A reminder that just because science and industry tell you something is a perfectly good idea, it isn’t necessarily so.
For more information about the problems with asbestos, please refer to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
On the left in this rare image of Sunset Boulevard just west of Crescent Heights, taken during the early 1930s, we see the entrance to the Garden of Allah at 8152 Sunset Boulevard. On the right is the Chateau Marmont, which still stands. A house behind the trees in the center would eventually become the Preston Sturges’ Players Club, then the Imperial Gardens, Miyagi’s, and the Roxbury.
About three decades preceding this photograph, the hills to the north were still lined with orange groves. What became Sunset Boulevard was just a dirt road. By 1905, real estate mogul William Hamilton Hay (1865-1946) began dividing and developing 160-acres of land bounded by today’s Sunset Boulevard to the north, Santa Monica Boulevard to the south, Crescent Avenue (today’s Fairfax Avenue) to the east and Sweetzer Avenue, in what is now the City of West Hollywood.
At the originally assigned street address of 8080 Sunset Boulevard, the “Hayvenhurst Estate” occupied a 2.5 acres site fronting Sunset. It was bounded by Crescent Heights Boulevard on the east, and Hayvenhurst Drive (today spelled Havenhurst) on the west. The property’s southern edge formed the city limits between the Hollywood district of the City of Los Angeles, and what later became the incorporated City of West Hollywood. Eventually, the property’s address was changed to 8152 Sunset Boulevard.
The estate had twelve rooms and four bathrooms. The interior finishes were fashioned from Circassian walnut wood which Mr. Hay and his wife Katherine had collected on a trip to the Philippines in 1912. (It is said that the couple personally managed the project). The interior walls were covered in hand-painted canvas and hand-painted. Perhaps unusual for the time, the property included a two-car garage (with upstairs rooms servants).
Completed in 1918, the property stood vacant for several years, as Mr. and Mrs. Hays had moved on to other building projects.
Around that time, the property was recommended to silent film actress Alla Nazimova, who first leased and then bought the estate from the Hays.
Alla Nazimova and Charles Bryant (actor) in a photo dated Dec. 6, 1912. George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress.
Facing bankruptcy, Ms. Nazimova apparently found investors, and had the property converted to a hotel by commissioning 25 villas on the site. In 1927, this became known as “the Garden of Alla”.
Main house interior, date unknown
Not skilled in running a hotel, Ms. Nazimova was forced to sell the money-losing property to a holding corporation, which renamed it to “Garden of Allah”. It was, in its heyday, a bohemian hangout for young creative types flocking to Hollywood’s film industry from all corners of the world. Given the list of guests (see below) and the many stories of rambunctious parties, dubious events and salacious happenings, it was quite the place to be.
Date unknown
1932
1934
A striking photo of Henry Wilcoxon at the Garden of Allah, 1934. Known as an actor in many of director Cecil B. DeMille’s films, he later served as DeMille’s associate producer.
When Alla Nazimova returned to California in 1938 after a stay on Broadway, she rented Villa 24 at the hotel, and continued to live there until her death in 1945.
Library of Congress Catalog: https://lccn.loc.gov/2014712156. Image: https://cdn.loc.gov/master/pnp/ggbain/32000/32003u.tif
The Garden of Allah pool in 1959
Sadly, after losing its luster and falling into disrepair, the Garden of Allah was torn down in August of 1959, to be replaced with the Lytton Savings & Loan main branch. A pristine example of Googie architecture, the bank building was designated a historic cultural landmark in 2016. Nevertheless, it was condemned to demolition by a subsequent ruling, in order to make way for one of the ugly, disjointed monstrosities Frank Gehry’s architectural firm is known for.
Today, nothing remains of the Garden of Allah, except a place in history, the myth, and an imaginary landmark as one of the central locations in the Golden Era of Hollywood.
