noirish Los Angeles

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

designed the Norwegian Seamen's Church in San Pedro.

A look inside the sanctuary.


https://californiacruizin.wordpress....gian&submit=Go

The figure in the mural looks like Bette Davis to me.

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

Don't mean to be eternally negative but this porte cochere is beyond ugly.

It's pretty bad...a little googling brought up this interesting little excerpt from Joseph Wambaugh, with an amusing touch of the sapphic:

[CityBoyDoug]

[QUOTE=[B]GaylordWilshire[/B];7674973]



GaylordWilshire
It's pretty bad...a little googling brought up this interesting little excerpt from Joseph Wambaugh, with an amusing touch of the sapphic:



Very appropriate & on target...good find.!!!

[Martin Pal]

.

I just wanted to put these two pictures together for contrast.

Originally Posted by HossC

This is "Job 196: Burton Schutt, Huntington Hotel (Pasadena, Calif.), 1948".

Originally Posted by Martin Pal

LAPL

The Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, "where the sunshine spends the winter," is covered with snow on January 11, 1949.

[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by Martin Pal

I thought I'd look for a couple snow pictures that we haven't seen on NLA before.
If these were posted previously, I didn't find them.
Source: LAPL



The Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, "where the sunshine spends the winter," is covered with snow on January 11, 1949.

I remember that Jan '49 day. We lived in San Gabriel and my older brother made a little snowman before school. By the time we got home after school that day, it was mostly melted.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

The original San Pedro Elks Lodge...apparently once at Palos Verdes & 11th streets

It had three floors. The lower floor contained store rooms, a billiard room, café, kitchen and pantry. The 36-by-36-foot lodge hall, with seating for 400,
was on one side of the second floor, and the the other side had a large smoking room and the ladies’ reception room and parlor. The third floor consisted of apartments for lodge members.


A look inside. (supposedly)

dailybreeze

Either this is an entirely different place, or the oval auditorium is on the backside of the building shown in GW's photograph.
I see no exterior evidence of an oval room with windows. (I guess the windows could be fake...painted like tromp l'oeil)

The oval room would be visible in an aerial. (I believe the 3rd floor apartments were probably built around it)
__

One small correction GW:

The building was located at Palos Verdes & 7th Street (the photograph was taken in 1911, so maybe that's where you got 11th street)

The official address was 207 W. 7th Street.

from http://blogs.dailybreeze.com/history/page/4/

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by Beaudry

Just by way of noir reminder, tip your glass toward the Biltmore Hotel tonight, in remembrance of the final sighting of Elizabeth Short, seventy years ago.

The Black Dahlia Cocktail

3 1/2 oz. citrus vodka
3/4 oz. Chambord
3/4 oz. Kahlua
Tools: shaker, strainer
Glass: cocktail
Garnish: orange zest

Shake ingredients in a shaker with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish.



Served at the Gallery Bar at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by Martin Pal

The figure in the mural looks like Bette Davis to me.

https://jasminplease.com/2012/12/12/...-church-in-la/

Yep, I see what you mean Martin pal.


https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/

To be exact, Bette Davis in 'Dead Ringer', circa 1964.
__


BUT, if you look closely, the hair situation in the mural isn't what it seems.

The aureole around Jesus' head goes behind the 'rainbow' (actually a larger multi-colored aureole), thus creating the Bette Davis illusion.
__


update: I'm wrong MP.

On closer inspection....his aureole (which is actually a garden variety 'halo' ) doesn't go behind the 'rainbow' at all.

lightened

detail

I liked him better when he looked like Bette Davis.
__

Maybe this isn't even Jesus.

[Norman34]

I am a nephew of the late Jack Dusenka and his wife, Anna, an older sister of my mother, Catherine Semanko Larson.

Jack Dusenka opened a Minneapolis tavern called Jax Café as soon as Prohibition ended. The name Jax came about because the sign maker, Brede Corp., suggested spelling it “Jax” for the notoriety. Furthermore, a sign for Jax would cost less than one for Jack’s. The Kozlak family kept the name Jax and has run it for generations. It is now of the finest restaurants in Minneapolis,

Jack and Anna moved to Los Angeles – I think in the late 1930s – and opened the Golden Gopher and later a place called the Flame Room.

Anna was born on Sept. 4, 1900, and died on June 2, 1950, at age 49.
Jack’s birth name was John, and he also was known as P. J. He was born on June 23, 1899, and died on Jan. 5, 1962, at age 62. They had no children.

