noirish Los Angeles - Page 2361

CityBoyDoug · #**47201** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 3:46 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelRyerson

I was born in Los Angeles (1944) in the hospital that sits on a hill overlooking the intersection of Temple and Silverlake Boulevard. In those days it was called Wilshire Hospital, the name changed a couple of times and now I think the building may be no more. Went overseas in 1965. Got out and came back in '69. Followed a job to Texas in '78. Back to LA in '82. Recruited by the same company in '92, back to Texas and now stuck. SoCal is still 'home'. They'll scatter my ashes in the blue Pacific unless the wind is onshore.

I believe that was later called Good Samaritan Hospital after the name of the street changed. Any other ideas?

Hollywood Graham · #**47202** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 4:33 AM**

Born in 43 at Queen of Angels, lived in Silverlake and Sunset area till going in the Navy. Got out and eventually married and moved to Glendale then La Crescenta. Now in Ojai. I remember street cars to downtown and Hollywood (Red Cars) occasionally rode a yellow car or two. Bike riding to P.O.P. and theaters in Hollywood. Loved the old buildings downtown that are no longer there. Give me old L.A. any day.....

BillinGlendaleCA · #**47203** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 5:12 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelRyerson

I was born in Los Angeles (1944) in the hospital that sits on a hill overlooking the intersection of Temple and Silverlake Boulevard. In those days it was called Wilshire Hospital, the name changed a couple of times and now I think the building may be no more. Went overseas in 1965. Got out and came back in '69. Followed a job to Texas in '78. Back to LA in '82. Recruited by the same company in '92, back to Texas and now stuck. SoCal is still 'home'. They'll scatter my ashes in the blue Pacific unless the wind is onshore.

Is it this one
? It was Temple Community Hospital, it closed in 2014. I've seen a couple of posts about it here. It's slated to be torn down and they're planning on building apartments on the site.

CaliNative · #**47204** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 5:14 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slauson Slim

Scott Charles wrote:

"If the Mona Lisa, Acropolis, and Notre Dame had their home in Los Angeles, they too would have been considered “relics” and gleefully destroyed in the name of progress. It's a travesty what was done to Los Angeles in the name of “progress”."

Viable housing, beautiful buildings and neighborhoods destroyed - the latter cut off by freeways and isolated by poor or indifferent public transport. I recall LA before freeways - we rode street cars. I grew up in a multi-racial working-class and lower middle-class South Central LA, as did my parents. We shopped at the great department stores, and went to the theatres, downtown. I went to the Hope Street YMCA.

The great post-war boom, freeways and the car culture and the rise of the savings and loan industry, and the need for worker middle-class housing built the suburbs - Downey, Artesia, Lakewood, Torrance, the Valley, OC, etc. but at the same time sucked the viability out of large parts of LA. And this was exacerbated by the riots.

Granted, there is a good old days gloss to some memories, and old LA had real poverty, racism, corruption, organized crime, wide open prostitution and gambling, Main Street was a dump of seedy bars, etc., but the place has lost much due to ruthless leveling and destruction at the expense of, and indifference to, lower and middle income folks. Television also knocked off the sense of community - instead of going out folks stayed home and no longer enjoyed things communally on a day-to-day basis.

LA is a magnet for folks from the US and overseas due to opportunity and employment, and it always has been.

Change is inevitable, but the changes wrought on LA lowered the quality of Place. I recall the Richfield building, the stone buildings on Spring Street, Wrigley Field, neighborhood movie theatres, hamburger stands, the NBC building on Sunset, movies at The Orpheum, musicals at the Philharmonic Auditorium, visiting my grandmother's friends on Bunker Hill, etc. When I go back it is painful to see the filthy rutted streets, cracked sidewalks, hideous strip malls, what was done to Bunker Hill, businesses that are essentially fortresses and being stuck in a car.

I left in 1966 and live in Northern California.

As an aside, I am curious as to how many posters here live in or grew up in LA or SoCal.

Born in Pasadena in 1952 at Hunt. Memorial. Grew up in North Hollywood. Went to Walter Reed Jr. High & No. Hollywood High School. Go Huskies! Went to LAVC and UCLA. LAVC was a good school. Bryan Cranston studied acting there==look at him now. Heisenberg no less. Now live in S.D. My grandparents lived on 91st St., just off Broadway until 1961. Streetcars still ran. Made the trek down the Harbor Freeway past the Richfield Tower many times with my parents to visit grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins.

