Baseball In Los Angeles - The Hollywood Stars

There's one major sports venue in pre-1950s Los Angles I'm yet to write on. It's the companion piece to Gilmore Stadium; Gilmore Field. Gilmore Stadium, Gilmore Field, the Farmer's Market, and Pan Pacific Auditorium were all within spitting distance from each other on Fairfax. I've been debating on whether or not I should write on the Hollywood Stars. There were two different Stars franchises, and didn't get their own park until 1939. However, the Stars did win some pennants, and are responsible for some baseball firsts so what the heck. Let's learn a bit about Los Angeles' other baseball team.

The first Stars franchise was one of those vagabond franchises that just has a hard time finding a home. They were a charter member of the PCL as the Sacramento Salons in 1903, moved to Tacoma in 1904, returned to Sacramento in 1905, moved to Fresno in 1906. Left the PCL, came back in 1909 in Sacramento, then moved to San Francisco in 1914. The team was sold to a Utah businessman, who moved them to Salt Lake for the 1915 season.

Salt Lake was their first permanent home. They played as the Salt Lake Bees for eleven seasons, until their owner Bill Lane moved them to Los Angeles in 1926. They were the Hollywood Bees for a year, then renamed the Hollywood Stars.

Now, given my love of Hollywood, you'd think I'd be all over a team during Hollywood's Golden Age calling themselves the Hollywood Stars. However, the Stars never played anywhere near Hollywood, spending their entire existence as tenants in Wrigley Field. When the Angels doubled the Stars rent in 1935, the Stars left for San Diego, becoming the San Diego Padres.

Really, the only legacy of that first Stars franchise is the name. The Stars did manage to win two pennants in 1929 and 1930, but never caught on. Like the Los Angeles Angels major league franchise at Chavez Ravine, they were just something to watch when the real team was out of town.

The Padres, however, lasted 32 years in San Diego, and would eventually give their name to the new National League franchise.

The second Hollywood Stars began as the Vernon Tigers in 1909. Vernon was one of the few wet cities in LA county, and thus a great place for a baseball team. They too won two PCL pennants, but didn't really establish a rivalry with the Los Angeles Angels, especially after the first Hollywood Stars moved to Wrigley Field. The Tigers instantly picked up stakes and moved to San Francisco, but couldn't really establish a rivalry with the Seals either.

So the now Mission Reds moved back to LA in 1938, taking on the Hollywood Stars name. After one season, the Stars were sold to a local management group including Robert H. Cobb, of the Brown Derby restaurant and Cobb Salad fame.

These owners realized just slapping the Hollywood name wouldn't be enough, they needed to be a Hollywood team. So the Stars played one year in Wrigley Field then moved to Gilmore Stadium for a year as Gilmore Field on the same lot.

Gotta love the view of downtown, and that vintage neighborhood ballpark feel. Gilmore Field opened up in time for the 1939 season. The Stars won three pennants at Gilmore Field, and became heated rivals with the Los Angeles Angels. Gilmore Field could seat 13,000, was 335 to left and right, and 407 feet to dead center. 

Not the most glamorous park from the outside, but it fits with Gilmore Stadium's functional style. The Hollywood Stars are responsible for some innovations, such as dragging the field in the fifth inning (making it, like the seventh inning stretch, a good time to hit the concession stands). They began televising home games in 1940, coincidentally, this whole Gilmore lot would eventually become CBS Television City. 

That last note is actually more significant than I realized. When the Hollywood Stars broadcast their home opener on March 30, 1940 this as just the second baseball game ever broadcast and the first minor league game. It was broadcast by the Don Lee Broadcasting station W6XAO. Don Lee was a Cadillac dealer in Los Angeles, who partnered with Cal grad Harry Lubcke to start a VHF station. 

By 1940, Don Lee had purchased RCA cameras from back east, and was broadcasting at 441 lines at 30 frames per second. Television was still a hobby at this point, there were only about 300 receivers in the area. Still, many celebrities turned out for the broadcast, including radio comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen ("Goodnight Gracie"). A shop window in Long Beach had a set tuned to the game, beginning a tradition that electronics stores would use to sell TVs as the fad caught on. 

As for W6XAO, it was granted a commercial license as KTSL in 1948 (The second LA station behind KTLA). It's frequency was originally 1, but chanced to 2 when the FCC decided to reserve 1 for low wattage community TV. CBS and the LA Times were the owners of KTTV 11 (49% CBS, 51% LA Times). The Times refused to sell their majority share, so CBS bought KTSL and changed it to KNXT to match their LA radio station. 

Those who grew up in Los Angeles probably remember KNTX, as channel 2 kept that call-sign until 1984 when it was rebranded KCBS. 

So the station that would become CBS, broadcasts a baseball game from Gilmore Field, then two years later it's razing the lot to create CBS Television city, the main branch of CBS's television operations. And just to show the Stars weren't the only ones on board with this television thing, here's the LA Angels in the Don Lee studio, filming an experimental broadcast in 1939.

I never really know where these entries are going to go. I learned so much researching this. 

Indoor Sports In Los Angeles - A History

Over the last week, I tried to show the rise of USC football from on campus diversion to the city building a giant bowl, and the Rose Bowl game following the same trajectory. How that lead to a demand for professional football, and that those efforts would eventually attract the NFL. Then I tried to show for pro baseball started up in Los Angeles at the turn of the century, around the same time as the National League and American League back east, and eventually the Brooklyn Dodgers taking advantage of the market the LA Angels created (then the AL naming their LA expansion team after that minor league team).

For the final piece of the LA sports puzzle (at least as far as this series is concerned) we again turn to collegiate athletics, the rise of UCLA and USC basketball, and minor league hockey in Los Angeles. The Pacific Coast Conference started sponsoring basketball in 1915, the same time that USC returned to playing American football.

