noirish Los Angeles

[ethereal_reality]

vintage photo-bomb, Los Angeles June 1934.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/08380-B-W-Ph...item1e7d83859d

There she is, primping in the background in her mink-stole.

reverse

__

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by Chuckaluck

Pelton Motor Co. 1932

I remembered a prior Pelton--turns out it was yours, Chuck. Looks like a Hollywood Blvd branch was opened in late 1936.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=11973

[ethereal_reality]

I remember seeing the unique rifle & pistol sign, but not from this angle.

The St. Charles Hotel between Temple and Aliso St.

ebay/date unknown

This rifle & pistol shooting sign has always intrigued me. What are the three 'vents' on top, and why is the sign so THICK?
Did it light up? (using gas perhaps) It's just really odd. It reminds me of an arcade sign at a carnival.
__

[BifRayRock]

Deja vu - again?

1928 - Image of NE Corner - La Brea meets Wilshire. Notice "Sturgis" to the right.
http://waterandpower.org/Historical_..._Brea_1928.jpg


Clem Wilson grows up!



http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/re...9coll170/id/62











1929 - Sturgis Radio store has sidewalk crowd for World Series radio broadcast.



























For more perspective: February 1930 (After the Philly Athletics won the series against the Chi. Cubs) http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...ostcount=11842


http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/utils/...ran&DMROTATE=0


(USC image with Chinese watermark)
http://www.picturechina.com.cn/bbs/w...AxNWZmNS5qcGc=



http://www.supermansupersite.com/reevescast.jpg

[BifRayRock]

803 1/2 North Hayworth - 1931 Still occupied.

http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/utils/...tic&DMROTATE=0


Fresh fruit, linoleum and refrigerator. Heaven?
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/utils/...tic&DMROTATE=0

A closer look

[Krell58]

Vintage Los Angeles in the 1940's. Theater district, etc. at night
Sorry, it's a direct link, it doesn't work as an embed.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vNwV...HwPK7amEG2OGwY

[BifRayRock]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I remember seeing the unique rifle & pistol sign, but not from this angle.

The St. Charles Hotel between Temple and Aliso St.

ebay/date unknown

This rifle & pistol shooting sign has always intrigued me. What are the three 'vents' on top, and why is the sign so THICK?
Did it light up? (using gas perhaps) It's just really odd. It reminds me of an arcade sign at a carnival.
__

Is it real? An experiment with mixed results?





Your earlier post approximated the date as 1876. Are there other images that include the sign from another vantage point?

The sign seems an historical anomaly, or maybe something other than we suspect, which may have been the primary reason for the attention-grabbing photo. Its very subject presents itself as great target for mischief. Compared with the presumably normal-sized human standing near the sign, the sign looks quite big. This might explain its width and the fancy (presumed) cast iron supports. What tends to look like vents support the conclusion of back lighting. Yet a big backlit sign would have required many lumens to be effective, so maybe given the weird scale of the sign, those are "smoke stacks" - rather than vents. A big sign might have been easier to illuminate via exterior reflected light.

Unless the maker had invented plexiglass or transparent aluminum, a backlit sign was likely mica or glass, and therefore fragile. Stones and other small objects were a known hazard to glass (and even mica) in the late 19th Century. Flying objects were known to occur when stage coaches needed to keep on schedule (verified by watching Hopalong Cassidy and Gunsmoke) and when normal school was in recess.

Did the sign advertise a shooting range that some distance away? When there was probably quite a bit of nearby unimproved land, for use as a make-shift range, was there really much demand for an in-town shooting range? (Unless it also served drinks, food and ammo.) A "legalized" in-town range would have been a nuisance to nearby humans and livestock. ("Come stay in the St. Charles Hotel! Conveniently located near a modern, state of the art, super-quiet, rifle range?")





http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2...comesstcha.jpg http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...postcount=2528


Similar, less-incendiary signage? (these were presumably electrified)
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=12931



http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...ostcount=11623






With enough firepower, your range is where you find it.

Mr. McKee, son of Cherokee Charlie who rode with the Dalton boys, is at his Silver Wolf ranch, 240 acres in the Boney Range of the Santa Monica Mountains behind Thousand Oaks. Photograph dated: July 23, 1959.

http://jpg1.lapl.org/00083/00083101.jpg

[CityBoyDoug]

1

[AlvaroLegido]

Originally Posted by Krell58

Vintage Los Angeles in the 1940's. Theater district, etc. at night
Sorry, it's a direct link, it doesn't work as an embed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vNwV...HwPK7amEG2OGwY

Nat King Cole Trio at 9 : 01 ! I guess it is the Million Dollar Theater where his stay is well remembered. The year was 1950. It matches the cars.

