Entertainment Industry
Articles about the entertainment industry in Los Angeles.
There’s something so LA about Film Noir. In a similar way to how the novels of Charles Dickens recreate the world of Victorian London, Film Noir perfectly captures the aesthetic and atmosphere of 1940’s and 50’s Los Angeles. The different aspects of the city: its sunny beaches, neat clean suburbs and downtown concrete jungle, make a perfect setting for these…
Culver City isn’t by any means considered one of Los Angeles County’s best known cities. Sitting on the Westside, almost completely surrounded by the city of LA, at first it can seem like it’s in-between a lot of other, much more interesting, places such as Santa Monica, Koreatown, Venice, downtown and even Beverly Hills. However,…
The Black Dahlia is one of the most famous unsolved murder cases in criminal history and a subject for numerous documentaries, books, TV episodes and movies. Law enforcement agencies, criminal experts, on-camera presenters and amateur sleuths have all attempted to solve the case, all without success. Rather like the Jack the Ripper murders in London…
Victor Ponet, a Belgian LA land developer, undertaker and diplomat, bought 240 acres of the old Rancho La Brea in 1890. His new estate consisted mostly of poinsettia fields and was a couple of miles west of a small village that was only just becoming known as Hollywood. Fourteen years later Ponet had a six-hundred…
The Hollywood Sign is such an iconic structure that it never needs an introduction or description to first-time visitors who are guests. They know it well, having seen it untold times in movies, TV shows and news pieces. For sure they’ve seen a picture of it many times too. Interestingly if you next ask them…
When we visit the Broadway Theater District on our tours, visitors from outside Los Angeles can get confused. There’s a Broadway with lots of theaters in LA too? Isn’t that New York? Their confusion only increases when we tell them that actually ours has the largest number of historic theaters in the entire U.S. It…
When the TCL Chinese Theatre opened in 1927 it was known as Sid Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and some older Angelenos still call it such. Directly opposite, across the Walk of Fame, is the El Capitan Theatre, now owned by Disney, but when it opened in 1926 it was a Broadway style theatre that was part-owned…
The performing arts building at 1735 Vine Street near the intersection with Sunset Boulevard, now known as the Avalon Hollywood, has been singularly successful over the course of its nearly hundred-year-old life. When the Hollywood Playhouse opened in during the Prohibition era of the 1920’s most theaters being erected in Los Angeles were being designed…