This time UCLA got the leg up on USC. I didn't even both mentioning UCLA in the football article, cause I try and ground these pieces in Los Angeles buildings, and UCLA didn't start playing at the Coliseum until 1928 when it joined the Pac conference, and didn't move to the Rose Bowl until 1982. There aren't any houses that UCLA football built. That is a bit of a disservice, as they did come up in the LA pro football article, so they obviously had an impact on LA Football, just not LA buildings. Before playing at the Coliseum, UCLA played it's home football games at Moore Field, which presumably was on the UCLA campus.

I hope I mentioned in the USC Football article that they got their name Trojans during the rugby years, before a game against Stanford. Cal and Stanford were the power schools then, enough to convince the schools around them to switch from football to rugby and back to football. Before that USC were known as the Methodists or Wesleyans, probably to distinguish themselves from the Jesuits at St. Vincents (now Loyola) or the Presbyterians at Occidental.

Anyhow, it should be no surprise that while USC got their nickname from Stanford, UCLA got theirs from Cal. As the University of California Southern Branch, UCLA played it's first year of football in 1919, and called themselves the Cubs relative to the California Bears (Cal was also known as the Bruins around this time, but it was Bears that stuck). In 1923 they started going by Grizzlies (the bear on the California flag, and where UC got it's nickname, is a Grizzly) and in 1925 they brought out a coach from the University of Minnesota to upgrade their program. In 1928, the Grizzlies were ready to join the Pac conference, but at the time Montana was a member and they were the Grizzlies. So Southern Branch, which had changed its school name to UCLA in 1927, became the UCLA Bruins in 1928.

Now the Bruin basketball program was started in 1920, one year after their football program. The Bruins won conference championships in 1921, 22, 23, 25, 26, and 27; so you can see why they wanted to join the Pac conference. They needed better basketball competition than the local schools could offer, and that also explains the efforts to beef up their football program.

However, after joining the PCC, UCLA wouldn't win another basketball title until 1945. So this is a bit of a fakeout, I just felt bad for old UCLA. Yes, in the 1920s-30s, it was USC that dominated area basketball. They won their first PCC title in 1928 and would win three more before UCLA won their first. Of course, the basketball power in the early PCC, like music to my ears, was California. The year after UCLA won their first PCC title (and a split title at that) Cal won their tenth.

USC was the dominant power in the Southern division (the PCC was split into North and South for basketball). The program was established in 1909, and after winning the South in 1928, won the division 10 times in 16 years. In 1935 LA saw the grand opening of this building:

Yes that's what all this buildup has been for, the Pan Pacific Auditorium, which opened up in 1935. The building is an example of the switch from Art Deco to Streamline Moderne, which an architect will have to explain to me. I just think it looks really cool, but it seems that Streamline was he American response to European Art Deco. Interesting. 

Why the name? LA had been hoping to host of Pan-Pacific Exposition like San Francisco had in 1915 and San Diego had in 1916. It's not simply coincidence. The Pan refers not to all like it's used now, but to Panama. The Panama canal had opened in 1914, and the port cities of SF, SD, and LA were holding these expos as an attempt to drum up shipping business.

USC used the Pan Pacific as their home from 1949-1959. UCLA never moved in permanently, but played some home games there during that same time period for games too big for the campus gym. PPA sat 6,000 for basketball, but was said to get very loud. 

Now the reason I started with the basketball programs, is because in 1959 the City of Los Angeles opened their own gym build specifically for sports, the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. This shiny new arena sat 16, 161 and attracted an NBA franchise from Minneapolis, the Lakers.  

There was another sports tenant in the Pan Pacific Auditorium, and that was the Los Angeles Monarchs of the Pacific Coast Hockey League. Hockey doesn't have nearly as long of a history in Los Angeles as basketball, but it was the pro sport of choice for folk up north where it snowed. Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver had their own minor league hockey group as early as 1929. When it restarted again in 1944 (now in it's third incarnation) it included teams in LA, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Diego. In 1952, that league merged with a Canadian league to form the Western Hockey League, which like the PCL was considered a threat to the NHL, enough to make the NHL expand westward. 

The LA Monarchs didn't make it past 1950, as the PCHL decided to disband the Southern division. LA wouldn't join the WHL until 1961, with the Los Angeles Blades playing at the Sports Arena. When the NHL decided to expand into Oakland and Los Angeles in 1967, killing the LA Blades, it was the Monarchs they tried to invoke, naming their team the LA Kings. The Monarchs remain the only Los Angeles Hockey franchise to win a championship, winning the President's Cup in 1947. 

So what else happened at the Auditorium, especially before the late 40s? Ice Capades, Harlem Globetrotters, car shows, tennis matches, political rallies, it was LA's premiere indoor venue. In 1957, Elvis would have a perform at the PPA. It wasn't his first stop in LA, but the press treated it as such and as a result it's probably his most memorable LA stop. 

It took more than the Sports Arena to kill the Pan Pacific Auditorium. The Convention Center downtown, opened in 1971, took away the expo business. 

The Pan Pacific Auditorium was destroyed in a fire, but you can still see those iconic stylized towers. Disney's California Adventure currently has them above the turnstiles to get into the park. Welton Beckett was a principal architect of the PPA, and a neighbor of Walt Disney when he moved to California. It was Beckett who suggested to Disney that he use his own artists, and not an architectural firm, when he built Disneyland, which led to the eventual creation of Walt Disney Imagineering. Who knew? 

So Cal college basketball, minor league hockey, Elvis, and Disney, all in one article. Isn't slice of life history grand? 

Baseball in Los Angeles - The LA Angels

Baseball and college football were the "it" outdoor sports during the time of Movie Palaces. Chronicling baseball history in Los Angeles is fun. We get to revisit Washington Park, the baseball ground that was part of the End of the Trolley line amusement park (like Coney Island), and across from the school that would become Loyola Marymount. We get to revisit the Gilmore grounds, where Gilmore Field was built next to Gilmore Stadium. We get to see Catalina Island, and the original Wrigley Field. On a World Series off-day, let's take a look at how baseball was played before the Dodgers moved west.

I feel its a common misconception, that the leagues that are now considered national brands were always considered the top flight without rival. The NFL, NL, and AL faced constant competition from leagues in their own region, and in the South, in Texas, out West, those territories had their own regional leagues. Before the NL Dodgers moved west, and the AL placed an expansion team in the same territory, LA baseball fans were entertained by the Pacific Coast League.

