Ciro’s: Nightclub Playground of the Stars (2024)

Socializing, dining, and dancing at Hollywood’s restaurants and nightclubs were an expected part of an actor’s career. Publicity around these activities drove the public to buy movie tickets and fan magazines.

William “Billy” Wilkerson, owner of industry tabloid “The Hollywood Reporter”, understood this well and decided to throw his hat into the entertainment ring when he opened The Vendome restaurant at 6666 Sunset Boulevard, the first in a string of highly successful restaurant-nightclubs to grace Hollywood’s nightlife scene, in May of 1933. Conveniently located just a stone’s throw from the Reporter’s offices, The Vendome was originally planned as a specialty store for Hollywood’s royalty, serving lunch and dinner to patrons such as Joan Crawford, The Gables, Mae West, Louella Parsons and Marlene Dietrich.

In mid-1934, Wilkerson sought a location for a new venture specifically geared to the nighttime crowd already frequenting the stretch of Sunset Boulevard between Hollywood and Beverly Hills, known as the Sunset Strip. According to one account, Wilkerson was scouting for a place to store his stock of vintage libations and happened upon La Boheme, a restaurant equipped with a large cellar, that had recently closed due to gambling and liquor violations. He bought the place with the idea of opening a nightclub above the basem*nt. He employed Harold Grieve, decorator to the stars with a midas touch, who remodeled the interior in the mode of a smart French cafe. The result was Cafe Trocadero, whose grand opening, much like The Vendome, was hyped by a series of provocative ads in The Hollywood Reporter. Wilkerson persuaded agent Myron Selznick to host the opening night party, a private affair, before the club’s public open a couple nights later on September 17, 1934.

The official opening the “Troc” (as it was more commonly referred to) attracted notable revelers such as Joe Schenck; actress Peggy Fears; Ida Lupino;the Gene Markleys (Joan Bennett); Carl Laemmle Jr; George Raft; Virginia Hill; Pat DiCicco; Sally Blanc; and the Darryl Zanucks. By all standards, the Troc was a bona fide success and Wilkerson was credited with ushering in Hollywood’s Golden Age of glamour. The film industry finally had its own official playground, sanctioned by the stars and their studios, and legal by virtue of Prohibition’s repeal and the club’s no-gambling policy. The Trocadero became the place to “see and be seen”, the stars’ idea of a perfect hangout, so thick with actors and actresses, it felt more like someone’s party den than a public nightclub.

Robert Cummings and Marsha Hunt at Cafe Trocadero, 1936

Wilkerson initiated a Sunday night audition where newcomers had an opportunity to perform for Hollywood’spower players. Sunday night soon became THE night to head to the Troc - not only for the array of talent on display, but also due to the City of Los Angeles’ Blue Sky Laws, which prohibited dancing within the city limits on the Sabbath. Conveniently located at 8610 Sunset Boulevard, the Troc was not within city limits, but on a block of unincorporated Los Angeles County. In the wake of the Troc’s enormous success, other clubs also sprang up along Sunset, making the boulevard one long procession of nocturnal merrymaking and host to private benefits, birthdays, anniversaries, and movie premiere parties.

In late 1936, Cafe Trocadero was completely remodeled to the delight of its many patrons. Wilkerson decided to sell it in August 1937, but received no offers. When he pulled out of the Trocadero in 1938, Felix Young became involved, as a manager or part owner. Shortly thereafter, Wilkerson began developing another nightclub just down the street named Ciro’s, which opened in January 1940. With the added competition, the Trocadero began to lose the dominance it had previously enjoyed on the Sunset Strip. In 1939, Young tried to renegotiatethe club’s lease with the landlord, Chateau Sunset Corp. When negotiations broke down, however, Young closed the club on the morning of October 7, 1939, ordering his secretaries to telephone the 400 people who had reservations for that evening and say, “Until my contract is clarified to my satisfaction, the Troc will remain dark.” Three days later, The Trocadero was thrown into involuntary bankruptcy, and by May 1940, the club’s furniture and fittings were auctioned off to satisfy the debts. Several months later, it was reopened under new management, simply renamed “Trocadero”. Over the next few years, it enjoyed some degree of success, but its liquor license was suspended a couple of times, and it finally closed its doors in 1947.