I remember the "noirish L.A." as a kid and it didn't seem noirish at the time. All colors & everything, like today. Just more smog and more old cars running around and new cars with big tail fins and more big propeller planes in the sky and ladies with pony tails and black and white shoes and Ike ran things when he wasn't golfing. Now more men wear pony tails than women.

CaliNative · #**47205** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 5:35 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott Charles

CaliNative, are you saying that you actually saw the Richfield Tower in person?

If so, (1) that's amazing, and (2), could you describe what the lights on the “derrick” actually did? I've heard the lights were animated, and simulated an erupting geyser - is that correct?

The Richfield Tower is one of my favorite LA buildings, too. I wish I could have seen it - it was torn down while I was still an infant.

Of course, I'd LOVE to see a movie of the tower's lighting, but I don't know that such a thing exists.

If the Mona Lisa, Acropolis, and Notre Dame had their home in Los Angeles, they too would have been considered “relics” and gleefully destroyed in the name of progress. It's a travesty what was done to Los Angeles in the name of “progress”.

Yeah, I saw it many times. It stood until I was 17. The oil derrick spire spelled out "Richfield", lit up. There was a lit globe at the top. I don't remember a geyser of oil or anything animated. It was nice. The building was dark brown or black with gold. Black gold, oil. It all worked. I'm sorry you never saw it, but you do have a picture of it by your name. But that means you are younger than me, so that is good. Please post a pic of the spire at night so people know what they are missing.

ScottyB · #**47206** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 5:52 AM**

Born at Huntington Memorial in 1960, third generation Pasadenan, lived there until 1990. Travelled a lot but have always called So Cal home. It's in my bones! And nothing as dramatic CBD's harrowing tale! Everything noirish stayed behind the curtains in my world.

unihikid · #**47207** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 6:11 AM**

Born in Santa Monica at St. John's in 1982. Grew up in the Pico and Fairfax area, and moved to South Pasadena during college, and now living in Hermosa Beach. I'd move back to the west la in a heart beat!

Lomara · #**47208** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 6:21 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slauson Slim

Scott Charles wrote:

As an aside, I am curious as to how many posters here live in or grew up in LA or SoCal.

Dad is from Long Beach, I was born and raised in Downey (in a home built on the former Los Angeles Poor Farm land). I bought a place 2 miles from there, and still live here.

Scott Charles · #**47209** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 10:02 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lomara

I saw this comment and had to go look at the location. Sure enough, you can see the filled-in post holes from that trough/fountain. Amazing to me that they can be seen so many years later.

That's AMAZING, Lomara!

Otis Criblecoblis · #**47210** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 10:22 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slauson Slim

[. . .] I grew up in a multi-racial working-class and lower middle-class South Central LA, as did my parents. We shopped at the great department stores, and went to the theatres, downtown. I went to the Hope Street YMCA.

The great post-war boom, freeways and the car culture and the rise of the savings and loan industry, and the need for worker middle-class housing built the suburbs - Downey, Artesia, Lakewood, Torrance, the Valley, OC, etc. but at the same time sucked the viability out of large parts of LA. And this was exacerbated by the riots.

Granted, there is a good old days gloss to some memories, and old LA had real poverty, racism, corruption, organized crime, wide open prostitution and gambling, Main Street was a dump of seedy bars, etc., but the place has lost much due to ruthless leveling and destruction at the expense of, and indifference to, lower and middle income folks. [. . .]

Change is inevitable, but the changes wrought on LA lowered the quality of Place.

[. . .]

As an aside, I am curious as to how many posters here live in or grew up in LA or SoCal.

Slauson Slim, I found your post wonderfully evocative. My family moved here in 1964 when I was a lad of five, and after a brief sojourn on Franklin near Highland, I grew up in the Crescenta Valley. I now live ten miles east in Pasadena. I have hardly been elsewhere in the interim, except for ten years in Culver City when I was first married, and brief sojourns in the USC dorms and back in Santa Clara County where I was born.

Too-pointed criticisms of changes to Los Angeles over the past fifty years tend to generate controversy in these pages, so I will avoid them. But I can't help expressing sadness at the current drive to turn every city center in the county into another Manhattan. That includes Pasadena, where there is an ongoing campaign to disrupt the flow of traffic. This represents to me a wilful destruction of our area's distinctive low-density, decentralized, mobile character.

Yes, change is inevitable. But in this county, it has become senselessly pursued as a civic virtue. That, it is not. Change should be evolutionary, not compulsory.

Scott Charles · #**47211** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 10:50 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

Odinthor, handsome stranger and fellow noirishers. There's lot more to my story...

