Hollywoodland! (pt.1)

Does anyone remember an 80s band called Frankie Goes to Hollywood? No?
Well, that's where I got my title from, Timmy Goes to Hollywood.
TjH Photo 2012

Thank you for visiting my Hollywood blog. I went out to Hollywood for two and a half days in October of 2012 and I just now posted my photos along with some rambling commentary. This blog is divided into six chapters. At the end of each one is a link to the next one. Or you can jump around by using the Table of Contents, to the right. You don't have to read everything... or anything, for that matter. After all, this isn't communist Russia. It's HOLLYWOOD!

"Hooray for Hollywood!

That screwy ballyhooey Hollywood..."

~ Johnny Mercer

from the 1937 motion picture Hollywood Hotel

 Hooray For Hollywood video from YouTube, thanks to azuukyle7. Click on it to enjoy

A warning to those who don't know me 
(and a reminder to those who do): I tend to ramble. 

You've heard of Hollywood Babylon? Well, this blog should be called Hollywood Babble-On. (tee-hee)

So close but yet so far. Me in front of the Hollywood sign. 
Ten miles in front of it,  but in front of it nevertheless...
(Click to see it bigger. An inch bigger, but bigger nevertheless...)

So, a guy goes to Hollywood. He spends half an hour trying to get across Sunset Boulevard during rush hour. Suddenly he sees Paris Hilton on the other side of the street. He yells over, "Miss Hilton! Any idea how I can get across this street?" Hilton rolls her eyes and replies, "Duh, Mister! You ARE across the street!"

Okay, first things first: This blog is not a diary, so it's not in chronological order (or any kind of logical order, for that matter). I did not go to Hollywood to seek out celebrities, I didn't take the Universal Tour, I didn't see any shows. Hollywood was the show. I wanted to see Hollywood. The city, the suburb; the place where Laurel and Hardy used to work; the hills where the famous sign looms. I'm a nostalgia buff so basically I went there to see stuff that isn't there any more. Make sense? No?

As the Beach Boys' said: "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times." I went to Hollywood in 2012 wishing it was 1930. Seeing the Hollywood sign is cool, but I really wanted to see it when it said Hollywoodland:

... I wanted to eat at the Brown Derby when it was actually shaped like a brown derby...

... and I wanted to watch the great Laurel and Hardy make a movie.

So let's start there: Laurel and Hardy at The Petersen Automotive Museum.

Well, I didn't get to see them making a movie... but I DID get to see the car that Laurel and Hardy were driving when they got "sandwiched" by two streetcars in the 1930 movie Hog Wild (shown above, 1930 -- shown below 2012)...

TjH Photo 2012

The car -- originally a 1922 Ford Model T -- is on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard at Fairfax Avenue (catty corner from Johnie's Coffee Shop). This car was custom built for the final scene of Hog Wild when Stan and Ollie get caught between two oncoming streetcars. It was designed to be fully operational after the "accident" and indeed Stan and Ollie drive away in it at the end of the film, to roars of laughter -- undoubtedly -- from 1930s theater goers. Below is another view and the exhibit signage.

TjH Photo 2012

Click to Enlarge   TjH Photo 2012

The Petersen Automotive Museum is not just a Hollywood Movie Car Museum (although they do have a few.) It's more of a History of the Automobile Museum and an Automotive Styling Museum (Petersen Publishing, in case you didn't know, is the company that developed Hot Rod Magazine in 1948 and many other publications, not all car related, including Tiger Beat and Sassy. The company has since been sold, and someone else publishes Hot Rod today, but the founder, Robert E Petersen, was also the founder of this museum which he established in 1994, so his name and love of automobiles live on at this museum. Mr. Petersen died in 2007.

Other exhibits at the Petersen.   TjH Photo 2012

A couple of Woodies.   TjH Photo 2012

The Batcycle driven by Yvonne Craig as Batgirl in the 1967 season of TV's Batman
TjH Photo 2012

Yvonne Craig who played Batgirl in the 1967 season of TV's Batman
"Holy Eye Candy, Batman!"

The Batcycle I saw.
Designed by Tom Daniel

I STAND CORRECTED! Actually, the Batcycle shown above was NOT driven by Yvonne Craig as Batgirl, but was in fact driven by Adam West as Batman. Burt Ward as Robin sat in the attached sidecar. This cycle was used in the 1966 movie version of TV's Batman. The cycle driven by Batgirl was in fact purple and much more feminine. But if you think I'm going to remove this delightful photo of Miss Craig just because of my faux pas, you're indeed mistaken.