- Christy McAvoy, Historic Hollywood Photographs

Source: Bruce Torrence archives

Clark Gable with Carole Lombard at Ciro’s, 1940

One of my favorite books about Hollywood is Out with the Stars: Hollywood Nightclubs in the Golden Era. Jim Heimann published this opus in 1985 and 35 years later it remains one of the most fun reads ever. He called it “a romantic and nostalgic look back at the fabulous night clubs that lined the Hollywood hills and spread across California’s Southland in the heyday of the film capital.” As he says, “Trocadero, Ciro’s, Mocambo, Cocoanut Grove - the names of the hottest spots are almost as famous as the stars who went there.”

Hollywoodphotographs.com is fortunate to have its own unique record of this era. In addition to our restaurants & nightclubs gallery, six of the most famous locations - Cafe Trocadero, Earl Carroll Theatre, Ciro’s, Cocoanut Grove,Mocambo, and The Palladium– each have their own dedicated gallery on the site. These very special venues embodied glamour, romance, beauty, exotic décor, and a lifestyle well beyond the reach of the average fan. The Hollywood celebrity experience was shared extensively through the studios’ publicity machines, columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, fan magazines, and the photographs snapped every night, so fans could live vicariously and “feel like they were there”. The fantasy world that Hollywood created on screen found its way into the décor and grandeur of the real nightclubs along Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards. And sometimes, if you lived in Los Angeles, you could actually go!

I have treasured photos of my parents and grandparents, celebrating a special occasion at the Palladium and Florentine Gardens. I’m sure many of you do too (please feel free to share your photos in the comments). Luckily, you can still experience some of these locations firsthand, though they may not be the same type of venue they once were. Today, Ciro’s is the Comedy Store, the Palladium has been restored, and the Earl Carroll is about to begin a new chapter (more on that soon).

In the coming days, be sure to stay tuned here, as we roll out a new series of posts that explore the legends, contributors, and interesting facts behind each of these magnificent nightclubs and restaurants in deeper detail….

- Christy McAvoy, Historic Hollywood Photographs

Another much-anticipated nightclub joined the Trocadero and Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip on January 3, 1941, at the site of the old Club Versailles at 8588 Sunset Boulevard. Owners Felix Young and ex-talent agent, Charlie Morrison, who’d never run a nightclub before, created an extraordinary setting for their Mocambo restaurant best described as “a cross between decadent Imperial Rome, Salvador Dali, and a birdcage.” Allusions to a Mexican motif were carried out in a medley of soft blues, terra cotta, and silver. Flaming red columns with harlequin patterns, oversized ball fringe hanging from lacquered trees, walls with huge baroque tin flowers and Jane Berlandina paintings, striped everything, and a dazzling aviary of live birds created its over-the-top interior.

The birds, in fact, almost prevented the Mocambo from opening. The twenty-one parakeets, four love birds, four macaws, and a co*ckatoo were thought to be harmed by exposure to the nighttime noise and local animal lovers wanted them protected. Morrison assured those concerned that the birds were enjoying themselves and kept the drapes pulled during the day to allow them extra rest.

His $100,000 investment garnered the finest décor and entertainment team money could buy. Maitre’d Andre was hired away from 21 in New York and August Roche, a twenty-year veteran chef of continental cuisine, pampered the stars with culinary treats. Phil Ohman, a long-time fixture at the Trocadero, became house bandleader. Paul Hebert and Eddie Oliver sometimes conducted. Harold Stein and his Strolling Violins played the club often.

The $10 opening night charge hardly slowed the steady procession of people from parading under the outdoor canopy into the flamboyant interior. Each and every evening, big stars flocked to Mocambo, even many of Hollywood’s more reclusive personalities made it their haunt, including such prominent patrons as Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Carole Lombard, Clark Gable, Louis B. Mayer, Hedy Lamarr, Cary Grant, Rita Hayworth, Barbara Stanwick, and many more. At one table might be Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart and Burgess Meredith, while at another, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. could be found deep in conversation with Norma Shearer. Myrna Loy and Arthur Hornblow chose the venue to celebrate their divorce together. With such a highly charged room of celebrities, altercations were also said to be inevitable. Errol Flynn once slugged Jimmy Fiddler for disrespecting him and promptly got a fork in the ear from the columnist’s wife. Never a dull moment.

