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)...
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| 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.
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| TjH Photo 2012 |
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| 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.
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| Other exhibits at the Petersen. TjH Photo 2012 |
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| A couple of Woodies. TjH Photo 2012 |
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The Batcycle driven by Yvonne Craig as Batgirl in the 1967 season of TV's Batman
TjH Photo 2012 |
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Yvonne Craig who played Batgirl in the 1967 season of TV's Batman
"Holy Eye Candy, Batman!" |
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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.
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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.
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| Big Daddy Roth's The Outlaw built in 1959 right here in L.A. TjH Photo 2012 |
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| 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.
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| TjH Photo 2012. You can tell it's one of my photos. It's blurry. |
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| 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.)
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| "This one will talk till his voice is hoarse..." |
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| Fashions by The Petersen Automotive Museum... Wait - WHAT?! |
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| The Petersen Museum Today TjH Photo 2012 |
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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:
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| 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...
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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!"
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| LACMA TjH Photo 2102 |
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| The Urban Light exhibit at LACMA TjH Photo 2012 |
Oh, and here's another picture of Yvonne Craig,
for good measure...
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| She always looks better OUT of her Batgirl uniform... |
