South Bay History

Santa Catalina Island passed through many hands after first being claimed for Spain by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542. 

Its 76 square miles of land was used mostly for farming and ranching until the late 19th century. When George Shatto purchased it in 1887, he became the first owner to see the value of  transforming the island into a resort mecca. He built the landmark Hotel Metropole in 1887, and laid out plans for the city of Avalon.

Shatto sold the island to the Banning family in 1891. Over the years, the Bannings continued developing Avalon, but were set back by the disastrous fire which swept through the city in 1915. It dealt a major blow to the family’s fortunes, enough so for them to have to sell it to chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. in 1919.

Wrigley was even more committed than the Bannings into turning the island into a major resort area, and immediately set about to rebuild and reconfigure Avalon according to his vision. One of his first projects: to build a casino and dance hall on a promontory of Avalon Bay known as Sugar Loaf Point.

Sugar Loaf Point had long been a landmark for sailing ships, marking the northern end to Avalon Harbor. Its main features were two large rock formations, Big Sugar Loaf and Little Sugar Loaf. Crude wooden stepladder planks were built on LIttle Sugar Loaf in 1896 to allow tourists to climb to the top of it and take in the spectacular views.

Wrigley decided that Sugar Loaf Point would make the perfect location for his casino. He dynamited Big Sugarloaf rock to the ground to make room for the octagonal building, leaving Little Sugar Loaf standing on the very end of the Point. Construction was completed in 1921.

Neither the original casino building nor its successor ever offered gambling of any kind. In naming the building, Wrigley was using the more general Italian meaning of the word, seeing this casino as a social gathering place. As such, the first casino hosted entertainments including dancing and silent movie screenings during the 1920s.

Wrigley eventually decided that the casino just wasn’t large or splendid enough to attract throngs of visitors. He had it demolished in February 1928. He saved the octagonal metal framework of the building, and transported it inland in pieces for reuse in the construction of the main aviary of the Catalina Island Bird Park complex, which opened in 1929.

A much bigger ballyhoo ensued that same year with the opening of the new Casino building, which cost $2 million to build.

Wrigley had already blasted away Big Sugar Loaf rock to build the earlier casino. For a time it was thought that Little Sugar Loaf rock would remain on the end of the promontory, but Wrigley decided to dynamite it away in March 1929 to give his new edifice more visibility to incoming ships and provide visitors unobstructed views from its terraces.

The new casino opened on May 29, 1929, and it was, and still is, a marvel. The round building stood the equivalent of 12 stories high, though it only had two levels.

The bottom level consisted of a state-of-the-art movie theater with seating for 1,184 customers. It was fully outfitted with the very latest equipment capable of screening the new “talking pictures” then coming out of Hollywood in increasing numbers.

The elegant ballroom on the top level, at the time the largest round ballroom in the world, was capable of accommodating 2,000 dancing couples. 

The casino’s designers, Sumner A. Spaulding and William A. Webber, called for installing ramps instead of stairs to connect to the upper level in order to account for the faster movement of large numbers of people. The idea came from Wrigley’s ballpark in Chicago, Wrigley Field.

The building’s exterior was designed in the Moorish Alhambra style. Its interior furnishings and fixtures were done in the then-popular Art Deco mode.

The ballroom soon became one of the island’s premier attractions. Just about every major big band  enthralled dancers there, including orchestras led by Benny Goodman, Jimmy Dorsey, Kay Kyser (and his Kollege of Musical Knowledge), Harry James, Glen Miller, Artie Shaw, the  Count Basie Orchestra, and many others. 

Pop musicians also played the Casino’s ballroom during the 1960s. British rock legends The Yardbirds played there on Aug. 23, 1966, during the short time that ace guitarists Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were both still in the band. Page recalls on his Facebook page arriving at the island via seaplane and having to use unfamiliar amps rented for the gig.

Hard rock band Blue Oyster Cult played there on Aug 21, 2006, and rock revivalists Rival Sons played a live-streamed event there in 2021 during the pandemic.

After 90 years of operation, the movie theater closed for regular screenings in 2019 due to low attendance. It still hosts film festivals and special events.

The Casino itself, still the largest building on the island, remains open for visitors for touring, and also holds holiday events and other celebrations.

Sources:

“Avalon Theatre Owner Blames Streaming Services for ‘Upside-Down’ Attendance,” by Rebecca Rubin, Variety, Dec. 12, 2019.

