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  #57601  
Old Posted Oct 1, 2021, 9:38 PM
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Where in Los Feliz was there enough room to have a Drive-In Theater?



eBay

The wood (veneer?) wrapped around the counter reminds me of the closet doors in my parent's mid-century home.


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Last edited by ethereal_reality; Oct 1, 2021 at 9:52 PM.
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  #57602  
Old Posted Oct 1, 2021, 10:31 PM
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  #57603  
Old Posted Oct 2, 2021, 8:11 AM
CaliNative CaliNative is offline
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Originally Posted by Handsome Stranger View Post
^^^
They make the L.A. River look wider than the Mississippi OK, there was the flood of '37 (or was it 1938?) but that was an anomaly, a super el nino atmospheric river. Usually a kid could toss a ball across the mighty L.A. River, even before post flood channelization. Back in those days before the Corp of Engineers neutered it the river had steelhead runs and hungry bears going after the fish. Hard to believe, but true

Last edited by CaliNative; Oct 2, 2021 at 8:37 AM.
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  #57604  
Old Posted Oct 2, 2021, 4:29 PM
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um. . .so here then?

Top is East - to match Handsome Stranger's map

GSV

As you can see, the Griffith Park Municipal Pool (immediately to the right of my star) is in the way. . .

. .but the pool pre-dates the era of drive-in theaters by decades.


lapl (shown in 1937)

The pool opened in 1929 so perhaps my star is in the wrong place.

BUT, and it's a big but, if I move the star (the location of the Los Feliz Drive-In) to the right, where the tennis courts are located, the Mulholland Fountain doesn't line up with Handsome Stranger's map.

. . .right?...

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Last edited by ethereal_reality; Oct 2, 2021 at 10:42 PM.
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  #57605  
Old Posted Oct 2, 2021, 5:55 PM
Martin Pal Martin Pal is offline
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The Cinematour website says that the Los Feliz Drive-In could accommodate 500 cars and:
Opened: March 24, 1950
Closed: October 2, 1956

This Facebook page says:
The Glendale Blvd off-ramp goes through what used to be the Los Feliz Drive-in -- apparently it was a twin.

And from Cinema Treasures:



1952 photo, © HistoricAerials.com


From the comments section on Cinema Treasures, courtesy of Michael Kilgore:

From the March 11, 1950 issue of BoxOffice:

“Booking and buying for the Los Feliz Drive-In, new 600-car ozoner owned by Marvin Chesebrough, will be handled by Jim Finkler’s booking service. The operation is set for a March 15 opening with Tom Osa as manager.”


From the June 24, 1950 issue of BoxOffice:

LOS ANGELES – Because flood lights used to illuminate a playing field in the municipally owned Griffith park are blinding patrons of the nearby Los Feliz Drive-In, the city’s park and recreation commission has been given a “reasonable time” to erect an adequate shielding device.

That order was contained in a ruling handed down in superior couts as part of a preliminary injunction granted in an action filed against the city by Marvin M. Chesebro and Frank and Ernest Sbicca, owners of the drive-in, which opened March 15.

Chesebro, an attorney, held that the city should either stop using the flood lights or construct a baffle, which he estimates would cost approximately $3,500. The city’s plea that the cost would be closer to $7,500 and that the theatre should build the shield was denied in the court’s ruling. Chesebro charged that the drive-in is losing $300 worth of business every Friday night, when the Griffith park baseball field is open.

Chesebro is the son of Ray L. Chesebro, city attorney, who disqualified himself from representing the municipality because his son is a stockholder in the drive-in enterprise.

From Los Angeles Magazine:

Starting in 1950, the Los Feliz Drive-In’s two screens flickered for six years just southeast of today’s Friendship Auditorium near Riverside and Hyperion. Half the site became part of the Golden State Freeway, and half is now the five-acre Sunnynook River Park, with a walking path, native plants, and the occasional outdoor movie screening.
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  #57606  
Old Posted Oct 2, 2021, 6:11 PM
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For what it's worth, here's the area from the Renie 1955 map (east, again, at the top):

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  #57607  
Old Posted Oct 2, 2021, 6:13 PM
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MartinPal beat me to it by minutes, but with a much better post than the one I had planned, and odinthor as well! Just to illustrate what it says above, here's the comparison image that I was going to post with the 1952 view on the left and the rough location of the drive-in marked on the 2018 view on the right.


Historic Aerials
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  #57608  
Old Posted Oct 3, 2021, 9:51 PM
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Here's a mystery location slide.


eBay (found several weeks ago)







A closer look at the various clues.


detail


I'm intrigued by the two 'pointy things' sticking up from behind the Lincoln Mercury billboard. Are they on the roof of an old house?

