noirish Los Angeles v2.0

[Bristolian]

Street takeover, 1928 style

[Scott Charles]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

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Someone recently asked me what I knew about Carney's on Sunset and I had to answer "not much'.



eBay

Does anyone know the history behind it?

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Another place I used to go to with my mom. Like Lwize, I haven't been there for a long time... in my case, the late 1990s.

There's another one on Ventura Blvd, just east of Whitsett.

A Train on the Sunset Strip

Carney's opened in December 1975 — a real Union Pacific passenger coach converted into a restaurant on the Sunset Strip, right in the middle of rock-and-roll's golden era.

The Menu Has Never Changed

Thick burgers, snappy hot dogs, house-made chili — that's the whole menu. Carney's has never chased a trend because it never needed to.

Eating Inside a Real Train

The dining room is a genuine vintage railroad car — narrow, warm, lined with booth seats and old photographs, with the Strip rolling past the windows. There's nowhere else in LA quite like it.

An LA Cultural Landmark

Jonathan Gold named Carney's one of his 99 Essential LA Restaurants. Chicago transplants swear the dogs are the real deal. A second train car opened on Ventura Blvd in Studio City in 1981.

https://carneytrain.com/story

[Alkapone]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

.
Someone recently asked me what I knew about Carney's on Sunset and I had to answer "not much'.



eBay

Does anyone know the history behind it?

.

As to the car itself, utahrails.net pages on UPRR equipment gives it as an older heavyweight coach (aka Chair Car) which was modernized in 1950 for service in the standardized colors of the lightweight streamliner fleet (i.e. Armour Yellow & Harbormist Grey): https://utahrails.net/pass/heavyweight-modernized.html

[Scott Charles]

By the way, what's going on with this billboard? It looks like it should say Steve Martin - "A Wild and Crazy Guy", but the text is all misplaced.

[HossC]

Correct! It was a billboard for Steve Martin's 1978 album, which means that the kitchen car must've been added about three years after the main dining car.


eBay

[Snix]

1953 Film Daily Yearbook of Motion Pictures

Looks like Quality Pictures also produced and distributed the precursor to home videos, with these EXPENSIVE 16mm burlesque movies... These cost the equivalent of over $500 a reel today!


"Home Movies" magazine
November, 1946

The PBS show "Locationland" visited the room last year.

https://www.pbs.org/video/ed-woods-plan-9-adventures-ligruh/

Originally Posted by JoeParisi

I'm researching the history of the former Quality Studios / Quality Pictures property at 5628½ / 5634 Santa Monica Boulevard (today part of the Gold-Diggers complex) for a documentary on Hollywood's forgotten independent studios.

Like many people, I originally came here because of the Ed Wood connection (Plan 9 from Outer Space, Night of the Ghouls, etc.), but the deeper I dig, the more it seems this building has a much larger story.

Here's what I've documented so far:

Built around 1924–25 (still trying to pin down the original permits).
By 1933, the rear portion appears to have been occupied by Sidney M. Gordon's garage.
By the mid-to-late 1940s it had become Quality Pictures, operated by W. Merle Connell.
Contemporary advertising for George Weiss's Screen Classics Productions (Test Tube Babies) lists the company's address as 5634 Santa Monica Boulevard, suggesting Weiss was operating from Quality rather than "across the street."
The property later housed Mandour International Productions, then Solid Sound, Falcon Sound Studios, and eventually today's Gold-Diggers recording studio.

I'm now trying to reconstruct the building's complete history from roughly 1924 through the 1980s, year by year.

I'm especially looking for:

Building permits or certificates of occupancy
Sanborn maps or insurance records
Historic photographs (especially the rear soundstage)
City directory entries that fill in the missing years
Property ownership history
Memories of Solid Sound or Falcon Sound
Any recollections of George Weiss, W. Merle Connell, or Screen Classics operating there
Information on whether the rear building ever contained apartments or caretaker's quarters (I've only found one apparent residential listing: Medhat Mandour, Room 2, around 1960)

I've searched newspapers, trade journals, AFI, city directories, and planning documents, but I'm convinced there are still records hiding in places I haven't thought to look.

If anyone has old photographs, permits, directory scans, assessor cards, aerial photos, or simply remembers the property from the recording-studio era, I'd love to hear from you.

My hope is to build the definitive documented history of this fascinating little Hollywood building before its story is forgotten.

Again, this research is on the building BEHIND Gold Diggers, that is currently owned by that owner.

Thank you!

[Alkapone]

Originally Posted by Alkapone

And PE Car #5166 outbound westward at North Wilton Place by Ped. Sub. in undated shot from LAPL files: https://tessa2.lapl.org/digital/collection/photos/id/85405

Car 5166 with A&P Market beyond…



sourced Tessa2/LAPL above.

This might be the block found in Ed Wood (1994) where they had the “movie within a movie” location filming (see SetJetter site and Graham’s blog). They would be east of this corner.

[Alkapone]

Originally Posted by Alkapone

This might be the block found in Ed Wood (1994) where they had the “movie within a movie” location filming (see SetJetter site and Graham’s blog). They would be east of this corner.

For the above, start at JHGraham’s coverage of that A&P Market which later became Carpet Village here: https://jhgraham.com/2023/07/25/5635-hollywood-boulevard-ap-market/

The the Setjetter Ed Wood posts will lead (scrolling down) to the same store as a Carpet Village (at 5635) and the dressed-up appearance during the shooting for Tim Burton’s film.


The store on the east corner, right of the market, was a 5/10/25 cent place in the long past (IIRC).