736 Ceres
 

GW, It was just re the neighborhood, prompted by all your interesting posts about the 700 block of Ceres and environs ("the real vintage LA"), not to "help" anyone, who don't need it anyway. I apologize if I offended you. I'd delete the post, but I don't know how. In answer to your question, good heavens no.

I don't remember having French front doors. But I do remember the manager giving me a tour of Gloria Swanson's apartment (it was still empty) and it was very impressive. Real wood-paneled dining room. 2 floors. Beautifully tiled circular shower with a giant porcelain shower head. Legend has it that it was the site of many a "wild party" and that John Wayne was famous for taking showers with a couple of starlets at a time.

Thanks again to GW for providing the location of Fruitland School. My search for another picture of it was, um, fruitless, but I found this info:

News Notes of California Libraries (1921) identifies the "Maywood School Dist. Branch, Los Angeles Co. Free Library" with the note "This was formerly Fruitland school dist."
http://books.google.com/books?id=PR0...e%2016&f=false

In the 1892-93 Annual Report of the Board of Education of Los Angeles, California, the City Superintendent of Schools recommended paying a $190 yearly tuition bill (which had been vetoed by the City Auditor!) to the Fruitland School District for educating children who lived in Los Angeles but "cannot easily attend the city schools because of the river which compels them to go about three miles in order to reach our nearest school by bridge." That's $10 per head X 19 (average daily attendance out of 27 total students) = $190.
http://books.google.com/books?id=X9U...itland&f=false

:uhh:That got me to wondering how many bridges there were over the LA River in the mid-1890s, south of the downtown area. There was a bridge at Olympic Blvd (Ninth Street in those days) from 1889 (per: http://bridgehunter.com/ca/los-angeles/); maybe that was the one referred to in the 1893 report. South of there, I guess there were railroad bridges (considered safe for schoolchildren back then?), but I'm not sure what else. The situation may have even changed year-to-year, depending upon floods and course changes. Anybody know?

Batchelder Tile
 

Great stories!

If you liked your Batchelder-tiled bath at the Afton Arms there's several posts on the Dutch Chocolate Shop, Batchelder's tour de force, on this thread and more here: http://countdowntobatchelder.com/ and here http://la.curbed.com/tags/ernest-batchelder

Plus, of course, the Fine Arts Building, also on 6th on 7th:
http://www.ratkovich.net/uploads/big_FINEARTS_2.jpg

Vignes is the closest street. It's actually the alley just west of Vignes, looking south from 2nd.
Funnily enough, the railroad tracks proceed northward behind camera for nearly a block until the alley stops, at the back of a redeveloped property that faces 1st. So the tracks aren't connected to anything at either end.

That one is is on the south side of the bridge, facing west at the corner of Santa Fe & Mateo. This area has been fixed up, paved over and gated.


TheTalmadge:
Did you mean that John Wayne was there sometime after Gloria Swanson? They were not really contemporaries, Swanson having moved on (and to New York in 1938) by the time John Wayne really hit it big.

John Wayne in the 30's
 

John Wayne made at least one picture at Columbia, I think, and many on "Poverty Row", particularly for Monogram, both just around the corner from the Afton Arms. By his own estimation he made about 80 horse operas between 1930-1939 and was a bit player before that. He probably still had plenty of time to raise a little hell and may well have been a party boy in those years. Who knows any more? But he sure looks like he knows how to have a good time.

Wayne in 1930:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-_...621%2520PM.jpg
imagefave

Sure, it's possible, but it doesn't seem like a bit player/B-movie actor as he largely was in the 30s would be running in the same circles as Gloria Swanson, who was a star at a whole other level. His first big starring role in 1930 was a major bomb and he wasn't big again until Stagecoach in 1939.

Seems John Wayne started at Fox in 1926 as an extra and stuntman for John Ford. Mostly as an unbilled player. And billed once as "Duke Morrison." So while he may not have been pals with Gloria Swanson, it is possible that they had mutual acquaintances and he was player on the party circuit. Then again, as I said, that was the "legend" told me. May not be true... but it makes for a good story.

Yeah... I saw those photos in an earlier thread. Very exciting to hear about the restoration. Any news on when it will be open to the public?

LOL.....It doesn't bother me, Tovangar, because it WAS Ceres-related, and after well over 500 pages in this forum, just a happy coincidence of time and space.

Somehow I think I'll pass (no offense). Here's the last three pieces of music I viewed at Youtube. I don't think it's a match.

Lee Morgan - Sidewinder.
Ronnie Lane and Pete Townshend - Rough Mix
Dwight Yoakum - Streets of Bakersfield
(Yeah...I'm all over the map.......LOL)

Besides: I'm the squarest square from Squaresville, Daddy-o. Me at The Fort would be like Aunt Bea backstage at a Grateful Dead concert......:haha:

Plus I look terrible in Peruvian knit caps, which I believe are de rigueur amongst the uber hip. lol lol......

PS - As to marketing and promoting the events - YOU may not have a FB page, but LA Fort certainly does. (EZ to find on my Google Machine.) Feel free to pass it along.

