Joni Mitchell & the golden era

[MK]

I bought a delightful book today: Hollywood Then & Now . Not to be confused with Hollywood Now & Then.

No joke. They are different books by different authors. I am a sucker for books on old Hollywood and own both now.

Anyway.....I learned something from this new one.

In the 1920's there were a complex of villas built on Sunset Blvd. Some of the biggest stars lived there at one time or another. Names like Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Errol Flynn, Clara Bow, David Niven, the Marx brothers and even Humphrey Bogart! The place was called "The Garden of Allah".

?¢‚Ǩ?ìBig Yellow Taxi,?¢‚Ǩ? a great song by Joni Mitchell was about the tearing down of that lovely place.

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot!"

In 1950's the Garden was sold to Lytton Savings and Loan, which tore it down and a bank....and a parking lot . It is now a strip mall.:cry:

I know know what Joni went. It is a crying shame to tear down a piece of history.....for a parking lot and a strip mall. Lord knows we need more of them.

I will never hear that song in the same way again.

 

[STHill]

So that's what she was singing about. I always wondered if she was referring to a specific incident or society in general.

What were thinking when they tore that place down?

 

[Bogie1943]

For us Golden Era buffs that is something we consider a crying shame. For me it just shows how Americans, well some Americans, fail to appreciate history, heritage, and tradition. Now for those of us here at the Lounge, we obviously don't have this problem. We are lovers of the Golden Era and wish to preserve it as much as we can. Those old homes were just incredible pieces of 1920's Californian archetecture and it is truely a shame they were destoryed for such a pointless reason.:cool2:

 

[Michaelson]

Josh, don't get me started. Think 'Portsmouth, Ohio', my hometown, and what they've done there. YOU know what I'm talking about, being you're an old neighbor of mine. They can't tear it down fast enough, then paint a mural on the flood wall to commemoriate the rich heritage of the community's past buildings and businesses. Many times I'm ashamed to even admit I was born and raised there, as my family started one of the local towns just upriver from Portsmouth in the mid 1800's. As we 'speak', they're tearing down the 1931 Norfolk and Western 3 story railroad station to build the new COUNTY JAIL!!!!!! Makes me physically ill. Seriously. Most of the original Victorian downtown homes have been completely stripped and bulldozed to make room for a new combined high school/middle school, and I'm talking about blocks and blocks of neighborhoods of original homes. They're even talking about tearing down my home church, a ENORMOUS 1917 brick/steepled ediface (5 stories high, with a 10 story high tower and bell, 3 foot thick walls! on and on.) to make room for a parking lot for the new single story frame church they're buildling across the street. Nothing is sacred. My entire past has been literally razed by individuals who moved into the city in the mid 1980's, and when industry moved out due to the construction of a new State college, property values took a dive, and commercial taxes jumped. Heavy industry couldn't survive, so they moved out. Developers have been picking up properties left and right, and the destruction began.
We don't have to look toward Hollywood or the West Coast to experience the rape of our 'Golden Era'. It's still going on today...it's crept into the heartland of the country, and the cancer continues to grow. :cry: Pardon my ramblings, but this is a subject that is to close to my heart, and it's something I can't fix, and can only watch as they tear out yet another connection to my past....OUR past, and it's happening all over the U.S. Regards. Michaelson

 

[Wild Root]

Hey guys. This is something that I feel very strong about. The preservation of our historical buildings!!! Now, Michaelson, I know it seems like there really isn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t any thing you can do, but there is! There must be some sort of historical foundation dedicated to the preservation of old buildings. Especially a beautiful church! I know that there are large groups here in California that go nuts when they get wind of a historical land mark being threatened by the proposal of a stupid strip mall or even worse a parking lot!!! What we do over here is get big signs and posters and rally all around the building and get support to stop the wrecking ball! It really works when they see how many really don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t want to see things change for the worse! I talk to many people and they will bring up something like this and come to find out that they didn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t want to see a gas station go where a lovely old Art Deco or what ever was before. But, they don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t know how to stop it from happening. So, if you get enough people and such on your side, you might have a good chance to over power the wrecking ball! Do what ever you can to save our history! Don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t ever give up if it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s something important to you.

Ok, I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m getting off of my soap box now.

See ya all later.

 

[havershaw]

I don't even want to talk about what they're going to do to the Ambassador Hotel...

MK, I wish I had seen this thread earlier. Being a fan of old Hollywood myself, I'm very familiar with the Garden of Allah. When it was torn down, they were aware of the history they destroyed. And they wanted to do something about it - so they built a scale model of the hotel and its grounds, which, for many years, was inside a big shelter on the grounds. However, the shelter became a hotel for the homeless, and it was taken down, but the model still exists, though I don't know where. There is a great book called "The Garden of Allah" by Sheilah Graham which you should get. I found it in a rare book shop in Florida, but it shows up on eBay from time to time. There's one on there now, but it looks like it's in terrible shape and it's not the hardback edition which I have, which has a lot of other photos of it on the dustjacket.

Also, if you don't have David Wallace's "Lost Hollywood" book, you should maybe check that out as well. It gave me a lot of concise ideas about what kind of things I wanted to find out more about. Lots of short essays on a number of Hollywood institutions which are no longer there.

 

[Michaelson]

Just to note, I moved away from my hometown over 18 years ago, and was part of the migration of families of my age that did so when the 'rust belt' began with a vengence in the Ohio River Valley in the mid 80's. The only people left there are our aged parents who don't really care anymore, and the new folks who REALLY don't care, as most of them moved into the vacuum left when WE moved to apply for the Federal aid and Social Security benefits that the Goverment supplied when things went bust. Those of us who refused to eat the 'welfare cheese' and had mouths at home to feed moved on to find work. (Things were so bad, Portsmouth Ohio actually made the front cover of Life magazine during that time period as the highest receiver of Federal aid in the country. What they DIDN'T report was that all the folks depicted in the article were families who had moved into the area just months before from other States in order to meet the 4 week living requirement that the Feds put in place so aid COULD be received. It was like a land rush!) So, what's left are folks who don't care due to age, or don't care because they have absolutely nothing invested in the town, so they'll tear it down in the name of progress. Anything we say now as the ones who moved on are considered as coming from 'outsiders'. So to answer your question, no, there is NOTHING that can be done for the town I was raised in. To those who are sitting in towns like this, be warned, and stop the rot before it razes YOUR heritage. Regards. Michaelson