A Walk Into Movieland History : The Streets and Hills of Hollywood Are Alive With the Murmur of Memories

When they first surveyed the open fields, wooded hills and scattered orchards of Cahuenga Valley, the Prohibitionist couple from Kansas dreamed of creating a Christian utopia in this frost-free belt.

Purchasing 120 acres in 1887, Horace and Daeida Wilcox subdivided the property, plotted streets, planted pepper trees and offered free lots to any church community. Gambling halls, billiard dens and saloons were prohibited when Hollywood was born.

By the turn of the century, the village was a peaceful community of 500 Midwesterners whose Victorian and Craftsman houses were set amid citrus, fig, cherimoya and apricot trees. To these early settlers, Hollywood appeared to be “paradise found.”

A Different Place

By its 50th anniversary, Hollywood had become a very different place. Annexed to Los Angeles in 1910, its population had grown to more than 150,000 by 1937 and its name was generally synonymous with glamour, wealth and fame. To many, however, Hollywood became “paradise lost,” a place of ruined lives, widespread vice and scandals involving drugs, sex, suicide and murder.

A few chroniclers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler, revealed this darker side of Hollywood. But it is through Nathanael West and his riveting apocalyptic novel, “The Day of the Locust,” that Hollywood as a “dream dump” best came to light. The novel portrays a Hollywood filled with the absurd and surreal, and West saw its tension in the town’s architecture, religion, populace and economy.

Even if you can’t join the film premieres and celebrity tennis tournaments that continue to mark Hollywood’s ongoing centennial celebration this year, you can take your own two-hour walk into its history that will lead you to many of the places used by West as the settings for “The Day of the Locust.”

Begin the walk at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, the legendary crossroads. Walk north on Vine Street. At 1735 N. Vine St. stands the Palace Theater, built in 1927 as the Hollywood Playhouse. The Spanish Churrigueresque building originally served as a legitimate theater and later hosted radio, television and recording studios. The Palace now is a nightclub.

(Across the street, at 1750 N. Vine St., is one of Hollywood’s most famous buildings, the Capitol Records Tower, a 13-story structure designed by Welton Becket in 1954.)

Cross Yucca Street and turn left. The Yucca-Vine Tower at 6305 Yucca St., a Zigzag Moderne high-rise built in 1928, features panels of florid geometric patterns and a row of rooftop figures.

At Ivar Avenue, turn right and walk uphill. This isolated hilltop neighborhood of apartments and bungalows, particularly the Parva-Sed Apta Apartments at 1817 N. Ivar Ave., was very familiar to West. Here, while living as an unemployed writer in 1935, he began to research “The Day of the Locust.”

Many of the residents who shared his Tudor-styled rooming house--aspiring actresses, aging vaudeville performers, extras, prostitutes and a dwarf--inspired the characters in his novel. West even noted the neighborhood in his book: “Another name for Ivar Street was Lysol Alley.” His protagonist, Tod Hackett, first lives in the Chateau Mirabella, inspired by the Parva-Sed. The Chateau “was mainly inhabited by hustlers, their agents, trainers and advance agents,” West wrote; each morning “its halls reeked of antiseptic.”

Continue walking uphill to the Alto-Nido Apartments at 1851 N. Ivar Ave. This imposing Spanish Colonial revival building, with its red-tile roof and wrought-iron balconies, may seem vaguely familiar to some. It was the setting for the apartment of Joe Gillis (William Holden), the unemployed screenwriter who became the live-in writer for Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), the aging silent- movie queen in Billy Wilder’s film, “Sunset Boulevard.”

At the end of Ivar Avenue, turn left, take the walkway down to Franklin Avenue, cross at the first crosswalk and walk north again on Ivar. As you approach the freeway underpass, note the Craftsman houses at 6407 Dix St. and 1931 Ivar Ave., which were built between 1910 and 1915 when Hollywood was still a small town.

