Cafe Trocadero on the Sunset Strip, 1935: From left, Edith Gwynne Wilkerson (wife of Trocadero owner Billy Wilkerson), Jean Harlow, William Powell, William Haines’ husband Jimmy Shields (standing), Anderson Lawler (seated), unidentified man (standing), William Haines, Edith’s sister Marge
‘I’ll be damned if I’ll believe anyone lives in a place called the Garden of Allah.’
– Thomas Wolfe, in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, July 26, 1937In a project for the West Hollywood History Center in conjunction with the Alla Nazimova Society, I have published a 50-plus page virtual history of the most infamous celebrity stopping place on the Sunset Strip, A Place Called the Garden of Allah.
Hollywood madam Lee Francis and Judge Cecil D. Holland reviewing a document, 1940
One of the Sunset Strip’s most infamous legends is that the Piazza del Sol, an Italian Renaissance-style building at 8439 Sunset, was once a brothel – that the entire building was a lavish pleasure palace operated in service to Hollywood elites. I fact check the legend in my latest at the West Hollywood History Center.
Surviving scandals, arson and even murder, the future looks bright for the Piazza del Sol
Revisit the history of the Hacienda Park Apartments, its decline and destruction by fire and subsequent Phoenix-like rise from the ashes as today’s Piazza del Sol at the West Hollywood History Center.
Killer and victims: From left, Billy Howard, Virginia and Henry Bolte, Paul Wharton
The infamous 1935 murder at the Hacienda Park Apartments (now known as the Piazza del Sol) of Paul Ivar, a dress designer to the stars, in a case riven with gay subtext. Read the full article at the West Hollywood History Center.
Picture postcard view of the back of silent-film star Wallace Reid’s home at De Longpre and Sweetzer avenues in Hacienda Park — as seen from tourist buses on Sunset.
The tragic, scandalous story of all-American silent film heartthrob Wallace Reid, one of Hacienda Park’s first movie star residents. My latest at WEHOville.com..
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