South Bay History

The Academy Theater in Inglewood was showing Errol Flynn and Bette Davis in “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” when this photo was taken in 1939.

Today we call the roll of South Bay movie theaters of the distant, and in some cases more recent, past that are no longer in existence.

First of all, there are the drive-ins. After closing in April 1988, the Torrance Drive-In became a housing development. It opened on June 29, 1955.

 

The Harbor Drive-In on Vermont Avenue north of Sepulveda Boulevard near Torrance was closed in the early 1970s and was torn down to make room for the Village Square condominiums.

The Roadium drive-in was still showing movies when this 1961 photo was taken.

The Roadium in Torrance opened in May 1949, but stopped showing films in the mid-1980s, when it was converted into a permanent open-air swap meet which is still in operation today.

 

Pacific Theaters opened the San Pedro Drive-In on North Gaffey Street in May 1949. After a 37-year run, it closed and was demolished in 1986. Pacific then opened an industrial park and a mini-storage facility on the site.

The South Bay 6 in Carson closed for remodeling in 1997 and never reopened, leaving the Vermont Drive-In Theatre as the South Bay’s last operating drive-in – until it also closed in 1999.

 

The Fox in Redondo Beach closed in December 1972, and was razed shortly thereafter.

Among the walk-ins, the Fox Redondo was a long-time landmark that finally closed for good on December 5, 1972. It was torn down weeks later, but plans for a hotel on the site never materialized and the land is currently a parking lot. When it originally opened in the late 1920s, it was outfitted for live theater and vaudeville acts, in addition to being a movie theater.

 

Hermosa Beach’s Metropolitan Theater is shown in 1924, before becoming the Bijou.

Hermosa Beach’s Bijou began life in 1923 as the Metropolitan before becoming the Cove and then the Bijou. It showed its final film in 1996. The building remains, having been refitted as retail space that includes an art gallery.

 

Condos replaced the Marina 1-2-3 complex on the southeast corner of Torrance Boulevard and Catalina Avenue in Redondo Beach in the 1980s. The theaters began as a single-screen theater, The Strand, which opened on January 6, 1938.

The Torrance Theater in 1936.

Downtown Torrance once boasted two movie theaters. The Torrance Theater on Sartori near Marcelina was built in the 1920s and operated well into the 1950s. it was demolished and is now a bank.

The Stadium Theater in one of its last incarnations as a movie set, the fictional “Aurora Theater.”

The Stadium Theater on Cravens Avenue was first known as the Grand when it was built in 1949. It underwent another transformation in the 1970s when it became part of the Pussycat Theater adult theater chain. Protesters and pickets were a regular part of business there until it closed in 1991. It was empty for several years before being torn down to make way for condos in 2002.

 

The exterior of the Loyola Theater in 1982, shortly before it was converted into office space.

The spectacular Loyola Theater in Westchester showed its last film in 1982. The building was converted into office space, though vestiges of its former splendour can still be seen in the building’s present-day facade. It was a beauty in its day; the lobby alone, complete with sunken concessions stand, was worth the price of admission.

Some more modern theater complexes have also come and gone. The Hermosa Beach 6 operated briefly at the Hermosa Beach Pavilion shopping center on PCH. The center hit hard times and was mostly empty for almost a decade before being revived as a the home of a fitness center in recent years.

Mann Theaters once had an indoor fourplex in the north end of the Del Amo Fashion Center, and another outdoor multiplex, the Mann 9, on Del Amo Circle East south of Carson Street. Both are closed now, with the latter now the home of a 24-Hour Fitness complex.

Film director Quentin Tarantino says he spent many horus watching exploitation double bills at the Carson Twin on Avalon Boulevard, but that building was demolished to make room for condominiums in the 1980s.

Inglewood once boasted several theaters, the most flamboyant of which was the Academy on Manchester Boulevard (see photo at top of entry). The Art Moderne structure opened in 1939, ostensibly as a potential site for the Academy Awards ceremony, though it ultimately never was held there. The structure still exists, having been converted into a church in 1975.

