When Jack Schwab bought a failing drugstore...

When Jack Schwab bought a failing drugstore at 8024 Sunset Blvd. in 1932, he took note of the movie studios in the vicinity--RKO, Republic and Columbia--and saw the future. Schwab’s drugstore went on to become Hollywood’s prime hangout for underemployed actors, directors, screenwriters and aspiring stars.

Charge accounts and check cashing were its early innovations. Later, a paging system and a special phone for incoming calls was installed for the famous and the near-famous. Waitresses were hired to fit the role of the sympathetic matron, and were noted as much for their abilities as amateur psychologists as for their counter skills.

Despite popular belief, Lana Turner was not discovered here spooning an ice cream soda. She was sitting in a malt shop across Sunset Boulevard from Hollywood High School, where she sat sipping a Coke. But Schwab’s had plenty of genuine glamour.

Among its patrons were Judy Garland, the Marx brothers, Sylvester Stallone, Martha Raye, Robert Taylor, Danny Thomas, Goldie Hawn, Al Pacino, Shelley Winters, Caesar Romero, Ed McMahon, Clark Gable, Jerry Brown and a host of others. Charlie Chaplin was known to get behind the soda fountain to make his own milkshakes. Ava Gardner put on an apron and served customers ice cream sodas. Hugh O’Brian worked as a soda jerk. F. Scott Fitzgerald had a heart attack while buying cigarettes here. And Gloria Swanson came to Schwab’s to buy her makeup.

Then there were the legends. In 1939, composer Harold Arlen was walking by Schwab’s when it is said he was inspired by the light coming from the drugstore windows to write “Over the Rainbow.”

Writing from an office on the premises, Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky had a monthly feature in a movie magazine called “From a Stool at Schwab’s.” Skolsky once said that “at Schwab’s they operate on the notion that Joe Doakes is just as important to Joe Doakes as Lana Turner is to Lana Turner.”

The soda fountain where Hollywood legends were born and new stars discovered closed its doors for the last time on Oct. 23, 1983.

The auctioneer’s gavel sounded on Dec. 7 of that year, when everything that was not bolted down went to the highest bidder. The large red and blue sign over the front door sold for $650 and the smaller one on the roof went for $200; a Beverly Hills investment banker got the pharmacy’s Rolodex files for $500, containing the names and addresses of every person who had an account with Schwab’s, and the leather and canvas payroll bag sold for $300.

Almost a decade later, a 160,000-square-foot, $70-million Italian Renaissance entertainment mall, to be called 8000 Sunset, is rising on the site. It is scheduled to open next month.