I used to hear this song before I was in high school. I remember one summer afternoon walking on the elbow of Fish Canyon across the street from Colleen Black
1980, "Make a Little Magic," with Nicolette Larson, 1952-1997, whose voice was better than the songs that she was known for. Neil Young's 1978 "Lotta Love" is a sweet song, but doesn't really showcase her beautiful voice. "I Only Want to Be With You" does a better job of showcasing her voice. "Lotta Love" got so much airplay. 1978 I was still working at Colamco in San Dimas. It was the year that Sean died from drowning out at the SG Riverbed.
1937, Warner Brothers Studios, located at 5800 Sunset Blvd in Hollywood from 1919 to 1935. Wikipedia explains,
By 1937 Warner had closed the Sunset Boulevard studio and the property had been converted into a bowling alleyand "sports center". TheLos Angeles Timesreported on the conversion of the historic studio . . .
1941, Main Street between 6th Street and 7th. M & S Cafe, Star Loan Office, Big Nickel Coffee and Donut.
1941, Wow, Martin Turnbull covers a lot of ground. Incredible that he's got a couple of shots of this scene. Turnbull writes,
This circa early 1940s (judging by the sedan delivery (probably a Chevrolet) is from at least 1941) shot looks to me like a scene from a Damon Runyon story. On the wast side of Main St between 6th and 7th in downtown L.A. the Star Loan Office pawn shop (at 641 Main St) was bookended by the 5 and 10 M&S Café and Big Nickel Coffee and Donut. Five cents for a cup of joe and a donut sounds like a pretty good deal to me, however you can’t help but wonder what a dime got you over at the M&S Café.
1954, View of the 400 Block of South Main Street, east side; shows stores and shops at sidewalk level of three-story brick building, from right to left: Los Angeles Loan (446 S. Main), Lone Star liquor and wine, Roxy Loan Office (438 S. Main), Shoe Store, Earl's Clothes shop; curbside automobile at right, street railroad tracks in the foreground. Los Angeles; ca. 1954. Thank you to Library California.Gov.
1937, Looking North on Olive at 7th, Los Angeles (1937)
In 1937, looking north on Olive Street at 7th Street revealed a dynamic downtown intersection filled with life and activity. Office workers, shoppers, and streetcar commuters filled the sidewalks as they navigated the bustling shopping district. Department stores, theaters, and high-rise office buildings lined the streets, reflecting the city’s economic growth during the 1930s. Streetcars shared the road with classic sedans, highlighting the coexistence of public transit and car culture. This view captured the rhythm of daily life in downtown Los Angeles, a place where business, leisure, and transit intersected in a thriving urban environment. Thank you to Historical Los Angeles USA.
1942, The East Side of 1st Street in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles (1942)
In 1942, the east side of 1st Street in Little Tokyo was a bustling center of Japanese-American life in Los Angeles. Lined with small businesses, cafes, and specialty stores, it served as a vital hub for the local community. Restaurants offered traditional Japanese cuisine, while gift shops displayed imported goods from Japan. The onset of World War II, however, would bring dramatic change as Japanese-Americans were forcibly relocated to internment camps. This view of 1st Street captured the vibrant cultural heart of Little Tokyo just before this upheaval, highlighting a thriving community that would later rebuild and endure. Thank you to Historical Los Angeles, USA.
1938, In this view of 5th Street across Olive St in downtown Los Angeles, we’re treated to the sign of the long-gone Biltmore Theatre. Attached to the Biltmore Hotel, the theater was a major stop on the national touring circuit. (Erlanger was a theatrical syndicate similar to Shubert.) This photo was taken in 1938 when “Room Service” was playing—the same “Room Service” that was made into a Marx Brothers movie at RKO. The Biltmore Hotel still exists, but an office tower replaced the theater after the Los Angeles . . . Thank you to Martin Turnbull.
In 1908, the intersection of Grand and 9th Street reflected a quieter, early Los Angeles in its pre-urban boom phase. Horse-drawn carriages and early automobiles shared the streets, while pedestrians moved along wooden sidewalks. Small shops, saloons, and modest two-story commercial buildings lined the streets. Open land and undeveloped lots were still visible, signaling that this part of Los Angeles was on the cusp of change. By the 1920s, much of this area would be transformed into a denser commercial and residential district as the city grew rapidly. Thank you to Historica Los Angeles USA.