 

San Pedro theaters that no longer exist include the Fox Cabrillo, which opened in 1923 and was demolished in 1958, and the Globe Theater on 6th Street, which opened in 1915 but apparently closed sometime during the 1950s.

The Warner Grand was screening the film “Great Expectations” when this 1934 photo was taken.

So what’s left? The most notable historic movie theater to survive in the area is the magnificent Warner Grand in San Pedro. Built in 1931, it was bought by the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles in 1996, and has continued to host cultural events and film revivals after its restoration.

 

 

 

Sources:
http://www.drive-ins.com/
http://cinematreasures.org/

Both sites have databases that allow users to look up theaters of the past and present.

 

The Great White Fleet sets sail from its Hampton Roads, Virginia home port in this U.S. Navy photo.

 

From December 16, 1907 through Febraury 22, 1909, sixteen American battleships undertook a then-unprecedented 46,000-mile round-the-world cruise. The idea for the voyage of the “Great White Fleet” (the ships all had bright white hulls) came from President Theodore Roosevelt, who wanted to demonstrate America’s role as a naval superpower.

Such a voyage by steam-powered battleships had never been attempted, and some were skeptical, but the entire 14-month voyage went off without a single serious breakdown.

The journey began under the command of Rear Admiral Robley D. “Fighting Bob” Evans in Hampton Roads, Virginia. (He would later fall ill in San Francisco and be replaced by Admiral Charles S. Sperry.)

 

Its first leg took it south around the Cape of Good Horn, and up the Pacific coasts of South and North America.

Historian and post card collector William Stewart provides an excellent map of the entire voyage on his Web site.

 

 

The Great White Fleet approaches San Diego in this panoramic photo. Photo courtesy Library of Congress collection.  Click on photo to enlarge.

 

The fleet arrived in San Diego on April 14, 1908, for a tumultuous four-day stay. San Diego’s main harbor was deemed too muddy and shallow, so the ships anchored at the Hotel del Coronado on Coronado Island.

When the fleet reached the Los Angeles area on April 18, it had split into its four divisions so that the ships could visit four ports of call: San Pedro, Redondo Beach, Santa Monica and Long Beach.

According to Navy journalist Mike McKinley, “In Los Angeles, the officers and men were feted to such entertainments as a giant Spanish barbecue, thrilled to a breathtaking balloon ascension by a group of daring aeronauts, and cheered a number of prize fights between well-known local pugilists.”

Everywhere the fleet visited, the throngs of people greeted its arrival.

 

 

San Pedro residents walk toward the ferry landing to greet the incoming Great White Fleet ships, above; sailors arrive on the docks at Fifth Street Landing in San Pedro, below. Photos courtesy San Pedro Bay Historical Society.

 

An AP report on the fleet’s departure on April 25, 1908 described a crowd estimated at 100,000 that watched the ships sail from Point Dume:
 

“No spectacle so superb has ever been witnessed off the coast of California unless it was the arrival of the same ships a week ago… Since noon yesterday every available [street]car of the Los Angeles-Pacific system was operated without interruption, and for 18 hours a stream of people poured into Venice, Ocean Park and Santa Monica…”

 

Then it was on to more massive crowds in San Francisco and a quick stop in the Seattle area before crossing the Pacific to Hawaii, New Zealand, and the rest of its journey. The fleet returned to Virginia on February 22, 1909.

 

The Great White Fleet arrives in Port Said, Egypt in January 1909 after navigating the Suez Canal. Photo courtesy U.S. Naval Hisorical Center.

 

Sources:

American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps 1775-Present, By Jack Sweetman, Naval Institute Press, 1984.

“The Cruise of the Great White Fleet,” by Journalist Second Class Mike McKinley, http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/gwf_cruise.htm.

