1890 when he created the game of Ouija and its “Talking Board.” He assigned his creation to the Kennard Novelty Company, founded by Charles H. Kennard, Harry Welles Rusk, William H. A. Maupin, Col Washington Bowes, and John F. Green and incorporated October 20, 1890 with $30,000 at Kennard’s failing fertilizer factory at 220 S. Charles Street in Baltimore, Maryland. Ouija earned patent #446054 in 1891, later trademarked by the company on February 3, 1891. What started as a game eventually gave way to an obsession, and still exists 164 years later. Its popularity would influence the creation of songs, plays, and even movies featuring the little board and its communicating skills.

Ouija, pronounced and sometimes called Weegee by its practitioners, quickly attracted followers, both those interested in communicating with spirits and others just looking for fun. The game consisted of a “Talking Board” filled with letters and numbers and the words “yes” and “no.” A planchette on which two people would place their fingertips would select words based on vibrations. As with other incredibly popular toys, the fad would explode in popularity for a few years before dying away, only to be revived again later.

Advertisements appeared as early as January 1, 1892 promoting the talking board, which cost 98 cents. One 1892 ad explained how it talked of past and future, while an advertorial in the Rochester Weekly Republican on January 16, 1892 called it “the most wonderful invention of the 19th Century,” major hyperbole, claiming its results passed that of second sight, mind reading, or clairvoyance, and that it was “thoroughly tested” and “demonstrated” at the United States Patent Office before gaining its patent.

Some newspapers reported as early as July 1892 that it was created as a toy but exploded in popularity when discovered by spiritualists. They also denigrated it by claiming its followers were inclined to practice evil things or utter disreputable words after playing with it.

Those fearful of anything new condemned it and its followers, claiming it was irreligious and evil, leading its practitioners into paths of darkness. They described many of these people as gullible, excitable, or nervous, easily swayed by temptation or simplicity. Foes derided it, claiming it caused mental or emotional issues, particularly among women. They claimed it allowed those susceptible to scams or mental influence to become victims of its power.

Wesley Barry and a Ouija board.

The November 13, 1917 Los Angeles Times derided people who played with Ouija as believing in superstition and the occult, stating, “It is deplorable that people who otherwise evince an unnatural amount of common sense should thus become the victims of inanimate objects which have neither intelligence nor power. Will superstition ever be eliminated from the mind of humanity?”

Many men upset with their wives or female relatives employed the practice or playing with a Ouija Board as a sign the women were insane, mentally defective, or the like, particularly when they were seeking divorce or a greater share of an inheritance in decisions that did not favor them. From evidence in newspapers, only men employed these strategies in court cases, with the courts overwhelmingly finding for them and sentencing women to insane asylums or overturning wills.

In 1903, Frederick Olcott and his brothers Hans and Frank worked to break their father Joseph’s will through claims of the influence of spiritualism and ouija. They claimed their father and sister, Mrs. Josephine Kroff, were avid practitioners of spiritualism, with Mrs. Kroff working as a medium employing a ouija board. They were incensed their father left his entire $80,000 estate to her.

Charles Delaney of Portland, Oregon filed for divorce from his wife Pauline in July 1910 when he claimed she became obsessed with the game, trying to decipher whether he was cheating on her. Mrs. Delaney was institutionalized for a short time while Mr. Delaney was granted his divorce.

The July 31, 1917 Los Angeles Times reported that Judge Crow committed Lucy E. Palmer of Oxnard to an asylum per her husband’s statement that she believed in Ouija. Any time a woman questioned authority, asked for greater freedom or power, or acted independently, the simple act of even playing the game could be employed as a defense to lock her away.

Businessman Gaylord Wilshire, the stepson of Mrs. Susan Wilshire, contested probate of a will leaving most of her $800,000 estate to the YMCA to help sailors and soldiers in training camps, claiming she was mentally incompetent from using a Ouija Board.

Dr. William J. Hickson, director of Chicago’s leading psychopathic laboratory thought people who played the game became obsessed with it to evade responsibility, rendering them insane or deluded, per the February 14, 1920 newspaper. At a July 1920 medical conference in Philadelphia, doctors discussed whether the Ouija fad produced an increase in nut cases, or whether nut cases led to the fad. Directors of state hospitals claimed it unbalanced minds, mostly played by people of “highly strung and neurotic natures.”

Seventh Day Adventists fought against seances and Ouija in March 1920, with ministers of various religions calling it a “Toy of the Devil” at the same time.Dr. Herbert Booth Smith of Immanuel Presbyterian claimed that Ouija could lead to devil worship as there were more of these games than Bibles in the homes of university students.

In 1919, Ouija exploded in popularity again across the United States, possibly due to the tragedy of World War I and the loss of so many people. The January 8, 1919 Los Angeles Times described an increase in the occult, seances, and playing of the game because “so many splendid men and women have recently crossed the vale which the faithful believe leads from life to life.” Playing the game allowed participants to communicate one last time with dear departed loved ones, allowing some solace. Many felt it selfish to call them back from a place of peace to offer words of comfort.

Ouija playing became an epidemic in the Southland, with the entertainment industry helping to explode it into the popular conscience once again. While papers noted it gave some comfort, others derided the game, calling it “a duplex hootinganic consisting of a sample of polished dance floor with an alphabetical frieze doll’s milking stool with green felt slippers and a heart-shaped seat,” of course claiming it didn’t work.

Many stars played the game for fun, happily posing for photos distributed to magazines and newspapers. Others took to it in hopes of divining their future in the often precarious industry. Many held parties to both entertain themselves and others by enjoying the game, while at the same time happy if it gave them hope of a promising future. Los Angeles Times columnist Grace Kingsley also claimed that the game’s popularity was also due to the fact of the material world taking the place of alcoholic spirits with the rise of Prohibition.

Early in January 1920, composers William Jerome and Harry Von Tilzer took advantage of the national craze for the game to create the first song about it, “Wee Gee, Wee Gee, Tell Me Do,” which soon became a major hit, which their publishing company, owned by Von Tilzer, called “The craze of the country, the Great Ouija Board Song.” The patter of the second verse stated, “This little board is the ruler of the nation now,” which appeared to be the case in many places. As with most things about the game, the song focused on women and their uses for the board, with the second chorus going, “Wee Gee, Wee Gee Tell me do, Are the men you marry girlies always true? Should the supper table wait for the ones who really love to come home late.”

The January 21, 1920 New York Clipper called it a cleverly written song. Many vaudeville and minstrel performers quickly added it to their acts, including top stars Marie Cahill and Lew Dockstader. “Wee Gee, Wee Gee..” led all sales for sheet music the week of June 5, 1920 as well.

Crane Wilbur and Ruth Hammond in “The Ouija Board.”

The craze took off in other forms of entertainment as well, with the one-act play “Ask Ouija” and and Crane Wilbur’s successful play “The Ouija Board” employing it as both title and theme. Reviews called “The Ouija Board” a thriller about spiritualism, in which “real spooks invade a fake seance, leading to a murder mystery and suspense.