The Catalina Story, by Alma Overholt, Catalina Island Museum Society, Inc., 1962.

Daily Breeze archives.

Los Angeles Times archives.

Islapedia website.

Redondo Reflex archives.

“The Sad Story of Sugar Loaf Rock,” by Eleanor McCrackin, Postcard History website, Aug. 26, 2021.

Wikipedia.

Aviation pioneer Donald W. Douglas is most often associated with Douglas Aircraft, the firm he created near Clover Field in Santa Monica in 1921. (Clover Field was later renamed Santa Monica Municipal Airport).

Born in Brooklyn, New York on April 6, 1892, Douglas was entranced with aviation from its earliest days. He dropped out of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1912 in order to pursue aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

Just two years later, he became the first person at the school to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering. While still in his early 20s, he designed aircraft, including a U.S. Navy dirigible, for several different firms.

He formed his first company, the Davis-Douglas Company, in July 1920 with investor David Davis. Its mission was to develop the first manned aircraft to make a nonstop flight across the United States. 

The Davis-Douglas airplane, the Cloudster, was brought down by engine troubles during its June 1921 attempt, leading to the dissolution of the company. Davis pulled out of the venture, and Douglas carried on under the Douglas Aircraft Co. name at Clover Field in Santa Monica. (John Macready and Oakley Kelley made the first successful U.S. transcontinental flight in May 1923.)

A few miles south, aviation activity had begun ramping up at Mines Field north of the newly incorporated city of El Segundo, especially after the airfield with its crude oiled dirt runways was selected as the official site of Los Angeles Municipal Airport in 1928.

The small Moreland Aircraft Co. opened up on land south of Imperial Highway at the airfield’s southern border in 1928, and the company built small training planes there from 1928 to 1931. In 1932, Douglas Aircraft bought Moreland and renamed it the Northrop Division of Douglas Aircraft after Douglas brought in another future aviation legend, Jack Northrop, who was then working for him, to run it.

Northrop designed two successful monoplanes at the El Segundo plant, the Gamma and the Delta. He would leave to form his own company in nearby Hawthorne in 1937, confusingly also  named the Northrop Co. The El Segundo plant was then renamed the El Segundo Division of Douglas Aircraft.

During the 1930s, the streets on the east and west sides of the El Segundo plant were renamed Aviation Blvd. and Douglas St., respectively.

Back in Santa Monica, the flagship Douglas plant had broken through with the production of the DC-3 commercial aircraft, introduced in 1935. It was a huge success both commercially and militarily as the repurposed C-47 during World War II. The company would continue to produce DC commercial jets for decades following the war.

The onset of the war sent the Douglas plants into overdrive. The company opened a third plant in Long Beach which initially specialized in C-47 transport production, and later became one of three plants turning out the workhorse B-17 bomber. 

The El Segundo Douglas plant was retooled to produce fighter planes for the U.S. Navy. These were propeller-driven monoplanes capable of being launched from aircraft carrier decks. The most famous of these: the SBD Dauntless dive bomber.

The “SBD” stands for “Scout Bomber Douglas,” and the majority of them were produced at the Douglas El Segundo plant beginning in the mid-1930s. The Dauntless dive bomber, an extremely slow-flying plane by modern standards, is credited with greatly influencing the outcome of the war in the Pacific theater.

Four squadrons of Dauntless planes attacked the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway on June 6, 1942, sinking all four of the Japanese warships present, taking down three of them within six minutes. This naval victory essentially stopped the Japanese advance across the Pacific in its tracks, and gave the Allied forces their first major naval victory of the war.

Following World War II, Douglas Aircraft laid off approximately 100,000 of its wartime-peak 160,000 employees. But the business of aviation and aerospace research and production continued.

The company moved into jet aircraft, missile production and aerospace technology. Its A-6 Skyhawk fighter jet became a key weapon in the arsenal of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps during the 1950s and 1960s.

Commercial aircraft in the DC series resumed, with propeller-driven airliners giving way to jets,  beginning with the introduction of the DC-8 in 1958 to compete with the Boeing 707 jetliner.

30 years of Douglas Aircraft production in El Segundo ended when the plant ceased its manufacturing operations in 1962. Its former site now contains a Northrop-Grumman plant on its north end, and the Los Angeles Air Force Base on its south end that fronts El Segundo Blvd.

