fishing and canning industry yielding $20,000,000 of products annu-
ally. Three sides of the little harbor's quadrangular shore are crowded
with canneries, boatyards, fertilizer plants, gasoline filling stations for
tuna clippers, and other establishments auxiliary to fishing and canning.
The annual pack is valued at $15,000,000; such by-products as fish oil
and meal, fertilizer, and pet foods add an additional $5,000,000.
Fish Harbor is the home port of 1,200 fishing boats. Approxi-
mately 300 are operated by Japanese, and the remainder by Slavonians,
Italians, Portuguese, Norwegians, and Americans. Fleets of Monterey
trawlers leave daily and return at dusk with the day's catch. The tuna
clippers, equipped with deep wells, live-bait tanks, and Diesel engines,
go as far afield as the South Seas.
Ten packing plants, with approximately 3,000 employees, operate
in the harbor district. Tuna, albacore, yellowfin, bluefin, skipjack, sar-
dines, mackerel, and other fish are tossed into traveling baskets, which
dump them on conveyor belts leading into the canneries. Men of many
nations carry on the work in hip boots, sweaters, and knitted caps.
Slavonians, who represent about one-third of the fishermen, live
mainly in San Pedro. The Japanese, Italians, Portuguese, and Fili-
pinos, numbering some 2,000, have gathered in a colony of their own
on the north shore of Fish Harbor immediately behind the wharves
and extending the width of the basin and north from Wharf Street
to Terminal Way. The section is criss-crossed with narrow streets
bearing such names as Barracuda, Tuna, Shrimp, Bass, and Sardine.
On them is heard a babble of many tongues, but seldom English. In
the yards of the frame cottages and along the water front, men,
women, and sometimes children squat mending fish nets, some of which
are 3,000 feet long and valued at $5,000.
The Japanese population numbers approximately 600 fishermen,
150 merchants, about 500 women, and an equal number of children.
It forms a closely-knit colony, having its own Fishermen's Association.
20. The 38-acre BETHLEHEM SHIPBUILDING CORPORA-
TION PLANT (open by arrangement), 905 S. Seaside Ave., is
equipped to recondition and repair all sizes and types of ships. Its
floating drydock, with a lifting capacity of 15,000 tons, is the largest in
southern California.
21. The new FEDERAL REGIONAL PENITENTIARY (adm.
226 LOS ANGELES
by arrangement), the Government's newest West Coast prison for
short-term offenders, occupies the seaward side of the Terminal Island
section known as Reservation Point. Completed in May 1938, the
$1,380,000 institution is of reinforced concrete, with three cell blocks
and nine dormitories, providing quarters for 600 male and 24 female
prisoners. The cell blocks, dormitories, machine shops, mess hall, quar-
antine and administration building, and auditorium surround a quad-
rangular exercise yard.
Industry and Commerce
Burton O. Burt
UNLOADING TUNA FISH, FISH HARBOR, TERMINAL ISLAND
LOADING SHIP, TERMINAL ISLAND
Burton O. Burt
GRAIN ELEVATOR
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NATURAL GAS TANKS
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OIL FIELDS, MONTEBELLO
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WINE STORAGE VATS
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Los Angeles County Chamber of Commerce
WINE EXPERTS TASTE AND CLASSIFY CALIFORNIA VINTAGES
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California Fruit Growers' Exchange
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Studebaker-Pacific Corporation
BODY ASSEMBLY LINE, AUTOMOBILE FACTORY
Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc.
ASSEMBLY ROOM, AIRCRAFT FACTOR
Hollywood
Bus Stations: Union Bus Terminal, 1629 N. Cahuenga Blvd., for Greyhound
Lines, Inland Stages, Pacific Electric Ry. Motor Coach, Pasadena-Ocean Park
Stage Line, and busses for Universal City, Warner Bros.-First National Studio,
and Burbank; 1646 N. Cahuenga Blvd. for Union Pacific busses to San Fran-
cisco; 1735 N. Cahuenga Blvd. for National Trailways, Santa Fe Trailways,
and Burlington Trailways.
Streetcars and Busses: Fares: Hollywood zone 5^ (streetcars only), to down-
town Los Angeles io#, Santa Monica 20$.
Taxis: 20^ first J4 mile, io# each additional J^ mile.
Information Bureaus: Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, 6520 Sunset Blvd.;
Automobile Club of Southern California, 6902 Sunset Blvd.; Randall Motor
Club, Inc., 5901 Sunset Blvd.
Accommodations: 24 first-class hotels, numerous apartment houses and bunga-
low courts (see Los Angeles General Information}.