Newspapers and magazines employed it as a way to talk about possible future events, with the Motion Picture Herald titling a column, “Reading the Ouija Board” and others asking, Ouija, Ouija, Tell Me Do” in stories about sports, weather, and games of chance. Cartoon characters Mutt and Jeff consulted the Ouija in several strips as well.

Ouija dominated films that year as well. Writer Frances Marion adapted the short story, “the Manifestation of Henry Orth,” a satirical comedy about actions happening around the Ouija Board for the screen. Max Fleischer’s KoKo the Clown featured a spooky Ouija. Doug Fairbanks even employed a Ouija in his film, “When the Clouds Roll By.”

The first to actually feature the game both prominently in the title and story was the Cohn Brothers’ Hall Room Boys comedy, “Tell Us, Ouija,” in which Neely Edwards and Hugh Fay join in consultation with spirits “to put up a front without any financial backing,” long before Mel Brooks’ “The Producers.” Film Daily considered them wise to acknowledge such an important fad, with comedy sure to please and earn nice returns.

By late 1921, the Ouija fad began fading, but the game ended up in the Supreme Court in 1922 when the new trademark owner, the Baltimore Talking Board Company appealed a Federal Court decision which agreed with the government’s classification of the game as sporting goods, thereby making its profits taxable. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case, and the lower court decision stood.

The Ouija Board is still around today, though not as popular as in past decades, thanks to frenetic and colorful video and computer games replacing it in popularity. Though what many would consider old-fashioned, the game will never entirely go away, as many people look for ways to divine their future or bring good tidings into their lives.

When I began researching and writing my Arcadia Publishing book “Hollywoodland” almost five years ago, standard gossip stated that developers constructed the giant Hollywoodland sign in July 1923 as a billboard promoting the development, all with no documentation or backup. Neither the Los Angeles Times nor the Los Angeles Examiner ran such a story at the time, nor did any book. I even fell into the trap of believing something without legitimate sources backing it up.

After examining the subject over many years, I can safely say that Hollywoodland developers created their massive billboard in late November and early December 1923, thanks to multiple sources placing its construction at that time. There was no story in any newspaper the day it was completed, but Hollywoodland publicity chief L. J. Burrud immediately employed the mass media to publicize it and the development in big ways. Copying tactics from his past, adman Burrud developed stories of interest to newspapers, magazines, and newsreels, spreading the story of the glamorous hillside development across the United States.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

Jan. 6, 1924: The Times publishes a photo of an Oakland car that was driven up to the Hollywood sign.

Burrud began his motion picture career in 1910, working in various capacities in Hollywood before moving to El Paso to begin work as a newsreel cameraman for the Fred Feldman Company per the July 13, 1915 El Paso Herald, filming actualities that appeared in local and national moving picture theatres. The young man smartly realized the end game of all advertising was to drum up sales, and to that end, he began manufacturing short films and massive stunts like employing a giant crane to lift an automobile containing the mayor of El Paso and the stars of his short film about the city onto the top of Elephant Butte Dam.

Young Burrud later shot newsreel footage around the Southwest and in Mexico before creating advertorial film product like newsreels or shorts promoting various automobile companies, displaying cars like the Dort and Maxwell ascending to the top of Mount Zion, traversing deserts, surviving icy canyon passes, and scaling mountains. His scenic films of the Southwest were as much advertisement for the automobiles as anything else.

[Hollywood sign premieres, November 1923]

On September 7, 1923, developer S. H. Woodruff hired Burrud as publicity chief for Hollywoodland after noticing his work as press man for Lake Arrowhead, promoting that real estate development. Here, he met Los Angeles advertising man John Roche, who would go on to design the Hollywoodland sign for development partner Harry Chandler. This sign would dwarf all other real estate name signs around Los Angeles, including Whitley Heights, Outpost Estates, Bryn Mawr, Bel-Air, and the like, all intended as temporary advertising signposts.

Burrud began planning all types of ballyhoo to push the name “Hollywoodland” before the public. He placed stories with glamorous images of Spanish Revival and French Normandy homes in newspapers and magazines. The pressman began shooting a film documenting the building process of the Hollywoodland demonstration home late that fall, shown at a 1924 national real estate convention. In October, Burrud arranged for an Oakland Six motor car driven by Harry Nevill to carefully descend one of the rough, unpaved hills to the edge of Lake Hollywood. The story that ran in the October 23, 1923, Miami Daily Arizona Silver Belt described how the car’s four-wheel brake system carefully allowed it to descend grades up to 55% in accomplishing the feat. Just a few weeks later, an image in the November 16, 1923 Holly Leaves shows an empty Mount Lee, devoid of any sign or construction equipment.

A worker shows the scale of the Hollywood sign,  Practical Electrics, September 1924.

Around the same time, real estate partner and Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler pondered a way to heavily promote the development both night and day, beyond the many stories he could run in the Times. He devised the idea of a giant billboard promoting the development, bringing in local advertising man John Roche to conceive the perfect emblem of style and success. Roche mimicked other real estate signs by spelling out the name of the development but went a step further, devising one of huge white letters that could be seen miles away, unlike those colored red which were only visible within a few miles. He would claim decades later that the huge sheet metal letters were fifty feet high and thirty feet wide.

Developers acquired sheet metal, telephone poles, pipes, and chicken wire with which to build their temporary sign, employing mules and caterpillar tractors to carry the materials up the rough shorn road and steep hill to the top of Mount Lee. Working carefully on the precipitous lands, construction workers sank the sign’s framework of telephone poles into flat areas of the hillside in a jagged line, invisible from the flat lands below, upon which to construct the Hollywoodland sign.

[L.J. Burrud, Hollywoodland Publicity Man]

Publicity man Burrud brought in Fox Movietone newsreel cameraman Blaine Walker to capture the sign’s construction in late November 1923, with the undeveloped negative arriving at the Fox Movietone Newsreel office dated “November 27th-23,” per Greg Wilsbacher, director of the Fox Movietone Newsreel Collection at the University of South Carolina. The punch record of the New York office also shows a late November 1923 date.

Employing one of his old automotive stunts, Burrud approached Harry Neville and the Oakland Motor Car Company in December about this time scaling Mount Lee in the car to pose by the freshly constructed Hollywoodland sign. As described in the December 30, 1923 Los Angeles Times:

“Under the guidance of Burrud the car was driven up the trail made by the caterpillar tractor on the very razor edge of the hogback that leads upward…It took quite a few minutes to get the car up over the worse of the grade and then the task of turning it around presented itself. A motley crowd of hill climbers, workmen, salesmen, and curiosity thrill seekers watched this task and when at last Neville and the Oakland headed downward a cheer resounded from the throng.”

The Hollywoodland sign, Practical Electrics, September 1924.