In 1967, Douglas Aircraft merged with the McDonnell corporation to form McDonnell Douglas. Douglas Aircraft shuttered its Santa Monica plant in 1968. McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997, retiring the final vestige of the Douglas name in the industry.

Donald Douglas died at the age of 88 on Feb. 1, 1981. The final former Douglas Aircraft plant in Long Beach closed in 2015.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

“The Douglas Aircraft That Became Los Angeles Air Force Base,” by Robert Mulcahy, Los Angeles Air Force Base website, 2012.

El Segundo: Seventy-Five Years: A Pictorial History of El Segundo, California, by Eileen Curry Hunter, H2 Limited, 1991.

The Skyhawk Association website.

Wikipedia.

Skateboarding has been around longer than one might think.

Tony Hawk helped make the sport famous during the early days of the X Games in the late 1990s, but skateboards already had been around for a long time before that.

California surfers during the 1950s nailed roller skate wheels to wooden planks and began riding these homemade boards on paved surfaces to give themselves a land-bound activity to indulge in when the surf wasn’t up.

The sport gradually picked up momentum, and the first commercially available skateboards were produced and sold by The Roller Derby Skate Co. in La Mirada in 1959.

By the early 1960s, a variety of manufacturers were making the boards, often in the shape of miniature surfboards and not just planks of wood. With their superior design and construction, Makaha and Hobie brand boards became state of the art during this era.

As one would expect in a hotbed of surfing culture, the boards became extremely popular in the South Bay, with local newspapers taking note of the phemonenon in the early 1960s.

Emulating the well-established surfing clubs of the era, younger teens began to form informal groups devoted to skateboarding.

A pair of sixth graders at the now-closed Newton Elementary School in Torrance, Gregg Carroll and Gary Hill, liked the idea of having their own club with custom-made jackets and patches. They decided to form the Imperial Skateboard Club, the Imperials for short, and got several of their friends to join them.

Other members included Bill McKaig, Bruce McKaig, Ceilo Weislo, Gary Jennings, Mike Mel, and Rick Anderson. They specialized in performing various tricks on their boards, practicing their moves after school at nearby South High in Torrance.

They worked hard, and soon became proficient enough to consider entering in some of the earliest skateboarding events in Southern California. The first one they participated in was held at Lincoln Park in Santa Monica in the summer of 1964.

Its participants consisted mostly of older teens who were members of the Makaha and Hobie skateboarding teams. The Imperials didn’t win, but learned a lot about what it would take to become competitive in such events.

In December 1964, the first National Skateboard Championships took place at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The event was held on the indoor venue’s slick concrete floor.

The Imperials had been working on various moves and tricks at their daily practice sessions, and it served them well. Their headstands, handstands, jumps, nose riding and other fancy stunts impressed the audience and judges.

While Gregg Carroll was waiting to perform, UCLA film school graduate Noel Black approached him and told him of his plans to make a short film about skateboarding. Would the Imperials be interested in being its cast?

After further discussions, parental permissions were granted, and the project that would become “Skaterdater” was underway. (By the way, Carroll went on to win third place at the National event and fellow Imperial Mike Mel took first place.)

Filmed in fits and starts at various South Bay and Harbor Area filming locations, the 18-minute silent short film took a year to complete. It tells a simple story of teen romance – boy meets girl, boy loses girl, then wins her back – with a skateboarding backdrop.

Local filming sites include scenes at Rolling Hills Plaza in Torrance, Malaga Cove Plaza in Palos Verdes Estates, Averill Park in San Pedro, various streets in Redondo Beach and a climactic final race down a hill at the southern terminus of Cypress St. in Lomita just north of the Cypress Hill Water Tower and the Rolling Hills Country Club.

All the actors were Imperials members, with the exception of female lead Melissa Mallory, a Westwood teen who was cast in the role by director Black. Mike Mel plays the lead character.

The completed film, generally acknowledged to be the first-ever skateboarding film, tells its simple story elegantly, thanks to Black’s direction and the superb photography helmed by Black’s associate, cameraman Mike Murphy. 

Hollywood music producers Mike Curb and Nick Venet produced the soundtrack, whose main theme, “Skaterdater Rock,” was performed by Davie Allan and the Arrows.

“Skaterdater” was nominated for, but did not win an Academy Award for best short film. However, it did win a prestigious Palme d’Or award for Best Short Film at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.