“The Great White Fleet: A collection of postcards, medals, photographs, and memorabilia,” by William Stewart, http://www.greatwhitefleet.info/Great_White_Fleet_Cruise.html.

San Pedro: A Pictorial History, By Henry P. Silka, San Pedro Bay Historical Society, 1993.

 

For video footage of the Great White Fleet:

“The Great White Fleet: A Historical Look at the People, Ports of Call and Events,” http://www.navy.mil/gwf/theater.htm.

 

Photos courtesy of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Naval Historical Center, the Library of Congress, and the San Pedro Bay Historical Society.   

 

 

 

Before the unionization movement came to a tipping point 75 years ago in 1934, here’s what working on the docks was like: For a chance at 95 cents an hour and almost no benefits, workers had to line up before sunup to be picked or passed over in a process called the “shape-up.” (The photo at left shows dockworkers gathering to try and get work at a shape-up in the late 1920s. Photo courtesy Mike Piazza.)

Those selected got to do back-breaking, dangerous work using hooks and rope pulleys to load freight for long, unregulated hours. There were no containers, no automated processes and no one looking out for the interests of the workers.

 

Australian-born Alfred Renton Bryant Bridges, soon to be known simply as “Harry,” entered the fray as a union activist for the International Longshoremen’s Association in the 1920s. (The photo at right shows a dapper Bridges still wearing his union pin in 1985.) When asked what led to his involvement in the union movement, he said, “Simple. I wanted to be a worker with a good job, decent wages, a house, medical care. I figured it would be best if everybody had this.”

Bridges helped establish a branch of the I.L.A. in San Pedro in 1933 to work for some of these goals, but the union’s demands for reforms met with stiff resistance from employers. The union voted to authorize a strike on May 9, 1934.

(The front page of the Daily Breeze for May 9, 1934 announces the strike. Click box to show image)

Ship owners formed a group of replacement workers, or “scabs,” and called it the Longshore Mutual Protective Association. The group numbered about 300 members.

A group of disgruntled union men decided to confront the scabs at their camp in near the docks in Wilmington at 11:30 p.m. on May 14. Among the union supporters were San Pedro High School graduate Dickie Parker, 20, and Lomita resident John Knudsen, who was 43.

Waiting for them inside the camp were replacement workers and police officers. In the angry, bloody confrontation that followed, Parker and Knudsen were among those felled in a hail of bullets. Parker died at the scene, while Knudsen died some time later in a Long Beach hospital. Dozens of others were wounded in the fighting.

According to labor historian Arthur A. Almeida, the enraged union members continued to fight and eventually started fires that burned down the scab labor compound.

Parker’s funeral procession ended at Barton Hill Elementary School, his alma mater. He and Knudsen were the first casualties of the labor dispute.

The West Coast I.L.A. strike continued to intensify, with matters coming to a head in San Francisco in early July.

 Union marchers take to the San Francisco streets in early July 1934. Harry Bridges
is wearing a cap in an open-collared shirt, toward the back right of
the sign reading “Full Benefits ILWA.” (Photo courtesy Mike Piazza.)

On July 3, shipping line owners and government officials announced their intention to open the shuttered San Francisco port by force. Violence followed, with the day-long battle ending with union members in retreat. All was quiet on the July 4th holiday, but hostilities re-opened on July 5 with increased intensity.

This was the day that still is known as “Bloody Thursday,” as two more union members lost their lives when authorities opened fire on the battling strikers.

Two shooting victims down on the sidewalk at Mission and Steward streets in San Francisco on July 5, 1934. Charles Olsen, who recovered, is at left; Howard Sperry, right, died in the violence along with Nick Bordoise (not shown). (Photo courtesy Mike Piazza.)

When California Governor Frank Merriam called out the National Guard to quell the unrest, Bridges ordered his men to cease the hostilities.

Public opinion seemed to swing in favor of the union members when they held a solemn  funeral procession for the victims on Market Street. Thousands of marchers joined in, and city residents who feared more violence relaxed when the march went off without incident.