The image of the Oakland Six posed by the Hollywoodland sign appeared in the January 6, 1924 Times. As the story points out, the sign was electrified, already fitted with small light bulbs which at night flashed the words, “Holly,” “Wood,” “Land,” “Hollywoodland,” as a giant welcoming beacon to the neighborhood.

One other story seals the construction date of the sign, an article recently forwarded to me by another historian. Titled “The Mammoth Hollywoodland Electric Sign,” the story ran in the September 1924 issue of “Practical Electrics,” describing in detail its behemoth size and construction date. Even then the story claimed that the city of Hollywood was well known to people, hardly requiring advertising. It stated that the sign, visible for twelve miles, “is claimed to be the largest sign in the United States and the only attention it has required during eight months of display has been a weekly winding of the time switch and oiling of the flasher twice a month.” This proves that the sign began construction in late November 1923, finishing up in December.

[Hollywoodland Opens]

The story goes on to present the difficulty in transporting materials up the steep hills before its construction, describing the irregular and rocky hillside on which it was placed after tons of dynamite created the holes necessary for the framework of telephone poles “60 to 80 feet in height.” Letters at one end were 15 feet higher than the other, and some letters were 40 feet in front of the proper line, with others behind, in order to fit them on “the irregular surface.” The article reports that taken in a straight line, the sign would be 975 feet long with the letters 45 feet high.

Holly Leaves, November 1923.

‘Two by six inch timbers, placed 16 to 24 inches between centers, are the horizontal elements of the frame. Galvanized iron or sheet metal letters were nailed to the frame, with “each stroke of a letter is 13 feet wide.” The article states that 3,700 10-watt lamps were placed along the edge of each letter, with “the effect of this is that there is a shadow or dark space between the sides of each stroke, which is found to give an advantage in legibility at night.”

55 outlets composed each circuit, with the open wiring located on the back of the sign. “Everything centers in a junction box near the center of the sign. Here there is a pilot flasher and time switch. The flasher switches on “HOLLY,” then “WOOD,” then “LAND,” successively; then the whole sign is extinguished and the flasher repeats its work.”

Taken all together, these items prove that the Hollywoodland sign started construction in late November 1923, with completion in December. What was quickly and haphazardly erected in late 1923 ironically has become a giant advertising symbol for the city and industry of Hollywood, a worldwide icon on a par with the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and Statue of Liberty. A lowly real estate billboard now rates as Los Angeles’ top tourist attraction.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory has been receiving lots of attention since it was released in October and we were quite pleased to add a copy to the Daily Mirror library.

The book  is available from Amazon for $24.39. It is also available at $29.99 at Book Soup, Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Skylight Books and Vroman’s. (Check the bookstores’ websites for availability).

Or you can pick up a copy at the following book signings:

Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood.

Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. at Hollywood Heritage Museum, 2100 Highland Ave, Los Angeles.

Also on Saturday, Karie Bible will be signing books between films at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 429 Castro St., San Francisco.

Dec. 12 at 1 p.m. Mary Mallory will speak at the Will and Ariel Durant Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, 7140 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles.

Since almost the beginning of the motion picture industry, advertising tie-ups and promotions have stoked audience interest and desire in seeing certain moving pictures and movie stars. Studios quickly learned that partnering with another company or popular product cut the costs of advertising and promotion, as well as created huge audience awareness of their upcoming features. Stars often engaged in production promotion to gain financial rewards as well as to increase their popularity and name recognition with the public. If the studios or stars owned all or part of the tie-ups even better, as they earned huge profits on consumer spending for these items. As Moving Picture World described it in a June 28, 1919, the aim was not only to sell movies to exhibitors, but “to sell pictures to the public.”

In the early 1920s, Paramount Pictures joined in partnership with a novelty company for a special series of tins promoting several of the studios’ stars, in a bid to goose their actors’ popularity at the same time as the exploitation reminded the public of the studio’s development of attractive, vibrant motion picture personalities.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

The Beautebox, advertised in the Janesville Daily Gazette, Nov. 21, 1922.

Motion Picture News announced in the August 20, 1921 issue that the studio had signed renowned illustrator/actor Henry Clive to an exclusive one-year contract to design poster key art. The deal evolved out of his lavish portraits of the stars of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Affairs of Anatol,” converted into three-sheet personality posters promoting the film.

Building on this idea, they paired with Beautebox to devise products to sell to the moviegoing public, all handsomely illustrated by the talented Clive in what the December 9, 1922 Exhibitors’ Herald called a “permanent advertisement for Paramount Pictures.” Metal tins with black enamel finish of differing sizes and shapes featured gorgeous likenesses of Paramount stars Wallace Reid, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, Betty Compson, Pola Negri, Bebe Daniels, and Mae Murray, intended as keepsake boxes and souvenirs.

Tom Kennedy in the November 25, 1922 Exhibitors Herald stated, “Painted by Henry Clive, they are a handsome lot of novelties and look expensive. Whether they are expensive or not worries us little. What we marvel at is the enterprise and aggressiveness of these motion picture advertising people.”

Douglas Fairbanks cigars remained popular into the 1930s.

Just in time for Christmas gifts, newspaper ads began appearing across the country promoting the special containers, calling them both novel gifts as well as useful. An ad in the November 21, 1922 Janesville Daily Gazette called it “The very thing for gifts, favors and prizes. Covers or round boxes can be used for wall decorations, plaques, etc.” The empty tins could also be employed for a variety of uses, including holding gloves, handkerchiefs, jewelry, crackers, fruit, candy, nuts, sewing, cigarettes, makeup, playing cards, poker chips, and sewing equipment. The luxurious looking tins ranged in price from twenty cents to one dollar.

Exhibitors Trade Review reported that a new process allowed a lithographic image of a star to be adhered permanently under the cover’s surface. These lovely gifts allowed exhibitors to arrange cooperative window advertising with department and novelty stores, often providing free tickets for each tin purchased. Many exhibitors and newspapers listed them as collectibles, suggesting fans collect the images of their favorite pin-ups. At the same time the tins promoted stars, they also increased moviegoing.

Stars also joined in the publicity and promotion craze as a way to deepen their ties with moviegoing audiences and to profit off their soaring popularity. As author Tracey Goessel points out in her new biography, “Douglas Fairbanks, the First King of Hollywood,” movie superstars like Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and Fairbanks earned big bucks for licensing their names and likenesses for a variety of products.

The Beautebox in Exhibitors Trade Review.

A Douglas Fairbanks cigar was introduced in 1919, a cheaply priced one to appeal to mass audiences. It quickly became a hit with consumers, hoping that smoking a Fairbanks’ cigar would lend them the joie de vivre and success of the attractive Fairbanks. The Retail Tobacconist stated on April 20, 1922 that Irving Wertheim, a representative of the Clarence S. Gable Manufacturing Company of York, Pennsylvania, would promote the “nickel cigar of demonstrated quality.”

As the May 18, 1922 Tobacco Illustrated Weekly reported in a short blurb that “an implied guarantee goes with each cigar to the effect that once the smoker and the cigar meet, they become lasting friends and the smoker inherits that world known smile of the movie king, whose name they bear.”

