Saturday, June 26, 2010
The Dodger Schedule - Then and Now
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
The Sunset Blvd Bowling Alley and KTLA Studios
Located at 5858 Sunset Blvd in midtown Hollywood, The Sunset Bowling Alley was once known as the world’s largest bowling alley with 52 lanes to choose from and hundreds of bowling shoes to fit any size imaginable. One could bowl in a different lane every week for an entire year just to avoid the monotony amongst the happy hour social gatherings of struggling screenwriters, union gaffers, studio secretaries and sound stage runners. With its Roman columns, this massive structure was originally built in 1922 for the Warner Brothers to function as their West Coast headquarters. In 1927 this location was used as the filming site for the first “talkie“ film, The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson but when Warner Brothers acquired the First National Pictures property in 1929, Harry, Al, Jack and Sam packed it up and moved their operations from Hollywood to Burbank. The building remained unused until it was purchased in 1939 and turned into the "mother of all bowling alleys", where Jack and Peggy Ament spent part of their Honeymoon knocking down pins almost 70 years ago. In 1964 the singing cowboy Gene Autry purchased the building and made it the home of KTLA studios where it still operates to this day. Today, KTLA and KCET are the only Los Angeles broadcasters that are still based in Hollywood, California. Slowly over the decades, CBS, NBC and even ABC once located in the sleepy Franklin Hills area of Los Feliz have all moved out of the “Wood” and onto greener more suburban pastures.
If you grew up in Los Angeles in the second part of the 20th century, you probably caught the KTLA Channel 5 news at 10pm with its iconic anchorman Mr. Hal Fishman. Hal was one of the most durable and well respected broadcasters of our times delivering the news night after night for 40 plus years with his somewhat dry but very likeable delivery. Hal rarely showed emotions as broadcasters are trained to do but a few times a year at the end of one of those slow news nights, he would come out of his shell as he concluded the evening’s broadcast with the segment of the surfing chihuahua in Santa Monica or the champion who consumed 53 hot dogs at a hot dog eating contest in Malibu. Hal Fishman passed away in 2007 and of course the Los Angeles nightly news has never been the same since.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
UCLA Coach John Wooden 1910 - 2010
When it comes to Southern California Sports figures, legends, icons and personalities there are two lists:
The First List: John Wooden
The Second List: Eveybody else.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Wrong turn at Pickfair Way ? - The Pickfair Estate Beverly Hills
I recently raided the vacation photo album of tourists Al and Catherine as they toured Hollywood in February of 1946. Among the many great snapshots of the sharply dressed couple and their friends in front of all the "greatest hits" of that time period; The Brown Derby, The Chinese Theater and CBS Studios, there was an odd photo of them in front of a grassy front yard at 1148 Pickfair Way. I can only assume they were searching out the famous Pickfair Estate of silent film stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford located at 1143 Summit Drive, just around the corner from where they were so proudly posing for the camera. Al and Catherine were probably led astray by an outdated map much like that frustrated couple I encountered back in 1979. Built by famed California Architect Charles Neff and purchased by Douglas Fairbanks in 1919, Pickfair (an amalgamation of the names of its original residents Fairbanks and Pickford) was the fairytale home of the Hollywood couple until they divorced in 1936. Over the decades the estate was slowly reduced in acreage and eventually sold to Los Angeles Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss and then again to actress and singer Pia Zadora who had it bulldozed to erect the monstrosity that sits their today. Only the pool and the front gate remain from the glamorous original estate.
The Famous Amos store on Sunset Blvd is long gone today, but the vending machine at my work still sells the Famous Amos cookie brand, while I am again working on maps at my job but in a much different capacity. Mary Pickford continued to live at the Pickfair Estate until she passed away that same summer of 1979 leaving her third husband Buddy Rodgers and eventually Dr. Jerry Buss to deal with the hundreds of quirky vacationing couples that would arrive every summer at the famous estate searching out a photo opportunity. Back at home, Al and Catherine’s friends and family were none the wiser of the Pickfair geographical error made that day, as they enviously flipped through that 1946 vacation photo album of their trip to La-La Land.