Hotel Guests
Various sources have linked the following names to stays at the Garden of Allah:
Lauren Bacall, Tallulah Bankhead, John Barrymore, Donn Beach, Lucius Beebe, Robert Benchley, Humphrey Bogart, Clara Bow, Louis Bromfield, Louise Brooks, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Charles Butterworth, Louis Calhern, John Carradine, Virginia Cherrill, Mickey Cohen, Buster Collier, Ronald Colman, Marc Connelly, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Jean Dalrymple, Lili Damita, Vic Damone, Florence Desmond, Marlene Dietrich, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Errol Flynn, Greta Garbo, Ava Gardner, Dorothy Gish, Jackie Gleason, Jimmy Gleason, Elinor Glyn, Benny Goodman, Frances Goodrich, Ruth Gordon, Sheilah Graham, D.W. Griffith, Albert Hackett, Jon Hall, Jed Harris, Jascha Heifetz, Lillian Hellman, Ernest Hemingway, Woody Herman, Madeline Hurlock, Garson Kanin, George S. Kaufman, Buster Keaton, Muriel King, Eartha Kitt, Alexander Korda, Elsa Lanchester, Charles Laughton, Frank Lawton, Lila Lee, John Loder, Anita Louise, Bessie Love, Ernst Lubitsch, Charles MacArthur, Frances Marion, Harpo Marx, Zeppo Marx, Groucho Marx, Sam Marx, Glesca Marshall, Somerset Maugham, Patty McCormack, Ward Morehouse, Nita Naldi, Ramon Novarro, Alla Nazimova, David Niven, John O’Hara, Maureen O’Hara, Walter O’Keefe, Maureen O’Sullivan, Clifford Odets, Laurence Olivier, Dorothy Parker, Johnny Roselli, S.J. Perelman, Roland Petit, Tyrone Power, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ronald Reagan, Flora Robson, Ginger Rogers, Harry Ruby, Natalie Schafer, Leon Shamroy, Artie Shaw, Mildred Shay, Arthur Sheekman, Robert E. Sherwood, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Everett Sloane, Barbara Stanwyck, John Steinbeck, Donald Ogden Stewart, Leopold Stokowski, Igor Stravinsky, Gloria Stuart, Margaret Sullavan, Kay Thompson, Whitney Tower, Forrest Tucker, H.B. Warner, Orson Welles, Dame May Whitty, Herbert Wilcox, Hugh Williams, Hope Williams, John Hay “Jock” Whitney, Alexander Woollcott, Vincent Youmans.
Mark Twain photographed by A. F. Bradley in New York, 1907
“Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental Science Cure, and the Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with the same old, powerful instrument—the patient’s imagination. Differing names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the ways of the others.”
Mark Twain, born on November 30, 1835
It is remarkable how Mark Twain’s observation, written in 1907, still applies just the same over 100 years later.
“I am not sure if I can ever master the five principles of the ‘dojo kun’, but I try each day. Some people believe that ‘budo’ requires a willingness to die for your country or another person, but I don’t believe it has to do with death or how you die. It is more like a way of life that incorporates how you will die. I think someone who declares “I would die for my country or organization” is more into the entertainment, the drama.
But the purpose of ‘budo’ is about how you can help others, how you contribute to others. Budo is equal to helping someone. You can’t help people if you die. If you write ‘budo’ in the Japanese way, ‘bu’ can be interpreted as stop the spear or stop the halberd, and ‘do’ is, of course, the way. I interpret it to mean stopping someone’s negative emotions, such as fear, anger, upset, frustration. You try to stop harm coming to another human being.”
From: “Mind And Body – Like Bullet, Memoirs Of A Life In The Martial Arts”, by Yutaka Yaguchi & Catherine Pinch, © 2008
Saturn V, SpaceX Starship, Space Shuttle (with external tank and solid rocket boosters).
SpaceX Starship, Tesla Cybertruck, human figure, SpaceX CrewDragon, Space Shuttle.
This morning I learned with great sadness that YouTube personality and firearms expert Paul Harrell died yesterday, September 3, in Oregon. He was 58 old.