Mocambo also boasted having some of the era’s top performers: Edith Piaf, Eartha Kitt, Dinah Shore, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and Lena Horne. Morrison was always at the club to greet his guests and approached the entertainment bookings with a Barnum-like flair. Morrison installed a neon light marquee above the front entrance to highlight the club’s performers, setting the stage for what would soon be one of the Strip’s signature features. The club found its way onto the small screen when its main stage was replicated for the television series “I Love Lucy” as the “Tropicana Club” as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were close friends of Charlie Morrison and frequent guests at Mocambo.

According to Hollywood legend, Marilyn Monroe persuaded the owners to book Ella Fitzgerald; an engagement that changed her career forever. Fitzgerald became the first black performer at the Mocambo, paving the way for others to follow. When Charlie Morrison first saw Earth Kitt perform, he was ecstatic, exclaiming, "She is wonderful. I’ll hire her anytime.” After leaving the Tommy Dorsey orchestra in 1943, an up-and-coming singer named Frank Sinatra also made his Los Angeles solo debut at the club. Sunday evening was reserved for talent night. Marilyn Morrison, Charlie’s daughter, would interview acts during the day to perform that night.

Private parties were another extravagance that Mocambo happily accommodated. Oil heiress Elinore Machris gave a $30,000 party to announce her remarriage, only to be topped by Lana Turner, who hosted a $40,000 birthday party for her husband. The Mocambo, as fan-magazine reporter Lloyd Pantages observed, “… is a place in Hollywood which looks like Hollywood; magnificent, luxurious, exotic and unique”. Together with Ciro’s, Coconut Grove,Earl Carroll’s Theatre, Romanoff’s, and the Palladium,there was little doubt the great heyday of Hollywood nightclubbing was in full swing.

By 1945, with WWII’s ending imminent, Hollywood’s social scene was on the verge of dramatic changes that would forever alter the motion picture industry as well as the business of nightclub entertainment. With the studio system exerting less pressure to be seen in public, many celebrities found it preferable to socialize with small groups of friends at home rather than make the rounds to Hollywood’s nightspots, and the advent of television further encouraged stay at home entertainment. The process of Hollywood’s nightclub demise was a gradual one, but VJ Day clearly signaled the beginning of the end. Ciro’s and Mocambo, the two most popular spots, managed to draw crowds for several more years and continued to operate for a short time after Charlie Morrison’s death. But it was no longer the same and much to sadness of its many notable patrons, the legendary club finally closed its doors on June 30, 1952.

-Christy McAvoy, Historic Hollywood Photographs

Source: Bruce Torrence archives

The Brown Derby was a chain of famous Los Angeles restaurants founded by three entrepreneurial Hollywood transplants - Wilson Mizner, an acerbic wit, man-about-town, playwright turned developer from New York and Boca Raton, with a long checkered past; Herbert K. Somborn, film producer/distributor and husband of Gloria Swanson; and their silent partner financier, movie mogul Jack Warner. Despite its notoriety for wealth and glamour, the three were less than impressed with Hollywood’s food and restaurant scene. They were determined to fill the void and create a social epicenter that served “good hardy staples like Dunstan’s in NY” and a first-class establishment where “actors of lofty eminence could dine in relative privacy”. Legends of how the restaurant got its name vary, much like playing a game of telephone, but it’s said that Somborn believed, “You could open a restaurant in an alley and call it anything, even something as ridiculous as the Brown Derby, if the food and service were good, the patrons would just come flocking” or Mizner might’ve mused, “If you know anything about food, you can sell it out of a hat”.

They opened original Brown Derby restaurant at 3427 Wilshire Boulevard in 1926, a prime location Somborn had recently purchased, just across the street from the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel. Whimsical architecture was fashionable at the time, and its distinctive ‘derby hat’ shaped design readily caught the eye of passing motorists.

