Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality
Close up / detail
oldstuff, I didn't realize Grauman's Gift Shop sold high end items like expensive jewelry.
I'm somewhat embarrassed to say, but I pictured a touristy gift shop selling tacky souvenirs and chotchkies.
Do you, or anyone else for that matter, remember in detail what the interior of the two gift shops looked like?
Oh, and one more thing...do you mind telling us the lady's name who ran the shop?
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E_R, I have a few items of information about these places. At some point when looking at a Grauman's photo I had thought I read once that one or both of these locations had originally been a soda fountain. That would make sense as these places are long and relatively narrow and if there are many people inside they are quite claustrophobic.
Since I could not find my source as to where I read that information I sent off an email to the person who runs this site:
http://graumanschinese.org/index.html
...A Fan Site for everything Grauman's Chinese, which includes a section of "Every Movie to have played at Grauman's Chinese". In addition to the movie title, when it played there and for how long etc., if he has found a photo of the theatre marquee that includes all or part of the film title, he has posted them there. He finds alot of them on eBay, like the one you found above,
E_R, in fact he said he's in the process of removing the watermark on that very one before posting it there. These photos are great, but the biggest problem with this is that the photos on the site are all very small and aren't enlargeable and often not found anywhere else.
The stores on either side of the forecourt are tangential in most pictures, because people are obviously interested in the main attraction, Grauman's Chinese Theatre. In response to my query about those two shops possibly having been soda fountains at some point, he wrote me these items:
The store spaces at the Chinese are interesting - up to a point. I don’t know too much about the one on the west side, but the east one is better known.
When the theatre opened, a cigarette and cigar maker named Lickter opened a branch there. (His other store was in the Egyptian). The store was called “A Puff from Hollywood.” It went out of business in 1931 or so.
After that, a sandwich shop called Radlick’s was in there, then later on the sandwich shop was called Poggi’s from 1943 or so.
Keller’s took over sometime in 1948. I imagine that they discontinued sandwiches with the Cinemiracle remodel in 1958. In THE APARTMENT shot, you can see “Keller’s” in gold leaf on the center window. In some other shots, it looks like a nice little china shop - very tidy.
I know that the stores were originally thought of as being just regular stores, but as the fame of the theatre grew, souvenirs became the thing. They are interesting to visit today, since they are both the same as they were and totally different at the same time.
Any pages about these shops on the site is a low priority for me at present, although it is a fun idea, because I am in the midst of compiling pages on all of the forecourt people with hand and footprints in cement. The plan is to have a section with a photo of all the cement stars in the Theatre's forecourt and then one can click on the square of any of the people and it will bring up a page with the information about it. This is not linked to the site yet, and won't be until the project is completed, but I can give you a sample of one of them here:
http://www.graumanschinese.org/forec...s-douglas.html
I do still have a long way to go!
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I found an article, from just this past March, about the gentlemen who runs this site and it's worth a read!
https://www.dailybulletin.com/2018/0...ents-its-lore/