Also intriguing. . .the sign in the distance with the red lettering spelling out "something TWELVE".


.
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  #57609  
Old Posted Oct 3, 2021, 10:30 PM
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The 1956 CD shows J F O'Connor & Son's Lincoln Mercury dealership at 6028 Hollywood Boulevard. I haven't yet found answers to the other questions.
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  #57610  
Old Posted Oct 4, 2021, 2:30 AM
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Smile Street lamp

Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post
.

Here's a mystery location slide.


eBay (found several weeks ago)







A closer look at the various clues.


detail


I'm intrigued by the two 'pointy things' sticking up from behind the Lincoln Mercury billboard. Are they on the roof of an old house?

Also intriguing. . .the sign in the distance with the red lettering spelling out "something TWELVE".


.

I think the two pointy things are the tops of the street lamp behind the sign.

------
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  #57611  
Old Posted Oct 4, 2021, 6:49 AM
riichkay riichkay is offline
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artsy.net

This is labeled "East L.A. Skateboarders, 1950's".....possibly El Sereno as the photographer, Joe Schwartz, lived there in the early '50's.
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  #57612  
Old Posted Oct 4, 2021, 12:53 PM
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Bring back May Co.

Somebody's not impressed with the new museum:

https://airmail.news/issues/2021-9-2...ig-white-guilt

Have any Norishers been to it?
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  #57613  
Old Posted Oct 4, 2021, 5:40 PM
Martin Pal Martin Pal is offline
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Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire View Post


Bring back May Co.
Somebody's not impressed with the new museum:
https://airmail.news/issues/2021-9-2...ig-white-guilt

Have any Noirishers been to it?
_________________________________________________________________
I have. A week ago today.

I like to know a source before I read their opinion, so I did research what "Air Mail" is and also the author of this piece: Sam Wasson. A good place to start:
https://www.samwasson.com/about

So now my opinion: He isn't wrong.

One thing you would absolutely think essential to entering a museum like this is, well, the entrance!

Wasson: "whose imposing concrete lobby evokes the Fascist sterility of The Conformist"

Indeed, I was quite non-plussed at entering the place, it felt nothing like being welcomed, it felt like a wall of scaffolding. To be sure, there are things in the museum people will be glad they have seen, but they're not in a context of enjoying those things, but rather teaching you something. I began to think I was going to see a bottle of pills that Louis B. Mayer had fed to Judy Garland to keep her energy up in filming the Wizard of Oz.

Most casual visitors will never have seen an Oscar in person before and even that section takes away the wonder of what a moment like that might be like. Or used to be like. In addition to the museum fee you pay, an attraction in the museum is that you can go into a private area one or two at a time and pretend you've won an Oscar and pick it up and hold it etc., while a narrator comments on your winning. I think they decided at some point NOT to let people say anything like an acceptance speech as people are wont to bash AMPAS nowadays and wouldn't that be amusing on youtube? Whatever they record they send to you later on (after reviewing/censoring it? I don't know) on your cellphone. But even this experience at the museum comes with an aura of money grubbing. You have to pay an extra ticketed fee for it at $15 a pop. And it's completely private, no one else gets to see any of this going on.

I keep thinking "The Oscars" have reached a jumping the shark moment. Or maybe passed it. Which is interesting because hanging over the escalators in the lobby is the shark from Jaws. Perhaps they'd be better off letting us jump over it than go under it.

I don't want to be critical of the Museum, I want it to be a success. The two new theatres there will be having continuous programs of movie screenings all year and that in itself is something I can't wait to start attending. Last week I saw a several minute news report about the new museum that actually made it seem like I wanted to go there, until I quickly realized I had.

A Hollywood museum by AMPAS should be entertaining. I was surprised at how even the gift shop there doesn't know what people want. Really, the gift shop was the most disappointing thing there. LOL! When people come to Hollywood their idea of what they want to see is more like the Universal Studios tour than taking a film studies class at USC. I mean, a section of the bookshop is devoted to Spike Lee? Even people who are huge fans of Spike Lee films aren't going to want to buy what's there.

The museum also has a restaurant named after Fanny Brice called Fanny's. It wasn't open during preview week, but it stated it would be open for breakfast lunch and dinner. Dinner? It also said it would close every day at 4pm. ???

Thanks for linking this article. The writer loves Hollywood and the movies and his harsh criticism is because he's disappointed in the inaugural presentation here and makes great points. I don't know if he went in to the museum with pre-conceived notions or they were formed along with his visit.

Like the author, I do want to be kind and hopeful for the future of this place. I'm thinking of a line from Tea & Sympathy, "In the future, when you talk about this, and you will...be kind."