Earlier, on December 20, 2023, Paul Harrell recorded a video to be released after his death. In it, he said good-bye to his audience, apologized for not being able to continue, and encouraged the public to keep following his brother and his team as they were continuing the work, with Mr. Harrell’s blessings. The video will have been watched 2.5 million times within the first 24 hours of its release.
Paul Harrell served in both the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps. Having lived a mostly quiet and private life after his long military career, little is publicly known about his personal affairs after leaving the military – except for one incident in 2006.
In 2006, according to court records and newspaper reports, Mr. Harris was involved in a fatal self-defense shooting. According to Lewiston Tribune quoting the Wallowa County Sheriff’s Office on Nov. 26, 2006, “Benjamin Paul Harrell, 40, of Yakima, was charged with murder and is in the Umatilla County Jail”.
The case was investigated by the Wallowa County Sheriff’s Office, the Oregon State Major Crimes Team, Walla Walla Police Department and Walla Walla County Coroner’s Office.
According to the Wallowa County Chieftain (Nov. 29, 2006), Mr. Harrel was arraigned on charges of manslaughter, two counts of first-degree assault, menacing, and first-degree criminal mischief. Presiding over the arraignment, Wallowa County Judge Phillip Mendiguren set bail at $250,000. Mr. Harrell was later exonerated and freed by a grand jury, and the shooting was ruled to have occurred in self-defense.
Some sources say Mr. Harris worked as a dental hygienist for some time, and he himself spoke of a past, messy relationship with a woman whom he deemed mentally ill and vindictive, and from who he had separated many years ago.
But Mr. Harris found fame as a YouTube personality. His public persona was characterized by his always calm and rational demeanor, and his displays of both confidence and humility. His presentations were spiced up with dry humor and the occasional sarcastic, self-deprecating remarks. One of his famous closing lines was, “Don’t try this at home. I am what you might call a professional.”
His successful YouTube Channel was launched in 2012. (There was an earlier, little known channel which only had a handful of views). By 2023, the Paul Harrell Channel passed the 1 million follower-mark on YouTube. At the time of this writing, the channel has 1.15 million subscribers and 455 videos, some of which have been watched between two and more than four million times.
In July 2023, Mr. Harrell matter-of-factly announced that he had been diagnosed with Stage 2 pancreatic cancer. According to his videos, he was initially hopeful that the disease had been caught early enough. Although the odd of recovering from pancreatic cancer are very low, Mr. Harrell remained optimistic about continuing his work. He requested his audience not to give no medical advice in their comments, not to pity him, and not to dwell on the situation. He continued to release well produced videos, but with less frequency.
By January 2024, Paul Harrell had turned control of his channel over to his brother, Roy Harrell. In the following months, the two brothers often appeared in videos together, the last of which seems to have been recorded in or around July of 2024.
In his field, Paul Harrell was a recognized expert and a committed American patriot dedicated to the causes of American liberty, personal freedom and independence, personal responsibility, and minimal government interference.
Ever private about his personal affairs, there have been no publicly released details about Paul Harrell’s medical treatment, the circumstances of his death, funeral arrangements, and his final resting place.
Much of the public debate about AI has focused on the often bizarre errors and biases in AI-compiled facts and figures. But there is another, perhaps more sinister danger: we are now entering a new era in which photographic evidence can no longer be trusted.
Here is an example:
Of course, the “1963 Mercedes 600 Pullman” never existed. Obvious mistakes (such as the nonsensical air vent and the missing hinge gap on the door’s lower section) make it easy to tell that this is just a rendering. And yet, most social media commenters were tricked into believing that this was a classic vehicle.
Given the rapid pace of development, obvious mistakes in AI-generated photographs will soon disappear. Soon it will be impossible to tell that a photograph or video was made up in a computer.
People have been conditioned to believe what they “see with their own eyes”. It is time to stop doing that.
