Few details about this photograph can be substantiated. The original caption was supposedly “Radio Pictures Chorus Girls“. This might have been a reference to RKO Radio Pictures Inc., which operated from 1929 to 1959.
The girls were almost certainly entertainers who were photographed while having fun exercising on a Hollywood rooftop — possibly in 1938. The automobiles in the background were likely built in the 1920s and 1930s, and the boxing scene was obviously posed for the photographer. (If you can identify the street address or know any of the girls in the image, I’d love to hear from you!)
RKO Studios at Melrose Avenue and Gower Street, Hollywood, circa 1937.
On this day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln was born into poverty. His birthplace was a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky. Raised on the frontier (mainly in Indiana) he was well-read and self-educated, and became a lawyer who opened a law practice in Springfield, Illinois.
I asked DALL-E to simulate what Lincoln might have looked like as a young man during this period of his life, using historical images as reference. Here are the results:
At the time this map was printed, Los Angeles County was booming with droves of new arrivals pouring in mostly from the East Coast. According to the U.S. Census, the county’s population had grown by 196% during the decade following 1900. By 1910, it had reached 504,131.
At the following census in 1920, the county’s population had swelled to 936,455, which translates to another 85.8% increase over 10 years . Within 20 years of 1900, the population had increased by 5 1/2 times, and 13 times by 1930, ending the decade with a total population of 2,208,492.
Most of the new settlers arrived by railroad. But when the above map was printed, the first automobile affordable to middle-class Americans, the Ford Model T was already in its 9th year of production. While there was a frenzy to build electric tram lines and a bus infrastructure connecting the Los Angeles area, people’s preferences, and the future of personal transportation, were clear. Then as now, people preferred private automobiles over communally shared vehicles the same way as they prefer private bathrooms over public toilets. For much the same reasons, they always will.
By the end of production in 1927, Ford had sold 14,689,525 Model Ts, with the least expensive model selling for just $260. (At the time of this writing, this would amount to an inflation-adjusted price of roughly $5,000 in 2025).
Motoring at the time would have been both fun as well as challenging. Many Los Angeles area roads at the time were still unpaved and rural. The various towns, settlements and cities were scattered about the vast county, and surrounded by farm or ranch land. Cars frequently broke down miles from populated areas. Flat tires were common. The quality of gasoline was unsteady and questionable, and filling stations were a novelty.
Melrose Avenue, 1910
Most gasoline pumps were installed in front of hardware stores, feed companies, livery stables, and a variety of other retailers. Service Town, the earliest known gas station in a modern sense, was built in 1914, three miles from downtown Los Angeles. Before that time, motorists went one place for gas and oil, and other places for lubrication and cleaning, for repairs, or for tires and other accessories.
As automobile sales increased, the demand for fuel led to a more systematic and standardized way of delivering it. In 1914, Standard Oil of California opened a chain of 34 homogeneous stations along the West Coast, and other oil companies quickly followed suit to secure an outlet for their now increasingly branded and advertised products.
The Gilmore Gas Station was one of the first gas stations in Los Angeles. It was located on the northeast corner of La Brea and Wilshire Boulevards. Photo from ca. 1920. (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power).
View showing Mabel Demspey standing on the gas pump island at the Whitsett Service Station located at 2912 Whitsett Avenue in North Hollywood. Photo from 1923.(Los Angeles Department of Water and Power).
A man and boy sit in a car at the Central Service Station which is selling both Violet Ray Gasoline and Associated Gasoline. Note the dog sitting on top of what appears to be an oil dispenser. Photo ca. 1928.(Los Angeles Department of Water and Power).
View of service station with gas pumps on either side located at 1800 1/2 Long Beach Boulevard, South Gate. The signs advertise General Gasoline, Richfield Gasoline, Gilmore Gasoline, Hood Tires, United States Tires and Pennzoil. On the right, an attendant is climbing a ladder. Photo ca. 1928. (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power).
Some of the cities on the road map shown above no longer exist, but were absorbed by Los Angeles or other cities. Examples (on the Westside) are the historic City of Sawtelle and the town of Venice, which were annexed by the City of Los Angeles, and the City of Ocean Park, which opted to join the City of Santa Monica
In 1910, the semi-rural town of Hollywood had voted to merge with Los Angeles in order to secure an adequate water supply and to gain access to the L.A. sewer system. This was very common development at the time, and one which many cities later bitterly regretted.
The community of Pacific Palisades, which was consumed by the horrendous fire of 2025, didn’t exist yet. Neither did the City of Malibu, nor the Roosevelt Highway (later renamed to “Pacific Coast Highway”). But there was a “Beach Road” along the coast, as well as a steam rail line from Downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. The latter was how most beach goers arrived to take a few days of respite from the summer heat further inland.
By 1912, some motion-picture companies had moved out West to set up production facilities near or in Los Angeles, one of the first one being short lived Nestor Studios. (Originally known as Nestor Motion Picture Company, then Nestor Film Company, it merged with the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, headed by Carl Laemmle, in 1912).
