To generations of moviegoers, Carl Switzer would forever be “Alfalfa,” the freckle-faced, cowlick-haired boy whose off-key serenades and hopeless devotion to Darla made him one of the most recognizable members of Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedies. By 1958, however, the little boy on the screen was thirty years old, his days of childhood stardom long behind him. Acting jobs had become sporadic, and Switzer supplemented his income as a bartender, dog trainer and professional hunting guide. Then, on a January night in Studio City, someone apparently tried to kill him.

Long before Hollywood scandals arrived with publicists, attorneys and carefully worded statements, trouble at a movie star’s home could be wonderfully uncomplicated. Someone called the police, a patrolman arrived, and the next morning the newspapers told everybody what happened.

Hollywood sold sunshine and dreams almost as soon as film came to town—young flesh and celluloid lust. But tucked away from spotlights and palm trees, just underneath the angle of flash bulbs, was another kind of commerce—one that whispered rather than shouted, that worked as hard but rarely rested. Hollywood has had prostitution since its earliest days, though not in the boldface manner of later mythologizers. The business was discreet (held indoors and away from stationary property) and conducted under the perpetual threat of arrest, molded by fear as much as libido.

By the time dawn broke over Hollywood on Christmas morning, 1928, the house at 6622 Iris Drive in Whitley Heights had already passed into local legend. What had begun as a holiday gathering at the home of actress Lottie Pickford—sister of Mary Pickford and once a familiar name in silent-era cast lists—ended instead as a police blotter bonanza, complete with fistfights, bloodied hands, frantic neighbors, and headlines that blared of Hollywood excess spilling into violence.

In November 1928, Hollywood was already expert at manufacturing illusion. By day, the studios hummed and the stars smiled for the cameras. By night, the city belonged to shadows, unpaved roads, stalled automobiles, and men who knew where the streetlights ended. It was in that darkness—just as the silent era was gasping its last breath—that Lottie Pickford, younger sister of Mary Pickford and Jack Pickford, became the unlikely name at the center of one of Hollywood’s most disturbing police blotter stories.