robert landau Excerpt: Live on the Sunset Strip The street that made music history Robert Landau’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip was published in October 2012 by Angel City Press. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/4/79/381413/boom_2012_2_4_79.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 The Sunset Strip is that 1.7-mile stretch of Sunset Boulevard that is now part of the city of West Hollywood, connecting Hollywood on the east (where funky Laurel Canyon descends to Sunset and meets Crescent Heights) with Beverly Hills to the west (where Doheny Road climbs to the posh mansions of 90210-land). There are actually many Sunset Strips—versions that live in real time and space, and versions that live in our collective fantasy. The actual landscape of the Strip is typical of Los Angeles, featuring buildings of every imaginable architectural style, a look captured perfectly by artist Ed Ruscha in his 1966 book Every Building on the Sunset Strip. Outdoor advertising permeates the vista, ready to capture the attention of the steady stream of eyeballs that comes with continuously heavy traffic. Billboards of varying sizes are sandwiched between and above colorful hotels, restaurants, offices, gas stations, sleazy strip malls, and trendy retail shops. Now, thanks to digital technology, billboards engulf entire buildings and cover whole city buses, adding even more visual congestion to an already over- saturated urban scene. By day, the Sunset Strip was where the business of the music industry was conducted in the Sixties and Seventies. Both high-rise luxury offices and older, cottage-style buildings have long housed record companies, producers, talent scouts, business managers, personal managers, public relations executives, advertising agencies, design firms, and even a few film, photo, and recording studios. Deals have been struck and contracts inked at any number of casual or swank restaurants, or inside the lobbies and suites of elegant old hotels. Songs first performed at Sunset Strip clubs could have been discovered, recorded, packaged, promoted, and sold all on the same street, all in a relatively short period of time. By night, the Strip was, and still is, Hollywood’s playground, where the entertainment industry came to party and see or be seen at nightclubs, rock clubs, Boom: A Journal of California, Vol. 2, Number 4, pps 79–86. ISSN 2153-8018, electronic ISSN 2153-764X. © 2013 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/boom.2012.2.4.79. BOOM | WINTER 2012 79 Boom0204_09.indd 79 1/16/13 5:13 PM Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/4/79/381413/boom_2012_2_4_79.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 Billboards on Sunset Strip 1950 at Kings Road. bars, lounges, comedy clubs, and restaurants. Grizzled larger-than-life celebrities riding in stretch limousines, veterans of the film world mingled with newcomers trying surrounded by their private and public entourages, ever to catch a break. More people could usually be seen walking ready for their big close-up, with paparazzi fighting for the the street at night than in the daytime, since traffic would shot. Being discovered is always just as close as the next slow to a crawl after work, and parking was scarce, making club and the next flirtation. it a hell of a lot easier to get around on foot. Not much has The myth evolved honestly, honed over time. The changed. After the sun goes down in L.A., that hallowed first studios sprouted on Sunset Boulevard as early as pavement has, over the years, been navigated by stars, 1911, and the clubs and restaurants quickly followed. In starlets, gangsters, crooners, hipsters, winos, beatniks, the 1920s, the Russian Eagle nightclub drew the likes of hippies, teeny boppers, hustlers, rock stars, groupies, Rudolf Valentino. When it burned in 1930, La Bohème junkies, yuppies, punks, Gen-Xers, rappers, and anyone replaced it, then evolved into the Cafe Trocadero by 1934. else looking for a place to convene with a like spirit. Owned by Billy Wilkerson, the publisher of the Hollywood The mythic Sunset Strip, the Strip of our dreams, lives on in our fantasies, fueled by fan magazines, pulp novels, The myth evolved movies, stage productions, blogs, and, of course, television. In this, its most iconic incarnation, the Strip pulses with honestly, honed over time. 80 BOOMCALIFORNIA.COM Boom0204_09.indd 80 12/24/12 4:30 PM In 1953, the Hotel Sahara in Las Vegas literally created a splash on the Sunset Strip when its Foster and Kleiser billboard included an actual swimming pool, filled with water and stocked with in-the-flesh bathing beauties. Intrigued passers-by stopped their cars to gawk and take photos. The local press played up the story, especially when comedic actor Red Skelton, who was scheduled to appear at the Hotel Sahara, showed up at the site and jumped into the pool fully clothed. The clever publicity stunt not only caught the eye of the public and the press, but also of other Hollywood publicity hounds. The Strip was fast becoming the place to promote Vegas acts and other entertainment- Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/4/79/381413/boom_2012_2_4_79.