1939, Looking north on Hill Street with the Vendome Hotel on the left advertising rooms for $1.00 a day or $3.00 a week for a clean, well-ventilated stay. Photo by Dick Whittington.
1947, Street view of the Vendome Hotel, located on the west side of Hill Street between Second and 3rd Streets. The Victorian-style structure features a shoe shine parlor at street level with pedestrians adding life to the scene. Photo by Arnold Hyden.
HISTORICAL NOTES
The Vendome Hotel, located at 231 South Hill Street in Los Angeles, was a 3-story Victorian structure built in 1900 and designed by architect Charles H. Brinkhoff for the Barr Realty Company. Notable for its architectural features, including fire escapes, balconies, and bay windows, the hotel stood as a striking example of the period's design until its demolition in 1963.
1950, A view of the bay-windowed and columned Vendome Hotel at 231 South Hill Street, just north of 3rd Street. A man walks past the building, while a billboard advertising Dash Dog Food is visible near its left side. Photo by Arnold Hyle.
1958, A view of the bay-windowed and columned Vendome Hotel at 231 South Hill Street, with two men lounging on its porch. In the foreground, a phone booth, fire hydrant, and shoeshine stand are visible. The Hotel Astoria is seen in the left background. Photo by Arnold Hylen.
1960, A view of the Vendome Hotel at 231 South Hill Street, located at the foot of Bunker Hill. A man relaxes on the porch, likely waiting for a phone call (note the phone booth in front of the building). The Victorian-style hotel, built in 1900, features distinctive columns and bay windows, with a sign above the porch reading, "SPECIAL RATES TO SERVICEMEN." The Vendome stood until 1963 when the redevelopment of Bunker Hill began. Today, the site is occupied by a parking structure. Photo by Arnold Hyden. Thank you to Jack Feldman.
1960, Front view of the Vendome Hotel at 231 South Hill Street, a three-story Victorian structure featuring fire escapes, balconies, and bay windows. A sign reading 'Special Rates to Servicemen' is visible on the left. Photo by William Reagh
Anyone who visited dance clubs in the 80s danced to this 1982 Hall and Oats song, "Maneater." The rhythm is upbeat but stop and listen to lyrics and you get the sense that a couple of troubadours from Philadelphia were protecting you against the crazy world of dating.
She'll only come out at night The lean and hungry type Nothing is new, I've seen her here before Watching and waiting Ooh, she's sitting with you, but her eyes are on the door
So many have paid to see What you think you're getting for free The woman is wild, a she-cat tamed by the purr of a Jaguar Money's the matter If you're in it for love, you ain't gonna get too far
Oh-oh, here she comes Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up Oh-oh, here she comes She's a man-eater
Oh-oh, here she comes Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up Oh-oh, here she comes She's a man-eater
I wouldn't if I were you I know what she can do She's deadly, man, she could really rip your world apart Mind over matter Ooh, the beauty is there, but a beast is in the heart
Oh-oh, here she comes Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up Oh-oh, here she comes She's a man-eater
Oh-oh, here she comes Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up Oh-oh, here she comes She's a man-eater, oh-oh
Hey!
Ooh!
Whoa-oh, here she comes (here she comes) Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up Whoa-oh, here she comes (watch out) She's a man-eater
Whoa-oh, here she comes (she's a man-eater) Ooh, she'll chew you up Oh-oh, here she comes (here she comes) She's a man-eater
Oh-oh, here she comes (watch out) She'll only come out at night, ooh Oh-oh, here she comes (here she comes) She's a man-eater, ooh-ooh
Oh-oh, here she comes (she's a man-eater) The woman is wild, ooh-ooh Oh-oh, here she comes (here she comes) Watch out, boy, watch out, boy
Oh-oh, here she comes Oh, watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out Oh-oh, here she comes (watch out) Yeah-yeah, she's a man-eater
Oh-oh, here she comes (she's a man-eater) She's watching and waiting, ooh Oh-oh, here she comes Oh, she's a man-eater
1938, Looking east along Marchessault Street from Alameda Street in Old Chinatown, with the framing of Union Station's new clock tower visible in the background. Thank you to Jack Feldman. See the comments in that link. Jack provides the Water & Power Museum link. Very cool. The scene in the photo above is the location of Union Station.
1937 vs. 2021, View looking east of what was then Marchessault Street, now entryway to Union Station, from Alameda Street. This area was once part of Old Chinatown.
Bob Chaparro gives some interesting background.