Auto and Trailer Camps: Ventura Blvd., 3 miles beyond Hollywood.
Radio Broadcast Theatres: Columbia Square Playhouse, Sunset Blvd. and
Gower St., CBS programs; National Broadcasting Co. Studios, Sunset Blvd.
and Vine St., NBC programs.
Colleges: Chapman College (Disciples of Christ), 677 N. Vermont Ave.;
Immaculate Heart Convent (Catholic), Western and Franklin Aves.
Sightseeing Tours of Motion-Picture Studios: Tanner Gray Line Motor Tours
(enter only Warner Bros.-First National Studios, Burbank), leave Biltmore
Hotel, 5th and Olive Sts., weekdays only, $4.50 per person; busses pass all
other major studios but do not enter. Clifton Motor Tours, Inc., leave from
618 S. Olive St. daily, $1.50 per person; busses pass all major studios but
do not enter.
Note: Information concerning Traffic Regulations, Airports, Street Numbering,
Radio Stations, Theatres, Parks and Playgrounds, Sports, and Annual Events
in Hollywood may be found in Los Angeles General Information.
HOLLYWOOD (385 alt., 184,531 pop.), officially the Hollywood
District of Los Angeles, for it is not an independent city, lies on the
foothill slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains, eight miles from the
center of Los Angeles. Only recently have its boundaries been de-
fined: on the east it is set off from Los Angeles proper by Hyperion
Avenue and Riverside Drive; on the south, by Melrose Avenue; the
hills and canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains bound it on the
north; the city of Beverly Hills adjoins it on the west. Along the
base of the mountains runs Hollywood Boulevard, or just "the Boule-
vard," through the heart of the business district. Midway along it,
at Vine Street, is southern California's Times Square, an inexhaustible
source of comic and tragic material for columnists, romancers, de-
227
228 LOS ANGELES
bunkers, and serious novelists. Within a few blocks are large and
luxurious hotels, Grauman's flamboyant Chinese and Egyptian theatres,
elaborate beauty parlors and department stores, offices of booking agents
and of Variety, expensive shops and lO-cent stores, the Brown Derby
and other widely publicized restaurants where the consumption of
food and drink is incidental to seeing and being seen by "the right
people," such nocturnal "hot spots" as La Conga and The Tropics,
Radio City and Columbia Square, from which originate many of the
feature programs broadcast throughout the country, and often over
five continents, by NBC and CBS.
Along the western section of Sunset Boulevard, known as "the
Strip," are other theatrical agencies and expensive night clubs, jewelry
and antique shops, plush-carpeted salons of beauticians and couturiers,
almost all in gleaming white buildings of modified Georgian Colonial
design, flanked here and there with a drive-in Bar-B-Q stand, at which
customers are served by hooking trays on the open windows of the old
Ford from Iowa or the latest nickel-plated Rolls Royce in lemon and
maroon.
In all languages "Hollywood" is synonymous with "movies," yet
few film celebrities now live here and most of the studios are in sur-
rounding communities: Culver City, Burbank, and West Los Angeles.
Off the main boulevards there is nothing " Holly woodian" about Holly-
wood, which is much like any other city, with modest houses along
quiet streets, lined with southern California's conventional palm, pep-
per, and eucalyptus trees. Most of the houses are stucco or frame
bungalows, surrounded with lawns and gardens, although on the slopes
of the foothills above Hollywood Boulevard gleam some large and
elaborate mansions.
Hollywood, curiously, had a most conservative background. Unlike
Los Angeles, it occupies little space in the early Spanish or Mexican
annals. Only Cahuenga Pass, Hollywood's backdoor through the
mountains, receives important mention, for it was the principal route
between southern and northern California; through it passed the Por-
tola and the De Anza expeditions, the old Butterfield coaches of the
i85o's, and the lO-mule teams that hauled silver ore into Los Angeles.
After the Southern Pacific Railroad built its line through San Fernando
Valley in 1876, the pass was little used, but in recent years has again
come into its own, being one of the two main motor routes to the north.
Hollywood's first house, an adobe, was built by Don Tomas Urquidez
in 1853, on what is now the northwest corner of Franklin and Sycamore
Avenues. During the next 20 years Yankee homesteaders settled and
laid out farms. Among those who came from the Middle West during
the boom of the i88o's were Horace H. Wilcox and his wife, of To-
peka, Kansas. Prohibitionists and active members of the Methodist
Church, they bought a large tract of land at the base of the foothills
and in 1887 divided it into lots and christened their real estate develop-
ment Hollywood. The pious and temperate community grew slowly;
as late as 1896 the most exciting event in the daily life of the village
HOLLYWOOD 229
was the arrival of the stage, which came crawling and lurching in on
the scraggly dirt road that wound across open country to Los Angeles.