It played in theaters along with screenings of “The Graduate” in England, and was shown along  with the James Bond film “Thunderball” at the Rolling Hills Theatre formerly in Rolling Hills Plaza (it’s now a Bev Mo store), the shopping center where the “Skaterdater” opening scenes were filmed.

Sources:

Daily Breeze archives.

Internet Movie Database.

Los Angeles Times archives.

“‘Skaterdater’: the Story of the World’s First Skateboard movie,” Surfer Today website.

Wikipedia.

After graduating from Leuzinger High in Lawndale in 1934, David Lloyd George Dennee got a job working at the Continental Baking Co. in Beverly Hills.

He soon worked his way up from route driver to district manager. The ambitious Dennee wanted to run his own business, however.

He left Continental in 1944 to own and operate Dennee’s Hancock Oil service station at 913 N. La Brea in Inglewood.

In May 1946, Dennee entered into a partnership with Ray Fletcher to operate Fletcher and Dennee’s Goodyear tire sales and service store at 451 N. Hawthorne Blvd. in Hawthorne. He bought out Fletcher to become the store’s sole owner in 1948.

During this period, Dennee made a decision that would change his business and his life irrevocably. He had noticed the growing popularity of a new phenomenon: television. Demand for the big boxes with the tiny screens had been growing during the 1940s, but began to explode following the end of World War II.

On the face of it, the addition of the newfangled devices to his more traditional inventory of tires, auto parts and accessories in 1947 might seem odd. But Dennee had read the market well. The technology continued to improve, the sets became less bulky, and sales continued to rise.

In June 1949, he opened a separate store strictly devoted to selling televisions. He used his flair for promotion to boost the opening of Television Exposition at 110 E. El Segundo Blvd. near Hawthorne Blvd. Dennee backed up his operation with a full staff and ten service trucks.

In addition to selling TVs, he also moved into large appliance sales: refrigerators, washing machines, stoves and other appliances. Since most of these items came in the color white at the time, he called the store he opened with extravagant fanfare at 364 N. Hawthorne Blvd. “Lloyd Dennee’s White House.”

He turned its July 29, 1950, grand opening into a major public event, staging a full parade and enlisting entertainment stars such as singer Frankie Laine, starlet Randy Stuart and pro wrestling champion Baron Leone to appear. More than 25,000 people lined the streets of Hawthorne for the day-long event.

Longtime Los Angeles area television personalities Stan Chambers and Bill Welsh helmed a TV broadcast of the spectacle on KTLA Channel 5, described as the first live show telecast from the city of Hawthorne.

Dennee continued to grow his business during the early 1950s. By 1952, he’d opened “Manchester House” in Inglewood at 2112 Manchester Ave., and another branch in Torrance at 1875 Carson St., near the downtown “five points” intersection of Carson and Cabrillo Ave. 

He also opened a used merchandise store he called “Value Vault” in Hawthorne at 360 N. Hawthorne Blvd., next to his “White House.”

As the 1950s wore on, a variety of factors caused sea changes in the retail television business. More and more outlets began selling the sets, and the market began to reach saturation. Television set technology became more reliable, and larger retailers began to crowd out the smaller independent stores.

Lloyd Dennee’s outlets continued to do well, but a tragic accident shook the business on April 19, 1955. Dennee and Edwin Peters, manager of Dennee’s Hawthorne flagship store, were both killed when Dennee lost control of his 1951 Cadillac on a curve on Highway 1 between Laguna Beach and Dana Point.

The Dennee’s stores were in the midst of a major remodel at the time. Dennee’s wife Maxine took control of the business and saw the remodel through to completion. She also staged a major promotional gala in 1956 celebrating the revamping of the stores.

It was the last such massive celebration at the stores, which began transitioning into furniture and home furnishings during the next few years. The “Television Exposition” store and other locations eventually were shuttered.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dennee’s Distinctive Furnishings was operating at 12814 Hawthorne Blvd. in Hawthorne. Lloyd Dennee’s son David was its president.

Currently, descendents of Lloyd Dennee own and operate Dennee’s of Santa Ynez, a successful furniture and interior design business in the community of Santa Ynez, northwest of Santa Barbara.

Sources:

Dennee’s of Santa Ynez Instagram page.

Daily Breeze archives.

Los Angeles Mirror archives.

Orange County Register archives.

Torrance Press-Herald archives.