In 1969, Paul Mazursky (in his first effort) directed the hit movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. As a reward, he was allowed to choose his next project, which (inexplicably) turned out
to be Alex in Wonderland, starring Donald Sutherland and Ellen Burstyn. To his credit, I suppose, his career continued on after this movie.
Anyway, one Sunday morning, he took his crew out to Hollywood Blvd. to film this scene:
Los Angeles Times
Forty two years later, the area looks pretty much the same:
Google Street View
The Supply Sergeant is still going, but the House of Magic has turned into a tatoo shop, the Cinema bookstore now sells cell phones, and the Ritz Theater (the New View back then)
is a church.
Google Street View
The Ritz Theater has an interesting history. It started life as a bowling alley. In 1939, it was converted to a theater called News-View, which showed newsreels.
Later (as in the Alex in Wonderland photo), the "s" was dropped and it was just called the New-View.
https://sites.google.com/site/hollywoodtheatres/ritz
In the mid 1970's, it went porno and was called the Pussycat. Then in 1989, it was re-done as the Ritz. In the end, the "I" fell off the Ritz sign and it ened up the
church you see two photos above.
https://sites.google.com/site/hollywoodtheatres/ritz
On the other side of the street (in the Alex in Wonderland photo), you can see part of the sign for the Vogue Theater. The Vogue has gone through a number of changes too.
Here are a few of them.
In 1935, it looked like this:
https://sites.google.com/site/hollywoodtheatres/vogue
In 1959, it went through this remodel:
LAPL
Lately, it has been converted into a supper club:
Google Street View
Anyone interested in the history of Hollywood theaters, please check out this excellent website:
https://sites.google.com/site/hollywoodtheatres/home