And this wasn't some rinky dink minor league circuit. There was money out here in LA, and like the LA Bulldogs were one of the strongest football brands before they got raided, the PCL LA Angels were one of basball's great franchises.

Wrigley Field was built on 10 acres of land in South Los Angeles between San Pedro St., Avalon Blvd., 41st and 42nd. It was the home of the LA Angels for thirty years. William Wrigley Jr. (owner of the Chicago Cubs) bought them in 1921 for $150,000 (an astronomical sum). The stadium was completed in 1925. 

Before that, we have to explain William Wrigley Jr's association with Los Angeles, and why the LA Angels would have been such a pricey buy. 

Wrigley purchasing the LA Angels happened at the same time he was buying a controlling intrest in the Chicago Cubs. His chewing gum and confectionary business, which you've probably heard of, was based in Chicago. Wrigley had been convinced to invest in Santa Catalina Island, which at the time was controlled by the son of Phineas Banning (you remember him, right?). The idea, continued by Wrigley, was to turn it into a tourist destination, increasing ferry business from the port in San Pedro. 

Wrigley loved it, and bought the island in 1919. He built himself a home there, build a Spring Training facility for the Cubs, and bought the Angels. 

Wrigley's Catalina home

The PCL was organized in 1903, and from then to 1934 the Angels won 9 championships. Not that they were playing against peanuts, like the LA Bulldogs often were. The San Francisco Seals, Oakland Oaks, San Diego Padres, Portland Beavers, and Hollywood Stars, just to name from the top of my head, provided major league level competition every year. Joe Dimaggio and Ted Williams both got their start in the PCL. When Wrigley was looking at the team, they had just won a pennant in 1916, contended for four years, then another in 1921. In 1926, the Angels' first full year at Wrigley, they won the pennant again. 

Wrigley was by no means huge, but comparable to the size ballparks were being built back then. It sat 18,000 (Shibe Park in Philadelphia held 23,000) and the dimensions favored the hitters (340 to left field, 412 to center, 338 to right). The Angels won the pennant again in 1933 and 34, with the 1934 team considered the best minor league team of all time.

The Angels were pennant winners in the first PCL year, 1903, and then again in 1905, 07, and 08. The minor leagues of this time were different than they are now. Teams weren't under control of a major league club. When Wrigley bought the Angels, they were his team, not the Cubs. Player contracts were bought, but it was a negotiation not a demand from the parent club. So those early Los Angeles clubs were simply a collection of the best area talent, not leftovers. 

That's Washington Park, formerly Chutes Park when the Chutes Trolley Park was the main attraction. Chutes Park was on a different part of the lot, but with the Angels successful and the Trolley Park failing, a bigger park was built. Since the Angels went into a pennant drought from 1908-1916, Washington Park saw just two pennant winners while the old Chutes Park saw four. Still, the Angels kept winning, and kept outgrowing their grounds. 

As you can tell in the first photo, Wrigley Field Los Angeles was also the first one to plant Ivy in the outfield. That ivy, and the houses just beyond the outfield wall, would later make national TV as baseball's Home Run Derby program was filmed at Wrigley Field. You can see that Washington Park has just the one grandstand, while Wrigley had two, and the entire stand was roofed. 

Of course, Wrigley would meet a sad end. Walter O'Malley traded his farm team (the Fort Worth Cats) and cash in exchange for the Los Angeles Angels and Wrigley Field. Philip K. Wrigley had taken over the Angels after his dad died in 1932. Many fans in LA assumed O'Malley would move the Dodgers into Wrigley Field, at least temporarily. There were plans drawn up to expand capacity. However, O'Malley chose to use the Coliseum for four years from 1958 - 1961 (winning the World Series in 1959 - LA's first major championship) while his Dodger Stadium was built. 

Wrigley Field would be demolished, and that was that. Owning the rights to the Angels, O'Malley borrowed their interlocking LA cap logo for the Dodgers. The Angel name was sold to the American League for their new expansion team in Los Angeles. So the LA Angels live on, just not the way some Angelinos would have hoped. 

There's still more baseball to go. The Hollywood Stars, Dodgers and Angels are all still to come, so stay tuned!

Pro Football in Los Angeles - A History

Yesterday, I wrote about Cal, Stanford, USC, the Rose Bowl game, and the explosion of college football in the boom decade of the 20s. Unlike the movie palaces we've been talking about, Cal's Memorial Stadium, Stanford Stadium, USC's Memorial Stadium, and the Rose Bowl, have been hosting their respective teams continuously from the early 20s on. They've all had some facelifts, some more than others. Those stadiums stand as a reminder of a time when there was doubt about the future of American football, and the eventual commitment to making that game America's collegiate game. To think, we could have been a nation playing English rugby, or soccer!

The schools way back east refused to get on a bowl game bandwagon, and got left behind when football boomed again in the Jet Age. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Army, no longer football powers. It was the rust belt schools: Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, that partnered with the Pac schools in growing the game. It was out of the rust belt (Canton, Ohio) that the NFL was born.

The idea was simple enough. College athletics were starting to adopt rules regarding scheduling. With conferences forming and setting these rules, that meant schools couldn't play high schools, army infantries, and athletic clubs anymore. So these teams representing athletic clubs, meat packing plants, and food starch companies, got together and formed their own professional leagues, signing these former stars to contracts.

Wanting to get in on the action, plans were made for a Pacific Football League to launch in 1934. While the NFL teams back east mostly played in the already established major league baseball stadiums, oil magnate Arthur F. Gilmore built a football specific stadium in 1934 on Fairfax and Third. It seated just a fraction of what the college stadiums did, just 20,000.

You really do need the aerial view to get a sense of the scope of these stadiums. The track was used to host Midget Car racing, a sport first organized at Loyola High School Stadium in Los Angeles. You can see why an oil man would want to associate himself with a burgeoning auto sport. Football at Gilmore Stadium was just taking advantage of an open field. 