Hollywood was totally unaware of Thomas Edison's "Living Pictures"
then being shown in a Los Angeles theatre. Up to 1900 the population
did not exceed 500, and deer often ventured down to Hollywood
Boulevard in the early morning. Incorporated as a city in 1903, the
community began to grow more rapidly, having some 4,000 people in
1910, but, being in urgent need of additional water supply, it allowed
itself to be absorbed by Los Angeles. But it still insisted upon being
recognized as a distinct community of sober, serious, church-going
people, having no taste for the more cosmopolitan airs of Los Angeles.
Within a year, however, its rural quietude was rudely shattered.
In 1911 the old Blondeau Tavern, at the corner of Sunset Boulevard
and Gower Street, was bought and converted into a makeshift movie
studio by the Nestor Company, directed by the Horsley brothers, who
had appreciated and decided to capitalize on southern California's al-
most continuous sunshine, varied scenery, and "Western atmosphere."
The respectable and God-fearing were shocked and were themselves
soon dancing with rage at seeing baggy-trousered comedians prancing
up and down the streets; cowboys paraded the town on their skittish
broncos, to the terror and delight of small boys and the fuming exasper-
ation of their elders; cops chased robbers, and cameramen chased both,
frantically turning cranks, up one street and down another of the once
sedate town, even preempting Hollywood Boulevard on occasion. With
the older Hollywood still protesting, other companies built studios, and
by 1920 the population had vaulted to 50,000 and the resulting boom
in real estate attained fantastic proportions.
The frenzied 1920*5, that now almost incredible era of Big Money
and still bigger debts, individual and corporate, found full expression
here. The movies became a billion dollar industry, and to all the
world Hollywood was its home, the fountainhead of the liveliest of the
seven lively arts, the great projecting room from which was flashed
on screens around the globe an endless series of scenes of genuine
heroism and "ham" heroics, of gripping romance and simple "gush,"
of moving sentiment and unabashed sentimentality, of high artistry
and sheer hokum. The current darlings of the screen began to pay
income taxes on salaries of six instead of five figures. Writers of
reputation were offered contracts that left them breathless and with
barely enough strength to sign, only to be left in solitary confinement
in magnificent offices, alternately praying and cursing for something
to do. Some stars objected, but most did not, as gossip columns and
"fan" magazines made public property of the most intimate details
of their private lives. Thousands of movie-struck boys and girls, and
many a doting parent with a suspected child prodigy in hand, poured
into the film capital to live in cheap hotels and rooming houses while
they talked shop, read the trade papers, and waited patiently to be
"discovered." Periodic scandals rocked the colony, and Hollywood's
"morals" became a favorite theme in pulpits from coast to coast. But
23O LOS ANGELES
Hollywood mores, then as now, did not differ essentially from those
of the average American city, although perhaps a bit more frank and
cynical in some regards; Hollywood cannot quietly enjoy and smack its
lips over a juicy bit of local scandal, as other cities do, for with the
spotlight constantly upon it, a local scandal is immediately national
news and the inspiration of more censure.
Since 1929, with the advent of the depression and the talkie, a
marked change has come over the cinema capital. Ostentatious display
of ermines and diamonds, expenditures for gold plumbing fixtures and
platinum cocktail shakers, have declined. The talkie has retired the
beautiful clotheshorse, whether male or female, and has demanded
more accomplished and inspired players, better writers, more imagina-
tive directors, and technicians with higher and more varied skills.
These technicians script writers, assistant directors, still men, score
men, costume designers, make-up artists, research workers, electricians,
set designers and builders, engineers, cameramen, cutters, and many
others are those who make the wheels go round. Extras and bit
players constitute the largest group on the several movie lots and repre-
sent virtually all races and nationalities from Chinese and Egyptians
to Russians and Hindus. Here, too, gather men and women of highly
diversified talents, all eager to capitalize on them while they may:
composers, stage designers, flyers, skaters, baseball and football players,
swimmers, novelists, poets, bronco-busters, tumblers and trapeze artists,
crooners and swing kings, even symphony conductors.