A Reclusive Neighborhood

On the other side of the freeway, you’ll find yourself in one of Hollywood’s most reclusive neighborhoods. In 1901, four acres of this land, then filled with oaks and grassy hillocks, were purchased by William Mead as a rural retreat. As Hollywood growth exploded by 1920, the neighborhood, because of its setting and proximity to the studios, became one of L.A.’s first film colonies.

When Mead died in 1929, he deeded his property to the Vedanta Society of Southern California. Today, the Vedanta Society continues to own much of the property, which includes a temple, bookstore, convent and monastery.

Turn right on Vedanta Terrace and right again on Vedanta Place. At the end of this short block stands the society’s remarkable temple, referred to by some as the “little Taj.” Its fanciful facade, built in 1938, features three onion-shaped domes topped by golden spires. Walk up the front steps and follow the path to the left, which leads you to the bookstore and meeting room. These facilities are situated in Mead’s 1901 Craftsman retreat house.

Return to Vedanta Terrace and walk east. Rock gardens lined with small paths surround the small bungalows, suggestive of West’s description of this area’s surreal natural beauty:

They climbed until they reached another canyon . . . its bare ground and jagged rocks were even more brilliantly colored than the flowers of the first. The path was silver, grained with streaks of rose-gray, and the walls of the canyon were turquoise, mauve, chocolate and lavender. The air was vibrant pink.

At Vine Street, turn left. Many of these houses, some manorial in scale, were built by Hollywood’s first film idols.

Hopalong Cassidy resided in the walled Spanish Colonial Revival hacienda at 2030; Jeanette MacDonald lived in the Italian villa at 2027, which now serves as the Vedanta convent; Mae Murray’s Italian villa, highlighted with Palladian windows, is at 2051; Charlie Chaplin supposedly lived for a while at the “Monastery Gardens” at 2062. Nearby, Longview Avenue and Mound Street were home to Ronald Colman, Janet Gaynor, David Niven and Claudette Colbert.

Turn right at Vine Way. At the end of the cul-de-sac stands an intriguing house designed by Gregory Ain, a contemporary of Richard J. Neutra. The house, with its flat surfaces and boxy composition, reflects the International Moderne style of the 1940s.

Walk up Vine Walk, the winding stairway at the end of Vine Way, and follow Alcyona Drive. “Alcyone”, by the way, was the pen name of Krishnamurti, the prolific writer and lecturer on meditation and Eastern religious thought who frequently stayed in the neighborhood while lecturing in Los Angeles.

Turn right on Primrose Avenue, left on Argyle Avenue and left on Temple Hill Drive. Below you on the right is Beachwood Canyon, referred to as Pinyon Canyon in West’s novel. Developed primarily in the mid-1920s when Hollywood houses appeared to be designed by set designers, the hillside residences create a type of architectural zoo.

While this eclectic mix may amuse many people, it disturbed Tod Hackett:

He reached the end of Vine Street and began the climb into Pinyon Canyon . . . But not even the soft wash of dusk could help the houses. Only dynamite would be of any use against the Mexican ranch houses, Samoan huts, Mediterranean villas, Egyptian and Japanese temples, Swiss chalets, Tudor cottages, and every other possible combination of these styles which lined the slopes of the canyon.

When he noticed that they were all of plaster, lath, and paper, he was charitable and blamed their shape on the materials used . . . plaster and paper knew no law, not even that of gravity.

At 6205 Temple Hill Drive you come across a strange structure, a Craftsman-inspired Moorish castle with crenelated turrets, keyhole windows, Moorish arches and Batchelder tiles. These courtyard apartments were built in 1914 as the Ternary Building by the Krotona Community, the Hollywood branch of the Adyar Theosophical Society.

The theosophical community, founded in 1911 by Albert Powell Warrington on 15 acres, included by 1915 an Occult temple, a library, a lotus pond, a Greek theater, a vegetarian cafeteria and several residences designed in a style called “Moorish Egyptian.”

Krotona thrived from 1912 to 1924 and its members were very active in Hollywood’s cultural life. Its Ternary building was used as its lecture hall and guest quarters. Its upper atrium, in fact, was used as Krishnamurti’s meditation room while he visited Los Angeles.