In fact, when the PFL was in the planning stages, they didn't know if they'd use Gilmore Stadium or Wrigley Field in South Central. The idea was to have four clubs in the South, with one home stadium, representing former players from USC, Loyola, UCLA, and Santa Clara. Then there'd be two teams from the North, with players from Cal, Stanford, San Francisco Univeristy, and St. Mary's.

Also part of the planning was that the winner of the league would play the winner of the National league back east, a precursor to the Super Bowl. Ultimately, those plans fell through. The two northern teams withdrew, and then the whole thing folded a year later in 1935. At that point the league was sponsored by the American Legion, and had teams like the the Westwood Cubs and Hollywood Braves. 

Gilmore Stadium was known primarily as a Midget racing venue. Loyola High School would play big football games there, my grandmother remembers going to Gilmore Stadium for games. It was a boom time for minor league football though. The Dixie league formed in the south, and there were others, all trying to take advantage of these college stars with nowhere to play. 

The NFL would occasionally play exhibition games at Gilmore Stadium, as happened in 1936. Just after a Rose Bowl game between Stanford and SMU, the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers played at Gilmore Field. The Lions were national champs at the time, and the game drew the biggest crowd on record at the time at Gilmore. 

Interestingly, the reason they had to play the game at Gilmore was because pro football was banned at the Coliseum. The Lions vowed not to return to Los Angeles until they could play at the larger venue. Anyhow, the American Legion founds the Los Angeles Bulldogs, playing as an independent in 1936 and inviting NFL teams out for a weekend in LA. Team owner Harry Meyer (nicknamed moneybags) also took his team barnstorming back east, hoping to earn a bid in the NFL. The NFL decided to accept an AFL II team from Cleveland, the Cleveland Rams, instead. The plot thickens. 

The Bulldogs played in AFL II for a year, going undefeated and effectively bankrupting the entire league. By now we're at 1940, and the Bulldogs help form the Pacific Coast Professional Football League so they'd have some opponents. Their main competition was the Hollywood Bears, named for their coaches alma mater (UCLA), and the league was basically formed so the two teams could compete for something other than the LA Championship. 

Los Angeles was also becoming known as a football hotbed, with the NFL playing two Pro Bowls there in the 1940 calendar year. 

The Bulldogs had gained a reputation as the best team outside the NFL, and the PCPFL quickly gained a reputation as a place for black stars to shine. The NFL didn't allow black players at the time. Neither did Major League Baseball. This is how the Bulldogs were able to get a UCLA multi-sport star to play for them: Jackie Robinson. 

Now in 1943, sports entrepreneur Bill Freelove starts buying out the contracts of LA Bulldogs players to form the appropriately named LA Mustangs. The Mustangs also played at Gilmore Stadium. The Mustangs were granted PCPFL membership for 1943, but with the other owner fearing similar raids, they were kicked out in 1944. He goes and forms AFL III, but it doesn't come to much. 

Who knew that a stadium that couldn't hold more than 20k and was demolished by the fifties held so much history? Well all that attention the Los Angeles Bulldogs and Gilmore Stadium created paid off, but not for them. The NFL, and new competitor AAFC, had their sights set on Los Angeles. Of course, the team to move out for the NFL was those Cleveland Rams the NFL chose over the LA Bulldogs, and they found a way to play their games at the Coliseum which had banned pro football. 

As far as I can tell, it was simply a matter of the Coliseum softening it's position and the NFL having buckets of cash to throw at them. Owner Dan Reeves simply submitted an application to use the Coliseum to the commission that met once a year. The AAFC club, the Los Angeles Dons, also had designs on using the Coliseum. 

"It's going to be the best professional football town in the country," Reeves declared. He was right, and the Rams won out the battle for the Coliseum, with the AAFC folding the Dons when they merged with the NFL. 

The Rams would form a great rivalry with the former AAFC's San Francisco 49ers, and selling out the Coliseum was common. Selling out the Coliseum was a problem though, as traffic was terrible. The 49ers didn't have it much better, playing at Kezar Stadium. 

Cool spot, but like the Coliseum it's a large neighborhood stadium that became obsolete as the NFL and MLB switched to large multipurpose suburban stadiums. The 49ers would move into a converted Candlestick Park in 1970, and the Rams to a converted Anaheim Stadium in 1980. 

Neighborhood stadiums like that are common in the English Premier League (soccer), and of course the coolest college stadiums are on college campuses. The NFL and MLB saw the potential to become regional entities and built accordingly. Can't exactly argue against the results, although it didn't work out so well for baseball which has tried to tap back into that past in smaller neighborhood stadiums. 

The Rams ultimately left the region and the 49ers are desperate to find a new place to play. Gilmore Stadium was demolished in 1952 to build CBS Television city. The stadium that only wanted college football survived the LA Rams, Dons, Chargers, and Raiders and is now returned to just hosting USC. 

USC Football venues - a History

Before moving on to the Little Three, I thought we'd talk a little sports to cleanse the palate. The LA Coliseum and Exposition Park give me a chance to talk about USC Football, UCLA Football, the LA Rams, the LA Chargers, the LA Dodgers, the Olympics...gee what can't I talk about. Also, what exhibitions?

It was a Uni-Watch article that got me thinking on the subject (halfway down). Fifty years ago this weekend, USC played at Cal. Yesterday, USC played at Notre Dame. And both those series' have a lot of history and help explain the USC football phenomenon.

USC in the foreground, with the Coliseum in the background. 

USC has played Cal 97 times. It's a series without a break, but some years they played twice, and both USC and Cal had forfeited a game after the fact. Which makes the math not quite perfect. The series began on October 23rd, 1915.

Cal had been playing football since 1886, USC since 1888. Cal and Stanford both dropped football in 1906, as a response to the "football crisis" debate that was raging in America, and switched to rugby.

Cal and Stanford had actually hoped to get the entire country to come to their senses and stop playing football. They only succeeded in convincing a handful of colleges and high schools in California to do so, including USC from 1911-1913. One result of switching to the "English Game" was gaining rugby contacts in British Columbia and New Zealand. The All Blacks visited twice, plaing Cal, Stanford, and USC.

