Today we climbed into a van operated by Hollywood Fun Tours where Robert gave us a rundown on who’s who and who lives where in Hollywood. The main thing that we learned is that all the stars we know about are dead, and Hollywood is much like Hickory in that things are identified by “who used to live there” or “what used to be there”. The only difference is it’s famous people and entities, rather than the Winn Dixie.
It was hard not to hear about some of the places that Robert talked about without thinking back to the old “Dragnet” days. Mullholland Drive – Sunset Drive – Santa Monica Freeway – it’s hard not to hear those names without hearing it in a “Sgt. Friday” voice. Of course, the kids have no idea what we were talking about.
The short version of the history is kind of interesting. Mullholland Drive is named after the first Engineer for the City of Beverly Hills. He was initially charged with creating a straight road to connect the San Fernando Valley to western Los Angeles. This wasn’t Mullholland drive, although I didn’t catch which street it was. Mullholland was the next one, when he got ambitious and decided that he wanted to create a route to the beach. Although it’s only 24 miles as the crow flies, it’s over double that because of the switchbacks and routes around the various mountains. We didn’t go to the beaches today, though.
The first stop was up to a lookout point to get pictures of the “Hollywood” sign. This was originally built in 1923 as a real estate development and said “Hollywoodland”. It was made out of wood and aluminum and was lit up at night with over 5,000 light bulbs. By 1928 the development was sold out and built up and, as all developers do, they were looking to unload the sign and go try to make money elsewhere. People who’d bought into the subdivision, though, liked it and so it was sold to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce for $1.00.
Like many governmental ventures, they jumped in without thinking about how they were going to fund and upkeep the acquisition. “We bought it with grant money. Surely the feds will pay us to keep it up forever.” Oh, wait – that’s another blog, isn’t it?
Anyhow, the Chamber of Commerce, realizing that the purchase of this sign at $1.00 wasn’t such a bargain after all, recognized that the “LAND” of Hollywoodland was sliding down the mountain and was in the worst condition anyhow. They tore it down, stabilized the rest and continued to let things slowly decline until the 1970’s.
By that time, crime was rampant, gangs had taken over and the Chamber of Commerce / City government, being ever the visionaries, decided that they needed to put money into police and fire protection rather than to try and get people to come to town and spend their money, rather than advertising or returning two-way traffic to Union Square again. (Ooops, it slipped out).
By 1978, the sign was falling down again and a Rock Star Alice Cooper decided that he’d put $27,000 of his own money into repairing the sign. This fixed one letter – “H” – and he decided to put the squeeze on other rich people to rebuild the sign. It’s now made of steel and concrete, so it doesn’t need nearly the maintenance it used to, and the letters are a little larger than originally – they’re now 50 ft. tall and 40 ft. wide, rather than 40 ft. tall and 30 ft. wide.
By the time we’d heard all this, we were at the lookout point – or at least at the parking space right next to the very LONG flight of stairs that led to the lookout point. Incidentally, Ron Howard (a/k/a “Opie” on Andy Griffith) now owns the house that looks down on the parking area, purchased a couple of years ago for a mere $14 million.
The view was pretty good today. It’s overcast and kind of foggy, so you can’t see a lot of the downtown from there, but the white lettering of the sign showed up pretty well. At first, I couldn’t figure out why the kids were all up there holding their phones out and texting. Eventually I had an “a-ha” moment and recognized they were taking pictures with their cell phones rather than writing texts.
From the parking area, you could see the Hollywood Bowl, which is the largest outdoor ampitheater in the world. You could also see most of Los Angeles’ 528 square miles – inhabited by some ____ million people, making it second only to New York in population in the US.
The Hollywood Walk of Fame
The ultimate of tourist attractions was next on the agenda – we went to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to look at the foot and hand prints, followed by a jaunt up the “Walk of Fame” to look at the stars. Since there are 2360 stars covering about a mile and a half, we didn’t get to check them all out. Never mind the bazillion people standing on them, there just wasn’t enough time in the 30 minute stop we had.
Incidentally, the first star was awarded (by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, who has a super-secret committee to make those selections) to JoAnn Woodward in 1958 and the most recent went to Kira Sedgwick just last week. JoAnn I know; about Kira I’m clueless. This seemed to be the tone for most of the celebrity dish that Robert gave us for the rest of the day. We’d at least recognize the names of the dead folks. The live ones, not so much.
Oh, and if your approved for a star in one of the five categories, that doesn’t mean you get it. It means that you have the “opportunity” for someone to pay the $15,000 to $25,000 it takes to actually create the star and get it installed and maintained. You’ve seen similar schemes or gotten letters announcing that you’ve been nominated to the “Who’s Who of
Physically near to the walk of fame, but apparently unassociated with it is the foot and hand prints in the concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater across the street. It was interesting to note that a lot of these seemed to be much more recent than I realized. They don’t award these very frequently according to Robert, probably to maximize the fact that once the courtyard is full there’s no more space. The first block was installed in 1927, although we didn’t have time to find it.
