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{Hollywood} Forest Lawn Glendale: The Lawn and Freedom Mausoleum
Forest Lawn Glendale is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous! I have heard this before, of course, but this is one of those times where words don’t do it justice. Founded in 1906, the memorial park is famous for its vast collection of sculpture and art, as well as for being one of the first cemeteries to not allow upright headstones, giving the park a smoother look and appeal. There truly is no other cemetery like it, not that I have ever seen in my life. Of the five we visited, this was the first one (for obvious reasons) and we said later on that we shouldn’t have visited it first since it…
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{Hollywood} The Roosevelt Hotel
Opened in 1927 and situated diagonally from Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, the Roosevelt Hotel is a well-known Hollywood landmark. It was named for Theodore Roosevelt and was financed by Louis B. Mayer, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Marilyn Monroe lived here for two years and did her first photo shoot in the hotel’s pool area. Other notable residents include Clara Bow, Al Jolson, Frank Sinatra, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Harold Lloyd…you name them, they probably stayed at, or least partied at, the Roosevelt. Of course, this includes Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who frequently rented out the penthouse before they were married. The room rates actually aren’t…
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{Hollywood} Clark Was Here
Let’s follow Clark around Los Angeles… Culver Studios. Formerly Selznick International Studios, this is where Gone with the Wind was filmed. The white house and manicured gardens are well-remembered as the opening shot of GWTW, then with a white sign in front that said, “A Selznick International Picture.” The scene where Mammy, Prissy and Pork stand in front of Scarlett and Rhett’s enormous Atlanta mansion and exclaim over its size (“Lordy, she sure is rich now!”) was filmed right here, in front of this building, with a matte painting standing in for Scarlett and Rhett’s mansion. Carole Lombard made Nothing Sacred and Made for Each Other here. It was later home…
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{Hollywood} The Academy Library Clears Up a Clark and Carole–Gone with the Wind Mystery
People sure did look at me funny when I said that one of the things I was most looking forward to on my Los Angeles trip was a visit to the library. Sounds strange, but this is not just any library, it’s the Margaret Herrick Library, the library for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscars). If you’ve read a bio on a classic star (a reputable one, anyway) bet your bottom dollar they did their research here. They house thousands of original scripts, screenplays, correspondence, you name it. Many, many people have left their personal papers to the library, including Katharine Hepburn, Steve McQueen, Billy Wilder, Esther Williams, …
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{Hollywood} I’m back!
Well I am back from La-La Land and I saw so much I hardly know where to begin. Unlike many people, whom we saw crowded on tour buses snapping photos of Ashton Kutcher’s house, we were looking for history. In our rented Kia, with Garmin as our usually-cooperative guide, we drove all over Los Angeles, to Brentwood, to Bel Air, to Beverly Hills, to Culver City, to Studio City, to Encino, to Glendale, to Santa Monica, to Hollywood. We drove up long, twisted, tiny roads just to peer over the fence of houses previously owned by Clark, Carole, Jean Harlow, Lana Turner and many more. We snuck around legendary hotels, snapping…