[tovangar2]

Originally Posted by Krell58

Vintage Los Angeles in the 1940's. Theater district, etc. at night
Sorry, it's a direct link, it doesn't work as an embed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vNwV...HwPK7amEG2OGwY

Mesmerizing. Thx. And it starts off with a fave location:



What ever did happen to all the Biltmore's hanging lanterns?

[Those Who Squirm!]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

A postcard view of the Hollywood Palladium and the Columbia Broadcast System's western headquarters on Sunset Boulevard.



postcard via Cesar Del Valle



The Headliner in the above postcard is Freddy Martin and his Orchestra.



amazon





radiocityhollywood




below: The vast interior of the Hollywood Palladium featured a round dance floor.


LAPL



below: Freddy Martin in the 1943 movie 'Stage Door Canteen'.


H.R. Studios




below: Freddy Martin received billing in numerous movies in the 1940s.


movieposter_w

What's Buzz'in Cousin?



In 1947 Freddy Martin wrote the song 'Pico and Sepulveda' under the alias Felix Figueroa.

This should be our theme song here at 'noirish los angeles'. Click on the link below.


forbidden zone

Here is the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-DGz...eature=related


_____

Fascinating about Felix Figueroa! But it's not quite true that nobody's dream comes true at Pico and Sepulveda--in a few years we'll have a Metro station (Expo/Sepulveda) there. It'll make it that much easier to leave and go to another part of--oh, never mind.

[Those Who Squirm!]

Originally Posted by The Fuzz

Gentleman,

I have stumbled across your outstanding thread while researching those behemoth natural gas tanks located to next to the old Friedman Bag Co. As an avid film noir fan, there are countless wonderful background shots in the Los Angeles area that I always wondered about.

I am a 16 year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. With all of it in the field and not behind a desk.

I will point out details on some photographs with a police perspective.


To all the contributors, please keep up the wonderful postings!

Do you mostly work cases in the downtown area?

And I have to ask, though you probably get this all the time, do you like Dragnet? Somewhere in this thread I'm sure I've already recommended the old radio program to everyone here, because many of the episodes have interesting details about the downtown area. (And, of course, a few are set mostly in outlying areas when the roads and housing tracts were a lot less developed. For instance there's one that mostly takes place on the side of the Imperial Highway, back when it really was a country highway (at "the road to San Pedro").

The episodes are readily available on line, for example at the Prelinger Archive.

[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by Those Who Squirm

Do you mostly work cases in the downtown area?

And I have to ask, though you probably get this all the time, do you like Dragnet? Somewhere in this thread I'm sure I've already recommended the old radio program to everyone here, because many of the episodes have interesting details about the downtown area. (And, of course, a few are set mostly in outlying areas when the roads and housing tracts were a lot less developed. For instance there's one that mostly takes place on the side of the Imperial Highway, back when it really was a country highway (at "the road to San Pedro").

The episodes are readily available on line, for example at the Prelinger Archive.

I don't speak for everyone but I like Dragnet and the other old time radio and TV that featured Los Angeles. The Whistler show was made in Hollywood and certainly evokes the noir mood.http://youtu.be/ddM5SW-bsCI

Noir Los Angeles is a rich vein that has a long way to go before its mined out.

If you look at the views for this thread its in the millions.

[Those Who Squirm!]

Originally Posted by Illithid Dude

Can someone post pictures of downtown circa 1890? Thanks. It astounds me that Downtown today has not one resemblance from the downtown of 100 years ago.

That's not absolutely true. There are quite a few places, here and there, where a block or two of street still has most of the buildings that were there around 1910 or earlier. They tend to be in the areas that escaped the attention and interest of redevelopers, and in many instances are rather run down today, although the revitalization of the old financial district and other neighborhoods of DTLA have done much to improve the general ambience of these places without obliterating the architecture.

You see a lot of this not just downtown, but in other areas like Westlake and even Palms and Sawtelle.

[alanlutz]

Thanks, Krell58 for that link. I enjoyed it and it led me to another which contains Many of the pictures we have been enjoying on this Noir site. Perhaps it was one of our members who put it together. Please enjoy this as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ3Xzb5iXQw

[Those Who Squirm!]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

IMCDB
Speaking of '37 Dodge coupes, here's one--or possibly a '36--in the movie Cadillac Records of
2008 (at lower right). At first I thought that this movie must have had incredible art direction,
but then I realize that this has to be a vintage clip used in the movie. The streetlamps, the
semaphore, the streetcar tracks.... Or is it some sort of composite? Could the building line
down the east side of Main, including the Regent Theater, really be as intact as it appears to
be? The movie is set in Chicago, but in actuality we're looking south from Main and Winston in L.A.

