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In 2007, Curbed LA named Hollywood and Highland the ugliest building in Los Angeles. From many (if not most) angles, they have a point. But In the center of this ode to modern consumerism is a secret, a reference to the glamor and debauchery that are Hollywood's past. It started, as all the best secrets do, a long, long time ago.
In 1916, D.W. Griffith made Intolerance, his response to the widely maligned Birth of a Nation (which basically resuscitated the flagging Ku Klux Klan by portraying them as heroes). At the time of its production, Intolerance was the most expensive movie ever made. Its famous Babylon set was built right on Sunset Boulevard.
The Babylonian part of the movie in particular, was felt to be racy and over the top, with thousands of scantily clad extras, scandalizing the remnants of Victorian social mores and contributing to Hollywood's growing reputation as a den of sin.
Infamy, however, wasn't enough to bring audiences back after Birth of a Nation. It bombed at the box office, causing Griffith's production company to go bankrupt.
The Babylon set was abandoned and fell into deeper and deeper disrepair. In 1919, it was declared a fire hazard and torn down.
Hollywood used to be a dirty town. Like Times Square in New York it had its share of crazy homeless people, thieving junkies, punks and hookers. But just as that time passed for Times Square, so does it seem to be passing for Hollywood.
An important part of the Disneyfication of the center of what used to be the film industry is Hollywood and Highland. Definitely part of the Malling of America, this huge structure includes a hotel, a bowling alley, and mind numbing number of chain retail stores you could find anywhere. It's the home to the Kodak Theater, responsible for "moving the Oscars back to Hollywood." (If there ever was a sign of the oozing spread of mediocrity, it would have to involve the Oscars.) As an added bonus, it ruined the Chinese Theater.
Built on the site of the Hollywood Hotel, (erected in 1905 and torn down in 1956 -- the first hotel in Hollywood and therefore home to many top stars of the budding industry) the area has a storied past. But the recognition of this fact isn't its only nod to history.
Hollywood and Highland resurrected the Babylonian arch from Intolerance (as well as a couple of the white elephant statues). And, in an effort to put icing on that cake, the arch frames a fabulous view of the Hollywood Sign (when there isn't too much smog.)
Who knew that in the center of new watered down, "safe" Hollywood there would be a remnant of such a fabulous story -- a story of excess, prejudice, dissipation and resurrection, not just of Intolerance itself, but of D.W. Griffith and the industry at large.
Quite a story. Someone should make a movie out of it.
Present day photo by sheilaellen, via flickr.
Old timey photos from Wikipedia.
LAistory is our series that takes us on a journey to what came before to help us understand where we are today. So far we've been to Val Verde, Thelma Todd's Roadside Cafe, a house in Beverly Hills, Echo Park's Bonnie Brae House, Marineland of the Pacific, and Grand Central Air Terminal, Wrigley Field, the moment LA got its name, the wreck of the Dominator, 1925 "Hollywood Subway." the Pink Lady of Malibu, the Lions Drag Strip, and to Disneyland (when it was cheap to get in!).
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How was Mann's Chinese ruined? It's always been a tourist attraction.
Part of it is how the building is dwarfed by Hollywood and Highland. But they expanded the Chinese and stacked all these cement blocks behind it.
I'm sorry but the ugliest building in LA is the "Death Star" aka CAA building in Century City.
The Standard Hotel on SUNSET IS THE UGLIEST BUILDING.
While the final product Hollywood and Highland is pretty terrible, it is better than what was going on there the years before it. I don't mean it was "unsafe" as much as it was "shitty" and not in the picturesque "gritty" way (aside from the Mann Chinese, that one I agree with you 100% on that).
And you can't you always see the Hollywood sign from that part of town, regardless of the amount of smog?
Thanks for revealing this massive "secret" hidden inside Hollywood and Highland with this very actually at all informative and superbly written history lesson. Great point about Hollywood's fall from grace as place infested with "crazy homeless people, thieving junkies, punks and hookers" to its current Disneyfied mediocrity. I hate gentrification. Who wants to pick up a hooker in front of a Sephora.
BUSH!!!
"Hollywood used to be a dirty town. Like Times Square in New York it had its share of crazy homeless people, thieving junkies, punks and hookers."
Used to be? Pretty sure all it takes is a jaunt about 3 blocks east of H&H and you can find what you're missing until you get to Los Feliz.
Actually, Hollywood used to be beautiful. In the 1950s, it started going downhill, and by the 1970s it had become the total craphole of filth and vice seemingly beloved by so many. The same can be said of the downtown L.A. Broadway district. The streets were clean, the buildings were well maintained, the sidewalks weren't covered with old chewing gum, and the people were nicely dressed shoppers, diners, employees, and residents. That was before third-world crime, squalor, and blight set in and enveloped the whole place. Damn to Hell anybody who wants to restore these areas to their original glory, rather than preserving the depressing later years.