Shortly thereafter, other unions joined in what became a general strike in San Francisco. The bitter dispute went to arbitrators, who ruled in favor of the unions in October, 1934.

Three years later, Bridges would split a group off from the I.L.A., forming the the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), today’s longshore union, which he headed from 1938-1977.

He survived several attempts to discredit and deport him for being a Communist. Though he accepted its support – “Everyone that helps us is on our side,” he told a reporter in 1985 – but he maintained to his death that he never was a member of the Communist Party.

Bridges died of emphysema at age 88 at his San Francisco home in 1990.

 

Ships line up to dock at Redondo Beach in this circa 1895 photo.

 

Redondo Beach’s history as a port dates back to the late 19th century, with talk of building a harbor there dating back to 1877.

By 1903, three piers had been constructed, Wharf #1, Wharf #2 and Wharf #3, and traffic into the port was so brisk that ships often were lined up waiting to dock.

An early 20th-century maritime reference book, George Philip’s Dues and Port Charges: A World Handbook for Shipowners, Masters and Agents, contains a description of the Redondo beach  port, which at that time mainly handled lumber and oil, that has one rather ominous passage: “This is an open roadsted, perfectly safe in ordinary weather, but with occasional gales from November to April, at which times great caution is necessary with south-westerly and westerly winds.” (Italics mine.)

In the early 1900s, a succession of sailing ships fell victim to these storms, including the schooner Mabel Gray, below, which ran ashore during a storm in March 1904.

 

A little more than a year and a half later, the Katie Flickenger, a 472-ton barkentine (a type of three-masted sailing ship) was docked, unloaded, at Wharf #1 when a storm bearing 50 mph winds began to lash the port early in the morning of November 20, 1905.

She was anchored about 250 yards off the wharf at the time, and withstood the storm for several hours. At 8:30 a.m., however, the ship’s starboard anchor began to drag, continuing for 75 yards before being carried away.

At 175 yards from shore, the crew dropped the ship’s port anchor, but it also dragged for 75 yards. The tugboat Redondo threw the ship a line, but it snapped under the pressure.

Fortunately, a second line from the tug kept the Katie Flickinger from colliding with Wharf #2, but the ship eventually ran aground on the shore and was declared a total loss.

These four photos taken by Redondo Union High School student Bert Lerch in November 1905 show the Katie Flickenger running aground on the Redondo Beach shore.

 

For a variety of reasons, Redondo never did win its lengthy battle to become the official port of Los Angeles, a title bestowed on San Pedro in 1909. By 1910, sea traffic to Redondo Beach had fallen off considerably.

Plans to build a floating breakwater that would have sheltered the harbor from these occasionally violent storms were deemed impractical, and it would be decades until an effective permanent breakwater was completed (1958, to be exact).

 

Sources:

Web site: Well At Least We Tried: The Seaport of Redondo Beach from 1888 to 1912, By Michael McCandless. http://www.geocities.com/portredondo/sixdays.htm
 
Old Redondo: A Pictorial History of Redondo Beach, California, By Dennis Shanahan, Legends Press, 1982.

Fun, Frustration and Fulfillment: An Historical Study of the City of Redondo Beach, by Ken Johnson, 1965.

 

The interior of the Revelaire Club in Redondo Beach, which began as Club Bel Air in 1962. Photo courtesy of Peggi Collins.

 

The warehouse-like building at 312 S. Catalina Avenue in Redondo Beach began its brief but influential life as an entertainment venue with the founding of the Club Bel Air there in 1962. Four years and three name changes later, it was no more, but it lives on in legend among surf music fans.

 

Paul Johnson, who grew up in Palos Verdes and became one of surf instrumental music’s most brilliant guitarists, first got the idea to start a teen club after his band The Belairs – Johnson, guitarist Eddie Bertrand, drummer Richard Delvy, saxophonist Chas Stuart and piano player Jim Roberts – recorded the pioneering instrumental “Mr. Moto” for Arvee Records in 1961.