Continue walking north to 6147 Temple Hill Drive. Many locals claim that Charlie Chaplin owned this Moorish-style house and later sold it to Mary Astor. With its turrets containing stained-glass windows, horseshoe arches and patterned Batchelder tiles, the house must have been built originally by members of Krotona. Note its wrought-iron fence with stars over the gates.

Other Krotona retreats still stand on Temple Hill Drive, including 6137 with its porch columns with tile capitals, 6107 with elegant landscaping and a sunlit second-story veranda featuring jade-green ceramic tiles, and 6106, a one-story Moorish cottage with a bulbous onion dome over the entrance.

Turn right on Vista del Mar. A quaint cottage at 2244 features shuttered windows, ornamental chimney pots, a variegated wood-shingled roof and a wooden gate topped by a hand-carved smiling cat. Next door, a French cottage rambles down its sloped garden, and at 2220 stands an English Tudor-inspired cottage with timbered sides and clinker-brick chimney.

In West’s novel, Tod Hackett walks on this hillside lane:

On the corner of La Huerta Road was a miniature Rhine castle with tarpaper turrets pierced for archers. Next to it was a highly colored shack with domes and minarets out of the Arabian Nights. Again he was charitable. Both houses were comic, but he didn’t laugh. Their desire to startle was so eager and guileless.

Stop at the corner of Vista del Mar Avenue and Scenic Avenue. Surrounding the assorted hillside cottage are miniature olive, eucalyptus, Canary Island date palm, pepper and citrus trees, most of which were planted by Krotona between 1912 and 1924 as the community sought to create a setting reminiscent of the ancient Near East.

Turn right and walk up Scenic Avenue to the summit, continue to Primrose Avenue and walk downhill.

At Vista del Mar turn right and walk to 2130, the Krotona Court (now the Goldwater Apartments). Built in 1912, this court was the center of Krotona, with its lotus pond, library, publication offices, classrooms, and atop the hill behind, the Occult Temple. Now a private apartment complex, the court still evinces a mystical setting for meditation and study.

Walk north on Vista del Mar Avenue to 2158. Set in a stone wall on the corner stands a ceramic Madonna and child statue by Stewart Holmes, an actor, potter, sculptor and artist who lived here for many years. The house originally served as the dining room and storehouse for Krotona. His wife, Blanche, reportedly was an astrologer who wrote horoscopes for many celebrities, including Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. Her clients often drove here for their personal charts.

Continue walking north on Vista del Mar Avenue and turn right on Scenic Avenue. At 6111 stands a Rhine castle garage with a gabled roof and timbered sides. Another cottage, with variegated shingled roof, antique lanterns and stenciled flowers, sits at 6114. And at 6055 rises a two-story French Chateau apartment house built in 1937 by Warner Brothers Studios for its New York executives.

Head south on Gower Street. At 2126 stands the Rajagopal House, a Spanish bungalow built in the mid-1920s with a second-story addition built by Neutra in 1934. Krishnamurti also stayed here at times, and Aldous Huxley resided here for a month after his house had burned down.

At Carmen Place turn right. Here on the northwest corner, only six blocks from Hollywood and Vine, is the Monastery of the Angels, a convent of cloistered Dominican nuns. The complex, which you enter through the courtyard, includes a chapel, residence halls, walled gardens and a gift shop where they sell fresh baked pumpkin bread and handicrafts.

Walk south on Carmen Avenue, turn right on Franklin Avenue, left on Argyle Avenue, and right onto Hollywood Boulevard again. The Pantages Theater at 6233 Hollywood, Hollywood’s Art Deco palace, was built in 1929 as a monument to the glitz and glamour of the world’s entertainment capital.

If the settings of Nathanael West captivate you, however, you might want to drive down Hollywood Boulevard to end your day at Mann’s Chinese Theater, which served as the setting for the cataclysmic conclusion of “The Day of the Locust.”