I was born in England and lived there until I was six. It was then, in 1968 that my dad, on a whim, answered a newspaper ad about an American company, Mattel, recruiting engineers due to a shortage of home grown ones at that time. One thing led to another and despite being pretty set where we were, the family decided to give Southern California a try. My mother agreed to it but only committed to a two year stay.
We moved into a then very middle class Manhattan Beach. Mom was homesick at first but soon fell in love with the climate and everything else the southland had to offer and after that there were never really any thoughts of returning to England.
I've been in the South Bay ever since and this is home. The only time I could ever say I actually lived in Los Angeles was when I briefly paid the rent on a Mid Wilshire apartment for my then girlfriend, now wife around 1991. My brother and I moved her out of there the evening the 1992 riots broke out. The move date had already been arranged. The riots were a mere coincidence. We made our way back to the South Bay by heading west and then south and avoiding the action.
The apartment was in a soulless building around 5th & Ardmore. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it had replaced some really interesting grand old homes years earlier.
I have always felt that I really enjoy living very close to a major metropolitan city and not actually in it. That said, I love Los Angeles and all local history and have learned and continue to learn so much of it here.

My parent's endeavours to find a home for babies was not ''church sanctioned"....the people in the church knew nothing about it.
My stepfather rarely talked about his clients, therefore I know next to nothing about what you refer to GW but it is interesting.

:previous:


Oh, I thought you said that other members of your church were being recruited to adopt the issue your father's indiscretions...hard to believe it was really all "off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush"...or could remain so for very long. And one might wonder, didn't your father ever think that stopping off at a Flying A station for a French letter on his way to a tryst might be a good idea? And what was your mother thinking? Oh the noirishness of it all.

So I guess what will remain off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush is, who exactly was Leo Carrillo's attorney? And Mary's and Lita's?

Sadly, none of those names rings a bell for me, CaliNative. These teachers may have been gone by the time I arrived at NHHS.

My parents contacted one of the church members and only one. Sorry if I misspoke. This family did obtain the baby they named Gleam. That was all over 60 years ago and that family did legally adopt the baby. I remember there was a lot of talk about them being qualified because the husband was in his 60's at that time.

Leo's C.s wife died during this time and there was a lot of back and forth about her property and the Titles related to it. Leo was very concerned that they be properly handled. This was one of the reasons for his anxious telephone calls to our home.

Seeing as how some of us are posting the histories of our parents...

My father was born at Queen of Angels hospital. He was going to follow the family tradition of working in the movie industry, but when World War II broke out, my father volunteered for service (he served as an airplane navigator in the Pacific). After the war, he pursued his own path, and never worked in the movie industry again (he had been featured in a few of my grandfather's silent movies, playing bit parts as a kid).

Both of my parents were newspaper reporters. My father would always tell me that being a newspaper reporter was considered to be a very glamorous job at the time - my dad would say “look at how common the roving reporter character is in movies - it was considered to be quite a big deal if you were a reporter back in those days”.

Since newspapers were pretty much the entire source of publicity back in those day, my parents did lead somewhat glamorous lives as reporters - they were given free tickets and backstage passes to all the best shows, and they received many gifts from anyone trying to get publicity. For example, they were given hundreds of LP records, which I still have.

My dad knew and/or interviewed many top stars. He was at a restaurant one night when Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Mayo Methot, got into one of their famous fights - the pair were dubbed “The Battling Bogarts” - and apparently the two of them caused quite a scene.

Once my father was using a urinal in a men's room when Groucho Marx walked up and used the urinal next to him. Groucho, adopting a very formal tone said to my father “I beg your pardon sir, but would it bother you terribly if I were to fart right now?” My father replied “Why yes, Groucho, that would offend me greatly!” Groucho responded “Well sir, I'm afraid you're out of luck today!” and released an enormous fart.

Later on, my father also covered the trials of the Bell X-1 rocket fighter extensively, and knew Chuck Yeager. He also covered the moon landing.

My father was in John F Kennedy's press corp, and followed Kennedy across the nation as JFK ran for president. They visited all sort of places, including places like roadside diners. My father told me “I was shocked by how openly JFK moved around in public. All I could think was that anyone could shoot him at any time” - a prediction that sadly came true just a few years later. My father never had anything negative to say about JFK, who he had grown to like very much on the press tour.

My father was also at the Ambassador Hotel the night Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. After the shooting, the government agents (FBI, I presume?) locked everyone in the building, not letting them leave or make any phone calls - my mother had to wonder what had happened, until my father was allowed to return home sometime the next morning.

Later on still (circa 1970), my father left the newspaper industry for a job as a publicist in the corporate sector. He worked for many years at WOGA (The Western Oil and Gas Association) in the Fine Arts building, 811 West 7th Street in downtown.

https://i.imgur.com/KBFTHOJ.jpg

I was lucky enough as a child to have spent a fairly sizeable amount of time in the Fine Arts with my father - even as a child, I appreciated beautiful architecture. If you'd like to see some photos of the beautiful Fine Arts building, see here.