The Bat Girl Cycle I DID NOT see.
Not designed by Tom Daniel

By the way, the Batcycle and Sidecar was designed by the great Tom Daniel, about a year or so before he went to work for Mattel Toys as designer of their new Hot Wheels cars and Monogram Model Kits, such as the Paddy Wagon and the famous Red Baron show car. Tom worked for General Motors in the early sixties designing real cars but actually made more money designing Hot Wheels. I know a lot of worthless stuff, don't I?

Meanwhile, back in Hollywood...

Speaking of my favorite car designers, (and really, doesn't everybody have a list of favorite car designers?) running a close second behind Tom Daniel -- in my humble opinion -- was Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. Roth designed beautiful show cars in the fifties and sixties. Whereas Tom Daniel designed them to be toys or model kits (occasionally somebody would fabricate a full size replica of one of Tom's designs) Ed Roth built them for real and eventually they would become model kits or toys. Below is one of my longtime "Big Daddy" favorites, The Outlaw. Here it is sitting in the gift store at The Petersen Museum. Sadly it is not for sale, so I had to buy a Hot Wheels version of it for seven dollars.

Big Daddy Roth's The Outlaw built in 1959 right here in L.A.  TjH Photo 2012

Ed building The Outlaw circa 1959. More  about these great L.A. car designers later in the blog.

The Petersen Museum is located in an area of Hollywood known as the Miracle Mile, named as such in the thirties and forties for its great shopping and choice of fine eating establishments. You've prob'ly heard it mentioned in the Billy Joel song It's Still Rock & Roll to Me: "Should I get a set of whitewall tires/Are ya gonna cruise the Miracle Mile?" Back in the thirties or forties, the city even put up fancy neon signs promoting the area, some of which are still standing and in operation today. This one (below) is on display in the Petersen Museum, although there's a real one just outside the museum on the median strip on Wilshire Boulevard.

TjH Photo 2012. You can tell it's one of my photos. It's blurry.

Late fifties view of Wilshire Boulevard and one of the Miracle Mile signs.

Currently this portion of Wilshire Boulevard -- surrounded by Highland Avenue, Fairfax Avenue and La Brea Avenue -- is also known as Museum Row. All the old department stores from the Miracle Mile days are pretty much museums now. In fact my friend Brian informed me that the Petersen Automotive Museum used to be Ohrbach's Department Store. Brian also informed me that Ohrbach's used to furnish the clothing for the TV series Mr. Ed. (Clearly I run with a tight-knit bunch of trivia buffs.)

"This one will talk till his voice is hoarse..."

Fashions by The Petersen Automotive Museum... Wait - WHAT?!

The Petersen Museum Today  TjH Photo 2012



The Petersen Museum Building (right) when it was Orbach's Department Store.
The May Co. right across the street can be seen in this early 70s postcard.

Another big department store along the Miracle Mile was The May Company, a.k.a May Co. It stood right on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax. It could be seen from miles away because of it's three-story high metallic gold cylindrical cornice design. Here it is in it's heyday, (below) from a beautiful late 70s Instamatic snapshot I found on the internet:

Mayco late 70s. Notice Johnie's Restaurant across the street. We'll get to that later.

Well, the Mayco building is now the LACMA, or The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Below is a photo I took from the top of the tour bus. At the time I didn't know what it was, I was more interested in Johnie's Coffee Shop across the street. The LACMA is a very cool place. And it has The La Brea Tar Pits right in it's backyard! More on Johnie's Diner and La Brea Tar Pits later in this post...

It doesn't look like much from up here in the open air tour bus, but this intersection of
Wilshire and Fairfax held enough history that I returned to this location the next day.
TjH Photo 2012

Below is a photo of The May Company (now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) being built in the late 1930s. (If you look closely at the 1930s photo -- click to enlarge if necessary -- you'll see a sign across the street that says Simon's Sandwiches on the location that is currently Johnie's Coffee Shop (the blue and white building in the 2012 photo). Well, neither of these establishments are still in business, but they are both classic examples of 20th Century Caifornia "Googie-style" architecture, a commercial style somewhere between Art Deco and Streamline Moderne. I'm no expert on this by any means, but I read a couple of books on Googie style and it jumps out at me when I see it. I'll talk more about it later in this blog post. Bear with me. I'm a geek. "I don't know much about art but I know what I like!"

LACMA TjH Photo 2102

The Urban Light exhibit at LACMA TjH Photo 2012

Oh, and here's another picture of Yvonne Craig,

for good measure...

She always looks better OUT of her Batgirl uniform...

End of Part One ... Click to Go to Part Two ...