The first restaurant was such a success that in 1929, Somborn agreed to opened a second location, The Brown Derby Hollywood, at 1628 N. Vine Street, just south of Hollywood Blvd and the Walk of Fame. It was designed by architect Carl Jules Weyl, a former art director for Warner Brothers, in a distinctive Spanish Colonial Revival style that was popular for commercial establishments in Hollywood’s central core. Though its exterior was perhaps not as sensational as the first locale, the Brown Derby Hollywood was considerably larger and with its proximity to nearby radio, TV, and movie studios, it quickly became the place to schmooze, strike deals, and be seen.

Columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper were regularly on hand to gather gossip and report on the celebrities in the room, such as Ronald Reagan, Cesar Romero, Dorothy Lamour, Betty Grable, Shirley Temple, Glenn Ford, George and Gracie Allen. Legend has it that Clark Gable proposed to Carole Lombard there. Many civic and community leaders, such as Charles Toberman and his wife Josephine, could also be seen dining on a regular basis. A lion even celebrated his third birthday to much fanfare at the Derby! The anecdotes are endless. The Derby had its own public relations firm, led by Louella Parsons’ cousin Margaret Ettinger, who saw to it that there was a perpetual presence of autograph seekers out front at all times. A select group of professional photographers were given access inside to snap shots of the illustrious clientele. Most didn’t mind as it was an accepted part of the territory; the publicity machine being advantageous for both studios and stars alike.

Like many venues in Hollywood, the Brown Derby often played its own starring role in film and television. Most memorably, in L.A. at Last, the first of the I Love Lucy Hollywood episodes, Lucy, Ethel, and Fred go for lunch at the Brown Derby. During one of their typical misadventures, the trio finds themselves in a booth next to actors Eve Arden and William Holden. Lucy tries to surreptitiously sneak peeks of Holden over the back of the booth, attracts lots of attention while struggling to eat long strands of spaghetti, and then everything famously goes awry when Lucy inadvertently causes the waiter to hit Holden in the face with a pie.

One of the unique features of the Hollywood Brown Derby was that most of the booths had telephones, so busy executives could make or receive calls while dining off the lot. This successful ploy brought in a lot of business and contributed to the already theatrical atmosphere. The celebrity caricatures that covered the walls, most of which were drawn by Jack Lane and Eddie Vitch, were another feature unique to the Derby. It was also the birthplace of the Cobb Salad, which was said to have been hastily assembled from leftovers by Robert “Bob” Cobb, a combination steward, cashier and occasional cook, who later became owner of both the Wilshire and Hollywood restaurants, after Somborn’s death in 1934. Another signature dish of note - the Turkey Derby, served on their Pumpernickel bread that was apparently "to die for”.

Capitalizing on the chain’s success, a third Brown Derby was built in 1931 at 9537 Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills. In 1940, the fourth Brown Derby opened at 4500 Los Feliz Avenue, the only one to have both a fine dining restaurant and a 'drive in’ at the same location.

By 1975, the Wilshire location had lost its popularity. It closed and the building was demolished, except for a portion of the original 'derby hat’. The Beverly Hills location closed in 1982 and was demolished the following year. The Los Feliz Brown Derby closed in the early 1990s, though other restaurants and clubs continued to utilize the building in the years since. The Hollywood Brown Derby remained open until 1985. The building was badly damaged by fire in 1987 and it was demolished in 1994.

Thankfully, its legend lives on through all the colorful stories, films, and photographs that have been recorded and preserved. Our particular archive contains over 150 images, of all four Derby locations, spanning six decades, available for your viewing pleasure at hollywoodphotographs.com.

- Christy McAvoy and Carly Caryn, Historic Hollywood Photographs

Sources: Bruce Torrence archives; Out With The Stars by Jim Heimann

Schwab’s Pharmacy was the stuff of legends. It was perhaps the most famous drugstore in America during the Golden Age of Hollywood. The Hollywood branch of Schwab’s at 8024 Sunset Boulevard was the first store in a chain founded by Leana Schwab to support her six children. During its over five decade run, Schwab’s operated seven different locations in Hollywood and Beverly Hills, and all six children worked to make the business a success. Son Jack founded the Sunset Boulevard location in 1932. His brother Leon, after earning a degree in pharmacology from USC, took over after Jack’s death. Leon promoted the pharmacy’s proximity to the studios, set up delivery and charge accounts, and ran “tabs” for out of work actors. He encouraged publicity through columnists, film shoots, and accommodating tourists.

