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Motion Pictures Los Angeles in the 1950's

Discussion in 'The Hokey Ass Message Board' started by Ryan, Sep 7, 2012.

  1. Dane
    Joined: May 6, 2010
    Posts: 1,351

    Dane
    Member
    from Soquel, CA

    I was born in LA in 1955. I think todays kids are missing out as their heritage will be about telephones rather than rockets and jets. :D

    Anyone remember riding the rockets in front of the supermarkets for a nickle or trying to get the toy you wanted from the gumball machine inside the store?
     
  2. nwbhotrod
    Joined: Oct 13, 2009
    Posts: 1,243

    nwbhotrod
    Member
    from wash state

    Blue eyd Blonde and round eyes
     
  3. Mike VV
    Joined: Sep 28, 2010
    Posts: 3,029

    Mike VV
    Member
    from SoCal

    [​IMG]

    The stairs, next to the Karls shoe store, a friend and I had our "locked up" 10spd. bikes stolen from right there.
    This was about 1962.

    The stores are still there...but ALL have changed and even many of the buildings have been torn down and rebuilt.
    The EastLand tower is is still there too. They do still put up a large Christmas tree every year though.
    The May Co. is about 3 miles West down the 10 freeway now, Cliftons, Grant...all gone away.

    Mike
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2012
  4. Dan in Pasadena
    Joined: Sep 11, 2009
    Posts: 867

    Dan in Pasadena
    Member

    Hmmm,
    I was born in East L.A. at the very end of 1954. I like to say my beloved Dodgers waited for my 1st summer of baseball to win their first World Series. But of course they were still in Brooklyn, so NOT!
    My mother recognized even then that ELA was no place to raise a boy and expect him not to get into trouble. My sisters; then ages 6&8 could be raised there in her view but NOT a boy.

    So we moved to sleepy Whittier; 10-15(?) miles east of LA and in those days newly built suburbs where orange orchards still surrounded us. I remember seeing "smudge pots" in the orchards as a small boy and of course now most people will say, "What the hell is a smudge pot?" (A heater so fruit would not freeze on chilly nights - apparently climate change IS real cause you NEVER think about freezing temps overnight nowadays!). I remember school days when we were not allowed outside recesses because of smog alerts. Even my young lungs would ache with a deep breath on those days. I remember the tv show "Julia" being a big deal because it was the first with a black starring actress. I remember not understanding what the big deal was about the Frito Bandito but I also remember a cartoon character of a stereotypical Mexican peon with giant sombrero so all you saw was his big mustache and a cloud of flies circling over his head - confusing if you were a "Mexican" kid; no one had ever heard the term, Hispanic then. It hadn't been invented!

    I remember my soon to be brother in law's '49 Chevy that he dropped a Vette 327 in and had a 45 rpm record player in that played with the needle pointed upwards! I remember my sister's boyfriend riding up on the then-new '69 Honda CB750 Four. A truly radically fast bike in those days. I visited OCIR and Irwindale dragstrips with my 20 year old future brother in law and was wowed by the funny cars. I regularly cruised Whittier Blvd in my '66 Chevy van (eyes rolling here) instead of my Dad's '55 2 door hardtop Belair which was just an old car in '70-'72 when I started driving. Same as a '97 Chevy is today - at least that was the thinking. How DAMN dumb was that??!!!

    I suppose I truly "grew up" more in the 60's because I remember nightly news stories of protests and assassinations, riots. My astonishing memory is getting to junior college in the early 70's and thinking, "...nothing ever happens anymore"!! Only a kid raised in the tumultuous 60's would think that of the Watergate days of the early 70's! In my opinion, though it is REALLY REALLY different, LA is in many ways better than it has ever been for many. YMMV.
     
  5. The stairs, next to the Karls shoe store, a friend and I had our "locked up" 10spd. bikes stolen from right there.
    This was about 1962.

    The stores are still there...but ALL have changed and even many of the buildings have been torn down and rebuilt.
    The EastLand tower is gone too. They do still put up a large Christmas tree every year though.
    The May Co. is about 3 miles West down the 10 freeway now, Cliftons, Grant...all gone away.