Members of the pioneering surf instrumental group The Belairs strike classic poses in a 1961 photo provided by guitarist Paul Johnson, shown in right front of photo.

The Belairs, a group of South Bay teens from Palos Verdes Estates, Rolling Hills Estates, Miraleste and Lomita, had been playing a series of increasingly popular one-shot shows in support of “Mr. Moto,” which became a big local hit.

In working to capitalize on the record’s popularity, Johnson began to realize that there were no real outlets for teenagers to enjoy live music in the South Bay. The halls the band had been playing were not used to holding teen band concerts.

 

These venues included the Knights of Columbus hall on Avenue I, and the Elks lodge and the Eagles hall on Catalina Ave., all in Redondo Beach. As the crowds grew into the hundreds, these types of temporary venues grew more skittish about holding teen concerts.

Continue reading “The South Bay surf music scene revolved around Club Bel Air in Redondo Beach”

This 1917 postcard shows the Endless Pier from the air.

 

Tourism was the Redondo Beach’s main source of income in the early part of the 20th century: Redondo had a luxury hotel (the Hotel Redondo), a popular amusement area (El Paseo), a salt water plunge and a tent city where tourists could stay for a pittance and enjoy the ocean climate.

 
When a major storm caused considerable property damage along the Redondo Beach coastline in 1915, temporarily dampening the tourist trade, Redondo’s citizens took action. They passed a $125,000 bond issue to build a structure that came to be known as the “Endless Pier.”

The triangular structure was called “the most unique over-the-sea structure in the country.” Its two legs met in the ocean at a plaza-like area, where a pavilion with a restaurant was built.

Another postcard from 1922 shows fishermen dropping lines into the sea from the Endless Pier, with the pavilion building in the background.

 

Tourists and fishermen loved the structure, which was completed and dedicated in 1916. Chamber of Commerce literature of the time claimed that 10,000 people could find entertainment there at any one time.

By December 1925, carousel operator Arthur Looff had opened his Hippodrome, advertised as “the Finest Hippodrome Carousel Building in the United States.” The Hippodrome he had built on the Santa Monica Pier in 1916 to hold his carousel there stills stands today, and was made a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

Unfortunately, the pier structure itself was troubled from the very beginning. A fierce storm had damaged the pier while it was still under construction In1916, and another storm 20 months after it opened almost destroyed it.

By 1926, the Endless Pier’s concrete-and-steel construction showed signs of deterioration, so much so that amusement park promoter C.A. Langley was unable to build his planned addition to the pier unless the structure were to undergo substantial repairs. His consultant reported that the concrete pilings were weakening and the deck was sagging in some places.

In 1928, the Redondo City Council condemned the Endless Pier, and City Engineer Victor Staheli prepared plans for a replacement. The City selected contractor P.W. Krantz to demolish the Endless Pier and construct a new timber Horseshoe Pier, the forerunner to the current Redondo Beach pier, in the same general location.

 
Though some still refer to the current pier as the Endless Pier, the original Endless Pier only lasted for twelve years.

 

This circa 1925 photo shows the Endless Pier as it appeared from the shore.

 

Sources:

City of Redondo Beach Historic Context Statement, September 6, 1995, prepared by Marguerite Duncan-Abrams and Barbara Milkovich for Historical Resources Management.

Fun, Frustration and Fulfillment: An Historical Study of the City of Redondo Beach, by Ken Johnson. 1965.

Redondo Beach Historical Society Web site: http://www.redondobeachhistorical.org/rb_pier.htm 

The El Segundo water tower with its new string of energy-saving LED lights is shown in this December 2007 Daily Breeze file photo by Brad Graverson.

 

At last count, there were more than 60 water tanks in the South Bay, with a total capacity of more than 100 million gallons. The largest one is a buried concrete tank at Crenshaw Boulevard and Crest Road in Torrance that holds 18.7 million gallons.

