The Hollywood Canteen - Helping The War Effort

The intent of this blog was always personal, a place for me to record the history of the LA I read about on the internet. It's a weblog in the truest sense, like a captain's log on a sci-fi series. Today's entry has been written about before, and probably more thoroughly done, elsewhere. Before this afternoon, I never knew that a building I had been in many times before, Amoeba Records, sat on the site of one of World War II era Hollywood's most important night spots.

1451 Cahuenga Blvd. was originally the spot of a livery stable. That stable became a nightclub fittingly called the Old Barn, and with a war on in 1942 it reopened as the Hollywood Canteen. The canteen had sister outfits in New York featuring Broadway stars and in London. Much like the USO provided entertainment for soldiers abroad, the idea of the canteens was to give soldiers on leave an experience they'd never forget.



Just by showing up in uniform, soldiers were given a free meal, and the chance to dance with beautiful women. At the Hollywood Canteen soldiers got to meet movie stars, chat with them, get an autograph, maybe even get a dance and a kiss. You see, the whole thing was run by celebrities volunteering their services.

Servicemen chatting up a pair of starlets. Photo credit LAPL

The founding members were actor John Garfield and actress Bette Davis. The head of the Music Corporation of America Jules Stein headed up the finance committee. They received generous funding from Ciro's Nightclub founder Harry Cohn, who was also the head of Columbia Pictures.

Bette Davis, looking as ravishing as ever. Photo credit LAPL

Davis made a good career playing a mean girl for Warner Bros. She won Academy Awards for Dangerous and Jezebel, and was nominated every year from 1938 to 1942. Forty-two was a big year for Davis, as she became heavily involved in the war effort. Before starting the night club, she once sold $2 million in war bonds in two days. 

Cutting a cake dedicated to the Russian Army. Photo credit LAPL

The clubs were open to all allied soldiers, even if it was mostly American servicemen who frequented them. Here we see a cake dedicated to "Our Gallant Russia" on their 26th anniversary. Bette Davis is preparing to cut the cake with three Russian soldiers and the chef looking on. The man in the suit is a Russian Counsel.

Brief history lesson: The Red Army was formed in 1918 as the communist combat groups of the Russian Revolution took over the country after the first World War. Russia remained an Allied Power in the second World War, and suffered the heavy bulk of the casualties. Clearly at this point, US-Russian relations were just fine. 

It wasn't until after the war and Russia declared they wanted to create the Eastern Bloc because European countries kept trying to invade them that communism became identified as this huge evil power trying to take over the world. This photo is from 1944, two years later the Red Army would become the Soviet Army. 

Soldiers getting autographs. Photo credit, LAPL

The lines were long to get in, and you'd have to wait in line for your meal, wait in line to get an autograph. Still, it's hard to be cynical about the women of Hollywood volunteering their time to try and help the war effort in whatever little way they could. 

The Hollywood Canteen became so popular that in 1944 Warner Bros made a film called the Hollywood Canteen starring Betty Davis. The year before, United Artists made a film called Stage Door Canteen, the name of the New York counterpart. This musical was shown on KCET this past weekend as part of their Cool Classics series, inspiring this post. You can watch the film below. 

The newsreel that I lead with was shown with the film, as the Classic Cool series always accompanies the film with a cartoon, newsreel, and music video to give the piece context.

The cartoon this week was a Superman serial. There were seventeen films produced, first by Fleischer Studios and then by Famous Studios which succeeded Fleischer. The Fleischer brothers had made the animated feature Gulliver's Travels that came up in my entry on Paramount (there's a picture there of Gulliver's opening at the Paramount Theater downtown). Paramount released the Superman films, which during the Famous Studios period became propaganda films showing Superman besting Hitler and Nazi soldiers. You can watch the last of these short animated films, Secret Agent, here: