Hollywoodland! (pt.3)

Pico and Sepulveda. A more obscure song about a more obscure intersection than Hollywood and Vine:

"Vine may be fine but for mine I want to... feel... a-live... and settle down in my La Brea Tar Pits (where nobody's dreams come true!)"

Do you recognize that song? Did my singing do it justice? Those with bizarre taste in music (a.k.a. fans of the old Dr. Demento Show) will recognize those lyrics from Pico and Sepulveda, a pleasant little ditty recorded by The Freddy Martin orchestra in 1947. It's basically a cha-cha based on street names in Hollywood.

I could play it for you...

Let's see if I know how to link to a video... take this wire here.... put that wire there... red is positive... ground is black... just like the tar pits -- heh-heh! But I digress. God I hate it when people say that...  Okay, see if this plays:

For those who wish to sing along:

(Pico and Sepulveda... Pico and Sepulveda... Pico and Sepulveda... Pico and Sepulveda...)

Doheney

Cahuenga

Le Brea

Tar Pits (Tar Pits!)

La Jolla

Sequoia

La Brea

Tar Pits (Tar Pits!)

You can keep Alverado

Santa Monica even Beverly Drive

Vine may be fine but for mine

I want to feel

a-live

and settle down in my La

Brea

Tar Pits

Where nobody's dreams

come truuuue!

(Pico and Sepulveda... Pico and Sepulveda... Pico and Sepulveda... Pico and...)

Anyway...
Sorry to waste your time like that.
(But that's what blogs are for.)

Sign outside my motel on Sepulveda Boulevard. TjH Photo 2012

Culver City Travelodge, where I stayed, on the corner of Washington Place and Sepulveda.

The motel I stayed at was located on Sepulveda Blvd, one of the main North/South surface roads in West Los Angeles. Everything crosses Sepulveda Boulevard:  Santa Monica Blvd, Sunset Blvd, Wilshire Blvd, Mulholland Dr, and of course...

I don't know what was located at the intersection of Pico and Sepulveda in 1947 that would warrant a song to be written about it, but today there's just an ol' lumber store located there.

About a block east of the infamous Pico and Sepulveda intersection, stands this cool old Googie-style restaurant called Norms. I went by here at night and that sign is awesome, animated blinking neon... the N lights up, then the white neon arrow blinks.... then the O lights up and the white arrow neon blinks... then the R... you get the idea.

The song Pico and Sepulveda also mentions the famous La Brea Tar Pits. I've been hearing about this place all my life, from The Smothers Brothers Show (Dickie once judged a beauty contest for Miss La Brea Tar Pits) to The Simpsons (Homer accidently drove his car into the Springfield Tar Pits. Yes, apparently Springfield has Tar Pits.) And, in the 1979 movie 1941 (was there a 1941 movie called 1979 ?) John Belushi crashed his plane into the La Brea Tar Pits. 

John Belushi As Wild Bill Kelsoe in Steven Spielberg's 1979 film comedy,  1941.
I think I was the only one who liked this movie when it came out. Still do.

I stand corrected. Again! It was NOT John Belushi who crashed his plane into the La Brea Tar Pits in the 1979 movie 1941, it was Tim Matheson who crashed his plane into the La Brea Tar Pits in the 1979 movie 1941. (Belushi crashed his on Hollywood Boulevard somewhere.)

Tim Matheson in Steven Spielberg's 1979 film comedy, 1941.

I've always wondered, what are the La Brea Tar Pits anyway? Just a pit of tar in the middle of Los Angeles?

But now that I've been there I can tell you, it's just a pit of tar in the middle of the Los Angeles. Located on Wilshire Boulevard (right behind the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) these pits of tar are just what they sound like, pits of tar. They've been there for tens of thousands of years and Los Angeles was built around them without disturbing them. Actually, there's a nice fence around them, too. And a park. They're nestled inside a beautiful park called Hancock Park wherein is also located the George C Page Museum (you may recall from an earlier blog post that the Wilshire area is known as Museum Row.) (Like anybody's really reading this!)

Yes they are! The famous La Brea Tar Pits are literally pits of tar! 
TjH Photo 2012

Notice in the picture above the ripples in the tar. This is not because the tar is boiling, rather it is caused by methane escaping through cracks in the earth. (Make your own fart jokes here.) That's indeed what is happening. It bubbles like oatmeal. The La Brea Oatmeal Pits? It kinda looks like the opening of the Beverly Hillbillies Show, when Uncle Jed was shootin' at some food "and up from the ground came a bubblin' crude..." That's exactly what is happening here. Bubblin' crude (oil that is, black gold, Texas Tea...) In fact, years before the city had spread this far West (downtown Los Angeles is just east of here) this area was pretty flat, i.e. no tall buildings -- not even Johnie's Diner was here yet -- and this land was rich with oil. Here's a picture from about a hundred years ago... (I didn't take this picture, obviously.) (Well, actually I did. I took it from some other guy's blog.)

The La Brea Tar Pits circa 1910

Notice in the 1910 photo -- in the upper left quadrant of the picture -- all the oil derricks in the background. I don't pretend to know a lot about this, but I'll pretend to pretend to know and try to explain, because I was fascinated with this place for about half the afternoon... Apparently, this tar leaked up here to the surface from cracks deep within the earth. Yes, the earth has cracks. (Think of all the faults and earthquakes they have in California.) Well, this stuff is asphalt in it's natural form (as opposed to processed asphalt like we use to pave roads with.) (It smells exactly the same BTW!) When it bubbles to the surface of the planet, being forced out of the center of the earth by methane gas, it loses all it's oily petroleum stuff to evaporation, and instead of being valuable oil, it is worthless tar. 

(I'd probably get a D- for that explanation, but the fact that I typed it and put it in a clear essay protector would save me from flunking. Neatness counts, always.)

Life size replicas of ancient creatures getting stuck in the tar adorn the park.
TjH Photo 2012

So what happened was, way back in prehistoric times -- even before the oil derricks and Johnie's Diner were here -- dinosaurs and mastodons and wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers, as well as gophers and squirrels and mice, would wander into these tar pits, thinking it was a nice black, smelly pond to cool off in and maybe get a drink from, and they would get stuck in the tar and die a slow horrible death. Making this one of the most fossil-heavy places in the country. For thousands of years creatures have been getting stuck and dying here, leaving enough bones and fossils to warrant the building of it's own museum right on the premises. You can see the George C Page Museum in the background of the photo above.

The ripples in the tar are caused from gas from deep within the earth finding it's way to the surface. Not because the tar is boiling. Can you imagine a bunch of scientists 100 years ago gathered around the tar pits trying to coax the others to touch it to see if it's boiling? I can. That's the kind of thing I think about when I'm standing in front of a scientific wonder of the world.
TjH Photo 2012

Did They Ever Find Any People Bones in the Tar Pits?

Honestly yes. Legend has it they only ever found one human skeleton in the pits. And she was 10,000 years old. A seventeen year-old female. (Clearly a distant relative of Paris Hilton.) (Wow. Two Paris Hilton references in one blog. Is it even in vogue to make fun of her any more?)  

I better post another picture of Yvonne Craig as Bat Girl to cleanse the pallet...

Yvonne Craig as Bat Girl.
Later in this blog I'll tell you about how I saw The Original Batmobile locked in George Barris's Hot Rod Shop and looked at it through the window like a pathetic kid outside a candy store. For now, though, enjoy the Bat Girl.

Let us take our leave of the prehistoric Tar Pits and travel North up La Brea Avenue back to the Hollywoodland of the 1930s...

On the corner of La Brea Ave and Sunset Blvd sits a cute little English Tudor house... or is it?
TjH Photo 2012

Designed to look like a row of English Tudor houses, this is in fact the exterior facade of Charlie Chaplin's Studio (look beyond the maroon car and you'll see the actual roof of one of the real soundstage buildings.) The houses, built in 1917, are just a false front.
TjH Photo 2012

A similar shot of the Chaplin Studios -- circa 1920s -- looking North on La Brea Ave.

Now, I wasn't as fascinated by this as I was by the natural wonder of the Tar Pits, but it did help me to further appreciate the genius of Charlie Chaplin. (Let it be known, I'm not a big Chaplin fan, so I'm not just blowing smoke up his baggy overalls. I've only seen 1 or 2 Chaplin films. I'm a Stan Laurel fan myself.) But the fact that this was 1917 -- motion pictures were only about a dozen years old -- and Chaplin had the wherewithal (you like that word?) to design the exterior of his studio to look like an old English neighborhood so he could shoot street scenes right outside the studio door, instead of packing up an expensive mobile unit and driving to some other part of town. He just ran an extension cord out the gate and shot fifteen feet away from the sound stage. I think that's brilliant.

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, KBE standing outside his kingdom at 1416 La Brea Avenue. Actually this is before he was a Sir. He was still just a Little Tramp. In 1975 the Queen of England made him a Knight of the British Empire (KBE). He died in 1977. He sold this place in 1952 to Superman (Kling Studios.)

Today, a painting on the former main entrance door (now unused) is just one homage to the man who built this historic studio (actually it was physically built by a Milwaukee firm, but it was Chaplin's design...)
TjH Photo 2012

The current owner of 1416 La Brea is none other than Kermit the Frog (seriously!) as this is now The Jim Henson Studios, home of The Muppets. And in another homage to Sir Charlie, a statue of Kermit ala The Little Tramp stands high above the main gate.
TjH Photo 2012

But the Hollywood History of this place doesn't just start with Charlie Chaplin and end with Kermit the Frog. In the interim, it was Kling Studios (1952-1959) and they shot The Adventures of Superman here. Then Red Skelton bought it and they shot his show here as well as Perry Mason.

The studio in the '60s was more famous for Perry Mason than Charlie Chaplin. That is, until 1969 when it was placed on the LA Register of Historic Places.

In the seventies the Chaplin Studios became A&M Records and they recorded many many albums of the 70s and 80s here, including The Carpenters, Peter Frampton, We Are The World, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (in fact Herb Alpert was part-owner of A&M Records. A= Alpert, M= Jerry Moss.) (I told you, I know a lot of useless stuff.) They also shot many music videos here in the early days of MTV when it was actually a video music channel. The Muppets took it over in 2000 and restored it to Chaplin's glory.

Superman, Red Skelton, Perry Mason, The Muppets.
Just a few of the occupants of 1416 La Brea Avenue after Charlie Chaplin moved out...

I would have taken more photos, but there was an ambiguous crackhead following me around. If I crossed the street, he crossed the street. When I crossed back, he crossed back. As he casually walked toward me, from half a block away, I casually got in my car and casually drove thirty blocks away leaving 50 minutes on my parking meter. I'm such a wuss.

End of Part Three ... Click to Go to Part Four ...