this 1954 image of the court flight site wa taken about the same time as the color photo i had posted above

http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics36/00067901.jpg
Source: LAPL

this 1954 image of the court flight site was taken about the same time as the color photo i had posted above

http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics36/00067901.jpg
Source: LAPL

ethereal: That top shot is great-- "50 TICKETS 50 CENTS"

And I think the tall man in the hat is ordering the broom-wielder under his breath to "get rid of this creep." I wonder what's going on... who is that man with the boutonierre getting off the car who reminds me of Henry Ford? (Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.)


And back to the Hall of Records--a little more downtown color:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_z...lorhallrec.jpgLos Angeles Historian Photoblog

Here is a quicky, GSJansen style, of the corner of Temple and Boylston C. 1930. I wonder if Viertel's is located just out of frame already

http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/3...lstonc1930.jpg

Interestingly, that place next door, what's now a sandwich shop? Was the Nite Owl café in LA Confidential.

When Malumot said

A barbershop, a late-50s American sedan, cigars, and a man with a hat....are you kiddin' me?

Some people want to go back in time to Paris in the '20s, London in the Victorian era, the Palace of Versailles or the time of the Pharoahs.....

I'd be happy just to spend some time at the Owl.

I have to agree. But it's an interesting question, and since we're all interesting folk...I'm asking the panel to address it. Let's say you had a time machine (apart from the one that is this thread; a real one, with blinky lights on it and stuff) and you could pop back to Old LA for, say, a weekend. Would you prowl around January 1947, looking for Elizabeth Short? Would you stand about and watch the 1880s construction of Bunker Hill? Personally, I find the Sunday evening of 15 December 1935 mightily attractive, so I might peep into Thelma Todd's garage. Plus mid-30s LA...too early for me to go to Coulter's on Wilshire (at least I could run around the Richfield for a while) but that's the sacrifice to be made for solving Todd's death.

So. You?

I'd want to go hang with Miss Smog.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5215/...fa353960_b.jpghttp://farm6.static.flickr.com/5215/...fa353960_b.jpg


Are you kidding? I'd just like to hang out with this guy for a day. Any day. The ultimate Los Angeles Noir party animal. Bert Rovere!!!

Love that tie!

january 28th, 1923 seems like a good day, (but of course i'm a deveiant)

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5201/...58972b39_b.jpg

no it would have to be in the thirties after 1933 so i could dine at sardi's

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4066/...4225dfc3_o.jpg

First off, I'm too much of a coward to venture near Thelma Todd's garage on the night in question. But the the unsolved murders got me to thinking of the unsolved murder of actor David Bacon which contains some noirish qualities. Name doesn't sound familiar? How about the Masked Marvel? David Bacon played the Masked Marvel in the 1943 serial. You can read about his murder here http://www.capecodconfidential.com/ccc5-12.shtml The link to more details doesn't work but I believe it mentioned he lived at 8444 Magnolia Drive in the Hollywood Hills.

It turns out that years later that address figured in a minor Hollywood scandal involving acress Madge Meredith, more noir goings on.

http://moviemorlocks.com/2007/01/22/...-girls-go-bad/

http://1947project.blogspot.com/2005...or-kidnap.html

After clicking the link to Magnolia Drive on Google Maps, I think I'm also too much of a coward to visit there now. And I've been to the Spahn Ranch!

As to the original question, put me down for one of the parties at Errol Flynn's place!

PRC Studio
 

Anyone here know the address/location of what was once the old PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) studio in Hollywood? Many here probably know it was where "Detour," "Strangler of the Swamp," "The Devil Bat" etc. were made in the 40's.
I seem to remember once reading in a book on B films that it was located on the site of what is now a mini-mall or small shopping center on Santa Monica or Melrose in the rough vicinity of Paramount Studio, but can find no info. online as to the location.
On a slightly related subject (B movies) I looked up the locations used in the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," knowing it was mostly filmed in Hollywood and Sierra Madre, but "discovered" the location of the train station in the opening scene as being in Chatsworth, when that area was mostly way-out open country (1956).
BTW, here is a photo I found at google images of PRC, but no address. Look familiar to anyone?
http://home.sprynet.com/~dsl/landmark/prc.html

I believe PRC used to rent office space where the Sunset Gower Studios are now. Before they were taken over by Pathe.