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 related projects in Los Angeles. Ladies of Sahara Las Vegas Hotel, 1953. Reporter, Trocadero drew an opening night crowd that high-stakes poker games in the backrooms. The Strip’s included Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Jean Harlow, William status as unincorporated territory between the cities of Powell, and other big stars of the day. Through the years, Los Angeles and Beverly Hills helped foster an anything- Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, and others serenaded goes atmosphere, its few cops ready to be bought off, and patrons, while studio moguls and mobsters engaged in laws only there to be broken. Billboard for Sahara Las Vegas Hotel. BOOM | WINTER 2012 81 Boom0204_09.indd 81 12/24/12 4:30 PM Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/4/79/381413/boom_2012_2_4_79.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 Love billboard. In 1940, Ciro’s was the place to be seen, where clients By the mid-Fifties, the Strip had lost some of its such as Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and luster and drawing power, in large part due to two new Katharine Hepburn dutifully posed for photos that ran in popular phenomena: television and Las Vegas. Television newspapers and fan magazines the world over. Just down kept people away from movie theaters and nightclubs the street, director Preston Sturges opened the Players as they increasingly spent nights at home, glued to Club and welcomed regulars Greta Garbo, Marlene their sets. Las Vegas, just a few hours’ drive (and an Dietrich, and Hedy Lamarr. even shorter plane flight) from L.A., offered the kind of The Garden of Allah apartments at the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights housed writers including Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, all drawn to Hollywood to make big money as scriptwriters. Schwab’s Pharmacy was just a short walk away, and was known as a popular hangout where hopeful young actors and actresses could rub shoulders with the really big stars while waiting to be discovered. As reels of American films traveled to movie houses around the world, an ever-growing global press focused its attention on the doings of celebrities, making the Sunset Strip an international symbol of the razzle-dazzle of Hollywood nightlife. Wayne Newton at the Hollywood Bowl 1967 billboard. 82 BOOMCALIFORNIA.COM Boom0204_09.indd 82 12/24/12 4:30 PM Pandora’s Box was among the most notorious. energy through the onslaught of rock ’n’ roll. A few weeks before the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, the iconic Whisky a Go Go opened its doors The Liberace Show ‘70 billboard. at the corner of Sunset and Clark Avenue. Headliner Johnny Rivers was accompanied by the novelty of mini-skirted go- Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/boom/article-pdf/2/4/79/381413/boom_2012_2_4_79.pdf by guest on 28 September 2021 uninhibited adult entertainment that the Sunset Strip go dancers boogalooing overhead in suspended cages. Soon only suggested. Ironically, the Strip’s many billboards the new generation of emerging Hollywood stars, including featured airline travel to and from Las Vegas, as well as Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Elizabeth Taylor, Steve its headlining acts such as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, McQueen, and even a few of the Beatles, made headlines Jr., and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Adding further just by showing up to watch and listen. By 1966, the Doors insult to injury was the popularity of a 1958–1964 TV- had become the Whisky’s house band, and Ciro’s reopened detective series titled 77 Sunset Strip, filmed at the site of down the street with the Byrds as the main attraction. Dean Martin’s real-life nightclub, Dino’s, which glorified Connected by the music that was resounding on the the now-fading boulevard. It became a household word Strip, young people swarmed the boulevard by night. New for faraway television viewers who dreamed of coming to clubs and coffeehouses sprang up to meet the growing Hollywood. Ironically, it also kept the locals at home, out demand. The Sea Witch, the Trip, the London Fog, the of the restaurants and clubs on the Strip, seated on their Galaxy, Gazzarri’s, and a bit later on, the Roxy and the sofas watching Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Rainbow Room were alive with kids and music.