A lot happened here. Contrary to popular lore, Lana Turner’s discovery was not one of them. The true stories are even more interesting. The soda fountain was the big attraction and meeting spot. Gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky made it and the adjacent phone booth his office, using the tag line “From A Stool at Schwab’s” in all his write ups. He filed stories about Orson Welles, Ava Gardner buying lipstick, William Randolph Hearst picking up medicine for Marian Davies. Some stars were allowed behind the counter to make their own sodas or grab a cup of coffee. Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Judy Garland all got their prescriptions filled there. Charlie Chaplin and his sons were also regulars.

Schwab’s was officially etched in the pantheon of popular culture when it was featured in Paramount Studios’ movie Sunset Boulevard starring Gloria Swanson and William Holden, making it instantly world famous and a tourism magnet. The nearby Garden of Allah apartments also helped the trade. Its residents included many actors and writers like Robert Benchley and F. Scott Fitzgerald who would often pop in for a quick meal.

When it was torn down in November 1959 and replaced with a retail complex, the residential nature of that section of Sunset Blvd further declined and Schwab’s nearby customer base dwindled. By the 60s, the Strip as a whole was changing fast. Schwab’s closed at midnight while other restaurant and nightclubs stayed open 24 hours. Many regulars felt uncomfortable being around the new club scene, but Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and others continued to patronize the pharmacy.

February 1982 marked the 50^th anniversary of Schwab’s Sunset location. It was a major event, but as the press was reporting on Schwab’s illustrious past, in reality Leon was struggling to keep the business afloat. The iconic gathering spot eventually closed for good two years later and the building was demolished in 1988. Thankfully, its memory lives on through photographs, like those found in our collection, as well as film and TV shows that continue to re-create its glory days for today’s audiences.

~ Christy McAvoy, Historic Hollywood Photographs

Source: Bruce Torrence archives

People come to Hollywood to reinvent themselves. Endless stories abound. Many are prosaic and lost to history. Some become the stuff of legends.

Take for example, the story of Cora Irene Sund, a resourceful school teacher from Minnesota with big dreams and a knack for creative enterprise, who saved enough money to move to Los Angeles in the early 1930s. She took a job as a waitress at the Tick Tock Tearoom, a family owned restaurant on Cahuenga Boulevard. She soon met another transplant, Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, a bartender at the Hollywood Hotel, who served exceptional rum drinks and went by “Don the Beachcomber”. Cora Irene and Gantt became an item and when they married, he began officially using the moniker, Donn Beach.

To showcase Donn’s mixology skills, Cora Irene (also known as Sunny Sund and Mama C.I.) borrowed money to open Hollywood’s first tropical themed establishment “Don’s Beachcomber Café” at 1722 N. McCadden Place in 1934. They moved across the street to 1727 McCadden Place in 1937 to expand the bar and add a restaurant, which then became “Don the Beachcomber”. They let their imaginations run wild, creating their very own tropical island “tiki” oasis, complete with artificial rainstorms which pitter pattered on the corrugated roof. From the outside, the place was surrounded by bamboo and intentionally hard to find, making it all the more popular with the Hollywood elite, such as The Marx Brothers, Franchot Tone, Bing Crosby, Marlene Dietrich, Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, and Greer Garson.

Small dining rooms with names like “Black Hole of Calcutta” and “Cannibal Room” were decorated with palm trees, coconut shells, wooden idols, and other Polynesian paraphernalia, collected in Donn’s travels and work on movie sets. Candles in net-covered vases sat on varnished wooden tables in the shape of islands. Chinese groceries, leis, and rum were sold in the gift shop.

Even with all the over the top décor, the true stars were Don’s intricate rum drinks, including such classics as the “Missionary’s Downfall”, “Vicious Virgin”, “Cobra’s Fang” and of course, the “Zombie”. Cora Irene hired Chinese chefs to create a South Seas meets Cantonesestyle menu whose exoticismfar exceeded that of most standard Chinese restaurants in Los Angeles at the time. She found water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, lychee nuts; imported oyster sauce from China; and likely served the first pu pu platters and ramaki to enthusiastic Hollywood crowds.