Google Street View


Back to cars for a minute... the caption for this pic says it's Ginger Rogers posing with a new '36 Dodge coupe--not
sure it's her--but, anyway, the horn housings below the headlights seem to be one thing that distinguishes
the '36 from the '37.
Caught at the Curb


And as far as business coupes go, these were generally coupes that were marketed to traveling salesmen (or doctors)
in which the rear seat was removed, often replaced with a flat shelf for sample cases, etc. My favorites were the
Chrysler Corp. coupes with trunks that were longer than their hoods. I know that Ford was offering a business coupe as late as 1960.

In movies and photos from the late 30s through the early 50s I've often seen coupes generally being driven by young single urban professional type characters. Most of those cars look to me like they were designed solely as two-seaters to begin with; they don't look like there was ever room for any back seat. They look like sedans that have been chopped and put back together as shorter versions of themselves.

As for doctors driving these cars, that doesn't quite ring true in spite of what your friend says. I don't know if doctors still go around with those little black bags, but when they did they usually contained some controlled narcotics for emergency purposes, among other things. Because of that they didn't generally want to leave them in plain view, which would presumably be the case with the platform behind the seats.

[Those Who Squirm!]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

ooh la la.....now we're talking.

Cherie's was located on the 2nd floor of this beautiful building.


google street view


I wonder where residence GLadstone 9034 was? Is there a way to figure out a location by an old phone number?

There was a Gladstone exchange out around the border of Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades; this is how Gladstone's on PCH got its name. The number is still GL4-FISH, and I expect there are still many landlines in the area with 45x-xxxx numbers.

[H.L.P]

Hello everyone,
I haven't really posted anything on this thread before,
but I've been following it for a long time.
One of my favorite things to do, is to look through this great thread
while listing to my jazz records. Such as my
1950 Harry James Dance Parade record.


Photo by me.

Photo by me.

When I listen to a record like this and look at the thread,
it goes so well together, it adds another layer of history
to the pictures.
Then today I was in the local record shop
and came across this record with some familiar looking street cars,
and I immediately thought of this thread...

Harold Betters Funk City Express (1966)

Photo by me.

Im pretty sure those are old Los Angeles Street cars. I thought this might be cool to post on here. Sorry about the low quality pics but i've been wanting to post something on here for a while now,plus Im lacking in the camera department,
-Steven

[CityBoyDoug]

1

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by Those Who Squirm

In movies and photos from the late 30s through the early 50s I've often seen coupes generally being driven by young single urban professional type characters. Most of those cars look to me like they were designed solely as two-seaters to begin with; they don't look like there was ever room for any back seat. They look like sedans that have been chopped and put back together as shorter versions of themselves.

As for doctors driving these cars, that doesn't quite ring true in spite of what your friend says. I don't know if doctors still go around with those little black bags, but when they did they usually contained some controlled narcotics for emergency purposes, among other things. Because of that they didn't generally want to leave them in plain view, which would presumably be the case with the platform behind the seats.

USCDL
The red oval indicates what appears to be a Chrysler Corp 3-window coupe that was marketed as both a
low-line business coupe and in more luxurious editions.


Not being a doctor as well as being too young to have much actual experience with business coupes, I would have no way of knowing what doctors were thinking vis-a-vis their little black bags or preferences as to interior arrangements when selecting a car. Presumably the doctor, on arriving at a house call, would have have the presence of mind to remove his little black bag from plain view and taken it with him to the patient, to whom the the bag would have been more useful than it would be if it were still back in the car; similarly, when the doctor arrived at the scene of an emergency, he would have taken the bag with him to where the victim lay and where the controlled narcotics that may or may not have been in the bag might have been helpful.

I have found no statistics as to how many, if any, physicians purchased automobiles marketed as "business coupes"; perhaps as you suggest none ever did, they being mindful of the theft risk. I do know that, as my use of the qualifier "generally" was meant to indicate, that some automobiles marketed as business coupes were three- or five-window bodies fitted with a single bench seat with a small space behind, while some makes offered what was identical to their club coupe or two-door sedan but with the rear seat deleted and a flat floor installed in its place.

Hemmings
The rear floor of a 1950 Ford business coupe, showing the flooring installed in place of the rear
seat of the standard club coupe that used the identical body.

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

Yes, that's Ginger Rogers and a 1937 Plymouth.

...make that a '36