However, there was great pressure on all three campuses to conform to the notion of college life being lived at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the like. There were some fringe benefits, for instance rugby was being played when USC were nicknamed the Trojans.

Oregon and Washington were playing American football, USC switched back the year before, and Cal was looking to get back in the game; Stanford was resistant. Cal and USC signed a contract to conduct a home and home series in 1915, and so in October, USC students boarded the train to go north and face to California Bruins at California Field on the Berkeley campus.

That is California Field, where Cal and USC played American Football for the first time in the modern era: 1915. You can tell I'm walking a fine line between this being a Berkeley history article and an LA history article. I'm a Cal grad, love love love my alma mater, but I'm trying to keep this to LA history. They just played at Berkeley first : ) 

Anyhow, California Field stood about where Hearst Gym does now (where College st. meets the Cal campus) and sat about 20,000. It was Cal's second stadium, but before Memorial Stadium. And that's where USC's oldest continuous rivalry began (USC first traveled up to NorCal in for a game in 1905 against Stanford, but the teams didn't play American football again until 1918). The Trojans won this game 28-10. 

When Cal traveled down to USC on November 25th, 1915, they played at Washington Park on Washington and Hill St. in Downtown LA.

As you can see, the stadium was built for baseball. The PCL LA Angeles (they'll get an entry soon) played there from 1900-1925. The whole plot of land was built up in 1887 as Chutes Park. It was a Trolley Park, a turn of the century phenomenon where small amusement parks were built at the end of streetcar lines. The amusement park part closed in 1914, the baseball grounds as seen here were put up in 1911 though the Angels played on a smaller field at Washington and Grand from the turn of the century (USC played some big games there too). 

USC had an on campus stadium, but it was really just a practice field. It was often just called "college campus" in the papers, though in 1904 it got temporary bleachers and a name; Bovard Field. Still USC played it's big games off campus, with Washington Park the venue for the Cal game in 1915. USC played three games from 1915-1917 at Washington Park, and lost them all. 

Side note about Washington Park, it was across the street from St. Vincent's College (now Loyola Marymount). 

Things kept changing though, as Cal joined Oregon, Oregon Agricultural College and Washington in the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate Conference, which set rules for its members in American football, baseball, track, basketball, and crew. USC must not have liked its trip to Berkeley (or couldn't afford it) as Cal played USC in Los Angeles without a return trip from the Trojans until 1921. Stanford, after reinstating football in 1918, traveled down to USC to finish out their season. 

West coast football was rapidly changing. The Tournament of Roses in Pasadena had been going since 1902 when the organizers invited Stanford and Michigan to play in Tournament Park. At that time, East Coast football was so far ahead of the West than Michigan routed Stanford 49-0. The series was cancelled, and didn't resume until 1916 with Washington State and Brown. The West Coast started winning, and the grounds were built up. USC started playing their big games at Tournament Park in 1918 and one game in 1922 in the newly opened Rose Bowl against Cal with USC lost 12-0.  

The Rose Bowl and Memorial Coliseum were being built at the same time, and with the Rose Bowl finishing first, USC and Cal opened the stadium on October 28, 1922. Not only was this the first game in the Rose Bowl, but USC had been admitted to what now was being called the Pacific Coast Conference, and this was their first conference game. 

USC played in the Rose Bowl again that season. California won the PCC title, and thus the Rose Bowl bid, but declined. As a result, USC was invited to host Penn St. on New Years Day, a game they won 14-3 in front of a crowd of 43, 000. This was also the first ever college football game broadcast on radio in Los Angeles, on radio KHJ which had just launched in 1922. The radio station was owned by the Los Angeles Times. 

The Rose Bowl Game put the California Schools on the map. I mentioned that reinstating American football was a desire to take part in the typical American college life. Well, with increasing crowds, USC, Cal, and the Rose Bowl game all began building stadiums in the model of the Yale Bowl. A large amount of earth is gathered, and then a hole is dug out for the bowl. In the case of USC and the Rose Bowl, when you walk in at street level, there's the dug out bowl, and then there's the upper bowl. Cal is similar, except it was built into a hill such that the East side seats have to walk up a hill to the top of the stadium and then walk down. 

USC played it's first game at Memorial Stadium on Oct 6th. 1923 against Pomona College. Both USC and Cal dedicated their stadiums to those who died during World War 1. You see, while I was blathering about reinstating football, there was a war on!

The area the Coliseum was built on was an agricultural expo until 1910. There used to be a horse racing track where the rose garden is now; when USC started producing influential families they were having none of that gambling nonsense. 

The University of California and it's branches, as a government entity, owns the land it's campus sits on and as a result was able to build a stadium on campus land that the university owns. That's part of the reason why Cal refused to consider alternate sites during the treesitter crisis. USC on the other hand, as a private school sits on annexed Los Angeles land, and it was the city (in conjunction with the county and the state) that built Memorial Stadium. When Los Angeles was awarded the 1932 Olympics, Memorial Stadium was upgraded for that purpose. Stanford was able to annex their campus into their own city. Everyone's different. 

Football was a boom sport in 1920's California. Between 1921-1923, Stanford, Cal, the Rose Bowl Game, and Los Angeles (USC) all opened up large bowl stadiums and would soon attract crowds in the high 70,000s. 

I haven't mentioned UCLA at all. University of California, Southern Branch, didn't play football until 1919. They stuck with small schools like Loyola and Occidental. They played Stanford once in 1925 and lost 82-0. However, they were granted admission to the PCC in 1928, started using Memorial as their home stadium, and started playing USC in 1929. USC had already gotten Notre Dame to come out by train in 1926 to start that annual rivalry. The game was the second highest attended of the year (the NorCal schools still brought a bigger crowd), but the return leg was held at Chicago's Soldier Field and was played in front of 120,000. 

Anyhow, in 1961, USC-Cal (played in Berkeley at Memorial Stadium) looked like this. 

While the series has been lopsided in USC's favor, it's a longstanding pairing that has taken all the California football programs to the heights they're at now (And built all their stadiums in the span of three years).