[Norman34]

The 1940 census information about Jack Dusenka and his wife, Ann, is incorrect regarding the couple associated with the Golden Gopher. They were John (known as Jack or P. J.) and Anna. He was born in 1899, she in 1990. So in 1940 they would have been 41 and 40.

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

It had three floors. The lower floor contained store rooms, a billiard room, café, kitchen and pantry. The 36-by-36-foot lodge hall, with seating for 400,
was on one side of the second floor, and the the other side had a large smoking room and the ladies’ reception room and parlor. The third floor consisted of apartments for lodge members.


A look inside. (supposedly)

dailybreeze

Either this is an entirely different place, or the oval auditorium is on the backside of the building shown in GW's photograph.
I see no exterior evidence of an oval room with windows. (I guess the windows could be fake...painted like tromp l'oeil)

The oval room would be visible in an aerial. (I believe the 3rd floor apartments were probably built around it)
__

One small correction GW:

The building was located at Palos Verdes & 7th Street (the photograph was taken in 1911, so maybe that's where you got 11th street)

The official address was 207 W. 7th Street.

from http://blogs.dailybreeze.com/history/page/4/

You're right about the address, ER....



it was still there in 1980...doesn't appear to have any ovoid wing out back







And here's something interesting...looks like it was an inside job!




http://www.dailybreeze.com/general-n...royed-building

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

It was still there in 1980...doesn't appear to have any ovoid wing out back

Thanks for posting the aerial GW. I was hoping to see the shape of the room darn it.

__


re: The Arson Fire

" Evidence reportedly includes surveillance video of Nick Pecarich’s car, a black Honda Ridgeline, allegedly leaving the Elks parking lot
shortly before the fire was reported at about 2:40 a.m., according to sources.

Other surveillance tape allegedly caught him filling up a gas can at the Chevron station at 29421 S. Western Ave., at Crestwood Drive, in Rancho Palos Verdes
just 15 minutes before the blaze. Pecarich was a regular at the station, where he also bought a lighter at the transaction window that night, according to the station owner."

lol. I guess Nick never heard of surveillance cameras.
__

[John Maddox Roberts]

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

I remember that Jan '49 day. We lived in San Gabriel and my older brother made a little snowman before school. By the time we got home after school that day, it was mostly melted.

Hard to believe there are people on here whose memories go back even farther than mine. My earliest memories of Pasadena are from '54.

[Blaster]

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

I remember that Jan '49 day. We lived in San Gabriel and my older brother made a little snowman before school. By the time we got home after school that day, it was mostly melted.

I'm pretty sure in Robert Towne's original script of THE TWO JAKES, the sequel to CHINATOWN, the movie was supposed to end on that morning in January 1949... the last image was to be Los Angeles covered in falling snow.

[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by Blaster

I'm pretty sure in Robert Towne's original script of THE TWO JAKES, the sequel to CHINATOWN, the movie was supposed to end on that morning in January 1949... the last image was to be Los Angeles covered in falling snow.

wow...that is most interesting movie trivia. Sometimes real life intersects with fiction.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by Beaudry

What a great image! Never seen that before. I'd love to know who shot it.

Beaudry, I found this photograph of the 3rd Street tunnel in the same file with the three men sitting on the Clay Street steps.
I don't know the photographer of this one either, but they were quite possibly taken by the same person (since they were both in my same old file date)




Very moody. I love this pic.




cropped / enlarged



I thought the 'nico' was for the utility pipes/hydrant(?), but under closer inspection the pipes appear to be in front, and off to one side, of the arched niche. So what's in the niche?




note the small building selling french fries across from the liquor store. (if I remember correctly, the liquor store used to be a vegetarian restaurant back in the 1910s and 20s)


detail #2



I'm confused by the roof-line of this small building. (it looks like two gables, one on top of the other)


detail #3

Are the large 'A' and 'S' on the small building or behind it? And off to their right, note the sign facing in the opposite direction.

Does anyone know the name of this greasy spoon?


__

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by Blaster

I'm pretty sure in Robert Towne's original script of THE TWO JAKES, the sequel to CHINATOWN, the movie was supposed to end on that morning in January 1949... the last image was to be Los Angeles covered in falling snow.

That would've been great!

___

In a quick search I found two references to this. One is a 1985 article about why the sequel to Chinatown never got made.
(It would five years later.)