Douglas Fairbanks’ cigars remained popular for years, with ads still promoting them in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Even today one can acquire their own Fairbanks’ cigar boxes or Canco Beauteboxes as special holiday gifts, all thanks to the diverse auctions of eBay, Bidstart, or Etsy. What were originally items intended as affordable purchases linking consumers with their favorite stars now stand as unique collectibles demonstrating how little has actually changed in the entertainment industry.

A detail of a matchbook for Al Levy’s Tavern, 1627 N. Vine St., listed on EBay as Buy It Now for $6.95.

Much of the glamour of classic Hollywood grew out of the fame and atmosphere of its famous restaurants and nightclubs, oases of sophistication and excitement. Stars came to see and be seen, while dining at the same time. Some came because they enjoyed the ambiance or service of the establishments, others merely because the businesses reigned as the “it” spots of the moment. Many eateries remained popular for their excellence food, service, and welcoming presence, like Al Levy’s Tavern located at 1623-27 N. Vine St. Levy’s restaurant grew out of humble beginnings in downtown Los Angeles to reign as one of Hollywood’s premier nightspots for more than a decade.

For more than 50 years, Levy served Los Angeles and Hollywood residents, offering fine dining and festive atmosphere. He catered to the entertainment industry, offering a supportive haven for the film and stage crowd. Many could identify with the friendly and humble man, who saw his simple oyster cart grow into one of the Southland and West Coast’s most popular hotspots.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

An undated photo of Al Levy in a 1940 newspaper clipping.

Born April 25, 1860, in Liverpool, England, Alfred Asher Michael “Al” Levy dreamed big, longing to move to America as a boy. He arrived in San Francisco August 15, 1876 after sailing from Liverpool, and worked hard to make a living. He became a naturalized American citizen on July 16, 1888. By 1886 he lived in downtown Los Angeles, where he operated a small cart that he pushed around the city selling oyster cocktails, a food item he had invented. Per the March 24, 1941 Los Angeles Herald, he stood outside the Opera House at First and Main at midnight to serve theatre crowds.

His high quality food at affordable prices quickly became popular, with bars and later restaurants buying them to sell to eager patrons. Levy used his money to purchase a small “hole in the wall” shop to operate his own establishment, which quickly grew in popularity. Levy recalled for newspapers that “My oyster cocktails were so popular that the saloons began ordering them for their famous free lunches. Then the restaurants began buying them,” and soon he opened a small oyster house at Fifth and Spring Streets. Levy later served what the paper called “hot bird and cold bottle” days, popular with the middle class. His squab simmered in wine sauce became a popular item with the carriage trade crowd.

The July 29, 1897, Los Angeles Herald noted he was renting three adjoining stores on West Third Street as he business quickly grew, spending $5,000 to $6,000 in improvements to attract higher society folk, expanding beyond seafood into classic dinners and sumptuous surroundings.

Levy in a 1940 newspaper clipping.

The theatre crowd as well as cafe society flocked to his restaurant, which saw civic leaders drop in for lunch as they contemplated city duties. His colorful and loquacious personality attracted many to his restaurant as well, which he continually expanded and upgraded as his business grew, moving to Third and Main, and eventually 617 S. Spring St.

Many early silent film pioneers regularly visited his establishment, including Col. William Selig, D. W. Griffith, David Horsley, and Thomas Ince, as well as top stage performers like Minnie Maddern Fiske and Harry Lauder. The May 15, 1914, Variety noted that Levy’s new cafe downtown was “the gathering place for professional people.” To show his support, Levy hosted an Actor’s Fund salute on February 10, 1916 with 60% of gross receipts of his restaurant that day devoted to the fund.

On May 5, 1917, he reserved a special section in his South Spring Street cafe to exhibitions, exchange men, and other moving picture industry people to exchange ideas and develop new policies.

By the 1920s, such film luminaries as Jesse L. Lasky, Ford Sterling, Ruth Roland, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Tom Mix, Mabel Normand, and Charles Chaplin were regulars at Levy’s Cafe. Levy saw the writing on the wall, however, noting that the film industry had moved north and west into Hollywood. In order to keep his best customers, Levy needed a new establishment in the heart of the film colony.

After forty-four years in business, Levy finally opened a new restaurant in Hollywood, announcing in the November 14, 1930, Los Angeles Times that his Tavern would open in early December after over $100,000 in improvements in decorations and equipment at the new 1623 N. Vine St. location.

He hired architect Jack Schultz to design “One of the most distinctive cafes on the Pacific Coast,” after his praised work in creating outstanding interiors in the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blossom Room and the Fox Wilshire Theatre. The lavish interior would be required to cater to the motion picture industry and other discriminating clientele.

The November 28, 1930, Los Angeles Times described the “modernistic French manner” of the interior and noted that architects Morgan, Walls, and Clements had designed an “old English-style building” for the new eatery, which the December 17 edition of the paper called “an exact replica of an old English inn.”

Levy in a 1940 newspaper clipping.

On Wednesday, December 17, 1930 at 7 pm, Al Levy’s Tavern opened with grand festivities featuring special souvenirs, Klieg lights, an orchestra, a special dinner, and light show. After it opened, the restaurant featured a large, diverse menu with an emphasis on chops, steak, and seafood, with exclusive delicacies.

By August 21, 1931, Levy remodeled the interior in order to seat more than 400 due to the business’s popularity. He spent $10,000 to remodel the back bar and lunch counter in order to add more tables and booths. Eugene Stark was hired as manager on October 2, 1931, bringing his distinctive German-Hungarian recipes with him, a popular draw around town. He introduced a special nine course meal costing $1.25, in line with reduced prices during the Depression.

The motion picture industry once again dominated business, with many agents holding lunch meetings, businessmen and executives concluding deals, and others grabbing a quick bite before shooting or taping radio shows. Throughout the 1930s, Al Levy’s Tavern reigned as one of Hollywood’s prime dining establishments. Stars such as James Cagney, Paul Muni, Gary Cooper, Samuel Goldwyn, Boris Karloff, Thelma Todd, Charley Chase, Carole Lombard, Mary Pickford, King Vidor, David O. Selznick, Joe E. Brown, Hugh Herbert, Anita Page, Alice White, Lyle Talbot, and the Sultan of Jahore regularly dined at the popular eatery.

Location managers organized a group that met regularly at the restaurant as did a songwriting and composers’ organization created by Jack Robbins called the Robbins Round Table Club met regularly in the mid to late 1930s.

Levy took over the restaurant in the Plaza Hotel January 10, 1933, going into partnership with General Ivan Lodijensky when he moved his upscale Russian Eagle cafe into the empty location. By November, Levy sold out his interest in the business.

An undated photo of Al Levy in a 1940 newspaper clipping.

The tavern sometimes skirted the law; on May 18, 1934, Levy was found guilty of serving alcohol by the drink, a charge he appealed to a higher court. I can find no follow up as to how the case was resolved.

