I remember the first time I saw...
 

The Wonderful World of Disney in color at my cousin's house. This would have been in the early 60s. It was a wonder. We had a black and white TV, a Stromberg-Carlson, in a big rosewood cabinet. Thing must have weighed 200 lbs. We bought that Stromberg-Carlson in about 1951 or '52. Before that Mrs. Silver who lived across the street had the only TV in the neighborhood. She had an open door policy. Neighbors were welcome to stop by after dinner and watch whatever happened to be on. Sometimes the men would gather in her side yard and watch through a window. Seems like yesterday.

Yes, that was another early color show. Didn't it come on right before Bonanza on NBC? Ed Sullivan was on CBS. The Jackie Gleason show from Miami on Saturday night was another family favorite, also in color by the mid 1960s. "How sweet it is (was)...and away we go!" I think Gleason was the only one they would let drink on T.V. back then....OK maybe Dean Martin too. Does anybody else member the "Happy Wanderer" show with Slim Barnard? How about "Ralph Story's L.A.", in black and white, but he told a lot of historical L.A. stories, some noirish.

Yeah, I think Disney switched over to NBC so that...
 

they could broadcast in color. Yeah, I remember the Happy Wanderer with the uber-corny theme song. We liked the show though. A few years before Ralph Story we watched Stan Chambers on KTLA. My parents really liked him. And there was a program called City at Night, also KTLA. It had multiple hosts. They went all over the city.

:previous:
Yeah Michael, the "Alderree, Alderrye" song. Happy Wanderer had such a low budget, the travel films they showed were just soundless home movies taken on trips all over SoCal with Slim and his wife, and I guess a cameraman with a movie camera with Kodak color film but no sound. Places like Calico ghost town near Barstow (which Knott's Berry Farm had taken over to make a tourist draw), Red Rock Canyon, the Palm Springs tramway etc. The audio commentary was supplied in a studio with Slim cackling his odd high pitched laugh, assisted by his wife. The color was good though and it was fun to watch. It was a very highly rated show in L.A. in the mid 1960s because people liked the colorful travelogs on their new color TVs. Decades later, Huell Howser did a retrospective Happy Wanderer show on "California's Gold", where he interviewed Slim's wife and others involved in the show. Slim was long departed. I think you can find it on you tube. I remember Stan Chambers on KTLA covering all the big stories, quakes, fires, riots, children stuck in wells etc. I don't remember City at Night.

I also remember watching the Joe Pyne TV talk show with my family. Pyne, an ex Marine, played the conservative tough guy, taking on an assortment of SoCal "liberal kooks and nuts" as he called them, telling them to "go gargle with razor blades". Sort of a Morton Downey show long before Morton Downey. Even I realized at about 12 it was highly scripted and basically a talk show wrestling match to be laughed at. Pyne also hosted a radio talk show where he told callers he didn't like to gargle with razor blades. My family and I leaned liberal, pro civil rights etc., but found the Pyne radio and TV shows a hoot. The staged wrestling matches on KTLA announced by Dick Lane were also fun, the Destroyer, Gorgeous George etc.

I was born in the early '50s, so my memory fades out for anything before about 1957 or 58. I do clearly remember watching the Mickey Mouse Club Show regularly, Howdy Doody and Sheriff John, and assorted stuff like 3 Stooges and Little Rascals (Our Gang). I actually went to a studio show with the 3 Stooges about 1959, I think at the Channel 13 studios, or maybe channel 9. Larry and Mo were there, no longer in their prime, and Curly was played by someone else. They called him "Curly Joe" to distinguish him from the original Mo Howard brother who had passed on, as had Shemp Howard also. I am still a member in good standing of the 3 Stooges fan club. Woo woo woo!

I also liked watching monster and science fiction films in my pre-10 years. The Godzilla version with Raymond Burr inserted in it to appeal to American audiences, playing a reporter named "Steve Martin" (little did Burr know how big that name would become 25 years later). The film with the giant radioactive mutant ants in the L.A. storm drains and sewers; the original George Pal 1960 version of "The Time Machine" etc. One of my first crushes was Yvette Mimieux (the eloi Weena) in the TM. She passed away recently. Rest in peace Yvette/Weena. In my teens I became an original "trekker"...don't say "trekkie"!

