I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday For A Hamburger Today......

Why, you may ask, am I quoting the great J. Wellington Wimpy?  Well kiddies, it's because I'm hear to talk about hamburgers.....sort of.


But first, a confession.  It is possible to live in a land like Hollywood and, even though a fiend for the history of the place, let certain historical landmarks slip through the fingers.  So my confession:  I've never been to the legendary Barney's Beanery.....until yesterday.

Early 70s looking much the same as today.

What a fool I've been and why, oh why, have I waited so long!  Maybe it was a hangover of feelings regarding 'the infamous sign' (though that was taken down before I even moved to town), but I'd like to think I'm not that shallow.

"Barney", 1964.

And besides, the story goes, Barney put up the sign in the late 40s to appease the LA Sheriff's Dept. and the Alcohol Beverage Control Board who where cracking down on certain 'behaviors' that were happening in certain restrooms of certain establishments all around town.  As there was a gay clientele that frequented the place between then and the mid 80s when the sign was removed, it's clear that nobody paid much attention to the thing.

What folks did pay attention to was great comfort food and drinks served up in an atmosphere of democracy that allowed no more special treatment to Lana Turner than was given to a local milk man.  Here (now as then) all customers are customers; and customers are king.

Okay, now that we've gotten the stupid sign thing out of the way, let's get into the wonders of this burger stand/road house/gin joint/billiard parlor/rock and roll paradise.  This calamitous cacophony of color!

Courtesy of Barney's website.

I was invited over by Barney's very own Historian (and part owner), Sheri Hellard.  Sheri and longtime server Dominique Kadison were my guides through this magical history tour.

Dominique and Sheri.

The first thing I was shown was the endless collection of license plates over the bar.

Back when this place opened in 1927, it was on the last leg of Route 66 and folks who were seeking a new and better life in the golden west began to rip the plate off their flivver and give 'em to Barney, symbolically claiming their arrival.  The gesture has continued over the years.

Along about this point of my visit, lunch was ordered.  Here's a little tip:  arrive hungry.  There are over 1000 items on the menu and you anti-gluten and anti-meat types will be just as satisfyingly stuffed as the rest of us.

For me, double cheeseburger with fries and a small side of chili please.

In this world of 're-imagined classics' it's really nice to scarf a plate of chow that tastes the same as it would have when it was made in the 30s!

I'm not going to go into a long accounting of the history of Barney's because I couldn't write anything better than Domenic Priore.  His article is on Barney's own website here, but I will share a couple of my favorite things from the place.  And I will also tell you that I'll be going back because, even though I was there for 90 minutes, I think I saw about 6% of what there is to see.


Favorite thing No. 1:  Morrison Plaque

The 'here sat Morrison' plaque on the bar tells only half of the story.  Jim left more DNA than just sweaty palm prints.  One night, in what I'm sure was performance art, Morrison relieved himself of the last half-dozen drinks on this spot.  Yes, The Lizard King peed on the top of the bar.


Favorite thing No. 2:  The not-quite-all-seeing-eye

Yup, it's an eyeball.  And, yes, it's nailed to the ceiling over one of the pool tables where, as legend has it, it was surrendered to the victor of a pool game when it was discovered that the One-Eyed Jack, didn't have enough jack to payoff the bet he'd just lost.

Favorite thing No. 3:  Table top Goddess

Once again, direct your eyes to the heavens.  Nailed to the ceiling to protect it from any further molestation is a former tabletop where is carved, "Janis Lyn 70"!  Anyone who knows me knows that Joplin has always been my forever number one.  And on the evening of Oct 3rd, 1970, Barney's was her last stop before boarding the train bound to Fabulon at the Landmark Hotel.

One last thing.  All things being in cosmic synchronicity in a place like Hollywood, at the same moment I was snapping the above picture, Janis Lyn Joplin was posthumously receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Barney's rules.....peace out.

1949

Feliz Navi.......Nada!

In 1928, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce came up with a brilliant idea to drive up shopping traffic along their big commercial corridor of Hollywood Blvd.  A Christmas Parade!!!

So they got America's Sweetheart to do a little advance press and Viola!  Hollywood Blvd. magically became Santa Claus Lane.

Decorations festooned the corridor and crowds gathered for what, as it turned out, wasn't much of a parade.

That first year, aside from the lovely decorations, the 'parade' consisted of what you see above, one sleigh pulled by a couple of union reindeers from the Screen Reindeers Guild and the loot in the sleigh was a little known starlet named Jeanette Loff and.......Santa Claus.