Although not more than 15,000 Hollywoodians derive their incomes
wholly and directly from the movies, three out of four of them are
more or less dependent on the industry. Scattered throughout Holly-
wood are dozens of dance studios and dramatic schools offering training
to hopefuls, both children and adults. Two large companies here man-
ufacture endless strips of "celluloid" on which to film miles and miles
of dare-devil thrills and "hot" romance. Hundreds of small firms
supply the studios with lumber, metal, electrical apparatus, objets d'art,
period furniture and costumes, horses, trained animals, wigs, attire of
the latest fashion, and thousands of other things required in process
of production. Others are employed in the manufacture of movie
cameras and in processing film negatives.
Even before the depression it was common knowledge that only a
handful of extras earned a living wage and that many an ex-star hun-
grily accepted any bit part that was offered, but it was not until 1938
that a scientific survey revealed that the average annual wage of tech-
nicians was less than $1,500, and that four of every 10 film workers
were unemployed. Almost overnight Hollywood, once so individualis-
tic, became unionized not only technicians and casual workers, but
screen writers, directors, top flight actresses and actors. Celebrities
gave up their rounds of social activities and their week ends at Palm
Springs to attend and often to lead political forums and meetings,
organizing an Anti-Nazi League, the Motion Picture Artists Com-
mittee, the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, and, more recently,
HOLLYWOOD 23!
Associated Film Audiences, designed to marshal public support for
artistic films with realistic content and to fight censorship of plays
dealing with our current problems.
With its high concentration of players, singers, musicians, writers,
and other persons of talent, Hollywood has become second only to
New York as a radio center. Almost half of the programs broadcast
over national hookups originate in the studios here. The city is also
an important musical publishing center, making transcriptions of musi-
cal revues for radio programs and millions of records of popular songs
and dance tunes. One of the more curious businesses is the phonograph
recording of snores, sneezes, and thousands of other noises for broad-
casting purposes. The manufacture of cosmetics and the creation of
styles in women's clothes become more and more important in the local
economy, for in certain circles a label bearing the name "Hollywood"
has quite as magical an appeal as one reading "Paris."
A new and more serious Hollywood has emerged in recent years.
It now has six art galleries, numerous book shops, an art association,
and a botanical garden. Plays presented on the legitimate stage at the
Hollywood Playhouse and El Capitan do not want for audiences. The
"Symphonies under the Stars" presented regularly in the Hollywood
Bowl under the direction of conductors of international reputation
are known around the world. Sports still preoccupy many: polo and
horse racing attract those who can afford them; thousands get their
exercise vicariously at boxing matches and baseball games; the Holly-
wood team in the Pacific Coast League is financed largely by members
of the film colony. Although the city is still growing, it is at the same
time achieving a new integration as it turns toward the more serious
concerns of the world and away from the "Never-never Land" of
adolescent romance. Hollywood has settled down to a less fantastic
way of living and a more mature view of life, and can no longer be
dismissed summarily as "the home of hokum."
POINTS OF INTEREST
BARNSDALL PARK (picnic facilities), bounded by Vermont
Ave., Edgemont St., Hollywood and Sunset Blvds., a lo-acre park
planted with olive trees, was deeded to the city in 1931 by Aline
Barnsdall, oil heiress. The former family residence is now an art
museum, art library and little theater (free). The donor's liberal
social and economic views have been for many years given expression on
signboards around the encircling strip of land.
1. The CALIFORNIA ART CLUB (open 2-5; adm. 25$, free
Thurs.), on the top of Olive Hill in the park, is the former home of
Miss Barnsdall. The gray cement structure, designed by Frank Lloyd
Wright, recalls the massive temples of the Aztecs. Occasional ex-
hibits of contemporary art and permanent collections of California relics
and handcraft are shown here.
2. The names of 20,000 movie extras and bit players, together with
detailed information on the appearance, talents, and wardrobe of each,
232 LOS ANGELES
are on file in the CENTRAL CASTING OFFICE (see The
Movies), 5504 Hollywood Blvd., maintained by the larger motion-
picture studios.
3. COLUMBIA SQUARE (open 10-10 daily; adm. 40$; guides),
6121 Sunset Blvd., is the Hollywood matrix of the Columbia Broad-
casting System. The square, opened in 1938, was designed in the
modern manner by William Lescaze. Its three units border a patio
garden facing Sunset Boulevard. The five-story central structure, of
reinforced concrete and glass, houses seven modern studios, an audition
room, a transcription studio, and offices. Nationwide CBS broadcasts
originate in the 96oseat COLUMBIA SQUARE PLAYHOUSE, which faces
the patio garden.
