American Legion Post Answering New Call of Duty

The big guns have always come out for the Hollywood American Legion.

And not just the likes of Sid Grauman, Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart, either.

First there was the 5-ton howitzer captured from the Germans in World War I. It created a sensation when it was trucked through town 75 years ago and placed in position in front of the bunker-like American Legion Post 43 building that was under construction.

Then there was the slightly smaller artillery piece captured from the Japanese in World War II that took its place on the front steps and has puzzled passersby ever since.

The German cannon was seized from the war’s Western Front. It was donated to Legionnaires who in 1929 were pouring 2-foot-thick steel-reinforced concrete walls for their new hall at 2035 N. Highland Ave.

“When they started hauling it up Highland Avenue, it cut through the hot asphalt like it was butter,” recounted an eyewitness to the gun’s journey.

The city required the Legion to repair the street -- but not to make restitution to the truck driver who was startled by the sight of the cannon and crashed into a streetcar.

Neighbors living across the street from the hall were rattled too. Legion officials were forced to reposition the howitzer’s barrel after residents complained it was aimed at their front porch.

For more than a decade the huge enemy artillery piece helped point the way to Post 43, built in a sturdy, if not eye-catching, Egyptian Revival-Moroccan Deco architectural style.

The post was jammed nightly by legion members who filled a neon light-accented Art Deco bar and spilled into a nightclub-like dining area called the “Cabaret Room.” Crooners performed from a stage above a small polished dance floor.

Larger shows featuring big-name artists such as Bing Crosby and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen drew crowds of more than 1,000 upstairs in the main auditorium. Cathedral-like concrete buttress columns arched 55 feet above the hall’s 2,000-square-foot ballroom dance area.

During the World War II years the American Legion post went to war. Hollywood stars and studio moguls were regulars when war bond drives were staged there. The Navy used the hall for a time as a recruitment center.

Ten months after the U.S. entered the war, legionnaires donated the World War I German howitzer to the federal government so it could be melted down and turned into munitions.

When the fighting ended, grateful federal officials replaced the missing German gun with the captured Japanese artillery piece. It has stood guard over the American Legion post since.

Legionnaires’ embrace of the Hollywood community has never disappeared, though. In the post’s early days, it staged weekly boxing matches at the Hollywood Legion Stadium, a prizefight ring on El Centro Avenue a few blocks south of the hall.

Hollywood celebrities such as Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino rubbed elbows with the blue-collar crowd during the early days of Legion Stadium’s Friday Night Fights. Later, the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Errol Flynn, Mae West and Lupe Velez were often spotted in front-row seats.

The stadium was converted into a bowling alley in 1959 and into a health spa in 1987. The building is still owned by the post and remains a rental money-maker for legionnaires.

But it is another Hollywood connection that legion officials say is guaranteeing the post’s survival at a time when membership is sagging due to the aging base of World War II veterans. Where Post 43 boasted 3,000 members after World War II, enrollment is now down to 485.

In 1983 producers of “Tamara” signed a long-term lease of the Highland Avenue building and converted its interior into a rambling set for a “participatory play” in which the audience moved from room to room for different scenes.

The post was dubbed “Il Vittoriale” for the show, which was dark on nights that legionnaires held their post meetings. The play ran until 1994.

Members were quick to take note of their unusual building’s potential for other, shorter-term shows and events. Legion leaders turned their Egyptian-Moroccan Deco showpiece into a backdrop for movies and commercials and a venue for musical artists and entertainment events.

“There was a time before that when we were surviving on bingo games and on can and newspaper recycling drives,” said post member Terry Duddy, who these days is the post’s events administrator and chairman of its board of trustees.

Filmmakers love the Art Deco bar and the cabaret lounge. So do those booking private parties.

The bar was renamed the “Green Dragon” for a Feb. 29 Oscar party staged by 1,500 fans of “The Lord of the Rings.” It was described by one critic as “the hottest bash in town” when the movie dominated this year’s Academy Awards.

The legion hall was transformed inside and out. At the front entrance, a bronze statue of a soldier was covered in an elf’s coat. For dinner, the nightclub lounge was dubbed “Mordor.”

Duddy, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Glendale, said those renting the hall must treat it and its furnishings with respect.

Recognizable American Legion items -- such as emblems on the auditorium’s 334 wooden seats and a memorial wall in the 55-foot-high Center Atrium that lists deceased post members -- must be covered for film shoots.

A library and a museum that is filled with World War I-era weapons, gas masks, torpedo housings, rare battle maps and memorabilia such as vintage photographs of Hollywood stars visiting the post are off-limits during parties and filming. But they are popular with post members nostalgic for their own war years.

The post is open to the public only on Veterans Day. But about 200 members and their guests show up for dinner meetings the first and third Mondays of each month.

The meals are free, which makes the American Legion’s $15 annual dues a bargain.

The average age of a post member is 60, according to Barney Edgerton, Post 43’s adjutant. He is a World War II veteran who served in the Philippines and now lives in Los Feliz.

Efforts to attract new members from among those who have served in the Gulf Wars have largely been unsuccessful, Edgerton said. But many veterans wait until middle age to join. And there seems to be no shortage of future U.S. military vets on the horizon.

For now, though, Edgerton and others are making plans to mark the Hollywood American Legion building’s 75th anniversary on July 5.

“We’ll fire the cannon out front,” he joked. “With traffic the way it is these days on Highland, it’s the only way we can get out of the parking lot.”