Well Santa Claus was the star of this show, and he delivered the shoppers, and so the Santa Claus Lane Parade became an annual tradition.  Santa's appearance was always the climax of the parade that sent the crowds into paroxysms of glee.  It grew every year until it included big-named stars by the score.  And there is the famous story of Cowboy Star Gene Autry riding in the parade just in front of Santa in 1946.  After a couple of blocks of hearing children shrieking "Here Comes Santa Claus! Here Comes Santa Claus", Autry gets a notion and, a new Holiday Carol is born.

So the parade is only one night but for almost a month each year, Hollywood residents and visitors alike have been treated to a sweet and magical "Santa Claus Lane"


Just Look!:

No matter how seedy and downtrodden Hollywood ultimately became, the old girl still got tarted up and stirred a little sparkle.  By the mid 1980s, when Hollywood and the Boulevard were little more than an open air drug bazaar, and looked like Beirut on a rough day, from Thanksgiving on at least, there was still a little shiny-shiny going on:

At the beginning of the new century, the word was: Hollywood is experiencing a rebirth!  And Santa Claus Lane jumped on board tying together Holidays and the Cinema!:

So by 2012, you must be thinking, it's got to be STUPENDOUS!  Well, brother, would you ever be wrong.  I took this picture today from the northeast corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga looking west and, as you can see, zilch!

It could be any ol' day of the year, but certainly not smack in the middle of the Holiday Shopping Season!  Why even the sky looks like it's going to cry.

So Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce, what are you doing with aaaaallll that money you charge folks to be members, that you can't string up a few damn lights and a strand or two of tinsel?  Huh?

Life Must, At The Very Least, Always Include....

Madcap Merriment

The Albertina Rasch Group

And Zany Hijinks

Ramon Novarro and friend.

Golly, Just Think Of It.......

While you read this blog (a blog for the Smart Set),

Louise Brooks is reading about you!

Perspective On Fame.

"The motion picture business in those days was very different from the motion picture business of today. No other stars will ever hold the unique position occupied by Wallace Reid and Mary Pickford. The game has grown beyond that. There are too many attractive men and women, too much competition, too many theaters, too much interest now in the story, the settings, the cast, the photography. The motion picture fan has evolved, and the days of such enormous personal popularity as came to Wally are gone forever. No one can take Wally Reid's place because that place no longer exists. Like many another monarchy......it has become a republic."

- Adela Rogers St. Johns, Liberty Magazine, June 1928

Wallace Reid April 15, 1892 – January 18, 1923

Some Dame!

Alright, not really a Dame if you want to be technical.  More like a Baroness.

Born in 1874 little Marie Rose Antoinette Catherine de Robert d'Aqueria de Rochegude of Le Havre would, in 1895, marry in Paris and hence become the Baroness Catherine d'Erlanger.  In London where she and the Baron lived at 139 Piccadilly (Lord Byron's old joint, don't you know) she would be more commonly known as "Flame" for her hair color.

Flame as painted by William Bruce Ellis Ranken

Before you begin to feel to sorry for Flame being couped up in that city house, do know that it was one of three in which the Baron and she encamped.

139 Piccadilly exterior and....

interior.

Then there was Falconwood the Palladian manse outside of town:

Falconwood drawing room as painted by Sir John Lavery

And lastly, there was the place in Venice.  What.  Everyone needs a place in Venice.  But do they really need to name it Villa La Malcontenta?

La Malcontenta 

The Baroness loved the arts and she loved the artists.  Here she is being the art by participating in a tableau vivant, The Five Senses at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, 1900.

"Tasting" is the sense that the Baroness embodied.

Catherine cultivated the most astonishingly irreverent continental society of bohemians, artists and aristocrats at salons in her homes.  She was pals with Ravel, Debussy, Nijinsky and Proust.  She was also financial patroness to Diaghilev, The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and Cecil Beaton. (why buy art when you can buy artists?)

In short, she knew people.  So much so that when Helena Rubenstein was launching what would become her empire in 1908, she hired Flame to be her guide though the complex hierarchy of London Society.

The other thing we find out about the Baroness (and in Rubenstein she had a kindred spirit here) she was a junker -- a picker!  She absolutely adored trolling through the London flea markets searching for 'beautiful things'...at bargain prices.  Cecil Beaton once described her homes as being "decorated with an eclectic display of shell flowers, witch balls and mother of pearl furniture, all picked up for a song at the Caledonian market!"