Levy constantly needed to expand due to his popularity; in 1934 he took over Stanley Rose’s book shop next door in order to add a bar after the end of Prohibition. He remodeled again, with the Tavern reopening May 20, 1935 with ads trumpeting Levy’s serving of three generations of Angelenos, as well as the heavyweights of the motion picture industry. A special champagne dinner was served at $3 a head, which included pint bottles of Montant Champagne.

In 1936, Levy celebrated his Golden Jubilee in the restaurant business, holding a grand party in the Tavern, which had recently been named “the Most Distinctive Cocktail Room” on the West Coast.

Movie Classic magazine in 1937 called bartender Jack Marsh “the mixologist whose advice is sought by celebrities when their own cocktails taste like hair tonic…” The Tavern’s new Maitre d’Hotel, Alex Montoya, served many a star at Agua Caliente before joining the staff.

Al Levy, center, and Eddie Sutherland, right, in Photoplay magazine.

While the restaurant thrived, Al Levy was slowing down. On February 10, 1940, he collapsed in front of the eatery with a cerebral hemorrhage, and rushed to the hospital. He recuperated, but his health was never the same. Levy passed away March 24, 1941 after an operation at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. He was buried at Forest Lawn Glendale.

His son Robert Levy took over management of the restaurant, continuing its operation. Just days after the elder Levy’s death, the Tavern hosted a 50th Anniversary luncheon honoring George Barbier’s 50 years in Show Business. Universal organized the luncheon with Ralph Morgan serving as chairman and Mischa Auer as master of ceremonies. Such stars as May Robson, Hobart Bosworth, Frank Craven, C. Aubrey Smith, Joseph Hawthorne, William Desmond, and William Farnum hosted their long time colleague.

On July 1, 1941, a major fire swept through the tavern during the lunch hour, forcing 200 patrons to flee. A cook dropped a can of hot grease on a boiler plate, leading to the conflagration. The fire caused more than $40,000 to $50,000 damage. Mike Lyman, President of the Mid-Town Catering Company, operator of the tavern, stated that most of the equipment and interior was ruined by water damage. He also announced, “It is our intention to rebuilt as soon as the building is turned over to us.”

Simon’s Restaurant signed a ten-year least for more than $150,000 on the space, making immediate renovations to the space, turning it over to Mike Lyman, who opened Mike Lyman’s Grill on September 7, 1941.

Al Levy’s reigned as one of Hollywood and Vine’s top hotspots for more than ten years during an era that we now know as that of Classic Hollywood. Levy himself served the residents of Los Angeles and Hollywood for more than 50 years, bringing good food and fellowship to his patrons. Only memories now exist of this once classic restaurant, , now the location for a parking garage.

Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds and Virginia Dale in “Holiday Inn.”

Recognized today as one of the top selling singles and pieces of sheet music of all time, Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” was just one of eleven songs in the 1942 holiday classic, “Holiday Inn.” First put to paper by Berlin in 1940, the tune evolved over time before becoming the beloved hit sung by the dulcet tones of baritone Bing Crosby.

Jody Rosen, in his book, “White Christmas: The Story of an American Song,” reveals that on Monday, January 8, 1940, Berlin composed forty-eight bars which his secretary Helmy Kresa transcribed to manuscript paper, after the composer flew into the office claiming he had written his greatest song. Nearly fully formed as the song we know today, the most famous sixty-seven notes never changed from the first time they hit the page. These emotion-filled lyrics touched hearts during America’s first year in World War II, nostalgic for better and happier times.“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

The song evolved out of a planned revue Berlin hoped to stage after returning to New York City from Hollywood in 1938, where he crafted many wonderful tunes for such films as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ musicals. He fooled around with the idea before composing “The Music Box Revue of 1938,” complete with show tunes, vaudeville sketches, and stunts, including topical songs on contemporary newsmakers. Berlin later retitled the show, “The Crystal Ball,” intended to be a three-act “Revue to today, tomorrow and yesterday,” which included “White Christmas” among its proposed songs in his trunk of tricks, intended as an ironic novelty song and showstopper.

Inspired by his time in sunny and warm Beverly Hills and Los Angeles around Christmas, the tune featured a sardonic introductory verse that opens,

“The orange and palm trees sway.

There’s never been such a day

In Beverly Hills, LA.”

The song’s narrator misses the season’s warmth and homey ambiance of a snowy East Coast. When Bing Crosby’s recording became a massive hit, Berlin ordered the first sixteen bars expunged less its jaunty and ironic opening mar the hushed anthem sung by Crosby.

This opening chorus was perhaps also influenced by the composer feeling homesick at Christmas 1937 when he found himself stuck in Hollywood working on “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” His friend Twentieth Century-Fox head Joseph Schenck arranged for a three-minute film short entitled “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to be created showing his family around their Christmas tree, as a holiday greeting for the lonely Berlin on December 24. This memory remained etched in Berlin’s brain, a non-practicing Jew who would compose one of the most endearing Christmas songs of all time, transposing Jewish otherness into homogenized Americanness.

In April 1940, Berlin bumped into director Mark Sandrich in Washington, D. C., where he pitched his long gestating idea of a star singer retiring to run a country inn open only on holidays. Sandrich recognized the thin plot could be augmented with showstopping songs and dance numbers into something wildly entertaining. They negotiated for months before signing a deal to make “Holiday Inn” their next film.

Paramount brags about the success of “Holiday Inn” in Film Daily.

From the very beginning of filming, Berlin intended “White Christmas” to serve both as film centerpiece and backbone of the motion picture’s love story. While the other holiday tunes were designed as elaborate showstoppers, “White Christmas” remained a simple ballad, one that he obsessed over. Berlin inspired orchestrator Walter Scarf to design a lush, romantic arrangement. Scharf described the trauma of dealing working with Berlin as “It was as if he were going to have a baby when he was working on that song.” Many on the production recognized that the song seemed destined for hit status, but Bing Crosby could only mutter out of Berlin’s hearing, “I hope so,” per Rosen.

Paramount Studios realized that song trailers, what would now be music videos, would be perfect ways to promote the film and build word of mouth before it was released, per Variety in December 1, 1941. “White Christmas,” the strongest song, would be the first released to theatres in the spring before the movie’s release. I have not been able to discover whether these song trailers were actually produced and released.The tune did receive its first public performance by Bing Crosby on Kraft Music Hall’s Christmas Eve show in 1941 as a sneak preview promoting the upcoming “Holiday Inn,” per Rosen’s book.

After filming was completed, Crosby recorded a series of songs to be released in conjunction with the movie at Decca Records on May 29, 1942, including “White Christmas.” Crosby, the great emotional storyteller, brought a moving reverence to the lyrics which matched the delicate arrangement, capturing both the sweet romance and the heartfelt melancholy in its words. This would become the recording beloved by generations of Americans.