What a harrowing story, CityBoyDoug! I'm glad you lived to tell the tale!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hollywood Graham

Born in 43 at Queen of Angels

That's the same hospital my dad was born in... in 1922.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaliNative

Went to Walter Reed Jr. High & No. Hollywood High School. Go Huskies!

Me too, on both counts! Class of ’84. I really liked the architecture at Walter Reed... when I got to North Hollywood High, I was disappointed... Reed was so much prettier (at least to my eyes).

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaliNative

Yeah, I saw it many times. It stood until I was 17. The oil derrick spire spelled out "Richfield", lit up. There was a lit globe at the top. I don't remember a geyser of oil or anything animated. It was nice. The building was dark brown or black with gold. Black gold, oil. It all worked. I'm sorry you never saw it, but you do have a picture of it by your name. But that means you are younger than me, so that is good. Please post a pic of the spire at night so people know what they are missing.

What I wouldn't give to have seen the Richfield Building. I may be younger, but you have all those great experiences of LA!

And here's the Richfield Tower at night...

LINK

Note the aviation beacon - the highest in the city! Even higher than City Hall!

LINK

eBay

LINK

Martin Pal · #**47212** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 5:40 PM**

^^^

Anyone know anything about this?

Someone posted this comment on a short blog entry about the Richfield Building:

"Didn't the color of the tower beacon light indicate the weather forecast?"

No one answered it.

_________________

GaylordWilshire · #**47213** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 6:23 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

Odinthor, handsome stranger and fellow noirishers. There's lot more to my story.

My mother's father knew an attorney in LA., via one of his girlfriends. My mom persuaded this attorney to handle her divorce from the psycho. His wife had one year previously committed suicide by pistol in their garage attic. She had swiped the pistol from their neighbor the previous day whilst having tea and cake with her. This same attorney [who my mom later married] also obtained an arrest warrant for her former husband---then separated from.

My mom, my brother and I moved to a new home every two months, because she feared for our safety....due to the psycho's threats. During that year my brother and I were involved in a crosswalk accident with a drunk driver on Brand Blvd. in Glendale. Our names appeared in a local newspaper...after my mom had begged them not to print our names and address..they did anyways. The next day she received an unpleasant call from one of his relatives. Later that night us brothers were taken to San Bernardino where we stayed with a family-in-law for 6 months.

When her ex found out about the arrest warrant, he left CA, never to return.

This is the house where she committed suicide in 1943. They had bought the house new in 1935 for around $7,000...its in San Gabriel. She left a note claiming he had some girlfriends.

photo bucket

Here is the in-law family we stayed with. Mary Ellen and John Dobson. This was taken on the late night we arrived. Myself at the Left next to my older brother.
Later that summer the house caught fire and we had to move to another place. Mary Ellen's mother had been married to my grandfather. On grandfather's honeymoon car trip, the car door came open, she fell out on a steep mountain road and was killed. He was married for his 4th time about 4 weeks later. He went on a speaking tour and died in a Arizona hotel whilst drinking coffee with a lady her knew....only age 52.

photo bucket

An absolutely er...fantastic story. I'm a tad confused though. Is the house in the picture in Los Angeles or San Gabriel? You say it's still standing--where? I'd like to GSV it. And what happened to your sister? Or is she "Gleam"?

Here's your post from July 7, 2014:

Quote:

Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug

The details of Joan's life are interesting and of course very LA Noir GW.

My stepfather was a successful attorney in Los Angeles [he also owned apartments, several factories, a jewelry store and so on]. My mother loved him and put up with just about anything he did. She liked being on the inside of his many intrigues and she always cooperated. A lot goes on in marriages that is kept very quiet. My sister and I only found out these things many decades after the fact. As a child at the time, I only knew that he was seriously searching for ''parents'' for these babies. I never guessed that he was the father. What does a child know of these matters. I tried to stay out of his sight because he knew my real father and he intensely disliked him. As I have said here before there was an arrest warrant active for my bio father for aggravated assault, etc. He fled the state and never returned to CA.

Two of these babies, a brother and sister, went to his long time friends who lived just around the corner from us [they were unable to conceive]. The other two babies, sisters, went to people in our church who were desperate for a child. I recall seeing the adopting mother when she got her new baby...she had tears of joy. She named the baby Gleam.