Last edited by Martin Pal; Oct 4, 2021 at 6:32 PM.
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  #57614  
Old Posted Oct 4, 2021, 7:16 PM
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MP: Thanks for your review. Good to have another if not dissimilar perspective. Actually, it sounds like a disaster, but then I'm of an age where I'd rather see the bottle of Judy Garland's pills than the shark over the escalator. And the phony Oscar-win setup sounds cheesy beyond belief. (I thought you might be making it up.)
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  #57615  
Old Posted Oct 4, 2021, 8:52 PM
CaliNative CaliNative is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by riichkay View Post

artsy.net

This is labeled "East L.A. Skateboarders, 1950's".....possibly El Sereno as the photographer, Joe Schwartz, lived there in the early '50's.
Interesting pic. Kids were nailing roller skates to boards at least as far back as the 1920s and '30s, so I think boards with skates attached long predate the 1950s and 1960s. Often the kids nailed a vertical board or wood box to the front for a hand hold, but not always. Usually the things were used as scooters. However, I'm not aware of any evidence they stood up and rode them surfer style for short distances without a handhold but maybe some did. I was a young kid in the 1950s, and I have vague memories of kids in the hood using boards without a vertical handhold as push scooters, usually with one foot pushing forward on the ground. I can't remember if they ever kept both feet on the board and rode them surfer style, but they might have. Maybe a surfer kid invented the modern skateboard back then, and rode it like a surfboard, but it didn't take off until the mid '60s when it became a craze, replacing hula hoops and frisbies. It essentially became "land surfing", an offshoot of the ocean variety, and shared cultural features including surfer lingo. Surfers (and hot rodders) were held in high esteem by many kids, especially white kids, and this was the age of the surfer movies such as the Gidget and Frankie and Annette franchises. Kids who couldn't get to the beach may have deliberately experimented with a land version.

Last edited by CaliNative; Oct 5, 2021 at 12:31 AM.
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  #57616  
Old Posted Oct 4, 2021, 10:39 PM
Martin Pal Martin Pal is offline
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Love that photo.

Quote:
Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire View Post


I'm of an age where I'd rather see the bottle of Judy Garland's pills than the shark over the escalator.
_________________________________________________________________

LOL!
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  #57617  
Old Posted Oct 5, 2021, 3:03 AM
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ethereal_reality ethereal_reality is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HossC View Post


The 1956 CD shows J F O'Connor & Son's Lincoln Mercury dealership at 6028 Hollywood Boulevard. I haven't yet found answers to the other questions.
Hoss, I also found an O'Connor dealership at. . .


lapl...for search purposes: ..3823 Crenshaw Blvd.

so perhaps the eBay slide was taken at the Crenshaw location.





Quote:
Originally Posted by WS1911 View Post
I think the two pointy things are the tops of the street lamp behind the sign.
A-ha! You're correct. Now I see the street light-pole.



.................................................






Now let's figure out the TWELVE sign!



What I initially thought were windows in a modern motel are/is actually the back of a billboard. (there's space beneath it)




.

Last edited by ethereal_reality; Oct 5, 2021 at 3:42 AM.
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  #57618  
Old Posted Oct 5, 2021, 3:15 AM
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Here's something I never thought about until I happened upon this mugshot.


...........................................................FEDORA HEAD


eBay


Since the noirish characters in movies all look suave and de-boner I never thought about what their hair might look like after wearing a hat all day.



.

Last edited by ethereal_reality; Oct 5, 2021 at 3:40 AM.
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  #57619  
Old Posted Oct 5, 2021, 4:46 AM
Noir_Noir Noir_Noir is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality View Post
Hoss, I also found an O'Connor dealership at. . .


lapl...for search purposes: ..3823 Crenshaw Blvd.

so perhaps the eBay slide was taken at the Crenshaw location.



Now let's figure out the TWELVE sign!



What I initially thought were windows in a modern motel are/is actually the back of a billboard. (there's space beneath it)

.


It's Hollywood Blvd. - you can see part of the Florentine Gardens building across the street.



hollywoodphotographs.photoshelter.com



The "twelve" sign maybe advertising the 1954 film Her Twelve Men.



movieposters.ha.com
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  #57620  
Old Posted Oct 5, 2021, 12:06 PM
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Looks like you're right, NN. The banner sign "HER TWELVE MEN" would have been on top of the Hawaii Theater in August 1954--and there are four '54 Mercurys on the O'Connor lot. ("Hitler's Women" and another anti-Nazi propaganda film "Women in Bondage" were playing in late 1943/ early '44)



Cinema Treasures/LAT Aug 11, 1954


Re the b&w pic of the Florentine Gardens-- I might have thought the image was older but Song of Norway was playing at the Hawaii. It was released in 1970


The Hawaii today


GSV
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