noirish Los Angeles

[ethereal_reality]

While trying to find the locations of Lorendoc's gambling establishments, I happened upon this fantastically noirish photograph.


https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/21198/zz0027z9j5/

Does anyone recognize this?

note: there's some architectural ornament visible in the upper right corner that might be a clew....ah, I mean clue.


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Here's how it's labeled on calisphere.


https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/21198/zz0027z9j5/

[Martin Pal]

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

Spectators watch the christening of the American Clipper aircraft by Pan-American Airways for regular flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco.... Terminal Island, California, July 1939


getty images

I love this photo, CBD.

I read a novel that took place in 1939 on a plane like this. It was the Pan American Clipper on a transatlantic flight from England to New York.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by Martin Pal

In the Julius Shulman workshop photo, this guy looks like he is naked:

It must have been hot in the manufacturing area.

I believe there's another guy with his shirt off.


detail

I lived nearby and remember this building well.

At the time I thought it was a somewhat-tacky 1970s creation. I vaguely remember the rattan furniture and a lot of plants,
and maybe a macrame' wall hanging or two.



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[ScottyB]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

I'm thinking this was probably taken at the old mansion.


Why it is so hard to find a photograph of 1003 S. Orange Grove?
I've google it and other mansion come up but not the old Parson's mansion. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

# # #





below: The following poem is the most famous written by John 'Whiteside' Parsons (1914-1952)

"I high Don Quixote, I live on peyote,
marijuana, morphine and cocaine,
I never know sadness, but only a madness
that burns at the heart and the brain.
I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman,
angelic, demonic, divine.
Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon
that brims with ambrosial wine." (1)

John Whiteside (Jack") Parsons (1943)

_

Here it is courtesy of PDHC. Not the tidiest yard on the block I'll wager.

http://cdm15123.contentdm.oclc.org/c...id/1098/rec/17

Great poem! Sung to the tune of "Man of La Mancha" I presume?

[GaylordWilshire]

LAT 12-1-1940




LAT 8-12-1940 above the fold on page 1--the article continued down the page and continued inside

[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by ScottyB

Here it is courtesy of PDHC. Not the tidiest yard on the block I'll wager.

http://cdm15123.contentdm.oclc.org/c...id/1098/rec/17

That $9,500 price in 1946 is now only $117,000 in 2017 according to the CPI Inflation chart. This reveals just how out of whack 2017 housing prices have become. I believe its called a ''bubble".

[HossC]

I thought I'd posted all of Julius Shulman's Bank of America photosets, but I guess I just covered the branches. This is "Job 5365: Oxley Landau Partners, Bank of America Building (Beverly Hills, Calif.), 1976". I'm posting five of the eight images.



It looks like there used to be tables on the raised patio area. There are only air conditioning units there now. The open parking lot has also been built on.



This is the N Beverly Drive entrance...



... and this one is on Santa Monica Boulevard. The building on the right has gone.



I think that the lady on the right is waiting for an elevator.



All from Getty Research Institute

The building is still standing at 9440 S Santa Monica Boulevard. The corner nearest the camera is covered by boarding in 2016 images, and a sign indicates that some sort of construction work is going on, so I went for a slightly earlier view.


GSV

[JeffDiego]

Originally Posted by HossC

I found this larger version on eBay. There are even bigger digital versions for sale online, but at least you can read some of the text here. The cartoons really bring this Hollywood map alive!


eBay

Back in October (2016), Godzilla posted this fascinating 1928 "cartoon map" of Hollywood, and soon after Hoss posted a larger image, allowing one to read the text.
An item caught my eye. Next to a tiny drawing of a house at the foot of "Cahuenga Pass" is written "J. Warren Kerrigan made his first picture in 1910." J. Warren Kerrigan, an utterly forgotten name today, was a major star in the early days of Hollywood, often in Westerns. In 1912, Photoplay Magazine called him the most popular star of all, and later another magazine termed him "most popular star in the world." He appeared in some 300 films between 1910 and 1924. He was also quite openly gay, sharing his spacious "Swiss Bungalow" at 2307 Cahuenga with his mother and his longtime male companion, James Vincent, also an actor.


