Hollywood Boulevard
So many memories about this street, instead of trying to organize them, here are some favorite stories in random order.
Half a block from Hollywood and Highland was the Snow White Café. The sign is still there! It was owned by Johnny Weissmuller. I used to stop in and say hello to him, and Tarzan would make me a liverwurst sandwich.
(I try to fact check my stories. There is nothing online to support my memory that Johnny Weissmuller owned the Snow White Café)
One late evening walking on Hollywood and Highland there was a sniper on top of the Scientology building shooting at people. I don’t think he hit anyone, but he came close to hitting me. With a couple of other people, protected by buildings, we were warning other pedestrians and cars.
Phil Harris, a popular singer and radio star in the 30s and 40s, had a record store on Hollywood Boulevard. His wife, Alice Faye, who I had an enormous crush on when I was a kid, sometimes was there doing the books. So exciting.
Pickwick Books, very similar to Vromans today. A great bookstore.
Half a block down there was an exceptional used bookstore. My cousins Freddy and Leo and I waited patiently at that bookstore for the UPS truck to come and deliver the first edition of The Silmarillion. What nerds.
On Hollywood, past Vine, was a row of great used bookstores.
Across the street, next to The Pantages Theater is The Frolic Room, where at 16, was my first dive bar. That amazing smell of alcoholics. Now it is an iconic hip spot
On Vine a little north of Hollywood was a shoe repair guy, he was Piggy from the Little Rascals. I’d stop in and say hello. I got shoes fixed once.
Hana and I saw Jackie Chan making a movie on that block.
The Hollywood Palace Theater had plays, TV shows like The Hollywood Palace, and The Dick Cavett Show, if he was in town.
Just south of Hollywood on Vine was a diner owned by Clara Bow. Had I known I would have loved to have met The It Girl.
There were the two Brown Derby restaurants. Hollywood Blvd (building now gone) and one on Vine (building still there). Not the location shaped like a brown derby on Wilshire Blvd.
And the Vine theater that Suzi managed when I first met her.
I saw The Three Stooges get their star on the walk of fame. Actually, it was on Vine Street. I got to meet two old character actors that were in many of The Three Stooges shorts.
On the block above Sunset was a little theater where Steve Allen taped his syndicated show. For years, across the street was a barn where the first feature movie was made in Los Angeles. It’s now located in a parking lot at The Hollywood Bowl.
Back on Hollywood, The Egyptian theater, a great movie place. We went to see Ben Hur there. In the courtyard of the theater, they had the chariots all in a line. I asked, and got to get on a couple of them. But not the chariot with the blades.
I was paid once to Yarn Bomb a block of Hollywood Blvd.
Then Sunset Boulevard. There is the famous grocery store, Ralph’s on Sunset. My favorite encounter there was with a six month old Thea, at 3 am, running into Jay Leno. When my cousins Alex or Lizzie were in town, they would like to go to Ralph’s after midnight and we would run into soap opera stars. Running into Malcolm McDowall and Mary Steenburgen, one of the few times I went total fanboy gaga hamenahamena. Also saw Larry Miller there, and Rudy Vallee, and my friend the character actor Kathleen Freeman. (See a story about her here ) There were many more, but my memory fails.
When I was an early teen there was a nightclub at Laurel Canyon and Sunset called Pandora’s Box. At least once a week they had an under age night. A fun place. It was mentioned in Joni Mitchell’s song Big Yellow Taxi as the hot spot that was built when they paved paradise.
Across from the In-N-Out was a 24 hour IHOP which was a hang out for Hollywood ne’er-do-wells of all stripes. And also the notorious Copper Penny to the east. Another on Highland. All lots of fun and dangerous late at night.
With some friends at Pioneer Chicken on Sunset, up rolled a Rolls-Royce. And out gets Edwin Starr. WAR, what is it good for, absolutely nothing. Say it again. He liked being recognized, he ate his chicken with us.
There were a number of real characters on Hollywood Boulevard. There was Uncle Phil, who paid a lot of attention to young boys. He was wealthy and financed many fledgling businesses for his fledglings. There was Shuffles. The tale was that he had been a very famous lawyer. He lost his family in a house fire, caused by his falling asleep smoking, and lost his mind. He just shuffled up and down the boulevard all day. People were very kind to him.
Then there was the Manson Family. I didn't meet Charlie Manson, but I met some of the girls. They were very flirtatious. When Manson was on trial downtown, a few of the girls kept vigil on a cement platform in front of the courthouse, with their shaved heads and swastika carved in their foreheads. My family was driving, turning the corner, the girls saw me in the backseat and waved. My mom told my dad that they were waving at him.
There were the Moonies, who were always trying to evangelize and get people to join them. There was another creepy preacher who was trying to recruit kids. I can’t remember his name now, maybe something about Moses. He published what would now be called zines about himself.
On Hollywood and Highland was a restaurant called Daniel’s, but pronounced Danielle’s, it now the Believe It or Not Museum. It was a raucous and fun place, a hang out for street whores, drug dealers, and drag queens. Raymond Burr, who played Perry Mason on TV, dressed like a middle-aged woman, was very often there in a corner booth, holding court.
A very valuable lesson I learned from these characters, a very valuable skill I learned from the freaks and predators on the boulevard and life, was how to navigate through and around them without getting lost or hurt.
From my early teens, until Thea had too many questions, I would Halloween on Hollywood Blvd. People were there on their way to parties or just to show off. Once the street was filled with apes from the movie Planet of the Apes. Another year there were robot cops from THX 1138. One year there were three stretch limousines full of so many Marx Brothers. When they discovered I knew how to do the Harpo handshake, all the Harpos descended on me.
Back past Vine there was the World Theater, where in the 70s they showed 3 movies for a dollar. It was a good place for junkies to sleep, and it was a fun place to go to, and at least one of the movies was good. A couple of doors down from that theater is the Salvation Army headquarters. But before it was that, it was a wonderful movie house called The Hawaiian. There was a volcano and a waterfall inside. I can’t remember what we saw there, but they were big movies. No, the Michener movie wasn’t there.
A block to the east, where Tommy's is now, was a model shop owned by character actor Reginald Denny. He was an inventor of many of the electronics and controls for radio control airplanes. He invented the remote device with two toggles that you move with your thumbs. That is where I got all of my Universal Monster models, ship models, some car models, models of the X-15, NASA spacecraft, and Big Daddy Roth’s Rat Fink models. He was a very kind man.
Back to the west is a little theater that showed classic movies, then became a porn theater, and then a church, but now it’s Ru Paul’s place. One late night, Alex, Sarah, and I went there to see It’s a Gift, one of my top favorite movies. They both fell asleep.
In the block after the Chinese theater was the wonderful C C Brown's. They claimed to have invented the Hot Fudge Sundae. They had old high wooden booths. You would order your Sundae and they would bring it to you with an additional little stainless steel pitcher of hot fudge. The old couple who owned the place were bright and fun and happy. But their kids, who were the servers, were angry and resentful. When the old couple died, the kids closed the place down. What a loss.
Noah, Lily and I went to see Mr. Rogers get his star. Read that story here.
I think I’ve shared enough stories of Hollywood Boulevard.
If God doesn't destroy Hollywood Boulevard,
He owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.
Jay Leno