My mother was born in Colorado (like both of my paternal grandparents), though I am unsure in which hospital. I know, however, that it was a Catholic hospital - my grandmother named my mother Mariko, and when the nuns wrote up her birth certificate, they changed her name to Mary.

I am unsure as to why or when exactly my mother's family moved to Los Angeles, other than it being in the 1930s.

Being Japanese, my mother spent World War II in a Manzanar relocation camp, where she was a reporter for the camp newspaper (ER helped me locate some of the articles she wrote online):

https://i.imgur.com/n42msgI.jpg

I've discussed my mother somewhat extensively before so I won't rehash everything, but she was one of the first women (let alone, minority women) to work as a reporter in Los Angeles. At one point, she and her best friend, author-to-be Hisaye Yamamoto, worked as the only non-black employees at a black newspaper, the Los Angeles Tribune, run by civil rights activist, Almena Lomax.

https://i.imgur.com/AblbG7k.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/lf3xuKv.jpg

One evening, my mother was at the police station following up on some story, when a skinny young man was hauled in in handcuffs for getting into a fight. My mother decided she should do an impromptu interview with the young man, and despite his reputation as being sort of rough-edged, my mother said she found him to be quite charming and likeable. He was an up-and-coming crooner who went by the name of Frank Sinatra.

Like my father, my mother eventually left the newspaper business for a corporate job. She worked as the head publicist at CBS Columbia Square, specifically at KNX radio, a job she held for 34 years, until she retired.

https://i.imgur.com/ZbCACwV.jpg

I spent countless days in this building, probably hundreds of days. If school was on vacation, my mom would often take me to work with her. Things are probably(?) different today, but back then nobody minded if she brought me to work. I was a very well behaved kid, quiet, and I never caused any problems.

It was (and still is!) a beautiful building. Those circular windows are in the stairwell, I used to run up the stairs when I was a kid, trying to beat my mother (who took the elevator) to the third floor.

Anyways, please forgive me for droning on and on! If anyone cares to read it, here is an interview with my parents regarding their times in LA:

http://www.riprense.com/Dailynewspagekitano.htm

April 1894
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...921/wbplD1.jpg
Thanks Beaudry. I appreciate your help.



'mystery' street, Hollywood. [c.1927]

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/hUOoY5.png
EBAY

Does anyone recognize any of the buildings along this street?

I REALIZE THERE ISN'T MUCH TO GO ON.

__

Thanks Scott...that Fine Arts building is a refreshing example of another era. I would like to visit it.

You'd love it, CityBoyDoug - it's a truly classic, beautiful building.

Here are some really nice photos of the building's interior:

https://www.kcet.org/history-society...las-commercial

Earlier today I came across these slides in an old file of mine.

They're rather baffling...especially this first one.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...924/2K5SSV.jpg
ER_FILE 2015

UFO !







The following three slides show how it was done.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/XBvYM7.jpg
ER FILE 2015





https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...921/4Y2XDb.jpg
ER FILE 2015





alien blood on this one. :yuck:

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/HpxEDB.jpg
er file 2015

This was obviously some sort of publicity stunt. But what was it for? :shrug:

__

oops

Lived in So Cal (Orange County) since I was 2 years old (I'm 48). I've watched orange groves and fields become dense urban/suburban wastelands. Saddens me, but whenever I visit other states, I can't wait to get back!

They were shooting a promo film for a song called "Only You (And You Alone)" on top of the building, from Ringo Starr's album "Goodnight Vienna." Wikipedia says the shoot date was November 14, 1974.

• Video Link

I have vivid memories of being taken to Disneyland as a young child in the mid-1960s and passing miles of Orange County farmland en route. Seeing live cows during the drive was an exotic treat for a suburban kid.

I've only just caught up after a month not reading the thread. May was unbelievably busy at my house! But I felt I should contribute to the SoCal roots postings.

My immediate family - parents and two older sisters - are all from Iowa. I am the only member born in California. My family moved to Anaheim in 1972, following several siblings of my Dad's who had moved to SoCal in the 1950s, and my uncle who had moved to Orange County perhaps 3 or 4 years before us. My uncle worked for Bergen Brunswig, and helped my Dad get a job there as well when his Iowa employer, Des Moines Drug Co., went out of business. Bergen Brunswig was the successor to the Brunswig Drug Co., known to noirishers for their several large buildings just off the plaza in downtown L.A., one of which remains today, restored on Main St. a couple doors down from the Plaza Church. But, my uncle and Dad worked at the Bergen Brunswig facility in Anaheim so we lived in Orange County. After a short stint renting in Anaheim my family bought a house at the southern edge of Fullerton, and I was born in 1974 at Martin Luther Hospital near the 91 freeway and Euclid, technically just across the city boundary in Anaheim.

I never lived in L.A. proper, spending nearly my whole SoCal childhood in that same house in Fullerton. We only ever made it into L.A. two or three times that I can recall, the most memorable of which was when my sisters performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in some sort of Christmas program, as part of the Mater Dei High School bell choir. I remember Betty White speaking to open the event, or concert, or whatever it was. I would have been about 9 or 10 years old.