2307 N. Cahuenga
mitinger-mccarron.blogspot



J. Warren Kerrigan
images tagged j.warrenkerrigan/immortalephemera.com



James Vincent
wikipedia


Kerrigan's huge popularity took a nosedive in 1917 when he gave a most unfortunate reply to an interviewer's question about joining the military to help fight World War 1. Kerrigan's answer:

"I am not going to war. I will go, of course, if my country needs me, but I think that first they should take the great mass of men who aren't good for anything else, or are only good for the lower grades of work. Actors, musicians, great writers, artists of every kind - isn't it a pity when people are sacrificed who are capable of such things - of adding beauty to the world."

This did not endear him to the public. Interestingly, he continued to appear in dozens of films and actually enjoyed a career surge in 1923/24 when he starred in both the first great epic Western, "The Covered Wagon," and then "Captain Blood," after which he retired.

In 1936 through '38, a former female impersonator name Mansel V. Boyle, known as "Vardaman (his middle name) The Gay Deceiver," is listed on census records as living with Kerrigan at the Cahuenga Ave. house. An online biography of Kerrigan surmises that because Boyle was down on his luck and moved frequently, he may have just been a friendly companion who needed a place to live.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...nselVBoyle.jpg
Mansel Vardaman Boyle
gay history wiki/wikidot.com



Later, Kerrigan moved to a foothill estate in Sunland (now known as Sunland-Tujunga), then to Balboa Beach, where he died in 1947 at age 68.

The picturesque home on North Cahuenga was later demolished and today a generic 1980's/90's stucco apartment complex occupies the site.



2307 N. Cahuenga today
www.zillow.com/home details/2307-1

More information about Kerrigan can also be found in "Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood," by William J. Mann, author of the superb "Tinseltown."

[ethereal_reality]

re:1003 S. Orange Grove

Originally Posted by ScottyB

Here it is courtesy of PDHC. Not the tidiest yard on the block I'll wager.

http://cdm15123.contentdm.oclc.org/c...id/1098/rec/17

Thanks so much for finding this photograph ScottyB. The unkempt yard adds to it's mystique.

Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire

LAT 12-1-1940

I see the ad mentions the basement where the so-called 'nefarious' blackmagic-sex-activities took place.

"In 1941, alongside his first wife Helen Northrup, Parsons joined the "Church of Thelema" and ran a branch called the 'Agape Lodge'
from his mansion on Orange Grove Avenue."


Helen (Northrup) Parson

http://www.controverscial.com/Jack%2...%20Parsons.htm
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Here's Parsons with his second wife, artist and occult practitioner Marjorie Cameron.


http://www.laweekly.com/arts/cameron...ts-due-5130928

what's that on the table that looks like a flying saucer? (at first I thought it was her hat, but she's already wearing one)



I really like this photo of her. (sassy!)









Contemplative, yet still sassy.







& one of her paintings.


http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/b...rjorie-cameron

Now who does that look like?

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[Blaster]

Parsons believed that Marjorie Cameron was an "Elemental Woman," whom he had invoked through a series of sex magic rituals. She appeared in a number of avant garde films and even makes an appearance in Curtis Harrington's "Night Tide" with Dennis Hopper.

[John Maddox Roberts]

In the photo of Cameron in her Navy uniform she looks remarkably like a young Katharine Hepburn. Incidentally, Parsons'first wife Helen (pictured above) ran off with and married L. Ron Hubbard. What a family!

[CityBoyDoug]

Originally Posted by John Maddox Roberts

In the photo of Cameron in her Navy uniform she looks remarkably like a young Katharine Hepburn. Incidentally, Parsons'first wife Helen (pictured above) ran off with and married L. Ron Hubbard. What a family!

Cult founder L. Ron Hubbard.....who famously said, ..."If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.

He did and its called "Scientology" which is permanently listed on the Cult Watch website.

[ethereal_reality]

Originally Posted by John Maddox Roberts

Parsons'first wife Helen ran off with and married L. Ron Hubbard.