My stepfather's previous wife of 20 years committed suicide in the garage of this Los Angeles house [photo below]. He bought this house in 1935 for around $5,500 new [? if I recall correctly]...its still standing. I have her suicide note that I found after his passing. I found it in a file of his personal papers and letters. She had taken the gun from a neighbor's home the day before...if you can believe that. At least that's the story, which I find a bit far fetched. I don't think that there was any investigation. She was just found dead in the loft of the garage when he came home from work.

Noir? I'd have to agree with that GW.

That was life in the 1950s...there were many twists and turns, plus a lot of drama now and then.

personal collection

Jungmann · #**47214** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 6:30 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott Charles

I was born, on Sunset Blvd, in 1966. I've lived in LA my entire life.

I was born in 1941, Ceders of Lebanon (now Scientology, as most of us know). Grew up in East Hollywood, just west of Silverlake. Went to Micheltorena and Ramona grammar schools. Family moved to Pico/Fairfax in the early 50s--I went to Louis Pasteur and Hamilton.

Needed to start my life over--went up to Berkeley for 6 years, which were great, but--though it was like pulling teeth because I really liked the Bay Area--I came back to LA in 1958, simply because this was where the jobs were.

Got a gig in the movie business and worked in it for forty-five years or so. Retired ten years ago, but I still keep my hand in.

I've read all the posted criticisms of present-day LA, and there's plenty of truth in them. We 've lived in Santa Monica for the last forty years or so, and we only go downtown on weekends, when the traffic allows (to, among other places, La Azteca on East Caesar Chavez for the outstanding chili rellieno burritos).

Still, adding it all up, plus and minus, I love LA. Always have.

And I love this site.

CaliNative · #**47215** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 8:51 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scott Charles

What a harrowing story, CityBoyDoug! I'm glad you lived to tell the tale!

That's the same hospital my dad was born in... in 1922.

Me too, on both counts! Class of ’84. I really liked the architecture at Walter Reed... when I got to North Hollywood High, I was disappointed... Reed was so much prettier (at least to my eyes).

What I wouldn't give to have seen the Richfield Building. I may be younger, but you have all those great experiences of LA!

And here's the Richfield Tower at night...

LINK

Brings back memories. What a pity that is gone! They could have built the ARCO/BAC complex around it or on an adjacent plot. I've always suspected that the crown & spire of the Empire State Building built a year or two later were inspired by the Richfield--similar design although many times taller. E.S. "dirigible mast" = Richfield "oil derrick".

Walter Reed & NHHS were excellent schools. Still rank academically at the top in L.A. area. Do you remember Mr. Wolf the history teacher at NHHS? A character & humorist& excellent teacher. Later he retired to Vermont & set up a bed & breakfast inn with his wife like that Bob Newhart TV show. He passed a few years ago. Was Mr. Corbin the physics teacher still there? Probably not, he was probably over 55 when I went there. Also a good teacher.

Scott Charles · #**47216** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 10:11 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaliNative

Do you remember Mr. Wolf the history teacher at NHHS? A character & humorist& excellent teacher. Later he retired to Vermont & set up a bed & breakfast inn with his wife like that Bob Newhart TV show. He passed a few years ago. Was Mr. Corbin the physics teacher still there? Probably not, he was probably over 55 when I went there. Also a good teacher.

Sorry, I do not remember either of those teachers, CaliNative - when were they teaching? As I stated somewhere above, I graduated NHHS in 1984.

DavidWilliam · #**47217** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 11:21 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by ethereal_reality

After all that SEPIA how 'bout some COLOR.

taken out the back window. (mystery car trailing behind)

EBAY

Kodachrome slide [undated]

It's a Mid-Fifties Morris Minor trailing behind. British Car

Handsome Stranger · #**47218** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 11:30 PM**

Scott Charles, thanks for the collection of Richfield building photos. What an architectural gem it was. Truly an irreplaceable loss.

ethereal_reality · #**47219** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 11:40 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidWilliam

It's a Mid-Fifties Morris Minor trailing behind. British Car

Quote:

Originally Posted by HossC

Looks like a Morris Minor to me. The horizontal slat grille was first fitted in late 1954.

Thanks guys. I was stumped.

I imagine it would have been unusual to see this car on a Los Angeles freeway.

MichaelRyerson · #**47220** Posted **Jun 2, 2018, 11:47 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Pal

^^^

Anyone know anything about this?

Someone posted this comment on a short blog entry about the Richfield Building:

"Didn't the color of the tower beacon light indicate the weather forecast?"

No one answered it.

_________________

I have never heard that. But of course until just a few years ago I didn't know about the Lindberg Beacon either. Would like to know if this is correct.