Although my Dad had been a sales rep for Des Moines Drug, traveling to small-town Iowa drug stores as Des Moines Drug was a supplier for them, at Bergen Brunswig he worked in their warehouse for the rest of his career. My mom mostly provided daycare in our home, for 1-4 kids at a time, while I was growing up. I do remember when I was very young she also worked in the office of a business called Apache Plastics. Back in Iowa in the 1960s she had worked in the offices of Look Magazine, which was based in Des Moines.

My Dad retired in about 1988 and they sold the house in spring 1990. I finished out my last 2 months of SoCal residency at my aunt's house in Westminster, commuting to high school in Fullerton by public bus, and learning to drive with my Mom between Westminster and my job at Barro's Pizza in Anaheim, around the corner from our old house, while my Dad went to NorCal to set up their retirement home. After a summer in Willits, we finally settled in Crescent City, a far, far cry from the bustle of SoCal. After 5 years there, I got married and promptly moved to Las Vegas, where I remain. My parents didn't even last that long in Crescent City, taking off for Roswell, NM in 1993. But they came back to California later - to Hemet, then Tehachapi, then Hesperia and Apple Valley, and finally following myself and one of my sisters to Las Vegas.
Between my sisters and parents, I'm the only one who goes back to SoCal with any regularity. My wife and I have been to L.A. far more times than I ever did as a kid, for events, Route 66 gatherings, and even genealogy trips. In starting genealogy research several years ago, I discovered many more relatives than the 3 aunts' and 3 uncles' families who had preceded my own to SoCal. One of my great-aunts had come as early as 1930, settling in Costa Mesa, where her husband ran a Richfield station on the Coast Highway. (I found distant relatives in cemeteries scattered throughout SoCal - Newhall, Westwood, Glendale, Culver City, Whittier, Lake Forest, Duarte, etc.)

This thread has provided me with countless hours of entertainment and a great many stop ideas on various trips, to admire SoCal architecture and other points of interest, and I thank you all. I even took a trip one time with my Dad and kids, where we visited the only two missions I didn't make it to as a child (ironically, among closest to our home!), visited the USS Iowa battleship in San Pedro, went to a close view of the Hollywood sign, and went to City Hall to catch the view from the observation deck, which we had never done. It was rather gratifying to know some of the stories behind what I was seeing from that vantage point, among them the remains of the California State Building, which I could point out to my Dad and my kids, due specifically to this thread.

I wish I hadn't stayed away from the thread for so long, as I would have had the opportunity to contribute to the side discussion of Galco's! We stop there nearly every trip to L.A., to pick up a variety of sodas, and sometimes sandwiches from their deli in the back. I know we've taken some Nesbitt's home to Vegas before.

Am I the only one who thinks that LA seems quite scary when it's in black and white?

My grandparents and great-grandparents on both sides came here in 1910, both parents born here, and I was born here and still live in the same house where I grew up. My paternal grandparents and great-grandparents farmed land on a ranch where the Burbank Airport is now. They lived across the road from Jim Jeffries, the boxer, who had land in Burbank. My dad, who was born on "the Ranch" in Burbank in 1913, learned to swim in the LA River, (if you can imagine it having enough water to swim in). They called what is now Toluca Lake, "Brown's Pond" since a man named Brown watered his cows there. My mother was born at her grandparents' house in Santa Monica, since they were visiting there when my grandmother went into labor. Her sister went to Belmont High for a short while before they came to Burbank. My mom and dad, myself and my husband, my children and my eldest grandson all went to Burbank High.

I rode the last street car which came through Burbank, when I was a baby, since my mother wanted to be a part of that slice of history.
My Grandfather, Great-Grandfather and my eldest uncles on my dad's side, went to the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and are probably somewhere in the picture that day of the huge crowd watching the water come down. My grandmother stayed home with my dad who was a baby.

I remember, as a young child, eating at McDonnell's Plantation Rancho restaurant, adjacent to the Grand Central Airport in Glendale, and watching the last few planes flying in and out of there.

Is Hamilton the school that's located on Robertson Blvd.?

That's the one.

I was watching TV the other day when I saw a clip of the rather bizarre video below. It's "Mr. Tillman" by Father John Misty.

• Video Link

What caught my eye was the Art Deco building, first seen as a model.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...MrTillman1.jpg

It's obviously the old Lane-Wells Building at 5610 S Soto Street, Huntington Park, but there's some camera trickery going on. I'm guessing that some scenes were filmed with a tilt-shift lens, and they've also digitally altered this shot to turn the sidewalk into a driveway and add more grass.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...MrTillman2.jpg

Some external shots were definitely filmed on location, as can be seen in this view of the entrance...

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...MrTillman3.jpg

... and the building next door.

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...MrTillman4.jpg

All Youtube/Sub Pop and Bella Union

Looking at this Streetview image, you can see where the filmmakers kept the tree and all of the manhole covers in the sidewalk right up to the pedestrian crossing sign, but changed the road to grass. In the video, the room key names the building as the Mint Hotel in Las Vegas, which appears to be a reference to "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas".

http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/z...MrTillman5.jpg
GSV