Though the business partnership flourished, the marriage did not. They would open an additional 16 locations, making Don the Beachcomber the first themed restaurant chain in the United States. When they divorced in 1940, Cora moved to Chicago to manage that operation full time, and by 1947 it was named one of the Top 50 US restaurants. Donn later moved to Hawaii where he would further expand his roster of tiki-themed entrepreneurial ventures. In 1958, Joseph Drown, owner of the Bel-Air Hotel and other elegant hotelleries, took over the business and added restaurants in Marina Del Rey and Newport Beach. The original Beachcomber closed in 1985 and was demolished in 1987, but the mid-century tiki culture that Donn and Sunny made popular, lives on to this day, more prolific and revered than ever.

~ Christy McAvoy, Historic Hollywood Photographs

Source: Bruce Torrence archives

Americans love to eat. Even more so, they love to dine out. Dining establishments, be it fine dining restaurants, diners, soda fountains, drive-ins, or food stands - have been an integral part of American culture since the beginning. Each region has its own unique cuisine, each city its signature establishments. Vying for title of “best”, “hottest new”, or named on prestigious awards lists has become a sport of sorts. Advertising and celebrity always playing a key role as owners strive to make their venue stand apart from the crowd through the ambience, menu, theme, or cuisine. Many have designed clever ways to stick in the minds of patrons and promote their brand long after the bill is settled, through keepsakes like paper menus, swizzle sticks, matchbooks, and postcards, and the collection of, a hobby for many.

Restaurants have always played an enormous role in community life, especially in Hollywood. While they act as natural gathering spots to share a meal with friends and family, early restaurants and nightclubs were also where the public could potentially encounter their favorite iconic actors and actresses of the silver screen, radio and television.

While the studio publicity apparatus became masterful at utilizing restaurants and nightclubs for promotional purposes, the most popular establishments had to develop strategies for striking the balance between public access and their clientele’s privacy. Some hotspots successfully incorporated the film industry and its personalities into its signature décor, through illustrated portraits and autographed photographs on their walls; others allowed filming, making cameo appearances as stars in their own right. Managing photographers, gossip columnists, and the public’s appetite for things other than food, became a job all its own during the Golden Age of Hollywood when the movie industry and studio system were at their peak.

Today, few of the most popular culinary landmarks remain, existing solely in photographs or immortalized on film. Musso & Frank’s and Yamashiro can still be experienced first-hand. Others like the Pig ‘N Whistle, Off Vine, 25 Degrees at the Roosevelt Hotel, Wood and Vine in the Taft Building, make excellent use of their historic locales. Hollywood’s tastes and preferences are fickle; restaurants come and go at lightning speed. Luckily, we’ve got quite a collection of images, over 145 of Hollywood’s most favorite food haunts and the stars who frequented them, available to enjoy at hollywoodphotographs.com.

In the next few weeks, we’ll explore several of Hollywood’s most famous restaurants - the legends, defining features, and power players behind them – sharing their stories along with some of the rare photos we have in our collection, so be sure to stay tuned…

- Christy McAvoy and Carly Caryn, Historic Hollywood Photographs

Not many businesses, let alone restaurants, can say they have been in business for over 100 years. Not many restaurants can say that members of the founding families still operate them today. Nor can many say their old school continental steakhouse entrees (flannel cakes, chicken pot pie, Welsh rarebit) that have been on the menu since the restaurant first opened, still draw patrons who pine for a fix if they’ve been absent too long. Few can claim there have only been three executive chefs in their entire history, or that the first one (Jean Rue) stayed for 53 years. Nor can they say that their headwaiter (Jesse Chavez), who began as a busboy in the 1920s, later became part owner for a time. Or that a bartender like Manny Aguirre could literally make your day better with his classic gin martini (stirred with ice) and legendary smile. But Musso and Frank most certainly can.

