Quote:
Originally Posted by Dogsbollox
I heard that there was a Simon's Drive-In located on Ventura Boulevard near Laurel Canyon.... Does anyone have any info on the exact location and any links to photos?
|
I wonder if it could have been another branch of Simon's Sandwiches? Photos of two different Simon's locations have been posted previously in this forum. I don't have time now to locate those posts, and instead of reposting the photos I'll link to copies on Flickr.
One location was at
Wilshire and Hoover Street and another was at
Wilshire and Fairfax.
An additional view of Simon's Sandwiches at Wilshire and Fairfax can be seen
here.
Both buildings on Wilshire appeared nearly identical, so if there were an additional location on Ventura Blvd. I wouldn't be surprised if it looked much the same.
Speaking of Wilshire and Fairfax, here's an odd little anecdote about something that nearly happened in 1951 on the same corner where Simon's once stood. I've transcribed this from an episode of a BBC documentary called
The RKO Story: Tales of Hollywood that first aired in 1987. It concerns a promotion for a movie called
His Kind of Woman.
MARIO ZAMPARELLI, graphic artist employed by Howard Hughes:
The painting that I did, he just enjoyed very very much. And then one day I was told that a brilliant idea had come up and I asked what this was about. They said, "Well, we're going to do something very special." So at the RKO lot...I didn't see this being constructed, but I saw it being moved at 2:00 in the morning...and this was to a site at the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire Boulevard, directly across from the May Company. There was a large parking lot there and a restaurant which no longer exists. And they put on that corner a huge gilded frame, like a masterpiece if you will. This was all framed, gold-leafed. And the center was going to house my painting, twenty, thirty the size of the original, if not a hundred times the size. It was enormous!
While that was going on, people were passing by, cars were going by and they were monitoring how many vehicles would pass the corner. Mr. Hughes had an idea that to emphasize the concept of the hottest combination ever to hit the screen, that they would have two or three or four large gas jets throw flames up into the air about twenty or thirty feet high. Now everybody thought this was marvelous, and that it would be an exciting event to have this happen. And these gas jets would go up...they would be programmed every so many minutes to flame up.
I was there; I saw all the gas people come and all the pipes were being put up and all the tests being made with short gas jets and all the publicity people were there. While all of that was going on, a phone call came. And it was, "Stop everything."
Well it seemed that there was something on the docket that we were not aware of, it came out in the newspapers later. Some kind of dealings with Hughes and the city fathers. And [we were] advised that they would have been very irate that this was going on, and the possibility that those jets going up into the air were prone for accidents from motorists passing by who wouldn't expect that thing to occur.
And here's the BBC's recreation of what it might have looked like:
[source: BBC]
[source: BBC]
[source: BBC]
Since Johnie's Coffee Shop wasn't built until 1955 (
according to the L.A. Times), I wonder if the "restaurant which no longer exists" Zamparelli refers to would have been Simon's?