Of course, by 1961, Memorial Stadium was also hosting the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL (which moved there from Cleveland) and for one year the Los Angeles Chargers of the new AFL. Pro football in  LA is going to have to be another article for another day (since it's minor league history involves another venue : )

Loew's State Theater - Los Angeles

MGM are an important piece of movie history. From Gone With The Wind to The Wizard of Oz up through the James Bond franchise, can't talk film without talking about MGM. Like the other Big 5 I've already written about, they had a massive film studio in Los Angeles by the end of the 20s.

Looking at the map from the Studio Club article which spurred this whole adventure through LA's theater history, Metro Goldwyn Mayer had their studio 10 miles away from the Studio Club in Culver City. The Metro in MGM was Metro Pictures Corporation, a production company founded in 1916 by Richard A. Rowand and Louis B. Mayer. Mayer left to start his own production company in 1918. In 1920, Metro Pictures which had acquired Goldwyn Pictures was purchased by Loew's Inc. which was Marcus Loew's theater exhibition company. With vertical integration complete, Mayer came back and MGM was formed in 1924.

There's the MGM Studios main gate. Not exactly the photo ready gates of Paramount Studios. Not even much to make from the details of the photo. If I hadn't told you it was MGM, you'd probably neve know. Unless you've been there of course. 

MGM studios wasn't so much about presentation as it was functionality. Here's a shot of a bustling back lot. That shot is from 1951, and you get to see actors and extras milling about as a tractor moves some scaffolding, all with the MGM sign and clock in the background. 

Things were a bit more under construction in 1937. That's New York Street being constructed. Every Hollywood Studio has a New York Street. The production companies all moved out to Los Angeles, but they never stopped telling stories in New York. The TV Show Bones, uses LA Landmarks to stand in for Washington DC, then films their street shots on Fox's New York Street. 

I mentioned that Gone With the Wind (1939) was filmed up the street at RKO's old lot. Well while that was filming, The Wizard of Oz (1939) was filming on the MGM lot. Influenced by Disney's Snow White, realizing there was a market for children's book adaptations, MGM bought the rights to the book in 1938. 

The Wizard of Oz had it's premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. I've found no evidence that the Loew's theater chain had a theater in Hollywood. However, they did have a theater in the Broadway Theater district. 

The State Theater was build in 1921 by Loew's; at 2,450 seats it was the largest of the Broadway theaters. Before she was in The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland (then Frances Gumm) performed a sister act here. 

The film Happy Landing was a 1938 Fox film as was City Girl. Sonja Henie was quite an it girl in her time, otherwise it's an unremarkable billing. While the theaters were owned by the studios, I think we're learning that didn't mean they showed exclusively films from that company. I'm sure it wasn't freeform though, there must have been agreements signed.

Remember how I talked about the cartoon shorts: RKO distributed Disney, Paramount had Betty Boop and Popeye, WB had the Looney Tunes, MGM made the Tom and Jerry cartoons. I never even realized. 

As I wrap up the Big 5, I should say a last word on what vertical integration meant for the industry. Those studios that controlled their own film-exhibition theaters showing first run films in urban areas (like the ones in downtown LA and Hollywood I tried to chronicle) controlled 50% of the seating capacity in the US for first run movies. So there were other options, but that's pretty impressive. The theaters charged high prices and attracted large crowds. 

You notice how some of the marquees were showing just alright films? Theater owners were required to purchase blind bookings, where they had to show a block of B-movies in order to show the prestigious A-movie they wanted. This process would go on until the 1940s, when US vs. Paramount ordered the studios to divest of their theaters. 

All of my studio history information I've gotten from AMC's film history page.  The website Cinema Treasures has been great in identifying theaters, and most of my photos have come from the lapl photo collection. Those I didn't take myself of course. 

The Little 3 are next, and while they don't have fancy theaters, they do play an important part in the history of Los Angeles.

A Brief Correction

I need to make a correction. I've said from the beginning, I'm aiming to find historical truths. I'm not a historian, nor am I particularly knowledgable about business. I've been making an error in saying vertical integration was owning the stars, the lot, and the theaters. I've been thinking about it as "stuff controlled" when it reality it was a business chain. As I said, I don't know business.

Vertical Integration is best defined as owning the means of production, distribution, and exhibition. Production is everything involved in making a movie, including pre and post production. When a film poster says ____ presents a ___ film, the production company is the second blank. Pixar is a production company, Big Beach is a production company, Mandate Pictures. The big studios will be the main producers on a film occasionally, but even then there are few movies with just one company paying for production.

Distribution is the first name. Production involves getting talent (actors, directors, writers) to sign contracts to create films and then contracting the post production companies. Distribution is negotiating the contract with exhibitors over showing a certain film, and making sure the prints for all those exhibitors get made and distributed.

Now I've been saying distribution when I meant exhibition. Fox, Paramount, MGM, Warner Bros, and RKO owned theater chains so it didn't have to negotiate with an exhibitor. They were the exhibitor. So they produced the films, instead of selling the rights they then distributed the films themselves, to be shown in theaters they own.

It's so much different now. Disney, before they bought Pixar, had to negotiate a contract to distribute their films. Disney then had to go to AMC Theaters, Edward Cinemas and other such theater chains, and negotiate a price for exhibition. Even though a company like AMC has a sizable bargaining chip, I can assure you most theater chains make next to nothing on straight ticket sales. That's why popcorn costs $10.

Anyhow, we'll close out the Big Five with MGM, just as soon as I figure out what theaters in Los Angeles were owned by MGM.

RKO Hill Street

Time to learn a bit about RKO pictures. The LA Times ad I found to support the Paramount article also led to more Warner investigation and introduced the two RKO theaters in the LA proper area. In 1948 those were the RKO Hillstreet and the Pantages. That date is important, because the Pantages opened as a Fox theater, but we'll get there in a moment.

The following RKO ad advertises Wise Girl, a 1937 RKO production and Penitentiary a 1938 Columbia Pictures production. The Pantages wasn't brought under RKO control until 1948, and it says smash hit pictures, so it's likely this is bit of a retread. At any rate, it introduces us to RKO pictures, and the two LA proper theaters. 