The Los Angeles Times’ review of “Holiday Inn” August 17, 1942 called it both propaganda and escapist, while director Sandwich called the film “inspirational,” noting how the audience came out of the theatre feeling happy to be American. He told the paper, “Holidays are a part of our history,…tied in with our mores, our way of life.”

Most reviews of the film stated that “White Christmas” was the strongest song of the bunch, but no one remarked on how powerful it was or predicted the huge success it would achieve thanks to it’s nostalgic yearning for joyful and hopeful times.

In an ironic note, “Holiday Inn” came out at a perfect time for the song to rocket to cultural phenomenon. Though the songs were written and recorded in early December, the film was not completed and released until summer of 1942. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor sending the United States into war brought yearning for the home front into deep focus once troops shipped overseas. Soldiers dreamed of white Christmases and family gatherings leading up to the 1942 holiday season, and began requesting it on Armed Forces Radio. Families back in the States dreamed of embracing their overseas loved ones at the holiday season. Radio Showmanship asked what Irving Berlin thought to himself before writing “White Christmas,” “What is every serviceman and every mother and every lonely war wife dreaming about as our first real war Christmas draws near?” The emotional perfect storm to create a major music sensation.

BBerlin pushed to make the entire “Holiday Inn” score a smash by unleashing his plugging staff at the Irving Berlin Music Company to promote the songs in “the greatest exploitation campaign , in connection with any musical, so far made,” per Rosen’s “White Christmas” book. They began with “Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” plugging it all the way to number two on the Hit Parade.

In September, without any help from plugging or play on the radio, “White Christmas” exploded in popularity, though Berlin had planned its huge promotion around the holiday season, not encouraging its sale until that time. On September 29, 1942, the song sold 12,000 pieces of sheet music that day, with 8,000 sheets sold the day before, outperforming by a mile any other film related sheet music in the marketplace. Sales snowballed.

By November, “White Christmas” sold more than 400,000 copies. In early November it sold 250,000 copies in one week. By November 11, sales hit 750,000, quickly zooming over a million. The song achieved the biggest sheet music sales in fifteen years by the middle of the month, thanks to stores keeping it on display rather than removing it to put holiday items on sale and display. Many smart exhibitors lined up promotional campaigns with local sheet music stores, plugging the movie through the song and earning huge returns for both.

On November 21 Crosby’s recording of the song hit the top of the charts, where it stayed for ten weeks, becoming one of the most popular songs on juke boxes as well. Over the next twenty years it would re-enter the survey every December except 1953, eventually spending thirty-eight weeks in the top spot and eighty six weeks total on the charts. Irving Berlin Music saw record profits in 1942 of $250,000, and more when the song became the title and hit of the 1954 film, “White Christmas.” Over 31 million copies of Crosby’s “White Christmas” were sold by early 2000, unseated as all-time top single in the “Guinness Book of World Records” by Elton John’s Princess Diana tribute recording of “Candle in the Wind” 1997.

“White Christmas” was ubiquitous by Christmas 1942, playing on juke boxes, appearing in stories in magazines and newspapers, employed as a tag line in advertising, even appearing in cartoons. It revived the slumping sheet music industry. Writer Carl Sandburg noted how lonely and sad the country was in a story on December 6, and described “White Christmas” as affecting everyone in the place where they love peace.

Paul W. Keston, Vice President and General Manager of CBS used the theme of “White Christmas” in his 1942 Christmas card, which he shared with Variety magazine. As he wrote, “The words of the song may seem trivial; they talk of little things. But I wonder if its sudden grip on America at war means something more…I like to think that the stranglehold of this ‘old-fashioned’ new hit is a sort of mass symbol of what American wants to believe. An instinctive way of saying, without making a speech, what kind of world we’re fighting for.”

“White Christmas” became almost a war anthem during World War II, uniting Americans in a sense of how lucky they were to live in such a prosperous, caring, and giving country. It invigorated people in a sense of hope about how simple things were more valuable than any financial riches.

The song “White Christmas” today remains as emotionally potent as ever, particularly as the world remains mired in sadness and despair over financial stagnation, abominable living conditions around the globe, and threats of violence from madmen.

The Ambassador Theater, as shown in the Exhibitors Herald, 1921.

On February 9, 1919, the Los Angeles Times reported that the California Hotel Company would soon begin construction on a luxurious hotel on twenty one acres adjoining Wilshire Boulevard between Catalina and Eighth Streets. This resort-like property would cater to the upper classes, with bungalows, ballroom, billiards, card rooms, swimming pool, and an arcade of shops catering to every whim of the wealthy clientele. Often overlooked in the hostelry’s many high-end amenities was the plush Ambassador Theatre, intended both as rental facility, host to conventions, and movie theatre.

D. M. Linnard, owner of the California Hotel Company, announced on April 4 that architect Myron Hunt had been employed to design something along classic Italian lines for the $5 million project. The proposed design showed buildings in a giant H shape with a combined 1000 rooms between the main building and annexes. The proposed project also included tea house, casino, and a convention hall with pipe organ and stage. Construction began in June 1919 for the massive project after demolishing the former Ruben Schmidt farmhouse on the property. The hotel’s name changed from California to Ambassador in March 1920 as well.

“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays” by Karie Bible and Mary Mallory is now available at Amazon and at local bookstores.

On June 27, 1920, the Los Angeles Times reported that architect Myron Hunt was designing a large movie theatre, garage, and servants’ quarters at the west end of the hotel to cost $250,000. Guests would enter the theatre through the west lobby, beyond the grill and arcade of stores. The up-to-date screening facility would include pipe organ, artistic lighting elements, and comfortable seating for 575-600 people. On October 9, 1920, Motion Picture News announced that Gore Brothers and Sol Lesser had signed a deal to operate the Ambassador Theatre, and negotiated an agreement with Associated First National for the theatre “to serve as a world premiere house for all First National attractions.”

Art Smith, supervising projectionist for the Gore Brothers, chose the projection equipment of two “S” Simplex projectors and a signal system in conjunction with the house lights installed between them. Each projector was ventilated through the roof as well for security and safety issues. A special electrical installation allowed control of spot and stereo optical lights as well as projectors. The projection booth consisted of three adjoining rooms: one with motor and generator, another with projectors, and the last a cutting room, thereby reducing a fire hazard. Special rewind machines and cabinets in the cutting rooms were installed making it a top of the line system.

Finishing preparations for the theatre took longer than anticipated, requiring that the Ambassador Theatre open February 5, 1921 rather than January 1, 1921, as did the glamorous Ambassador Hotel. Crews worked double shifts to make the February opening, which included wiring it to allow fanciful lighting effects in seven different colors and combinations. The elegant Theatre rivaled the beauty of the striking hotel, containing large, leather- upholstered overstuffed arm chairs set back from other rows and aisles. It would feature refrigerated air in the summer and heat in the winter.