JMR, unless I'm mistaken it was Helen's sister Sara that married L. Ron Hubbard.
___



update:

The confusion is understandable because Jack Parson was having an affair with Helen's sister, Sara.

below: Sara Northrup (future wife of L. Ron Hubbard) and Jack Parsons.


https://alchetron.com/Sara-Northrup-Hollister-815324-W

"At age 15, Sara moved in with sister Helen and her husband Jack, while she finished high school. Parsons had subdivided the house,
a rambling mansion next door to the estate of Adolphus Busch, into 19 apartments which he populated with a mixture of artists, writers,
scientists and occultists."

"In June 1941, at the age of seventeen, Sarah began a passionate affair with Parsons while her sister Helen was away on vacation.
When Helen returned, she found Sara wearing Helen's own clothes and calling herself Parsons' "new wife."

more at:
https://alchetron.com/Sara-Northrup-Hollister-815324-W

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[GaylordWilshire]

"Fleming’s Swiss-style mansion (right) was designed by architect Frederick Roehrig in 1898. The residence on the left
was built for John S. Cravens who named it “Ivy Wall” and sold it in 1905 to brewer Adolphus Busch." (Per the
Pasadena Museum of History.)



Good writeup with more images is at the museum site here




The house appears to be going or gone in this shot--note the pillar that appears in the first picture of it we saw:

[John Maddox Roberts]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

JMR, unless I'm mistaken it was Helen's sister Sara that married L. Ron Hubbard.
___



update:

The confusion is understandable because Jack Parson was having an affair with Helen's sister, Sara.

below: Sara Northrup (future wife of L. Ron Hubbard) and Jack Parsons.


https://alchetron.com/Sara-Northrup-Hollister-815324-W

"At age 15, Sara moved in with sister Helen and her husband Jack, while she finished high school. Parsons had subdivided the house,
a rambling mansion next door to the estate of Adolphus Busch, into 19 apartments which he populated with a mixture of artists, writers,
scientists and occultists."

"In June 1941, at the age of seventeen, Sarah began a passionate affair with Parsons while her sister Helen was away on vacation.
When Helen returned, she found Sara wearing Helen's own clothes and calling herself Parsons' "new wife."

more at:
https://alchetron.com/Sara-Northrup-Hollister-815324-W

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Thanks for the correction. They were, shall we say, an unconventional family.

[Earl Boebert]

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

re:1003 S. Orange Grove
what's that on the table that looks like a flying saucer? (at first I thought it was her hat, but she's already wearing one)
__

I think it's a hat belonging to the lady whose manicured and polished fingernail we just get a glimpse of:



Cheers,

Earl

[ethereal_reality]

Yep, you're no doubt correct Earl. I was so busy looking at Jack and Marjorie I didn't notice the additional pair of arms. Duh!



Earlier today I came across an original negative on ebay.

"Orig Los Angeles Street Scene Leggett's Department Store 1950's Photo Negative"


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Orig-Los-Ang...0AAOSwTglYkrTO



I found the address in the 1942 city directory.

lapl



8301 Beverly Blvd.
gsv

Does anyone remember shopping at Leggitt's?

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[59imperial]

Not sure if these image have been posted on this forum before. They show before and after shots of the natural gas storage tank that was near the 101 fwy. In the distance you can see the Security Pacific Bank Building under construction. So the tank was probably dismantled in late '73 or early '74?





Source:The Spirit of Enterprise: The History of Pacific Enterprises from 1886-1989

[ethereal_reality]

The two photographs aren't showing up 59imperial. (some other people have been having problems too)



Remember this handsome bloke?

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

eBay

Does anyone recognize this precinct? (I wonder why the flag is half-mast)

Originally Posted by 59imperial

The policeman is posing in front of the Torrance City Hall. The officer's arm patch appears to be Torrance PD.

Here's another view of the mid-century Torrance City Hall.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Torrance-Cal...0AAOSwo4pYcugl

Is this building still standing?
____







While trying to find out what happened to the mid-century building, I found a photograph of the preceding city hall. [photo dated 1937]

served as city hall from 1936 through 1956.

http://thehoffs.com/Historical/incl_pages/1937_trch.htm

The building now looks like this / 1511 Cravens Avenue near El Prado

gsv


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[ethereal_reality]

I just found another vintage photo of the art deco city hall.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/CITY-HALL-TO...AAAOSwUKxYhVRR