Keith-Albee-Orpheum were the controlling partners of a chain of Vaudeville and motion picture theaters known as Orpheum. Orphem and Pantages were competitors in the Vaudeville racket. Joseph P Kennedy, the father of John F. Kennedy, owned FBO studios, a small group producing Westerns. Humorously, FBO had their studio in Hollywood across the street from Fox, on Western ave. In May 1928, Joe Kennedy bought a controlling portion of Orpheum, and then sold the lot to the Radio Corporation of America. RCA called the resulting company Radio Keith Orpheum. After the merger, they were strictly a motion picture company. They became one of the Big Five, with vertical integration, by purchasing the Hillstreet theater and reopening it September 11, 1929 as the RKO Hillstreet.

It seems I underestimated the Downtown theater district. With the Warner on 6th, the Paramount on 7th and now the RKO on 8th and Hill, it certainly was the place to be. The movie on the marquee, China Corsair, came out in 1951. It was produced by Columbia, but Columbia blah blah distribution blah blah Little Three. Of course, by '51 were right up against the end of the studio system. In fact we're just one year away from the first 3D film.

It Came From Outer Space was a Universal 3D picture, and look it's also in Wide Vision. Plus Nat "King" Cole! How could you turn down that night. 

I mentioned the Pantages. Originally part of the Pantages family of Vaudeville theaters, it was bought by Fox in 1932, but then it was brought under RKO control in 1948, which is also the year RKO was purchased by Howard Hughes. That seems like it might be important for LA history. Hrm. 

Anyhow, RKO was considered the smallest of the Big Five. It was kept afloat by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, as well as King Kong and Citizen Kane. It never became the factory the other four became. It shut down for good in 1957. 

RKO had three facilities in the LA area. The old FBO Studio in Hollywood, the Forty Acres lot in Culver City, and a backlot in Encino. King Kong was shot at Forty Acres. David O Selznik ran RKO for a time, then as an independent producer leased the Culver City lot in 1937. He then leased it for pictures such as Gone With the Wind. 

The Encino lot became the main production facility. The Culver City and Hollywood studios were bought by Desilu, Lucille Ball's production company, and then they were bought by Gulf + Western which controlled Paramount. The Hollywood studio became Paramount's TV wing. 

The RKO Downtown was closed in 1963 and was demolished in 1965. Pacific Theaters, a Drive-In chain, purchased the Pantages in 1967.

Another neat note about RKO. They were the original distributor of Walt Disney's short and feature length animated films. Which meant they were the distributors of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. This deal lasted from 1936 to 1954. Disney opened Walt Disney Studios in Burbank in 1940 with the revenue from Snow White. Fifteen years later, he was building a theme park.

There's a side view of the RKO Hillstreet. That style of parking lot should be familiar to LA locals, and you have to love the giant bill painted on the brick. But who's that on the small billboard underneath? Why that's Mickey! 

Warner Downtown and Wiltern

First, it was supposed to be one post, so I could use some of my photos from my historical walk on Hollywood blvd. I said in it, that I'd just be scratching the surface, the more I find. Then I thought, I'll just cover the Big 5 and the Little 3, and I'll be on to another topic in 8 posts.

Well, this will be my third post of Warner Bros. in LA, so to quote the LA legend Vin Scully "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."

Warner Bros. Downtown (1938)

Now the Warner Downtown was on 7th and Hill, so one block over from the Paramount. And what a theater! The photo is was taken January 26, 1938. The film on the marquee, The Hurricane by Samuel Goldwyn was released in November of '37. It was distributed by United Artists, but as you'll learn, UA didn't have a theater chain (like Universal, making them two of the Little Three). Goldwyn made pictures for Paramount for a time, but was an indie filmmaker by the 1920s.

I found out about the Warner Downtown when I wrote the Paramount Studios post, I found this LA Times Ad, which reopened the Warner topic for me (and made me decide to do RKO pictures next!)

LA Times theater ad (1949)

It was a companion to the LA Times ad I featured in the last post, and it shows the two Paramount Theaters in LA proper. To the left of Paramount's Sealed Verdict, is Warner's New Adventures of Don Juan; with Errol Flynn! 

Errol Flynn was famous for his portrayal of Robin Hood, one of Hollywood's original swashbucklers. So perfect for the part of Don Juan. The ad shows the film is playing at the Warner Hollywood, which we've covered here. It's also showing at the Warner Downtown and the Wiltern. 

Wait, Warner Downtown? I mentioned that Warner built the Hollywood theater and opened in the 1928, but in 1929 Warner purchased the Pantageas theater downtown. Now the Hollywood Pantageas still is operational, but that was built in 1930 to replace the downtown one that Warner bought. I'm gonna have to dig into the Pantageas circuit, make a post out of it soon, since it keeps coming up. Remember the Pantageas in Portland, Oregon became a Warner theater as well. 

The Warner Downtown opened in 1929 with Gold Diggers of Broadway. This film is important because it's just the second ever all talking film done entirely in two strip technicolor. Color took longer to catch on than talking, and was reserved for the family film categories: musicals, costume pictures, and animated features. 

Gold Diggers of Broadway is considered a lost film, and the more known version is it's remake Gold Diggers of 1933. Unlike it's early version, this one is in black and white, and features the song "We're in the Money". A little bit of Warner musical history. 

The ad for Adventures of Don Juan calls it a technicolor hit! On the marquee for The Hurricane it's advertised as featuring Vitaphone (Warner's sound process). What a difference a decade makes : )

That still leaves the Wiltern. Named for the corner it sits on (Wilshire and Western), it was built in 1931 and opened as the Warner Bros. Western Theater. 

The idea was to run Vaudeville here, but that didn't work and the Warner closed a year later. It reopened in the mid 30s with the Wiltern signage, and became part of Warner's LA proper trio. The Wiltern is now a concert venue, it didn't make it past 1956 as a film theater. The Warner Downtown made it to 1975, and the Warner Hollywood was showing films up until the Red Line was built in the 1990s. 