COLUMBIA PICTURES CORPORATION (no visitors), 1438
Gower St., was founded by Jack and Harry Cohn, and Joe Brandt,
who withdrew from the Universal Pictures Co., Inc., to organize the
C-B-C Sales Co. in 1922, renting space in "Poverty Row" near the
site of the present studio. The first picture, The Hall Room Boys,
was followed by their first feature, More to Be Pitied than Scorned.
In the same year, they purchased the property near Sunset and Gower
where the administration building and nine sound stages are situated.
In 1924, the name was changed to the Columbia Pictures Corporation,
which since has had a sustained comedy production, including such pic-
tures as // Happened One Night.
4 . EARL CARROLL'S THEATRE RESTAURANT (open nightly
at 7), 6230 Sunset Blvd., housed in an ultramodern building designed
by Gordon B. Kaufmann, and opened in December 1938, has two re-
volving stages 80 feet in diameter, one within the other ; there are three
floating stages, disappearing platforms, and a neon lighting system used
in musical extravaganzas and revues. The interior, divided into six
tiers, accommodates 1,000 persons. Members of the theatre's Inner
Circle Club pay $500 to $1,000 to sit in the first tier.
5. The NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY STUDIOS
(open 10-10; adm. 40$), Sunset Blvd. and Vine St., are housed in a
modern three-story concrete building designed by the Austin Company
of Los Angeles. The low horizontal mass is relieved by a higher corner
pavilion with vertical fenestration. Its concrete walls are finished in
blue green, harmonizing with the sky, lawns, and shrubs. Opened in
1938, the building has eight studios, four of which seat 350 persons
each.
6. The HOLLYWOOD POST OFFICE, NW. corner Selma and
Wilcox Aves., a white concrete two-story structure designed in the
modern manner by Claude Beelman and surrounded by well-kept lawns
and shrubbery, is illuminated at night by two large ornamental bronze
lanterns, one at each side of the broad front stairway. At the northern
end of the main corridor, a decorative relief, The Pony Express, by
Gordon Newell of the Federal Art Project, depicts two horses and a
pioneer stagecoach driver, carved on a piece of mahogany three feet
by five feet.
HOLLYWOOD 233
7. DE LONGPRE PARK, bounded by June St., De Longpre and
Cherokee Aves., with landscaped lawns, flower beds, clumps of bamboo,
and clusters of banana, pepper, and eucalyptus trees, has in the center
the RUDOLPH VALENTINO MEMORIAL, designed by Roger Noble Burn-
ham, and erected in 1930 with voluntary contributions from all over
the world to commemorate the "great lover" of the igao's. Entitled
Aspiration, the monument, a four-foot bronze male nude poised on a
globe, rises from a small lily pond. On each Memorial Day since
1930, a "mystery" woman has placed a wreath on the statue.
8. The CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD, 6661-81 Sunset Blvd.,
extending to Selma Ave., is a block of shops and cafes designed to
create an Old World atmosphere. The shops face wide lanes radiating
from a spacious central patio; open-air concerts, pageants, and fashion
shows are staged in the shady courts. The ATLAS TOWER, above
the shops at the entrance, supports a revolving globe of the world,
symbolizing the commercial range of the center.
9. The EGYPTIAN THEATRE, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., designed
by Meyer and Holler, witnessed the first Hollywood "premiere," with
the showing of the silent version of Robin Hood in 1922. Now a
second-run house, it was the first architectural fantasy of Sid Grauman,
Los Angeles movie magnate. Hollywood's first-nighters once prom-
enaded the long narrow forecourt that leads from the boulevard to the
four plain white columns at the entrance to the foyer. On the fore-
court walls are large colored drawings of ancient Egyptian deities; the
south end of the court is adorned with figures in plaster and stucco.
A heroic figure of the Egyptian god Osiris, guarding the foyer door,
and chattering live monkeys in cages along the court, greet the theatre's
patrons.
10. GRAUMAN'S CHINESE THEATRE, 6925 Hollywood Blvd.,
another bizarre creation by Meyer and Holler, is widely known for the
fact that the concrete slabs in its forecourt bear the handprints and
footprints of movie stars and their congratulatory messages to Grau-
man. The pseudo-Chinese facade represents a huge entrance gate to an
enclosed temple garden. Around the two gate piers and jutting into the
sky are four obelisks with Oriental decoration. At the end of the fore-
court, planted with palms and ornamental shrubbery, is a pagoda with
POINTS OF INTEREST
1. California Art Club 8. Crossroads of the World
2. Central Casting Office 9. Egyptian Theatre
3. Columbia Square 10. Grauman's Chinese Theatre
4. Earl Carroll's Theatre Res- n. Japanese Gardens