I've noticed that posters have at times often related a story of their own or others that go along with the photographs. I'll delete this if inappropriate, but here's:
Why I've been interested in COFFEE DAN'S
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I had been interested in what "Coffee Dan's" was ever since I met an aging man at a Halloween dinner party about a decade ago. I don't know the whole story, but a gay couple in their thirties or early forties had become friends with him. I guess he was in his 70's.
As a young man he worked at the Bank of America on Hollywood Blvd. near Highland Ave. He said that when the Dodgers first came to town in 1957-58 the team set up bank accounts for them at that bank branch and that he often helped them. He said that one of them recognized him from a (gay) bar he'd been at. The man didn't remember his name or many details about that. (Dang!) You know how things happen in one's life that years later other people find more interesting than you did at the time? Sometimes "we" even find things we've done a lot more interesting later on. (***see SIDEBAR below)
Anyway, during dinner one of the couple who had invited him that night said, "Tell them about the time Montgomery Clift asked you out!" Now how interesting was that question? The man modestly said he wondered if any of us would be interested in that and if we even knew who that was--!!!
This all happened in the late '50's...'57 or '58 probably. He told us that he worked at that bank and that next door to the bank was Coffee Dan's. It was a coffee shop restaurant and he said that Montgomery Clift could often be found there early on many mornings sobering up after a night on the town. Having walked around that area a few hundred times over the years I found this quite interesting. I didn't know anything about a place called Coffee Dan's, but for some reason I loved that intriguing name and wondered what it would have been like to go in a coffee shop like that and see Montgomery Clift there!
The man told us that one day Clift came into the bank and he waited on him. I don't recall exactly what the details were, but Monty either asked him for a date right there or he asked for his phone number and called later on, but the man was asked out on a date by Montgomery Clift. The man said he replied that he wasn't sure, but that he'd think about it. ("Think about it!") He said that during the next week Monty called him at home a few times. It happened that the man came down with appendecitis that week and was not in the mood for a date and nothing really happened after that as he was recovering and not feeling like a date. I know some people might be like "was he crazy, it was Montgomery Clift" but we can't judge others and the situations in their lives. The man didn't seem to particularly have cared that nothing ever happened, in one of those "if only I'd done this" sort of ways, so who knows. It was one of those conversations that you wished you could have dwelled on longer.
Then, on occasion, I've wondered about Coffee Dan's. What I know is that Coffee Dan's was a small chain of restaurants. They were mostly in California, and a few other western states. Los Angeles area had at least five of them. They were distinctively designed in what I described above as a sort of combination of art deco and the Jetsons.
I know there were two in downtown Los Angeles, one on West 8th and one on Broadway, and also one in the valley in Van Nuys. There was also one on Hollywood Blvd. and one on Vine Street near Sunset, but in trying to research this there seems to be a discrepancy whether or not they both existed at the same time or that the one on Vine relocated to Hollywood Blvd. at some point. In either case, I have not been able to find any photos of either one of them head on. The Hollywood street photos, like the ones above, have a bit of the signage in them, but no head on pictures have I found.
On Martin Turnbull's site (he's an occasional contributor here--in fact he just posted on this page) he has a "Hollywood Places" section where he lists places and establishments that he's come across in his research and what they've said about those places, with the proviso that he cannot vouch for the accuracy of these statements, he is only referencing them.
http://www.martinturnbull.com/hollywood-places/
Coffee Dan's:
--A Hollywood coffee shop that catered exclusively to homosexuals, especially underage gays who lacked the proper ID to get into the Hollywood Blvd. bars.
--It's neon signage is generally visible in all of the great night pictures of Vine street in the 40s.
--By the '60's it is said that transvestites had taken over the place.
Note that the references are for the Hollywood Coffee Dan's location(s), but whether they existed at the same time is something I have not clarified. The "transvestite" reference appears to refer to the Hollywood Blvd. location.
Anyway, that's why I've been interested in seeing photos of those restaurants.
***SIDEBAR: Speaking of the Dodgers, another gentleman I used to know and frequently talked to who was a customer at my employment and who was also a young man at that time (late 50's), told me about going to a party with gay friends of his where Sandy Koufax was in attendance. I told him I had heard rumors that he was gay and his response was affirmative.
"Well if you'd seen Mrs. Koufax, you'd know." In the '80's and '90's talking to gay men who had grown up living in ways where you had to be extremely careful and watchful and mindful of anything you spoke, there was always a kind of indirectness in their divulging of information. As though if someone brought it back up to them they could claim it was a misunderstanding or something. Nowadays everyone's business is all over the internet if not at the NSA. It was a different time.
Ok, which one(s) of you was in a gay bar in Los Angeles?
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