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Let's briefly return to this photograph.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/ZvkL7X.jpg
eBay


:previous: I believe this is the roof garden of the W & J Sloane store at 9560 Wilshire Blvd.


The roof garden appeared in an 1938 issue of Architectural Digest.


https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...922/m602sU.jpg

#1
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/0yM5ug.jpg
archdigest



#2
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...924/gESj1D.jpg
archdigest




#3
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...924/zdwfx7.jpg
archdigest

Sorry for the blurriness. I'm not a subscriber so I don't have access to the Architectural Digest Archive.
(I enlarged the photos myself) thus the blurriness.




W & J Sloane was first mentioned a few days ago by Mackerm, HERE



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:previous: My best guess is that the rooftop cafe was on the oldest part of Saks, at the southwest corner of Peck and Wilshire. It looks like the garden was roofed over to make a 4th floor.

Maybe they were watching Mrs. Silver! :yes:

Red Rock Canyon north of Mojave? One of the places where I shoot astro stuff.

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-...rnv5tdx-XL.jpg

Could be. Although my memory of her
 

is that she was a pleasant looking woman who looked a bit like my grandmother's younger sister. And the more I think of it, I'm starting to think her name was Silber not Silver.

What is that about?
 

What is the 'thumbs down' thing?

Found this "then and now" pic on Pinterest of the 500 block of Ceres Avenue looking to where it intersects Central:

https://i.postimg.cc/brzB28QK/ceres-Pint-500s-NCent.jpg
Pinterest

Somebody is playing some mishief. Gave me a thumbs down on last post. I found the Huell Howser "Calif. Gold" show on the "Happy Wanderers" on you tube. Has an interview with Slim Barnard's wife and the production staff plus clips from the show. Slim had passed away years before Huell did the show in 1996. They have the complete "Alderree Alderrye" theme. Will post Sunday.

:previous:
Spectacular pic of Red Rock Canyon Bill. How long an exposure was that? Looks like at least an hour from the length of the star tracks around Polaris. I never thought of RR Canyon as a destination, but as a place you drive through on the way to Mammoth and the High Sierra. It is a pretty spectacular place though. Same with the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine and Mt. Whitney. Have you taken any photos or night shots there?

What is the imposing building on Central in the backround? Looks governmental, maybe a post office? This is one case where it looked better then than now. Even the (residential?) buildings, some with bay windows, on Ceres in the foreground would look nice restored and be far better than the ugly one story white building now. I bet you could say the same thing about all the buildings they tore down on Bunker Hill.

:previous:

That's the Arcade Depot complex:

https://i.postimg.cc/7PQm1py8/Ceres-5-6-1909-Bird.jpg
1909 birdseye map

The Arcade Depot was there, until demolished to build Central Station (Parkinson & Bergstrom, 1914), which we see at the end of Ceres in the then-n-now.

https://kcet.brightspotcdn.com/dims4...vw-d3e5612.jpg

Thanks, it is about a 90 minute shot in 30 second intervals and combined in post. Red Rock is pretty dark except for the light pollution to the south. The Owens Valley, not just the Alabama Hills is one of my go to locations lately for my shooting. I shot up there last winter(Andromeda setting with Mt. Whitney as a foreground as well as Orion with the Hills as a foreground), a couple of months ago, I shot the Milky Way over the cemetery at Keeler(eastern shore of Owens Lake). I'm itching to get back up there when I can get the time off work and cooperative weather. I've got my shots at my website.

Sorcery.

I always put on my sorcerer's hat before I start Photoshop.

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Remember the little boy on his bike?


Well, he just showed up again on eBay. This time, posing with his mother in front of Mike Lyman's Flight Deck at Los Angeles International Airport. (c.1954)

There are two slides.


https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/baCaYs.jpg
eBay





https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/Q04aNL.jpg
eBay

I'd love to know where they're going. (or coming from)

This is an attractive family.


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