noirish Los Angeles

[GaylordWilshire]

LAPL

Come as you are to the polls, as Mrs. Lucile Wheat of L.A. did on August 26, 1930, when voting machines
were introduced... just VOTE TODAY

[Mayor Shaw]

The squirrel returns



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[GaylordWilshire]

LAPL
June 13, 1933

Remember this day, Frank? Now, about that 'stache...

[Mayor Shaw]

My administration is remembered for many things, not the least of which is the first recorded use of the "High Five" in Los Angeles.

As far as the 'stache goes, my brother Joe thought it conveyed a sense of authority

[Lwize]

From today's LA Times:

'Sunset Boulevard' digitally restored for its Blu-ray debut
Billy Wilder's 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950) was digitally restored — a process complicated because the original negative is missing — for Blu-ray release.

By Susan King, Los Angeles Times

November 5, 2012, 5:43 p.m.

"Sunset Boulevard" is ready for its close-up.

Billy Wilder's 1950 award-winning darkly satiric tale of Hollywood starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich Von Stroheim and Nancy Olson is making its Blu-ray debut Tuesday in a new digital restoration.

This isn't the first digital restoration for "Sunset Boulevard," which earned 11 Oscar nominations and won three Academy Awards. "Sunset Boulevard" was restored a decade ago for its DVD release. "It was the first time that an entire film was scanned for restoration," noted Andrea Kalas, vice president of archives at Paramount Pictures.

But in the last 10 years, she said, digital technology has improved immensely. "Because it was Paramount's 100th anniversary, we knew we could do something really spectacular, using the tools that exist now to get that fantastic film noir look of the film."

One of the biggest hurdles was finding the best surviving elements for the restoration because the original negative of "Sunset Boulevard" no longer exists. Kalas said there is no record of what happened to the negative. ("Sunset Boulevard" isn't the only classic film with a missing negative; "Citizen Kane" and "Stagecoach" are among the seminal films whose original elements have suffered the same fate.)

Kalas and her staff found a duplicate negative that had been made from the original in the 1960s in the Paramount archive to use for the restoration. But the duplicate negative was not without its flaws.

"There were a few frames missing," Kalas said. "There was lots of cleaning and a few small tears."

Kalas worked with Technicolor on the restoration. "They have a lot of different tools at their hands ranging from standard restoration tools that are able to clean up [problems] to special effects tools when they need to do something particularly special. The capacity to restore it to its original glory is much more possible now than it had been before."

A 35mm print of "Sunset Boulevard" from the Library of Congress that was made from the original negative at the time of release was helpful in the restoration. That print was "our main reference for the film" to restore the correct shadings and shadows to John F. Seitz's atmospheric black-and-white noir cinematography.

"There's one scene where Holden is in the garage with Erich Von Stroheim and all you see practically is von Stroheim's face," said Kalas. "Everything else is in the darkness. We wanted to make sure we got that right."

The decades haven't dimmed the brilliance of "Sunset Boulevard." The film was a comeback for Swanson, who began her career in 1914. She gives an iconic performance as faded silent screen star Norma Desmond, who hires a struggling young writer (Holden) to help work on her comeback vehicle.

"It's a wonderful capsule of Hollywood," said Kalas. "The script is perfectly pitched. It doesn't hold back on its criticism [of Hollywood], but there's definitely a lot of affection."

Olson, who earned a supporting actress Oscar nomination as Holden's girlfriend, recalled that even during production, Paramount was abuzz that "Sunset Boulevard" was something special.

"Every day at 6 p.m., studio executives, directors and technical people attended the dailies," she noted. "There could be at least 15 movies being filmed at the same time. People would show up to see how the prior day's footage looked [of their film] and then leave immediately."

But a quarter of the way during production on "Sunset Boulevard," Olson said, "everyone stayed to watch the dailies. They had to bring in extra seats. They wanted to know what was going to happen next."

image: LA Times

[GaylordWilshire]

"Shut up, I'm rich! I'm richer than all this new Hollywood trash! I've got a million dollars.... Own three blocks downtown, I've got oil in Bakersfield, pumping, pumping, pumping! What's it for but to buy us anything we want!"

[ethereal_reality]

LOL, my absolute favorite line from the movie!




...and this is my favorite image.


http://thechaosofdeath.blogspot.com/...oe-gillis.html

[ethereal_reality]

ebay






reverse/info.

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[ethereal_reality]

Election Day!


http://pinterest.com/pin/68328119317158350/
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side note: When I worked for Lorimar Productions on the MGM lot I had to deliver some publicity stills to Ms. Gardner's dressing room
(she was appearing as Ruth Galveston on Knots Landing). It was the middle of a sunny afternoon and she was inside
drinking bourbon and chain smoking. She had a deep husky voice (it was always deep and husky)
and she asked me in. I showed her what I had brought down from the publicity dept.

On the sly, I also brought with me my favorite photograph of her from The Killers (1946).

this one.

http://justacineast.blogspot.com/201...1_archive.html

She couldn't remember very much about the photograph except that she was afraid the table was going to flip over.
She asked me if I wanted her to sign it. So I said yes of course.