Old China Town was wiped out by the construction of LAUPT [Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal]. In the process numerous tunnels were discovered. The Chinese residents built the tunnels to provide safe access to various business and homes after the riots and massacre of 1871. In October 1871, tensions were running high in Chinatown because of a feud between leaders of two rival Huiguan (mutual benefit associations) over the kidnapping of a young Chinese woman. A shootout between several Chinese men broke out in the middle of Negro Alley. The ensuing response by two police officers resulted in the wounding of one of the officers and the death of a civilian who assisted the officers, Robert Thompson. The shooters took cover in the Coronel Building. Word quickly spread that Chinese had killed Thompson, a popular former saloon owner. A mob of rioters quickly grew to 500 people, ten percent of the population of the city. The rioters forced the Chinese out of the Coronel Building and dragged the captured Chinese to makeshift gallows at Tomlinson’s corral and Goller’s wagon shop. When John Goller protested that his children were present, a rioter pressed a gun to his face and said, "Dry up, you son of a bitch." After Goller’s portico crossbar was filled with seven hanging bodies, the crowd dragged three more victims to a nearby freight wagon and hung them from the high side of the wagon. While there are varying accounts of exactly what transpired, there is no disputing the brutality and savagery of that night. The next morning, seventeen bodies were laid out in the jail yard, grim evidence of the horrific events of the previous night. The eighteenth victim, the first man hanged, had been buried the night before. Ten percent of the Chinese population had been killed. One of the Chinese caught up in the mob violence was the respected Dr. Gene Tong. In fact, of the killed, only one is thought to have participated in the original gunfight. Though a grand jury returned 25 indictments for the murder of the Chinese, only ten men stood trial. Eight rioters were convicted on manslaughter charges, but the charges were overturned on a legal technicality and the defendants were never retried.
1938, Looking toward City Hall from the southeast corner of Alameda and Marchessault, where the Tuey Far-Low Café stands. Thank you to Jack Feldman. Feldman links to the Water & Power Museum.
Was chatting with a friend in England yesterday who’d been reading about LA’s history as an oil town and I realized it’d been nearly a year since my last oil history post, so I’ve put together a collection of shots taken in Signal Hill in the third decade of the city’s ‘Oil Boom.’
The Long Beach Oil Field was discovered by the Royal Dutch Shell Company (now just “Shell”) on June 23, 1921, sparking an immediate rush to the area, with realtors selling off plots at $10K an acre ($175K today), and new wells going up within days. By the end of the week, there were nine derricks in the area, and a year later, there were hundreds, earning the area the nickname “Porcupine Hill” for its appearance from a distance.
While not the first oil discovery in the Los Angeles Basin, it proved to be the most productive, where even two competing derricks built within feet of each other could both produced hundreds of barrels a day for each owner. And, while fiercely competitive, these oilmen were organized enough to band together and incorporate the area of Signal Hill in 1924 to avoid annexation by Long Beach which might have brought zoning restrictions and added taxation.Truly the un-checked wild west, and by 1930, Southern California was producing a quarter of the world’s oil supply.
When these were taken, 15-ish years later, LA had grown tired of the pollution generated by the oil industry, leading to a war within our city government, as the heavily-bribed members of the City Council repeatedly tried granting companies “unrestricted” drilling rights within the city, only to have them vetoed each time by Mayor Fletcher Bowron who dared them to put it on the ballot and give the public a voice. It was a fight that led newspapers to refer to him as: “Mayor Bowron, the Man Nobody Likes But the Voters.”
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Photos:
• 1-4. by Andreas Feininger, 1947
• 5. by B. Anthony Stewart, 1941
• 6. Cameron Pl & Long Beach Blvd, 1948
• 7. Pasadena Ave & Spring St., 1949
• 8. Sunnyside Cemetery, by Herman Schultheis, 1937
• 9-10. by Nina Leen, 1945
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1-4,9,10. LIFE Magazine; 5. National Geographic; 6-7. Cal State Dominguez Hills; 8. LAPL
The burlesque theaters of S. Main Street, as seen in 1936 (and late-1940s).
So these first six shots were taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt, and for the longest time I’ve been scrolling past them, mistaking them as duplicates all taken at the same theatre. Something about how busy and cluttered the text and photos are that makes it much more difficult to see the buildings underneath. Looking closer, I see there are three theaters here, organized as follows:
1-3. Taken at the Follies Theatre at 337 S. Main St., with shows every Saturday at midnight. Opened as the Belasco in 1904 (predating the current Belasco), it became a vaudeville theatre in 1912, then started running follies & burlesque in 1919, which continued into the 1950s. See slides 8-9 to see it in the late-1940s.