On January 21, 1921, the Times stated that the sleek, Italian Renaissance-style theatre painted in dove gray would contain a lounging room with luxurious furnishings, stylish light fixtures, a twelve pipe organ, a moveable floor allowing grotto and mountain effects, an eighteen foot screen, and mural paintings on side walls highlighted by beams and draped in velvet, which would be pulled aside after the audience was seated, revealing the glamorous paintings beneath.

They hired S. Barret McCormick, formerly Toledo, Ohio’s Rivoli Theatre manager, to supervise and run the Theatre in December 1920, along with creating artistic prologues based on classical music to match the essence of the movie’s theme to kick off programming. The Ambassador Theatre would present the best moving pictures from all the studios in one week runs, with the December 1920 Motion Picture News stating, “It will be the releasing place for the great test pictures, and the Ambassador production is to be to the picture world what the Metropolitan is to the opera.” McCormick also called it the “National Art Theatre of the Screen,” per Exhibitors Herald.

Photos of an Ambassador Theatre prologue, Motion Picture News, 1921.

The theatre would host twice daily screenings with a matinee cost of 75 cents and evening screening with $2 admission, all seats reserved. very high as compared to regular prices. They hired top musicians, dancers, and acts to fill out the prologue portion of the program, accompanied by twelve piece orchestra. All up-to-date processes would be employed in providing audiences top-notch presentations. Motion Picture News claimed they were the only cinema located in a hotel but catering to outside audiences. The theatre would produce the Ambassador Weekly Magazine to highlight screenings, each with unique cover, and present preview screenings on Friday night.

Advertisements trumpeting the theatre employed the slogan “Toward the Ultimate” in describing their special programs featuring a musical prelude, stage prelude, prologue, and the film, along with a beautiful artistic booklet. As Motion Picture News stated, “The Ambassador Theatre will present each week the most noteworthy of screen productions, giving them in nearly every instance their world premiere several weeks before their presence in other cities…”

The Ambassador Theatre premiered February 5, 1921 with a screening of the Pola Negri film, “Passion” with an elaborate prologue designed by McCormick called “Clay,” featuring a thirty five member cast wearing contortionable masks by Alexander Hall in a show based on a poem by Omar. Choreographer Marion Morgan supervised and created symbolic dances to follow the avant garde sets. These featured bright, vivid trees against pitch black backgrounds. “Short and chic and bobbed hair” usherettes wearing stylish uniforms assisted patrons. Operators admitted to the newspaper that they expected to lose money, but hoped to cover costs of the entertainment and show.

The Ambassador Theatre screened Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” soon after, which brought out scalpers who corralled most of the tickets, selling out the venue a week in advance. While it was good for the theatre’s business, it was bad for the general public.

A prologue for “The Passion Flower,” Motion Picture News, 1921.

The Louis B. Mayer organization employed the Ambassador Theatre as one of two picture houses to host the premiere of his film, “The Woman in the House” on February 12. A few weeks later, Variety reported that the film played to only six people in one screening., calling the theatre a flop on February 25, stating that it appealed to only the high brow because of its location in the hotel, with a deluxe charge that millionaires didn’t want to pay and too high for middle class patrons. Management needed to think of something fast to maintain cash flow.

The Bakersfield Morning Echo reported on March 13, 1921 that management was now adding a series of one-act plays stated in conjunction with first-run films, replacing the more elaborate prologues. These would be staged by Frank Egan, formerly of Figueroa Street’s Little Theatre, in the style of Paris’ Grand Guignol. The “Ambassador Players” consisting mostly of film stars would act in these productions seeing as curtain raiser before the intermission, overture, and screening of the film.

Egan premiered “Fancy Free” as the first stage play, starring film actors Crane Wilbur, Mary McLaren, and Kathleen Clifford. Later one-acts featured cinema players Helen Jerome Eddy and Gaston Glass.

On September 10, 1921, Arthur L. Bernstein, formerly manager of the Fanchon and Marco Revue took over operations, devising ways to bring in revenue. During the daytime dark hours for the theatre, social and charity groups employed the space for meetings and special occasions. Mary Miles Minter performed in support of disabled ex-servicemen April 27, 1921 in support of the Assistance League’s efforts to help veterans. The Assistance League took over the theatre each Wednesday in support of a different charity.

The Ambassador Hotel now has a movie theater, Motion Picture News, 1921.

While changing up programming helped for a time, management was forced to consider changes in scheduling by 1922. It began renting out the facility to other groups for meetings and presentations in order to help pay the bills. The newly formed Wilshire Boulevard Congregational Church began holding services January 1, 1922 while they raised funds to locate a permanent location.

In the March 15, 1922 Los Angeles Times, the Ambassador Theatre noted that the week of March 22 they would become “the National Preview Theatre of the Screen,” showing previews three nights a week at 8:15 pm with opinion cards distributed to audience members. Regular screenings on other nights and Saturday’s all comedy night would continue. Such major attractions as the “Merry-Go-Round,” Jackie Coogan’s “Oliver Twist,” “The Lost World,” and others screened during the silent era.

On September 27, the Ambassador hosted the world premiere of the stereoscope film “The Power of Love” employing the Fairall Process using “eye screens” for film executives, exhibitors, directors, cinematographers, projectionists, optometrists, and scientists. “The Greatest Menace,” a film delving into the evils of drug use, premiered February 23, 1923.

Uncle John and the stars of KHJ (The Times radio station) are mobbed at Ambassador Auditorium, Sept. 8, 1925, Los Angeles Times.

By the 1930s, the Ambassador Theatre functioned more as a trade and press screening location, hosting screenings for journalists who needed to submit reviews to their magazines and newspapers. Colleen Moore’s film “Smilin’ Through” played in 1929, followed through the years by such films as “Pinocchio,” “This Gun For Hire,” “Pride of the Yankees,” in which many of the press shed tears at the screening, “Random Harvest,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and “Anchors Aweigh.” “Citizen Kane” previews the week of April 10, 1941 at the Ambassador, with Terry Ramsaye calling it “a magnificent sleigh-ride” of a picture.”

Over the next several decades, social, charity, nonprofit, and community groups such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, Confederation of Women’s Clubs, California Women of the Golden West, Matinee Music Club, Opera Reading Club, and Assistance League held meetings and presentations, while groups like the Nine O’Clock Players and Hollywood Opera Company presented recitals, concerts, and the like. Groups hosted lectures and food demonstrations in the theatre, and such organizations as radio, optometrists, exhibitors, and even morticians presented conventions.

By 1954, no more advertising appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the theatre appears to have shuttered, with entertainment focusing on the Cocoanut Grove.

The Los Angeles Unified School District took over the former Ambassador Hotel property to eventually construct schools in the 2000s, demolishing the buildings rather than remodeling and renovating them for a repurpose. While the Ambassador Theatre is no more, it operated as a high class, sleek screening facility during the hotel’s glamorous heyday of the 1920s through 1940s.

William Hoover, left, doubled for Edward Arnold, Silver Screen, August 1939.