I wonder what I'll find when I look into Glen Ford and Terry Moore performing in person on stage at the Pantageas and Hillstreet : )

Paramount Theater Downtown (and Hollywood!)

We've gone thoroughly through two vertically integrated movie companies so far; Warner Bros. and Fox. While the movie palaces are gone, the moves back in the late 20s - early 30s led these companies to set up campuses they still occupy today. That's also true for today's topic, Paramount Pictures.

Let's go over some themes before moving on. Things in the movies grew really fast. From small New York based companies in the early 1910s. Then moving out to Los Angeles in the late 1910s. Then establishing Hollywood Studios in the early 1920s, and building centralized studio owned movie palaces in the late 1920s. In the early 1930s, building suburban movie palaces. Of course, all of that is bracketed by two World Wars. Then after WWII, LA gets another boom industry, aerospace.

Paramount came up briefly in my Hollywood history overview, as their lot ended up housing Cecil B. Demille's barn. When Demille came out to Los Angeles to film The Squaw Man in 1914, he ended up renting that barn on Vine St. and using it as a studio. At that time he was under the control of Lasky pictures, who ended up establishing a studio on Western blvd. up the street from Fox and FBO.

The other partner in Paramount was Adolph Zukor's Famous Players, who built a studio at 5300 Melrose. When the two companies merged into Famous Players - Lasky, all operations moved to the Lasky studio. The Melrose studio was occupied, starting in the 20s, by Clune Studios, and then a whole series of also rans.

In 1926, Famous-Lasky bought the lot next to the old Famous Players lot, and in 1927 the company was reincorporated as Paramount Studios, later Paramount Pictures. The company still operates out of that studio at 5500 Melrose, the last remaining studio in Hollywood proper.

That's the corporate history, now to ground it in LA landmarks : ) Of course, the most recognizable Paramount landmark is the wrought iron gate:

Paramount Studios Bronson Gate (1933)

It's most famous role is in the movie Sunset Blvd, but it's made several cinematic appearances. That photo was taken in 1933, during an NRA strike. That's the banner on the gate, the National Recovery Administration created by FDR as a New Deal initiative. After the National Industrial Recovery Act gave workers protection to do so, the country saw a wave of organized demonstrations. Those are film technicians and extras waiting to go back to work. 

So Paramount has the production facility. We know it's had stars under contract, from Cecil B. Demille to Mary Pickford and DW Griffith (who would go on to found United Artists). All it needs is a movie palace to hold premieres (and later some movie houses to control distribution) and they're one of the Big 5. Well: 

Parmaount Theater, downtown LA (1939)

The Paramount was originally one of Sid Grauman's theaters. Grauman is responsible for the infamous Chinese and Egyptian theaters on Hollywood blvd. However, he built his Metropolitan theater near his Million Dollar Theater in downtown LA. I've posted the picture I took of the Million Dollar theater (across from the very cool farmer's market), now here's the old Met on Sixth and Hill Streets, across from Pershing Square.

Paramount bought the theater district movie palace in 1929 by their exhibition arm. You can see on the marquee, the movie that night was Gulliver's Travels a feature length cartoon. It's a film that gets compared to Snow White and the like, but it was produced by Fleischer Studios who had a production and distribution deal with Paramount. 

When it was released in 1939, it was just the second cel animated feature length ever released, after Disney's Snow White. Both Disney and Fleischer had experience with cel animated shorts, with Fleisher responsible for Popeye and Betty Boop. It was common for studios to run animation shorts and/or newsreels before their feature length films (Warner Bros had the Looney Tunes, and I'm sure I'm gonna find more as I keep digging). Obviously Disney, concentrating solely on animated features, ended up dominating the family film market and branching into theme parks (which we'll have to cover here), but in the 1930s, the field was wide open. 

There's a Paramount Theater in Oakland, built in 1931, which still operates today. On Friday's they show old movies, with a newsreel and a cartoon. I didn't realize until today that Betty Boop was a Paramount controlled character, but one of her cartoons was shown the night I went to see It Happened One Night. 

Paramount Theater, in Oakland (1975)

So that should give you a good idea about Paramount Picture's history, it's place in the golden age of Hollywood, and just a taste of the scene. Later the LA Paramount became known as the Paramount Downtown, to distinguish it from the newly acquired Paramount Hollywood. 

Paramount Theater marquee (1942)

That's the marquee for the Paramount Hollywood box office, which may look both familiar and strange. It was originally opened in 1926 (and later reopened in 1991) as the El Capitan. And yes, it's another Sid Grauman theater. It was remodeled in a more modern style in 1942, and that's a photo from the opening, featuring Cecil B DeMille's Reap the Wild Wind (featuring John Wayne!). Having two centralized theaters led to ads like this one in the LA Times: 

Frankenstein meets The Wolf Man and Captive Wild Woman LA Times ad (1943)

Captive Wild Woman, I love it! Frankenstein meets The Wolf Man and Captive Wild Woman were both Universal properties, but we'll learn later than Universal didn't own a distribution wing (making it one of the Little Three). Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is one of the other movies I saw at the Paramount Theater. 

One of the other recurring topics on this blog as I've talked about Hollywood is how much the studios panicked when Television came out, going to widescreen, cinerama, smell-o-vision, and of course, the one that has cropped up again now that TV's have gone widescreen: 

The world's first three dimensional picture, Bwana Devil! Now we're in 1952, and in direct response to television we get this film about killer lions. The marquee reads "The most important event since pictures learned to talk". It really should have read "the technology isn't really ready yet, but we'll release a bunch of B-movies and it'll be a fad and hipsters will wear 3D glasses around town. But just wait until it takes off in the next century!" 

By the by, you'll notice the marquee looks different. Before the release of Bwana Devil, the Paramount underwent a modernization in June of 1952. The Marigold Cafe at 329 6th st. confirms where we are. Bwana Devil came out in the fall of 52. The premiere screening of Bwana Devil at the Oakland Paramount Theater is where the Life Magazine picture of the audience wearing 3D glasses all staring at the screen.