Chapter 3 ~ Hollywood
Hollywood was a town filled with motion picture and radio studios, a town where people rode street cars to the San Fernando Valley or to the seashore or up and down Hollywood Boulevard. There were safety islands for passengers and tunnels under the Boulevard for pedestrians. There were newsboys hawking the daily newspapers at every major street corner and there was a movie theater on nearly every block. You could walk up and down the Boulevard and stare into the faces of strangers and never make a friend. Elizabeth Short fit in. She wandered the streets of Hollywood and spent hours in the restaurants and cocktail bars, but she was never discovered by the studios. Her fame would come after death. She arrived in Hollywood after the Academy Awards presentation at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on March 7, 1946 and was dead before the Academy Awards show at the Shine Auditorium on March 13, 1947.
She became as famous and as intriguing as the movie stars who helped put Hollywood on the map. She never made a movie, never made a name for herself in life, but in death, the beautiful, mysterious, young woman of 22 became a legend. Her story is the tale of a town and a gypsy girl who passed through it and left her mark on Hollywood history.
The town that grew up in the 1920’s and 1930’s with glamorous nightclubs on Hollywood Boulevard was a town where movie stars, such as Rudolph Valentino and Charlie Chaplin, ate at Musso and Frank, where actors lived in the Hotel Hollywood and the Garden Court Apartments. It was the town where Carole Lombard and Joan Crawford made names for themselves dancing in Hollywood night spots. Years later, Hollywood would turn into a haven for prostitutes, drug addicts and the homeless.
But in 1946, Hollywood was doing just fine, with films and radio production creating magic for the rest of the world. Bing Crosby’s Philco Radio Time introduced audiences to the first prerecorded broadcast on a prime time radio network. Television was just around the corner.
Elizabeth Short arrived in Southern California in July, 1946. She turned 22 years old on July 29. The most popular song that summer was “To Each His Own,” a tune from the movie of the same title, starring Olivia de Havilland.
The Eddy Howard recording of “To Each His Own” entered the Billboard Charts on July 11, 1946, and would stay on the hit parade for nineteen weeks. The song was so popular that four other versions also stayed on the charts through the summer. Tony Martin, the Ink Spots, Freddy Martin and the Modernaires with Paula Kelly all had hit recordings.
A rose must remain with the sun and the rain
Or its lovely promise won’t come true
To each his own, to each his own
And my own is you
The war years had been tough on almost everyone. By 1946, annual incomes averaged $2,390. A new house cost about $5,600 and a new car about $1,200. A postage stamp was three cents, a loaf of bread costs nine cents, a dozen eggs was twenty-two cents, a pound of coffee cost fifty cents, and a gallon of milk was seventy cents. If you had a new Roosevelt dime and a Jefferson nickel in your pocket, you could buy a gallon of gas or go see the new Clark Gable movie. The nickel was mighty. A telephone call costs a nickel in a phone booth. A newspaper costs a nickel and any greasy spoon in town served coffee for a nickel. Coca Cola guaranteed every man a in uniform a bottle of Coke for five cents. You could ride public transportation or buy a candy bar for a nickel. Or you could buy a short beer at Bradley’s 5 and 10, a Hollywood Boulevard hangout known to Beth Short.
* * *
In many ways, the Hollywood Boulevard of today does not look that different from the Hollywood Boulevard of 1946. Many of the structures built in the 1920’s and 1930’s still line the street. Some of the businesses remain, most notably, the Musso and Frank Grill, between Las Palmas and Cherokee, which has served customers continuously since 1919. Grauman’s Chinese Theatre at the west end of the Boulevard and the Pantages Theatre at the east end still operate. The Roosevelt Hotel is open, The Snow White Waffle House, now the Snow White cafe, is still in business. The Pig and Whistle has reopened and serves cocktails, lunch and dinner at the same old address. The Hillview Apartments is renting again, after a major renovation. Decades after being hidden, the Kress department store sign has been restored and rises high above Hollywood Boulevard at Whitley. The Broadway Hollywood, no longer a department store, still proudly displays it’s original sign. Across the street, with its blue neon sign still in tact, sits the venerable Taft Building. Across the Boulevard on the north side, the Frolic Room, a neighborhood bar since the 1930’s, is still open for business.
What has changed then? Well, the streetcars are long gone, including their rails and electrified catenary stystems. The newsboys have disappeared from all the major street corners. The five and dime stores, such as S. H. Kress, J. J. Newberry and F.W. Woolworth, are gone, although the buildings remain. The drugstores at Highland, Cherokee, Hudson and Vine, with their lunch counters, have vanished. Bradley’s Five and Ten, where Steve Boardner said Elizabeth Short frequented, was torn down long ago. It was located at the northwest corner of Hollywood and Cherokee, a block and a half from the Chancellor.
The Walk of Fame replaced the more conventional cement sidewalk in the early 1960’s and trees now line the north and south side of Hollywood Boulevard. Larry Edmunds Book Store moved from Cahuenga to Hollywood Boulevard during the intervening years. The old Hollywood Typewriter Shop, Miller’s Stationers and Pickwick Book Shop are gone, as well as C. C. Brown, home of the hot fudge sundae.
And of course, people don’t look the same any longer. They carry more weight and wear less clothing. Their manners and demeanor have changed. A well dressed woman like Elizabeth Short would stand out in the crowd today, and not just because she was so pretty.
Hollywood once had movie premiers at it’s first run theaters, but that rarely happens anymore. Movie-goers in the 1940’s, had many choices of theaters on Hollywood Boulevard. Most have vanished, but once there were more than a dozen. Gone is the Hollywood Music Hall at Hudson, the Admiral at Vine, the Iris at Wilcox, the Hollywood at Highland, the Fox at Gower, the Marcal, just west of the Florentine Gardens and the Hawaii, just east of the Gardens. The News-View, a single aisle newsreel theater was between Las Palmas and Cherokee. The Vogue was across the street, next door to the Musso and Frank Grill. The Hunley, the Apollo, the Hitching Post, the Warner, are all dark or razed. Today, the only theaters showing movies on Hollywood Boulevard are the Chinese, the El Capitan and the Egyptian.
Elizabeth Short might have seen “The Strange Woman” with Hedy Lamarr at the Hawaii, or “Missing Lady” at the Mayfair. or “A Game of Death at the Marcal. A happier choice might have been “It’s a Wonderful Life” at the Pantages.
If a flame is to grow there must be a glow
To open every door there’s a key
I need you, I know, I can’t let you go
Your touch means too much to me