Firmin “Frank” Toulet opened Fran’s Café on September 27, 1919 at 6669 Hollywood Boulevard. To put this in perspective: the motion picture industry had barely been in town ten years; WWI had just concluded; there was a nationwide pandemic known as the “Spanish flu” still sweeping the nation; and Hollywood Boulevard was a mixture of Victorian mansions and brick storefronts. Toulet later changed the name to Frank’s Francois Café, and when he partnered with Joseph Musso in 1923, renamed it Musso and Frank Grill. Four years later, the restaurant changed into the hands of John Mosso and Joseph Carissimi, a team who operated other restaurants in Portland, Oregon and Sacramento, California.

The original room, a dark paneled dining space with a long counter and open grill on one side, housed red leather booths for maximum privacy on the other. One of the first public telephone booths on the Boulevard was at the rear. By 1936, the restaurant had expanded to include a private “back room” and moved its front door to 6667 Hollywood Boulevard. Expanding again in 1955 (when it took over the space occupied by the Stanley Rose Bookstore to the east), the “new room” was added, creating the configuration that patrons are familiar with today. That room now contains the same ornate bar, fixtures, and furniture from the “back room” and little has changed in six decades.

The restaurant grew alongside the burgeoning film industry and was also a favorite haunt of literary icons and other artistic patrons from the get go. Beginning with Charlie Chaplin, who reportedly loved the roast lamb kidneys and always occupied a corner booth, Musso’s served all the movie stars and moguls including Greta Garbo, the Warner Brothers, Pickford and Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Claudette Colbert, Edward G. Robinson, and Orson Welles, to name a few. The business community joined them, represented by developer Charles E. Toberman, who lunched there well into his 100s, and regularly brought his family for dinner. With the Screen Writers Guild conveniently located across the street, and Stanley Rose Bookstore right next store, it was a natural home base for Hollywood’s literati transplants, especially those from the East Coast, seeking a familiar New York style atmosphere. California’s preeminent historians Carey McWilliams and Kenneth Starr chronicled their visits, with Starr saying that the list of authors who dined there was “the list of required reading for a sophom*ore survey of the mid-20^th century American novel.” Legendary wordsmiths like William Faulkner, William Saroyan, Nathanael West, Dorothy Parker, Dashiell Hammett, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and Ernest Hemingway were recruited by the studios to write screenplays in the hopes their fame would sell tickets. They prized Musso’s ambience and as such, the restaurant made cameos in their work, with quintessential set and setting descriptions of its scene appearing in Nathanael West’s Day of the Locusts and Bud Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run?

Guided by generations of Carissimis and Mossos, Musso’s has been a constant in the ever-changing landscape of the Boulevard. New generations of celebrity patrons including Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Keith Richards have sung the restaurant’s praises, keeping Musso’s legendary status intact and visits to it, a traditional right of passage for anyone worth their salt in Hollywood. It has starred in movies and television shows like Ocean’s Eleven, Mad Men, and of course, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Just as important, it is a community treasure, beloved by residents and visitors alike. For the price of one of those martinis, an order of flannel cakes or filet of sanddabs, you too can step back in time and be part of Hollywood history, still. Cheers to another 100 years…

~ Christy McAvoy, Historic Hollywood Photographs

Sources: Bruce Torrence archives; Musso and Frank Grill website; The Dream Endures by Kevin Starr

Vern Farquhar inside his Hollywood Tire Shop on Hollywood Blvd. in 1923

Road trips became a significant part of American life in the 1920s, but the roads were far from hazard free and good tires were essential.Vernon Farquhar made a comfortable living and developed a trusted reputation with his well-regarded tire shop. Originally located at 6262 Hollywood Boulevard, it moved a few years later to 6472 Sunset Boulevard. Farquhar was very active in his community - a founding member of the Lions Club (which provided services to the blind when it formed in 1923), as well as president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Vern (kneeling) at his Hollywood Tire Shop on Sunset Blvd. in 1930

~ Christy McAvoy, Historic Hollywood Photographs

Premiere night of The Heiress at Fox Carthay Circle Theater in 1949. Directed by William Wyler, starring Olivia de Havilland and Montgomery Clift. The movie was nominated for 3 Golden Globes and de Havilland won for Best Actress. Nominated for 8 Academy Awards, it won for Best Actress, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, and Best Score.

To view more photographs from our collection of movie premieres, theaters, and more, please visit:https://www.hollywoodphotographs.com/