EDIT: The original PDC Studios were in Prescott AZ as a western street. They had a presence in Hollywood too with rented office space around town, but I think their main PRC Studio remained in Prescott. At least as far as the westerns they produced.

Here's just about all the locations for Invasion of the Body Snatchers
http://www.angelfire.com/film/locati...s/invasion.htm

Producers Releasing Corporation, (PRC Studios) was located on Gower Street, just South of Sunset Boulevard and just north of Columbia Pictures. It was one of the "poverty row" studios located on Gower, (also commonly known as "Gower Gulch").

the 1942 photograph that you posted of PRC is looking South on Gower from Sunset. Columbia Pictures studio complex are the buildings just South of PRC .

http://home.sprynet.com/~dsl/landmark/PRC_Studios.jpg
Source: Dennis's online scrapbook

Very cool color photos, Gaylord and gsjansen!

As a kid in high school I used to fantasize about time travel to 1940s Los Angeles. I was very obsessed with the 1940s when I was a teen. But it wasn't until I got to college that someone pointed out to me, "you probably wouldn't even have been welcome in a lot of establishments back then." Which makes me wonder, would I have seen lots of "No Dogs or Filipinos Allowed" signs in 1930s and 1940s LA? Maybe I could've been a houseboy or chauffeur for an aging silent screen star or something-- hehe.

My mother lived in Chicago in the 1960s (my parents didn't move to LA until after they married and had me and my sister). She was there on a nursing exchange program they had with Filipino nurses; apparently she lived there during the Richard Speck murders, of which two of the murder victims, Filipino student nurses, were also there on an exchange program. Anyway, I asked her if she encountered racism in Chicago. She said "no, that was already the civil rights era."

All that aside, I would've loved to have gone to the Cocoanut Grove in its heyday and gone dancing at the Palladium back in the day, and eaten at the Hollywood Brown Derby in the 1940s: "Telephone call for Mr. Gable." I also would've loved to have ridden a Pacific Electric Car from downtown LA to Venice, or experienced the Pike in Long Beach during the 1920s.

Miss Smog aside, I always wondered how great those juke joints on Central were, back in the 40's and 50's.

PRC Studio
 

Thanks Jansen, MikeD and Fontucky. Obviously the old studio that I thought was on Melrose or Santa Monica was NOT PRC - such are the vagaries of human memory. I must've been thinking of another place that used to exist in that general location - Desilu?
It is interesting to now know where PRC was (On Gower near Sunset and almost next door to Columbia) and to think of all the campy films that were shot within those walls - "Fog Island," Philo Vance Returns," "The Flying Serpent," "Strange Illusion," "Club Havana," etc. - even a kind of charming little color film called "The Enchanted Forest" (1945-46 I think) that showed on TCM. PRC was certainly headquarters central ( along with Monogram) for ultra low-budget Noir.
I once visted KCET, the old Monogram/Allied Artists lot in the 70's and particularly remember a row of small attached craftsman bungalow-type bldgs. that I assume were used as offices or dressing rooms - and was interested to find that the lot dates back to 1912.

LA Time Machine Reservation- 1920's Please
 

This thread has gotten me much more interested in 20's LA. I think the 1890-1910 downtown seems the most elegant, and overall aesthetically pleasing time of LA's downtown history. The noir of the late 30's and 40s has its appeal, but for a fun filled weekend, I'd pick 1926, Travel up Mt lowe on the rails, go to the hollywood bowl, dance clubs in hollywood, downtown theaters, have breakfast with Bunker Hill friends and drive to the beach in santa monica, . . . Hmmm, kinda sound like what I'd like to do this weekend. The music, style and spirit of the 20's coupled with the yet unspoiled beauty of the area seems irresistible. Just to see those elegant streetlights at night would be worth the trip alone!!!

I'm looking at Sunset & Gower on Google Maps and it looks like the PRC building has been replaced by the Sunset Gowers Studio building. But the buildings two doors down (the taller one in the picture and the one closer to PRC) seem to still be there.

Sorry I don't know how to grab a screen capture off Google Maps to post here.

One of the Desilu lots was the old RKO Studios at 780 N Gower at the corner of Melrose. It started as the Robertson Cole Studios in 1920, became FBO in 1923, RKO in 1928, Desilu in 1957 and is now part of Paramount. The globe part of the RKO sign still sits on top of a sound stage minus the radio tower.

I think just west on Melrose was Samuel Z Arkoff's American International Pictures office. Does anyone know where the AIP studio was?