HOLLYWOOD
BOULEVARD
 ON
THE TINSEL BOULEVARD
We
are seeing some great new changes to one of the most famous boulevards
in the World. We are
talking
about Hollywood Boulevard where the stars
of the stars line the streets,
and were until recently
most
folks were afraid to come any where near this street for it only
represented the worse side of the
city.
A place where the homeless and runaway children and youth wandered lost
in Tinsel town. Porn stores
and Peep shows drew a seedy crowd and
it was for sure nothing that
the Hollywood City Chamber
or anybody in the entertainment industry could be proud of.
Ray
Bradbury in an article entitled "Celluloid City" in Southern California's
Lifestyle Magazine West
Ways
begins
the story with, "I have traveled to
Paris, Rome, London, and Dublin.
When I was there, did
the natives ask about New York? Nope. Washington, D.C.? Chicago?
San Francisco? No way.
What
did the locals in Florence, Venice and Madrid desire to hear about?
California? Almost. Los
Angeles?
Closer. Hollywood? That's it. Hollywood! To
heck with the rest, beautiful
and fascinating as they
are. Tinsel town. With tons of tinsel beneath the tinsel...Commence
with Hollywood and Vine.
Probably
as famous as Piccadilly, the Via Veneto, or Times Square."
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Now
there is change in the air. At the most famous corner in the world,
the corner of Hollywood and
Vine
there are four search lights shooting into the
Hollywood sky. Just
at the famous corner the
Pantages
Theater folks in L.A. dresses up to see "River Dance", "Peter Pan",
and "Phantom of the
Opera",
word is that Disney plans on bringing in Lion King. Down the boulevard
is the restored El
Captain
Theater, the new Panavision headquarters
on Selma have added to the new
feeling, there is the
Henry Fonda Theater.
Egyptian Theater re-opens
Just
recently The Egyptian Theater has seen a multimillion dollar face
lift while it has becomes the
America
Cinematheque new home office, all adding to
the arm in arm traffic on the
Boulevard.. The
Egyptian
opened with Cecil B. De Mille's "The Ten Commandments" and a music performance
by Lorin
Hart
(who has performed for the StudioClub.com on several venues), and who's
Grandmother, Leatrice
Joy,
stared in the 1923 silent film. The premiere
was accompanied by a
full orchestra with a huge brass
section
and theater organ. Steven Speilberg leased the Theater for
the opening of his "Prince of
Egypt".
Speaking of Speilberg, word has it that he is soon to break ground on a
new $70 million dollar
Entertainment
Theater just down the street from
THE BARN DANCE on Vine Street near Hollywood
Blvd.
(There is sawdust on the floor, go figure.)
[[
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Here is pic of Cecil B. De Mille and some
of the crew and actors of Squaw Man
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For the
most part the history of Hollywood Boulevard was not the HOT and FUN glare
of the
entertainment
business, but it became the place where the cast-aways and the dark underbelly
of that
monster
industry fell to their knees. A place where runaways of all ages
wandered and wondered about
this
wild wild west-ern these misfits find themselves being victimized and dying
on "the Vine" in
Hollywood.
It was a street where the dope dealers, chicken hawks and pimps that prey
on runaways
and
their youthful bodies, who were lured to the wretched town by the tv and
movie image of the town in
the
first place. A place where the salesmen of sex and the pleasures
of climax sold "Peeps" for a
quarter
in the Theaters that grew down the Boulevard. A carnival, a freak
show, maybe a dark circus,
a
human zoo that the Hollywood Chamber, Johnny Grant and his stars along
"The Walk of Fame, and
the
glitter of the Biz itself could not hide from reality. But thank
God, things can change. Change much
like
that historic change at New York's Times Square. Hollywood Boulevard
is coming back.
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As
a historic note, and speaking of Cecil B. De Mille and Barns...The StudioClub's
cybercast of Ronnie
Mack's
Barn
Dance and the Speilberg theater is close to where a barn stood in 1913,
that Mr. De
Mille
leased for $75 dollars a month and made the movie SQUAW MAN
the first
movie ever made in
Hollywood.
Mary Pickford used to talk about going down to "the lot" The area
of town became a
interesting
mix of cowboys and actors that were coming to town to lay the tinsel down.
These were for
sure
the early days of the beginning of the lure of the city to this day...the
Entertainment Biz. The area
was
referred to as "the movie colony." And I am sure took on a somewhat
"Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance
Kid" feeling. "Shoot" the gun..."shoot" the camera...the little doors
on movie lights are |
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Down the
street in the area surrounding the Mann's Chinese Theater and sprawling
over eight and a half
acres of the corner of Hollywood Boulevard
and Highland Avenue, ground
has been broken and construction
begun on the $388 million dollar HOLLYWOOD AND HIGHLAND project that is
described
as a "urban destination entertainment center" As reported
in the L.A. Weekly, "Bigger
than
the Getty Center, bigger than downtown's
new Staples ?Arena, bigger than
the proposed Village Center
in Westwood--the biggest development, in fact, to be built in Los Angeles
for the last
15 years--
it
is the brainchild of David Malmuth, the young and polished developer credited,
while working for Disney,
with pulling New York's Times
Square out of the gutter and into the glitter."
   
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