Things in the 1930s, as we know, were getting a little dicey on the Continent, and at some point she appears to have loaded a container or two with some treasures and beat a path to North America.  Now, should you even be surprised when I tell you that her move led her to settle in Hollywood, U.S.A.?

She bought a lovely and shockingly unpretentious home just a couple of blocks north of the Sunset Strip.  Life did not slow down for our Flame.  It's probably also no surprise that she discovered and became dear friends with the fabulously mad decorator/artist Tony Duquette.  They would actually influence one another.

You can see elements of her Duquette-icised living room.  The crystal room divider.  Silver lame drapes with crystal valances.

In 1939, in the same building that would house Spago in the 1980s, our gal opened up Cafe Gala.

As Spago.

This was a few years after the infamous 'pansy raids' of the early 30s but make no mistake, Cafe Gala was quite pansy.  In a reserved sorta way.  No touching beyond a handshake and all that.  But the clientele made it clear and the place was jokingly known around town as Cafegaleh.  Often, after hours and after closing Bobby Short recalled that the place would be taken over by that wacky bunch from MGM:  Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Conny Salinger, Roger Edens, Lenny Hayton and Kay Thompson.  The Cafe Gala sparkled and shone for a decade. After it's happy run ended, the Baroness d'Erlanger opened "881".

This nightery was recently mentioned again in the Scotty Bowers book as he was the bartender who opened the place.  Shortly after this time though, after a very large, long and fabulous life, the Flame started to dim.  She was getting a bit dotty and slowly receded from public life.  She spent her days, tiara firmly on her head sitting in the garden behind her house and in 1959 booked passage on the Fabulon Express.

Just another day in a Hollywood garden.

Stanwyck - The Ziegfeld Years.

Ruby Stevens during her Ziegfeld time 1923-24.

I've seen the above photo many times and loved it each time.  It seems to me that the pose/persona she's affecting is one of her greatest acting feats.  When you consider the rough-knocks childhood she had to endure, that later hard-boiled Stanwyck was really more of a natural for her.

The photo was taken by Alfred Chaney Johnston, an interesting chap in his own rite.  Charles Dana Gibson, originator of the illustrations know as The Gibson Girl, set the standard for American female ideal at the fin de siecle.  It's then only fitting that he took on the mentorship of Alfred Chaney Johnston guiding him and his photography to capture perfection in the female form for the next generation.  Johnston's career was made in 1917 when the great Flo Ziegfeld brought him in to 'glorify the American girl' in photographs.  He enjoyed tremendous commercial popularity throughout the 20s and into the mid-30s.  Then by the end of that decade, styles had changed but Johnston's had not.  In 1940 he and his wife left the center of it all and moved to a 15 acre parcel in Oxford, CT.  His era had past and the next three decades saw a much smaller life for Alfred.  In the 60s Chaney unsuccessfully tried to donate his entire studio and picture inventory to several organizations in both New York and Washington DC but there was no interest in storing such a vast amount of material.  The Library Of Congress did accept 245 prints as well as several product advertisement pictures.  The childless widower passed away  in 1971.

That top photo is just a teaser.  Chaney took other pictures of Stevens/Stanwyck.  Below are what I have found and they're lovely:

**posted with love for eva.

The Mystery Gets Revealed!!!

Well, get me!!  I stumped you all.  So without further delay:


It's hard to believe that in only 37 short years this handsome young devil of 19:

Would become:

Theodore J. Mooney!!!

A few other fun facts about wonderful character actor Gale Gordon:

**He was the first actor (albeit on radio) to play the role of Flash Gordon. (take that Buster Crabbe!)

** He was the original choice to play the role of Fred Mertz but had to decline owing to his commitment on the "Our Miss Brooks" show.

** He is the only actor to have either guest-starred or was a series regular on every weekly series that Lucille Ball ever did starting in the 40s with her radio series "My Favorite Husband" and ending in the 80s with "Life With Lucy".

**He had a ranch in Borrego Springs, CA some 160 miles from L.A. and commuted to work.

** The output of his ranch made him one of the few commercial growers of Carob in the US.


Okay everybody, all together now:

"MISSEZ  CAAAAHHRMICHAEL!!!"

Vivian Vance......

.....was awfully young to be wearing a pearl necklace if you ask me.  And such a very long necklace too!

Making Make Up Magic.

Tony Curtis for "Some Like It Hot"

Lon Chaney for "Mr. Wu"

Brando for "The Godfather"