Lost Hollywood: where the city forgets, but the stories refuse to die

For more than a decade, six enormous faces from Hollywood's golden past looked down upon the traffic and pedestrians of Hollywood Boulevard. Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, Bette Davis, James Dean and Clark Gable stood shoulder to shoulder, larger than life, transforming an otherwise ordinary wall into a colorful monument to the movies. Then, in a matter of seconds on the morning of January 17, 1994, they were gone.

A roaring Los Angeles story: When Southern California became the movie capital of the world, Hollywood Boulevard wasn’t the only attraction filling up with enthusiasts from around the globe. Several miles east of the bright lights lay another entertainment phenomenon unique to the region: a working farm filled with African lions. Gay’s Lion Farm offered visitors a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gaze upon dozens of full-grown lions roaming fenced enclosures, roar kingdoms like kings above the distant cityscape, and witness the spectacle of their trainers feeding these ferocious animals nearly a ton of raw meat every single day.

Before Hollywood became the center of the movie industry, there was Inceville, a film colony set between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Mountains. Though now mostly remembered through old photos, film clips, and stories, Inceville was once the most ambitious studio in the world and set the stage for the modern Hollywood studio system.

In Hollywood's darkest days--the uncertain, telegram-filled years of World War II when movie scripts were rewritten to suit patriotic needs--there was one Hollywood hot spot where glamour took a back seat to thankfulness. Tucked away on a corner just south of Sunset at 1451 Cahuenga Boulevard, behind an unassuming facade that hinted at nothing grand inside, the Hollywood Canteen swung open its doors and redefined celebrity volunteerism. The Canteen wasn't exactly a nightclub, nor was it the invention of Hollywood studios, although at times it sure acted like one. For three years, from 1942 to 1945, it became a bastion of equality and mutual sacrifice as movie stars waited tables, scrubbed pots and danced with servicemen and women who were about to ship out to fight in World War II.

A long-troubled landmark on Sunset Boulevard was jolted back into grim public view early Sunday morning when fire tore through the boarded-up Hollywood Center Motel at 6720 West Sunset Boulevard, sending heavy flames through both floors of the deteriorating structure and prompting a dramatic ladder rescue. The blaze, reported at approximately 4:30 a.m. near the intersection of Sunset and Highland, drew a massive response from the Los Angeles Fire Department as thick smoke and fire engulfed the former motel complex.

Once upon a time, before craft cocktails and velvet-roped nightclubs came to colonize Hollywood, there was another first taste of the city. Not beneath a neon marquee, but through the doors of a spotless, streamlined restaurant at 1743 North Cahuenga Boulevard. Today the address is a shape-shifting nightlife space, rebuilt, repainted, reinvented so many times its origins have nearly slipped from memory. But in 1939, this was one of Hollywood’s most polished, modern welcome centers: the Fred Harvey Restaurant and Travel Center, a collaboration between the famed Harvey House empire and Santa Fe Trailways designed to greet starry-eyed newcomers with efficiency, glamour, and the faint promise of possibility.

In the mid–1920s, as Hollywood Boulevard was transforming from a dusty trolley route into the film capital’s neon-lit main street, a veteran character actor named Henry Bergman quietly set about building a different kind of stage. Bergman, best known as a stalwart member of Charlie Chaplin’s stock company, had spent decades in theaters and on movie sets, playing everything from bartenders and mayors to comic foils. By 1925, he was ready for a venture where the audience could eat, drink, and gossip between pictures. With Chaplin’s financial backing, Bergman took over a storefront near the corner of Hollywood and Vine and created Henry’s Café at 6325 Hollywood Boulevard—part delicatessen, part late-night canteen, and, for a brief but glittering moment, one of the town’s most important meeting places.

HOLLYWOOD - On Sunset Boulevard, where neon once shimmered and film stars once slept, the Hollywood Center Motel now sits like a ghost from another age — its faded sign and boarded windows silently bearing witness to a century of dreams, danger, and decay. Once a symbol of modern travel and mid-century charm, the motel is now a symbol of Hollywood’s uneasy relationship with its past — and its present.

HOLLYWOOD - Before the Walk of Fame, before neon marquees turned Hollywood Boulevard into a river of light, there was a quieter kind of grandeur — one built on marble columns and whispered invitations.