Playground to the Stars
SUNSET STRIP 1860-1959
Henry Hancock, a New Hampshire-born, Harvard-trained lawyer and surveyor, arrived in Los Angeles in 1852, two years after California was admitted into the union. After working for the federal governme...
In May 1874, a sheriff’s posse descended on a remote, rough-hewn adobe cabin in Rancho La Brea, six miles west of Los Angeles, and captured the West’s most-wanted bandit, Tiburcio Vasquez, in a ha...
The transcontinental railroads reached Los Angeles in the 1880s, transforming it seemingly overnight from a dusty, brawling pueblo at the end of the trail to a bustling, prosperous town on its way to ...
In 1918, Alla Nazimova, the famed Broadway actress, was lured to Hollywood by Metro Pictures, one of the studios that later became MGM. A few years earlier, Nazimova had had such a successful run on B...
Wallace Reid and his wife, the former child star Dorothy Davenport, were a power couple in their day. Wally was a bona fide all-American--a Princeton graduate--who could play action roles as well as r...
In 1926, Alla Nazimova spent $1.5 million (about $20 million today) to convert her estate at 8152 Sunset Blvd. [map showing approximate location] into a residential hotel catering to the movie crowd. ...
"If you must get into trouble," Harry Cohn, the founder of Columbia Pictures, advised his stars, "do it at the Marmont." The Marmont, at 8221 Sunset Blvd. [map ], has been a famous hotel for so long t...
Like the Chateau Marmont, its ancient rival down the street, the Sunset Tower was originally conceived as an apartment building that catered to the Hollywood elite. The Marmont opened in 1927, the Sun...
On Sept. 21, 1932, Karyl Norman (né: George Paduzzi), a cross-dressing performer who billed himself as "the Creole Fashion Plate", opened at Club La Boheme, at 8614 Sunset Blvd., in the Sunset Plaza ...
William R. Wilkerson wore many hats. He was publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, of course, which, along with Variety, has been the go-to trade paper for the movie industry for decades. He was also a ...
Cafe La Boheme, at 8614 Sunset in Sunset Plaza, was closed when Billy Wilkerson acquired and remodeled it with what would become his trademark Hollywood style. He named the new club after the Trocader...
Humphrey Bogart lived on the Sunset Strip for 11 years, from 1935, when he arrived from New York to film “The Petrified Forest,” for Warner Bros., until in 1946, when he and wife number four, Laur...
Bruz Fletcher was a society piano man in the 1930s who was known for lyrics that were laden with gay subtext, a style that would be known later as camp. He was bona fide society, the son of a wealthy&
The mother of all celebrity brawls occurred on the balcony of bandleader Tommy Dorsey's apartment at 1220 Sunset Plaza Drive* off the Strip in the wee hours of Aug. 5, 1944. The primary combatants in ...
On the morning of May 5, 1948, dozens of powerful Angelenos -- movie stars, moguls and other movers and shakers -- must have done spit takes with their coffee upon opening the Los Angeles Times and se...
Mickey Cohen assumed control of the East Coast syndicate's interests in Southern California not long after the assassination of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, in June 1947. Later that year he moved the head...
In 1951, Ciro's owner Herman Hover booked Lili St. Cyr, a high-class stripper, to perform in his world-renown venue, making St. Cyr the first stripper to headline on the Sunset Strip. Part of St. Cyr'...
In November 1954, Marilyn Monroe was living along the Sunset Strip in the Brandon Arms Apartments at 8338 DeLongpre Ave. [map], recovering from her tumultuous divorce from baseball legend Joe DiMaggio...
Movie producer Howard Hughes, then America’s most famous millionaire, spent his final years in the throes of what many believe was an untreated obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was also a virulent ...
By the late 1950s, the Garden of Allah Hotel had fallen into a decline, overrun by call girls and cockroaches. The lot at 8152 Sunset was eventually purchased by Lytton Savings & Loan which had de...