Always here to lend a hand to fellow Noirishers.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-LA...27867737363277

Afton Arms
 

I really don't know (obviously), but going by Ms Swanson's rep (which may also be more legend than truth, even with the seven marriages) she seems like the type who would dress her parties up with some attractive starlets and whatever-the-male-equivalent-of-"starlets"-is just for the enjoyment of her other guests. In his early days, guessing about 19 to 26, Wayne would've fit that category to a "T". But again, it's just conjecture. I've got no proof that Swanson ever actually lived at the Afton Arms either. It's just the unshakable legend .

Batchelder
 

"A few months" according to a quote from the owner in the 1 August 2012 LA Times: http://countdowntobatchelder.com/?p=435 reprinted on the Dutch Chocolate Shop website, but you can get into the Fine Arts building lobby anytime: 811 W 7th (sorry, I identified it as being on 6th before, a stupid mistake considering friends had their offices there plus the number of times I ate at the Cap & Quill).

I love this still from The Hope Chest (1919) with Richard Barthelmess and Dorothy Gish on location at the Dutch Chocolate Shop.
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.co...e_chest010.jpg
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.co...e_chest010.jpg

736 Ceres
 

Thank you very much malumot, that was most kind of you. And actually, you'd fit right in, although not literally tonight at least, because it was such a crush. They're not hipsters, just a bunch of urban Angelenos with zero money and a "Hey kids, let's put on a show" attitude because they make their own fun because that's what is fun (and affordable). They're the unpretentious, dumpster-diving, thrift-shop-clothes-wearing, bike-riding lot, not the uber-hip, "concept"-club-going, loft-living, $14-drink-downing crew.

BTW, you have great taste in music.

Ceres Av
 

Thank you so much GaylordWilshire and FredH for the posts on Ceres Ave. They've electrified everyone from that part of town who's seen them. A little expedition was organized from the Le Roy Carman Printing Company building at 736 Ceres down to the "Rat Lab" on 8th at Ceres, scurrying past the site of 779 Ceres (shudder), and then back to the site of Otto Schrader's untimely death at 7th & Ceres, when his run-away team caused him to collide with the extant telephone pole, just half a block from home, poor lad. The ghosts were out waltzing on Ceres Ave tonight, like Brigadoon, thanks to both of you. Too darn cold to explore further, but rest assured that your wonderful research has had a lasting effect on many grateful people.

August 6, 1937 - the Four Star flies the colors for the Premier of "the Firefly."

http://jpg1.lapl.org/00096/00096787.jpghttp://jpg1.lapl.org/00096/00096788.jpglapl

http://www.moviefanfare.com/wp-conte...oster-1937.jpggoogle

Does it drive anyone else absolutely nuts the way they used to draw on the pictures, covering up the areas around people for clarity? So many of these old photos, presumably touched up for newsprint purposes, would be absolutely wonderful if a large portion of the photo didn't look like some kid went wild on them with his crayons. Argh!

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8072/8...6cc2193d_o.jpg
Thespians, 1929

May 17, 1929: A group of current and former football players pose for a Los Angeles Times photographer before heading to Maryland to appear in the movie “Salute.” From left are Clark Galloway, Russell Saunders, Jack Butler, Tony Steponovitch, Joe Fleming, Hayden Pythian, Jess Shaw, Frank Anthony, Al Schaub, Winfield Smith (Fox Studios representative) and Duke Morrison. Most of the players are affiliated with USC.

In the next day’s Los Angeles Times, this photo accompanied a story headlined: “U.S.C. Football Stars’ Status Periled by Film Stunt.”

From the Times article:

Surrounded by what they hoped would be deep secrecy, fourteen local college players, some of them scheduled to star on next year’s University of Southern California team, were aboard a Union Pacific train last night speeding toward the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, where they will participate in the filming of a motion-picture of football life for a local studio.

The squad left from Central Station at 11 o’clock yesterday morning accompanied by representatives of the Fox Film Corporation….

…Some of he youths feared their motion-picture work might be regarded as professionalism, and their eligibility for next year’s team challenged.

Duke Morrison and the other players filmed a fictional Army-Navy football game for the movie, then quickly returned to California. All eligible players kept their amateur status and played that fall for USC.

Morrison, whose real name was Marion Morrison, played on the 1925 undefeated USC freshman team. He was also on the 1926 varsity team but a shoulder injury — sustained while bodysurfing off Newport Beach’s Balboa Peninsula — and a Fox Studios job offer ended his football career.

At Fox, Morrison, a prop man, found work as a football-playing extra in the movies “Brown of Harvard (1926), “The Dropkick” (1927), Columbia’s “Maker of Men” (1931) and the previously mentioned Fox “Salute” (1929).

Along the way, Morrison changed his professional name to Duke Morrison — Duke being the name of a childhood dog.

In 1930, Fox Studios officials changed Morrison’s professional name to John Wayne.

Los Angeles Times archive, Scott Harrison, Framework

The "It" Girl
 

[QUOTE=BifRayRock;5953773]
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5106/5...4bcbb4e6_b.jpgFlickrhttp://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=3952

Your posted photo reminds me that of the time a former work colleague told that one of the most vivid (and not unpleasant) memories of his childhood was watching Clara Bow have it off with King Vidor in the back seat of a car in his father's driveway while a party was in progress in the house. Dunno if it was a LaSalle.