At the time, the pioneering movie studios were still a newfangled and rather suspect industry, viewed with skepticism by investors, polite society, and cultural guardians alike. They certainly weren’t the main reason why people from all over North America (and Europe) wanted to move to Los Angeles. More important factors were the discovery of vast oilfields and seemingly endless opportunities to make money and fortunes. There was affordable and available vacant land on which one could build quickly, cheaply, and year-round. And all this came with a pleasant climate, and a plentiful supply of fresh meat, fruit and vegetables throughout the year. (This would have been a major draw at a time when heating consisted of building a fire in an oven or fireplace, and electric refrigerators were a rare novelty).
But I would argue that of all industries, it was the motion picture industry which drove America’s rapid motorization in the first part of the 20th Century. Cinemas would soon reach every corner of the country. And there, on big silver screens, huge crowds of people saw all segments of society happily motoring around Southern California. Often in open cars no less, far from snow and ice, and enjoying the joys of personal, individual transportation. To audiences back then, all this looked like magic. And of course, the car industry back east could not have invented a better publicity campaign.
I just recently watched Howard Hawks’ 1944 movie, To Have And Have Not, based on the 1937 novel by Ernest Hemingway. Could any actor alive today deliver performances even close to that of Humphrey Bogart (and of course, Lauren Bacall)? I doubt it.
Incidentally, Humphrey Bogard died on this day, January 14, in 1957. He was 58 years old.
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
TheGarden 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.
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.
Born on February 4, 1902, Charles Augustus Lindbergh would be 122 years old today. Although mostly remembered as an aviator and U.S. military officer, he had a wide range of interests besides aviation – among them politics and international relations.
A prominent member and spokesman of the America First Committee, Lindbergh was strongly opposed to President Franklin Roosevelt’s foreign policy.
(Photo: Charles Lindbergh as a 25-year old, in 1927 – the year of his historical flight from New York to Paris).
Like many of his contemporaries, Lindbergh believed that Soviet communism was by far the greatest threat to America, and thus advocated a neutral stance toward the NSDAP’s rise in Germany.
This was indeed a very popular opinion among the American public at the time, and easily the majority. The way America had been drawn into World War 1 just a little more than two decades earlier played a major role in this.
Lindbergh later wrote:
“I was deeply concerned that the potentially gigantic power of America, guided by uninformed and impractical idealism, might crusade into Europe to destroy Hitler without realizing that Hitler’s destruction would lay Europe open to the rape, loot and barbarism of Soviet Russia’s forces, causing possibly the fatal wounding of Western civilization.“
Lindbergh died on August 26, 1974. During his life, he had witnessed both world wars (fighting for the U.S. in WW-2, albeit unofficially), the enormous rise of commercial aviation, the first nuclear weapons and the beginning of the nuclear age, the electronics revolution, the Cold War and the split of Europe into a free market Western part and a communist Eastern part, the Cold War’s proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, the culture wars of the 1960s, and the space race culminating in the first manned moon landings.
Almost 50 years have passed since Lindbergh’s death. Today’s world includes the Russian invasion of Ukraine, North Korean saber rattling against South Korea, the People’s Republic of China openly talking about (and practicing) the invasion of Taiwan, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and the aftermath of the attack on Israeli civilians originating from the Gaza Strip — all of which could easily compound and escalate into a global conflict with the potential for nuclear weapons being used.
I often wonder how, if he was alive today, Charles Lindbergh would judge the contemporary geopolitical situation, and the state of America and Western Civilization, in 2024.
About 6 out of 10 Americans are heading for the polls today, bringing to an end the most uncivil and intellectually hollow presidential campaign season I have ever witnessed. In an effort to keep myself amused and entertained, I have created a special drink to celebrate the end of this onslaught. I shall call it: the Bad Hombre. Here’s the recipe:
BAD HOMBRE
1 oz tequila
Fresh lime juice
Mexican beer (lager style, well chilled)
Slice of lime
Tapatío sauce
In a mug, pour tequila over ice cubes. Add a lime juice and a dash of Tapatío. Very slowly top with beer and stir very gently. Garnish with a slice of lime.
Mark Twain, detail of photo by Mathew Brady, February 7, 1871
Today I am celebrating the 180th birthday of one of my favorite personalities: printer, typesetter, journalist, humorist, philosopher, businessman, lecturer, world traveler, family man, passionate American, and of course, author Samuel Longhorn Clemens (M:.M:.), better known under one of his pen names, “Mark Twain”. (Clemens also wrote under the name of “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass”).
Twain had a great interest in the sciences, among them astronomy. (He was born in the year of Comet Halley’s appearance in 1835, and just as he predicted, he died in the year of the comet’s subsequent appearance of 1910). In his autobiography, he wrote:
“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’ “
Lesser known among Twain’s many other talents and pursuits is that he was also an ardent inventor and innovator — who earned (and lost) fortunes with his patents and contraptions, going from great wealth to bankruptcy and back to wealth several times in his life. Among other things, he invented a history trivia game and a self-pasting scrapbook, which earned him $50,000 in the years after 1873.
Twain was also quite a lady’s man, and one of his inventions, the “Improvement in adjustable and detachable straps for garments” (U.S. Patent 121992 A, Dec 19, 1871) must have made interesting dinner conversation in Victorian houses.