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1...n-robert-towne


The other is from a 2002 New York Times article about "snow" in the movies and the writer talks about his
fascination about Hollywood filming these snow scenes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/movies/holiday-movies-the-snow-is-in-our-hearts.html

At the end he writes:

In ''The Two Jakes,'' as Robert Towne had written it and was going to direct it in 1985, there is a scene that never made it to the film that Jack Nicholson ultimately directed. His character from ''Chinatown,'' Jake Gittes, makes his farewells with the woman who is Faye Dunaway's character's sister and daughter in the earlier film. She is leaving L.A. but says she'll be back. When? asks Gittes. ''First snow on the ground,'' she says.

Gittes replies sourly, ''The next time will probably be the first time,'' but then the scene dissolves to snow falling, and the Los Angeles Times headline -- from 1947, I think -- when that rarity happened, and this stage note: ''The headline dissolves into the streets of L.A. from Cahuenga to La Brea. From Mulholland to City Hall, filled with falling snow, and occasional pedestrians filled with joy at finding themselves in it, and occasionally finding each other.''

Note: We know the writer has the date wrong--it's 1949.

I wonder if that original screenplay is available anywhere to read. It seems this writer had read it someplace.

[GaylordWilshire]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

It had three floors. The lower floor contained store rooms, a billiard room, café, kitchen and pantry. The 36-by-36-foot lodge hall, with seating for 400,
was on one side of the second floor, and the the other side had a large smoking room and the ladies’ reception room and parlor. The third floor consisted of apartments for lodge members.


A look inside. (supposedly)

dailybreeze

Either this is an entirely different place, or the oval auditorium is on the backside of the building shown in GW's photograph.
I see no exterior evidence of an oval room with windows. (I guess the windows could be fake...painted like tromp l'oeil)

The oval room would be visible in an aerial. (I believe the 3rd floor apartments were probably built around it)

More 'Pedro BPOE...


Another, slightly different, exterior shot:




According to the Water & Power archive, Hudson & Munsell were the archs:





A few excerpts from the Lodge's own history (www.elks.org/lodges/LodgePages.cfm?LodgeNumber=966&ID=12509):


"Plans for a three-story building and ground was broken on November 23, 1908. The first task was to level the site. This, incidentally, was contracted to Don Knight and Jess Knight, uncle and father respectively, of California's Governor Goodwin J. Knight."

Note in the history that there was a big remodeling as the Depression set in...the top poo-bahs didn't have such great business foresight, it seems. Anyway, this may be when the oval room was changed:

"July 9, 1929 they authorized the borrowing of $15,000 recommended on the floor by the Trustees, for remodeling the Lodge room. When they got through, the cost was $30,000 and the Lodge was back financially where it started in 1910.... The stage was torn out, new seats, except officers' chairs, and rugs and drapes came in. The ceiling was lowered and the present beams built in to aid acustics....."


Then:
"The 1933 earthquake so damaged the upper reaches of the building that the cupola had to be removed. Later the tile was cast off to rid the building of pigeons."


I was in a fraternity in college, a rowdy one, great memories, but I never had any inclination to continue the whole mystical bit after school. I did find this particular BPOE item, presumably a symbol of power, amusing:

[HossC]

It seems like Julius shulman spent a lot of time in Beverly Hills. This is "Job 123: Ciro Jewelers (Beverly Hills, Calif.), 1947".



I've left out two pictures of the window displays because they weren't very clear. Here's the first interior shot. I'm not sure what this room was for. I initially thought there was a mirror at the back, but then I realized that I wasn't looking at a reflection.



This looks more like a jewelry shop. The neon signs say "Watch Repair" and "Cashier".



I'm not sure what we're looking at here, but it's nice and shiny!



All from Getty Research Institute

The description says that this is another design by Raphael Soriano. The 1956 CD lists the address of Ciro of Bond Street as 9620 Wilshire Boulevard. I think that places it where an extension to Saks Fifth Avenue now stands.

Ciro Jewelry started in London as a mail order company in 1917, and appears to have no connection with the nightclub of the same name.

[HossC]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I'm confused by the roof-line of this small building. (it looks like two gables, one on top of the other)


detail #3

Are the large 'A' and 'S' on the small building or behind it? And off to their right, note the sign facing in the opposite direction.

Does anyone know the name of this greasy spoon?

I've just checked the 1956 CD and found a cafe called Pat's Joynt at 262 S Hill Street. I wonder if the 'A' and 'S' are half of a sign for PAT'S.

While I was looking for the French Fries stand, I found this 1945 image of Hill Street auto park. The two businesses look smaller.


LAPL

This one is labeled "Suggested auto park improvement 1945". Note how many cars are the same as the image above, but several other details differ.


LAPL

I'm not sure if we've seen this image before. It's the sad view down the hill where Angel's Flight once stood.


LAPL