Note: This is an encore post from 2013.
A wartime Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, with many service personnel welcomed into people’s homes for a holiday meal.
The Times published cooking tips for war workers, advising cooks who were otherwise engaged “for the duration” to use prepared mixes, packaged pie crust and canned pumpkin to cut preparation time.
Note: This is an encore post from 2011.
Here’s a traditional roast turkey recipe from the “Every-Day Cook-Book and Family Compendium,” written about 1890 by Miss E. Neill. Be sure your fire is bright and clear and watch out for the gall-bag.
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Note: This is an encore post from 2012.
The area of Los Angeles now known as Studio City was mainly farm and ranch land up into the late 1920s, when investors founded the Studio City Business District and decided to try and create a film industry in the city. Businesses began springing up along the highway connecting the far Valley with Hollywood, the street now known as Ventura Boulevard. As the business area grew around what was originally the Mack Sennett Studio, and then Republic Studios, so did restaurants. One of these was Eaton’s Rancho Restaurant.
(Update: This site is near Du-Par’s, which is closing Dec. 31. An earlier version of the post said this was the site of Du-Par’s).
This week’s mystery movie was the 1942 MGM picture Tish, with Marjorie Main, Zasu Pitts, Aline MacMahon, Susan Peters, Lee Bowman, Guy Kibbee, Virginia Grey and Richard Quine.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1940 Twentieth Century-Fox film Lillian Russell, with Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, Edward Arnold, Warren William, Leo Carrillo, Helen Westley, Dorothy Peterson, Ernest Truex, Nigel Bruce, Claude Allister, Lynn Bari, Weber and Fields, Eddie Foy Jr., Una O’Connor and Joseph Cawthorn. Continue reading
At a time when men dominated the sales profession, two women facilitated moving pictures sales in the United States during the 1910s and 1920s, an incredible rarity in the selling profession. Pioneers in their field, these unsung women demonstrated that finesse and knowledge were as successful as aggression and domination in the often combative field.
Salespersons were then required to sell a company’s moving pictures to states’ rights distributors looking to fill the country’s film theatres while at the same time attempting to create demand for a particular brand or studio. Others were attempting to sell films from foreign countries here in the United States as well. Men dominated this competitive field, particularly those loud and aggressive enough to dominate competition or wily enough to outsmart competitors. These salespersons explained differences in product, popularity, and appeal, introduced new products, and supplemented their direct meetings with exhibit bulletins, reviews in Exhibitor’s Trade Herald and other trade magazines. Salespeople were the very embodiment of a booming new field. Continue reading
This week’s mystery movie was the 1953 MGM film Torch Song, with Joan Crawford, Michael Wilding, Gig Young, Marjorie Rambeau, Henry (Harry) Morgan, Dorothy Patrick, James Todd, Eugene Loring, Paul Guilfoyle and Benny Rubin. Continue reading
The Studio Club in Photoplay, 1917.
Note: This is an encore post from 2013.
T he advent of the 20th century offered the possibility of more freedom and opportunity for women. For decades, women had advocated for the right to vote, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Others clamored for more work opportunities beyond teaching, librarian, and secretarial positions.
The relatively new medium of motion pictures also tantalized audiences with many new possibilities beyond their hometowns: exciting new cities, novel hobbies and recreations, and modern employment opportunities. In fact, many people considered the growing film industry itself an excellent field to try their luck, especially movie-struck, naïve young women.
ALSO BY MARY MALLORY
Magic Castle
Mack Sennett
Brand Library
Auction of Souls
Pier Angeli and her little friend remind Daily Mirror readers to turn back their clocks this Sunday.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1933 RKO picture Topaze, with John Barrymore, Myrna Loy, Reginald Mason, Jobyna Howland, Jackie Searl, Albert Conti, Frank Reicher and Luis Alberni. Continue reading
Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, described by film critic Roger Ebert as the “first true horror film,” still wows audiences more than 100 years after creation due to its high artistic values and nightmarish, foreboding atmosphere. Reflecting as well as foreshadowing political events in Europe at the time, the story of its first release in Los Angeles in May 1921 also mirrors our current political environment.
Released in Germany to huge acclaim in 1920, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari popularized the Expressionist Style of filmmaking through its otherworldly depiction of the depraved psyche and nightmarish anxiety of its lead character. An offshoot of the revolutionary early twentieth century art form cubism, which embraced an abstracted and multidimensional presentation of reality, Expressionism symbolically explored the madness and nightmarish qualities of an anxiety-filled, suspicious culture. Continue reading
A postcard showing Sid Grauman and the Egyptian Theater, listed on EBay.