Since 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has recognized best acting performances in motion pictures by male and female stars. They began recognizing best supporting performances in 1936. Directors, writers, cinematographers, costume designers, and production designers are also honored, not only by the Academy but by each of their individual guilds, and now by critics’ groups, festivals, and even by the people.

Long forgotten by the industry and even audiences, stand-ins fought to be recognized for their own contributions to the creation of motion pictures. For a short time in the 1940s, this little acknowledged group handed out their own awards. Instead of being able to say, “I’d like to thank the Academy,” they could thank the stars for whom they tolled under hot lights and conditions.

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Victor Chatten, was the stand-in for Lew Ayres, Silver Screen, August 1939.

The use of stand-ins, replacing someone else in something onerous or dangerous, dates to the mid-teens when doubles or stand-ins replaced actors during difficult stunts in serials. Tony Slide in his book “Hollywood Unknowns” states that the earliest documented use of a stand-in dates to 1914, when D. W. Griffith substituted Claire Anderson for the ailing Blanche Sweet (she was suffering from scarlet fever) in some of the scenes for his film “The Escape.”

He also claims that the traditional use of stand-ins originated in the 1920s with the sometimes temperamental actress Pola Negri during her days at Paramount. Brought to America by the studio in 1923, Negri disliked waiting around the set when not working and suggested that a mannequin or dummy replace her during this time.

As early 1928, Screenland magazine mentions Betty Danko, Corinne Griffith’s stand-in for “The Divine Lady,” calling stand-ins a recent addition to filmmaking. The practice began to catch on, and studios hired lookalikes to replace the actors while directors and camera crews adjusted the lights, arranged staging, and set up for shooting.

Peter Lorre and Errol Flynn and their doubles, Modern Screen.

Articles began appearing in fan magazines about the profession, calling it perhaps an opportunity to break into the business, as readers inquired about the practice. Many of these stories included photos of stars with their stand-ins; some could be dead ringers for those they doubled, while others merely possessed the same height, body build, and hair color of their doppelganger. Some of the players became bosom buddies with their bosses, while others merely hobnobbed on the set.

Most stand-ins never achieved fame on their own, and worked rarely outside of this profession. Some, however, did go on to gain success. During silent days, many believe Buck Jones acted as stand-in and valet for star William Farnum, though the two possessed entirely different body types. Dashing Don Alvarado appears to have stepped-in for superstar Rudolph Valentino. Later in the 1930s, a young Ann Dvorak worked as Joan Crawford’s stand-in at MGM. Actress Julie Hayden stood-in for Ann Harding at RKO.

Jeanette Rudy, left, was the stand-in for Martha Raye, Silver Screen.

Some who had been famous during early filmmaking fell back to stand-in work later in their careers. Variety noted that cowboy star Lane Chandler worked as Gary Cooper’s stand-in for Hollywood shooting of “The Plainsman.” Little Carmen La Rue served as Dolores Del Rio’s stand-in. Baby Marie Osborne, star of Balboa Pictures, worked as Ginger Rogers’ stand-in during the 1930s, and after a short return to working before the camera, became Deanna Durbin’s stand-in in the early 1940s.

In 1937, dancer Mary Dees was hired to double for the recently deceased Jean Harlow in order to complete her last film, “Saratoga.” While Dees did possess a similar hair style and build to that of Harlow, it was still obvious that the actress seen only from the back in later scenes was not Harlow.

The use of the word “stand-in” began appearing in popular culture, with silent actor Charles Ray penning a short story in 1935 called “Stand-In,” which also later served as the title of a 1937 film starring Leslie Howard, Humphrey Bogart, and Joan Blondell, in which a New York banker learns all about the motion picture industry from a stand-in. The film “It Happened in Hollywood” featured a down-on-his-luck cowboy star (Richard Dix) who enjoys the companionship of his friends, the stand-ins. “Screen Snapshots” included a sequence about stand-ins at Columbia also in 1937.

George Raft, left, with stand-in Mack Grey, Photoplay, 1933.

By 1939, New York columnist Ed Sullivan wrote in Silver Screen magazine about the hard life of stand-ins, who only made money on the days they actually doubled for their stars, since they rarely appeared as extras in their own right. Thanks to the Screen Actors Guild, below-the-line talent pay had increased under the 1937 bargaining agreement, with extras earning up to $15 a day, while stand-ins received $23 a week or $6.50 a day.

Stand-ins attempted to form their own guild in 1939 to better their conditions when they organized the Hollywood Standin (sic) Players, Inc., before later changing its name to the Hollywood Stand-Ins Guild. By the 1940s, the Associated Stand-Ins of Hollywood represented the workers. They decided to honor their own with awards beginning in 1942.

Showman’s Trade Review reported March 14, 1942 that stand-ins “stood-in” for such stars as Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, Marlene Dietrich, Ole Olsen, Chic Johnson, Hugh Herbertt, Leo Carrillo, Deanna Durbin, and others at the unusual “Hellzapoppin” premiere at the Hawaii Theatre, with many of the stand-ins appearing in public for the first time as their screen lookalike. They appeared after attending a Brown Derby banquet for presentation of “Elmers” “for the “best stand-in performances” of the year to Sally Wood, stand-in for Marlene Dietrich, and to Frankie Van, stand-in for Hugh Herbert.” Following the banquet, the guests were chauffeured in limousines with footmen to the Hawaii Theatre, where they were greeted by photographers.

Joan Blondell, center, with her stand-in, Jean Blair, left, and Iris Lancaster, a stand-in for Joan Crawford, Photoplay, 1933.

The article does not mention how the winners were selected for best stand-in, if they went beyond the call of typical duties, or performed some special service. At least for once they were recognized for the hard work they endured in finishing motion pictures.

On March 15, 1944, Variety announced the winners of the “Elmers” awarded by Associated Stand-Ins of Hollywood the night before: Jack Parker, Randolph Scott’s stand-in for “Gung-Ho” received the award for best male stand-in, while Sally Wood won the best female stand-in award for her work replacing Susanna Foster in “This Is the Life.” No mentions of the Elmers appear again in the trade papers, suggesting the award ceremony disappeared.

There is no exact explanation for where stand-ins acquired the name “Elmer” for their awards. There is one possibility. The term possibly arose from the New York World’s Fair publicity department hiring a typical American friendly greeter. As the Motion Picture Herald stated in its June 29, 1940 issue, “Elmer” was the hypothetical typical American, hail fellow, genial, a sucker for sentiment, fond of popcorn, and with a merry “Hello, Folks,” for everybody.” Mr. Leslie Ostrander, a professional model from Brooklyn, served as their first “Elmer.”

In the 1970s, Amateur Radio began presenting Elmers to those they considered mentors or supporters of would-be ham operators, after the term was first used in a March 1971 article in QST. Elmer is an appropriate name for those who support and serve others, often receiving no great thanks or remuneration in return.

While the Academy Awards remain the motion picture industry’s preeminent award for excellence, the lowly Elmers are long gone and forgotten, though they also rewarded quality work by those who merely stood around and waited.