...and that was that. Quite exciting for a 23 year old transplant (me) from rural Illinois.
She died soon after.

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[BrysonWilshire]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

Jeff-- You can watch--sort of--The Brasher Doubloon on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lfE895sJqg), but the print is so bad (maybe it was filmed off of tv) that it's really unwatchable, which these stills of the house, while still identifiable as the still-extant Rindge house at 2263 S. Harvard, show:

20th Century-Fox

20th Century-Fox
Montgomery-as-Marlowe desribes it as being "way out in Pasadena."


LAPL
The Rindge House, closer to its 1903 construction date.

More information and contemporary pictures of the Rindge house are at http://bigorangelandmarks.blogspot.c...dge-house.html

Frederick Roehrig designed it. A quick look doesn't reveal if he might possibly have also done the similar-feeling Hershey house I think you're thinking of, but there is alot of interconnectedness in that Roehrig also designed the W. E. Ramsey house near the Rindge, on property sold to Mr. Ramsey by...Mira Hershey ( http://bigorangelandmarks.blogspot.c...lla-maria.html)

The house you must have in mind, which was at 4th and Grand on Bunker Hill:

LAPL

The full story of the Hershey house (long gone by the time The Brasher Doubloon was made in 1947), is here:
http://www.onbunkerhill.org/Hershey_CastleTowers


It looks like there are some other good L.A. establishing shots in the movie, including these:

20th Century-Fox
Marlowe's Hollywood office

20th Century-Fox
In the movie George Montgomery, as Marlowe, describes Bunker Hill as a place "people live because they
haven't got any place else to live." I'll have to look for this building in the various Bunker Hill resources,
but can anyone identify it in the meantime?

Its entrance:
20th Century-Fox

There's a much better copy of The Brasher Doubloon on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mViN_...hannel&list=UL.

Here are cleaner stills:

Twentieth Century-Fox

Twentieth Century-Fox

Twentieth Century-Fox

Twentieth Century-Fox

Twentieth Century-Fox

Twentieth Century-Fox

[ethereal_reality]

ebay

We have seen countless photographs of Hollywood & Vine here on the thread,
but I have never noticed any place offering novelty photos (like the one above).

Maybe the camera store down Vine Street near Tom Breneman's?
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[ethereal_reality]

...another find on ebay.


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[ethereal_reality]

postcard/ebay

The camera store I mentioned in my above post is Castle's Cameras.
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[BrysonWilshire]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

Jeff-- You can watch--sort of--The Brasher Doubloon on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lfE895sJqg), but the print is so bad (maybe it was filmed off of tv) that it's really unwatchable, which the stills of the house, while still identifiable as the still-extant Rindge house at 2263 S. Harvard show.

The National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form for the Frederick Hastings Ringe Residence at 2263 Harvard Blvd., Los Angeles, can be found at:
http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NR...t/86000105.pdf

The 14-page document (in .PDF format), received by the U.S. Dept. of the Interior National Park Service on Dec. 23, 1985, has various categories of information:

* Representation in Existing Surveys;
* Description (including present and, if known, original physical appearance);
* Significance;
* Major Bibliographical References;
* Geographical Data;
* Sanborn Insurance Co. Map.

[sopas ej]

Why am I so disappointed with Ginger Rogers?

Here she is somewhere on Sunset Blvd., October 8, 1960.

Los Angeles Times photo

[Those Who Squirm!]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

side note: When I worked for Lorimar Productions on the MGM lot I had to deliver some publicity stills to Ms. Gardner's dressing room
(she was appearing as Ruth Galveston on Knots Landing).

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You worked for Lorimar? So did I for about a year between '88 and 89. I loved being on the old MGM lot, and was about the best job I ever had in terms of the corporate culture and where I was professionally at that time. Most days I'd eat lunch at the cafe in the middle of the lot, sitting on the porch with my feet up on the rail as I finished my drink. "I can't believe I'm at work, I'd usually say to myself.

I left only because they told me my job was moving to Burbank.

[ethereal_reality]

'Those Who Squirm'.
You must have been enjoying your lunch outside the 'Lion's Den'...an off shoot of the MGM Commissary.

I moved back to Illinois just before Lorimar moved back to Warner Brothers.
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[BifRayRock]

Northeast corner of Fifth and Broadway, ca. 1917. "Building coming down Mar 31st." "last Days"
USC Digital

[BifRayRock]

More on the forerunner to the McClure Tunnel.

From the Arcadia Hotel, Santa Monica. The train tracks emerging from nowhere and paralleling the coast, look lonely. (Especially with the um . . er . . interesting cloud formations.) Circa 1893
USC Digital

Opposing view (Circa 1900)


Short distance north, Japanese Fishing Village at Santa Monica Canyon (Circa 1900)waterandpower.org

Circa 1905
waterandpower.org

Circa 1924
waterandpower.org

Circa 1926
waterandpower.org


More here:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=9236
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show....php?p=5832288

[BifRayRock]

The Beach Welcoming Committee, circa 1930(s). (It is rumored that due to increased traffic congestion and complaints from the Confidential Committee on Moral Abuses, some of the hardcore membership may have moved to a more urban setting, e.g., Sunset Blvd.) )



http://waterandpower.org