On Oct. 18, Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre turned 100 years old. Built and operated by legendary showman Sid Grauman, the spectacular theater introduced major Hollywood premieres and radio broadcasts as it became a mecca of entertainment for Southern California. The successful theater demonstrated the business and creative acumen of the shrewd exhibitor as he formed the template of the Hollywood premiere and its publicity possibilities by showcasing and expanding his creative genius.
Grauman absorbed showmanship from his theater manager father. Vaudeville’s obit called him “the father of continuous vaudeville…the first showman to establish himself after the great fire; also the first showman to adopt the large, luxurious theater for pictures.” Continue reading
This week’s mystery movie was the 1937 film Internes Can’t Take Money, with Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Lloyd Nolan, Stanley Ridges, Lee Bowman, Barry Macollum, Irving Bacon and Gaylord Pendleton.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1949 film The Queen of Spades, with Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans, Ronald Howard, Mary Jerrold, Yvonne Mitchell, Anthony Dawson, Pauline Tennant, Miles Malleson, Athene Seyler, Michael Medwin, Maroussia Dimitrevitch, Ivor Barnard and Violetta Elvin.
Harold Lloyd’s float in the electrical parade, courtesy of Mary Mallory.
Note: This is an encore post from 2013.
Long before the Walt Disney Co. began presenting an electrical parade at its parks, Los Angeles offered electrical parades as part of the city’s grand La Fiesta de las Flores celebrations. In 1931, the motion picture industry presented its own lavish spectacular, a glorious, over-the-top affair that only 1930s Hollywood could produce, called Motion Picture Night and the Parade of Jewels.
Los Angeles began celebrating La Fiesta de Las Flores in the 1890s as a way to boost civic pride and awareness as well as lure tourist dollars. Floats, bands and equestrian groups decorated with flowers took part in the event. An evening electrical parade highlighted each fiesta, lending a magical aura to festivities.
ALSO BY MARY MALLORY
Keye Luke
Auction of Souls
Busch Gardens and Hogan’s Aristocratic Dreams
For more than 12 years, Los Angeles has participated in CicLAvia, which closes city streets to traffic and transforms them for a few hours into public parks. These lively spaces allow residents to enjoy healthy activity, visit new neighborhoods, learn history, and people-watch. It connects people throughout Los Angeles in exciting and energizing ways, hopefully opening eyes and minds to our shared humanity.
Mike Hawks and I decided to enjoy the Heart of LA CicLAvia route Sunday, flaneurs enjoying the international and cosmopolitan flair of Los Angeles. We walked the entire route, traveling more than 24,000 steps and almost 10 miles in a city that has endured painful and discriminatory eras to learn the beauty and power of different cultures and races, blending them into a wonderful, inclusive gumbo that enriches as it informs.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1958 film The Proud Rebel, with Alan Ladd, Olivia de Havilland, Dean Jagger, David Ladd, Cecil Kellaway, James Westerfield, Henry Hull, Dean Stanton, Thomas Pittman, Eli Mintz, John Carradine and King.
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Halloween is coming up, so I’ll issue my annual warning: Don’t dress up like “The Black Dahlia.” It’s not honoring the memory of Elizabeth Short. It’s not “Justice for Beth,” however you might define it. Just don’t do it.
This week’s mystery was the 1965 film The Train, with Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Michel Simon, Suzanne Flon, Wolfgang Preiss, Albert Remy, Charles Millot, Richard Munch, Jacques Marin and Jeanne Moreau.
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A photo of the original museum at Campo de Cahuenga, courtesy of Mary Mallory.
Note: This is an encore from 2012.
Driving south down Lankershim Boulevard from Toluca Lake into Universal City, it’s hard to miss the skyscrapers, soundstages, and flashing billboard of Universal Studios on the south side of the street. On the north side of the street in Studio City, surrounded by the MTA Universal City subway station parking lot and hard to see, sits a small Spanish building called the Campo de Cahuenga. At this location on Jan. 13, 1847, Col. John C. Fremont signed a treaty with Andreas Pico, ceding California to the United States. Here, California’s Spanish past merged with America’s western expansion to help eventually create our bustling state.
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