There was an episode on “I love Lucy”, when they were doing the one-hour shows after the series wound down, that she and Ethel tried to steal John Wayne’s slab. My recollection was that it got returned or a new one installed, but we couldn’t find it there. There were some others that were pretty neat, though – Jimmy Durante
imprinted not only his feet and hands, but also his face with the words, “This is my Schnozzle”. For those who don’t know – his prominent nose was his trademark.Roy Rogers let Trigger join him in making footprints. Of note, Dale Evans was nowhere to be found, although I believe she was in just as many movies as Roy was. I’d be surprised if he sang “Happy Trails” with anyone else.
Some universal things came out on our tour. First, invest in what you know – it’s amazing how many famous people bought into real estate in these neighborhoods. They own hotels, apartments, etc. They were apparently successful, too, since rents for a 1-bedroom apartment start at about $1,200.00 a month. It also appears that rich landlords don’t spend a whole lot more on repairs and upkeep than regular landlords do.
The second was how even though there are a few uber-rich and famous, the vast majority of people are doing what everyone else in the world is doing – trying to grub out a living with what they’ve got available. For every Brad Pitt (who graduated from a local high school, incidentally), there’s 1000 other people out there picking up the trash, doing bank teller work and flipping burgers. Robert said that on average, 300,000 kids come out annually hoping to make their mark in show business. After 3 to 6 months, 90% of them have to go back wherever they came from because they can no longer make rent.
A lot of places are identified by who died there, too. The Highland Gardens Hotel, which is kind of run-down now, is where Janice Joplin died at age 26. John Belushi died at the Chateau Marmot Hotel on March 6, 1982. There were lots of others and I quit keeping track after a while.
The Oscars
The first Academy Awards were given in 1929, and it took a total of 16 minutes to give out 12 awards. Of course, without television coverage, there was no need for commercial breaks. These were given out at the Roosevelt Hotel, which is very near Grauman’s Theater. Incidentally, the first winner of the Best Picture was “Wings”.
That’s a far cry from what it is now, where they close down the street and cover it with red carpet. Sidewalks are covered with bleachers, and the stars are let out on the red carpet about a block away to walk down to the Kodak Theater where the awards are held.
Beverly Hills
If I had the technical prowess, you’d be hearing the theme from Beverly Hillbillies right now. I don’t, though, so you’ll just have to play it along in your head. We found out that there are really three towns for the rich and beautiful.
The first is Beverly Hills, which was thought up in 1907 when someone got the bright idea that there should be oil there. After drilling around for a couple of years and coming up with dry holes, they hit water, which proved to be just as valuable and a whole lot easier to store and deal with. Beverly Hills now has it’s own supply of water, although Los Angeles ships theirs in from as far away as the Colorado Rockies and Alaska. They don’t seem inclined to share, either.
The developers, once they had a supply of water, now needed to create a demand by generating consumers for the product. They laid out a town and started planting trees beginning in 1910, getting the name “Tree City, USA”. Every street is lined by a different type of tree. After a couple of years, they decided that Beverly Hills, which was originally the middle of the desert, looked good enough to sell by 1912 and built the Beverly Hills Hotel. This is still in existence and the little bungalows now go for $2,000 to $5,000 per night. Each has it’s own private swimming pool and the more expensive ones have their own tennis courts as well.
We spent quite a while travelling through first Beverly Hills, then Bel Air, then Homeby Hills. The populations of these are increasing in wealth in that order. The main thing that we learned is that lots of our favorite stars are dead – Lucy, Eddie Albert (who frequently jogged in the neighborhood until he died at age 99 in 2005), Frank Sinatra, Agnes Morehead. Lots of others that he talked about we didn’t recognize the name, much less what they were in.
Shopping on Rodeo Drive
We didn’t get out of the van here. There was no point – everything was so over the top expensive that it was just silly. Robert pointed out that most of the people walking along the street weren’t shopping for real, either—nobody had shopping bags. Lots of places required a credit check before you could even begin to shop there. Additionally, you could go 2 blocks away and buy the exact same thing for 50 to 70% less – what kind of an idiot would buy something there, then?
He said that when the uber-rich want to shop, they call ahead and the store owners just empty the shop out knowing that these people are going to come in and buy enough to make the rent – which runs at a minimum $20K per month.
There’s also no fast food places in Beverly Hills. In the 1940’s when fast food began to come along, they were banned by the local government. They do allow “sandwich shops”, though, so Quizno’s and Subway and coffee shops are there. No McDonalds or Burger King, though.
Farmer’s Market
The last thing we went to is the Farmer’s Market, which has been around since about 1900 and is on the historic register. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a disappointment because it’s really just a big open-air mall with the same things you’d find at any other mall. There’s a few small restaurants on the food court, but nothing to write home about. We stopped there for about an hour, grabbed some sandwiches and headed back to hang out at the hotel for the rest of the afternoon.