They’re usually unobtrusive, except for the water towers elevated on stilts. More of these structures used to dot the South Bay, but many have been removed over the years. Examples still exist in Hawthorne, Manhattan Beach and El Segundo.

A salvage crew dismantles the Hawthorne water tower on Doty Avenue in September 1999. The 155 foot high tower once held 250,000 gallons of water when full. The city’s other water tower on Truro Avenue north of El Segundo Boulevard remains a local landmark.

Continue reading “South Bay water towers”

This 1946 photo shows the Hollywood Park racetrack as it existed before the fire. Note the stables at the upper right, the infield lakes, and the oil derricks at the upper left of the photo.

 

Hollywood Park in Inglewood eventually will close for good to make way for a large development.

Hollywood Park Tomorrow, as the proposal is known, will consist of a walkable, mixed-use development of homes, offices and stores. It will include a 25-acre park system complete with two lakes and a waterfall between them intended to evoke the racetrack’s infield and double as a method of cleaning urban runoff.

Almost 3,000 homes, designed to house 8,000 to 10,000 residents of varying income levels, are planned.

The more than 600,000 square feet of retail space envisioned will consist not of big-box stores, but a 1,200-foot-long outdoor mall with movie theaters. That main street is anchored by civic plazas at either end, intended to provide a sense of place for residents and visitors.

When the racetrack closed in 1949, it was for a different reason: a massive $5-million-dollar fire.

It began in the clubhouse shortly after 11:00 p.m. on the night of May 5, 1949, less than two weeks before the opening of the track’s spring racing session. The fire quickly became a conflagration, rapidly spreading through the grandstand and the Turf Club.

According to the Associated Press account that appeared in the Daily Breeze, thousands of spectators watched the flames shoot high into the air, snarling traffic in the area. Firefighters from the Inglewood and Los Angeles fire departments at one point were sent running for their lives when the roof and upper walls burned away, and the masonry walls began to crumble. They battled the blaze for three hours before bringing it under control, but the structures were a total loss.

Fortunately, the horses weren’t harmed because the stables were located about a half-mile away from the grandstand. The swans and geese that congregated in the infield lake also were spared; the AP reported that “the fowl huddled safely in the little lakes in the infield” during the blaze.

Santa Anita Park stepped in to rescue the 1949 horse racing season from disaster by offering its facilities, where the spring meeting began right on time on May 17, 1949.

No cause was given for the blaze. The track was covered by insurance, and quickly began the rebuilding process. Slightly more than a year later, June 27, 1950, Hollywood Park reopened.

This Associated Press photo appeared on the front page of the Daily Breeze on May 6, 1949, the morning after the fire. For more pictures of the fire, visit  Mary Forney’s blog: http://maryforney.blogspot.com/2008/11/hollywood-park-and-great-fire-of-1949.html

 

By all accounts, the bash thrown on San Pedro’s Beacon Street on the night of Saturday, August 21, 1971 was quite a party.

The genesis of the “Last Night on Beacon Street” began with the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when it began the movement to bring redevelopment to the deteriorating area.

“The commercial center was moving away. We wanted the entire area to be productive economically,” said Chamber of Commerce manager Ken Jordan in 1969.

The area fell in the district of Los Angeles City Councilman John S. Gibson, who pushed the plan through for final approval by the Council in April 1969.

 
The idea was to replace the blighted area with new commercial and residential developments. Urban redevelopment in the 1960s often meant wholesale leveling of the old buildings, and such would be the case on Beacon Street.

 

But before that came to pass, civic leaders decided to hold one last fling one August night in 1971 to celebrate. Four Beacon Street bars that had already closed reopened for the occasion. Stage shows were held and the revelers danced in the middle of the street to live bands.

 
Soon afterward, the Beacon Street Redevelopment Project razed the colorful, rundown collection of bars, pawnshops and flophouses, and Shanghai Red’s, the Seafarers Social Club and all the rest were no more.