4. Taken at the Rosslyn Theatre at 431 S. Main (thanks to IG follower 'thrift_store_rescues' for identifying it), which opened in 1925 and was not known for burlesque. Tried finding more info on the "Girlesque" show and learned there was actually once an unrelated Girlesque Theatre one block over which was shut down in a vice raid in 1930. This appears to be a temporary stop for a touring "Girlesque Revue," which debuted at a carnival on the LA County fairgrounds in 1936 and then went on tour around town, also hitting San Pedro & Wilmington.
5-6. Taken at the Burbank Theatre at 548 S. Main St, which opened in 1893. Started running burlesque in 1927, and continued into the late-1960s.
7. Exterior of the Burbank Theatre, 1937
8-9. Taken outside of the Follies theatre in the late 1940s, about ten years after the photos in Slides 1-3. You can see that the building has gone through some major changes, with a neon-lined marquee added, lowered to the first story - likely part of a $60K renovation done in 1938.
10. Dressing room at the Follies, late 1940s.
11. LA Daily News, July 11, 1936
12. A 1936 program from the Follies Theatre
13-15. Follies lineup announcements, 1935
16. 1938 clipping
17. Follies ad, May 8, 1936
18. Burbank ad, 1937
19. LA Daily News, Jan. 10, 1936
20. Burbank ad, May 7, 1936
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1-6. via LIFE Magazine; 7-10. via @lapubliclibrary ; 12,16,18. via Bill Counter's Los Angeles Theatres Blog (or see: Los Angeles Theatres)
1. Vermont & 48th, love the record store to the left.
2. Vermont & 43rd, V Line on its way to East Hollywood.
3. Vermont & 42nd, U Line headed to Florence Ave.
4. Vermont & Florence. Love the Chevy dealer.
5. Somewhere on the B Line, headed toward Ascot & 51st.
6. Taken on Central, somewhere along the U-Line, which ran between Nevin & West Adams.
7. Listed as Slauson & Central, but it’s labeled as a U-Line car which wouldn’t have run there.
8. Taken on Hawthorne in Inglewood, the 5 Line is on its way to Eagle Rock. This ran up Crenshaw, then cut across Santa Barbara Ave (now MLK) to head up Grand.
9. Somewhere along the 8 Line heading from the Plaza to Leimert Park (ended at 54th & Crenshaw). Zoom in to see LA Railway’s first African American ‘motorman’ Arcola Philpott at the helm.
10. Taken on Hoover, the F Line heading to Vermont & 116th
Unfortunately, these cars wouldn’t last much longer. When these were taken, the privately-owned Los Angeles Railway system had recently been sold to American City Lines out of Chicago, who shut down rail service on all but five of the original yellow car routes in 1948, replacing the others with buses which operated under the company’s new name: Los Angeles Transit Lines.
Today, Vermont is still one of the most traveled routes in the county, with Metro’s 204 bus carrying 20,000 riders every weekday - more than any other route. To better accommodate this, Metro is currently working to add bus rapid transit for faster, more reliable bus service on Vermont Avenue.
1. United Airlines ground workers on strike, July 1968.
Photo by Ralph Crane.
2. The Brown Derby waiters strike of 1934, when waiters were being paid 90 cents a day and were asking for a base of $15/week. This strike lasted three months.
3. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union pickets nonunion dressmakers during the Biltmore Bowl, Jan. 18, 1940.
4. Red car operators picketing during a Pacific Electric Railway strike in 1943.
5. My all-time favorite: the lone picketer who stopped work at the Park La Brea construction site on Sept 15, 1949. More than 2,000 tradespeople refused to cross.
6. Carpenters Union on strike in 1949, looks like Gower with Columbia Studios on the left.
7. Striking workers review their growing “Scab Gallery,” during a Douglas Aircraft strike in Long Beach in 1952. Photo by George Silk.
8. César Chavez marches with farm workers during the five-year Delano grape strike that led to the formation of the United Farm Workers Union. Photo by Ernest Lowe, taken March 15, 1966.
9. “The longer the picket line, the shorter the strike.” Also taken by Lowe during the grape strike - March 16, 1966.
10. Disneyland’s maintenance on strike, taken March 7, 1979. In total, 500 workers marched from 14 different unions.
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