    Mike[/QUOTE]

    Hey Mike, one of them didn't happen to be red did it? For years, travel to and from Eastland was through a wash, we would pick it up at San Bernardino Rd and Grand Ave, and travel it to Rowland Ave where we climbed out. On occasion we would continue, it was a concreted tunnel under Eastland, the San Bernardino Fwy and under the service road ( if memory serves me correctly, that would have been Garvey) and open back up by the West Covina Bowling Alley. Anyway, I found a red 10 spd down in that wash but I'm thinking that it was earlier than '62.
    Next to those stairs was an escalator that we would ride for hours, or at least till the Security Guard ran us off. Eastland was a major hangout until I got mobile...
     
  6. Mike VV
    Joined: Sep 28, 2010
    Posts: 3,029

    Mike VV
    Member
    from SoCal

    1stGrumpy -

    Mine was almost brand new...it was a greenish gold. I don't recall the color of my friends bike. The only thing I've EVER won in a contest was that bike. Back when Berts Motorcycles...was Berts Bicycles in Azusa. They had a new store, grand opening prize...I won the bike. Hell...as I recall, I only had it a coupla months..then gone..!

    And yea...we got tossed out too for riding the esclator...!

    I remember a coupla washes but not one at Grand and San Bernadino Rd. I lived right near Grand and Covina Blvd....actually do again..back from Glendale !

    And as I corrected in my post...the EastLand tower IS still there..!

    It may have been real late 61..but I know it was no earlier thAn that.

    Mike
     
  7. The wash ran along the R/R tracks and then turned south just past the reseviour on San Bernardino Rd.
    I lived by Cypress and Grand.
     
  8. Dan in Pasadena
    Joined: Sep 11, 2009
    Posts: 867

    Dan in Pasadena
    Member

    Their memories will be just as fond.

    They'll say to us codgers, "You mean if you weren't in that ONE SPOT on Earth, no one could reach you by phone??"

    Already I find myself remembering when the only tv you cared about was channels 2(KNXT), 4(KNBC) and 7(KABC).

    5(KTLA), 9(KHJ), 11(KTTV) and 13(KCOP) were for reruns and crap you didn't much care about. At the end of summer I remember waiting eagerly to TV Guide so I could read about the new shows: The Munsters, Addams Family, Wild, Wild, West, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Oohh and "Burke's Law" The detective (former Bat Masterson) had a frickin PHONE in his FRICKIN CAR!!! And Bruce Lee was his driver. How cooool was that?!!

    Ha ha, good times. Anyone under say 45 remember the "Reader's Guide to Periodic Literature" at the library? We researched all our school papers using it. Hell, most younger people probably never go to a library. Everything is available on the internet.
     
  9. K-88 ghost
    Joined: Nov 5, 2009
    Posts: 214

    K-88 ghost
    Member
    from Nevada

    L.A.X. around 3:00am '58 or '59
     

    Attached Files:

  10. I was born in Van Nuys, in the middle of the San Fernando Valley in 1955 a couple blocks down the street from the house my mom was born in and lives in now. That house was built by Grampa next door to great grandma and Great grampa's house, which was one of 2 other houses in what later became a neighborhood. Like the others on here who grew up in SoCal in the same era, cars were pretty much everything in my life. Just a few doors west of the house I was born in (Van Nuys Maternity Hospital, which was a converted 2-bedroom house with clapboard siding and looked like most of the other houses in the area) was Van Nuys Blvd. 1/2 a mile down is the Bob's Big Boy. Getting food in the drive-in on Saturday night in the 60s and 70s meant witnessing lots of street races being challenged and set up. Then the street right past it, Van Nuys Blvd, was the epitome of cruising. Movies were made about it. Up until the early 80s when the cruising got shut down by the Cops and City Hall. On Facebook, I frequent a page about the San Fernando Valley in the old days up to about 1980. http://www.facebook.com/valleyrelics
     
  11. Old Man Taylor
    Joined: Apr 5, 2010
    Posts: 37

    Old Man Taylor
    Member

    Thanks for that link. I was in the Valley from 1949-1964. A lot of memories in the link you posted.
     
  12. 50Fraud
    Joined: May 6, 2001
    Posts: 10,101

    50Fraud
    Member

    Probably a little later. There's a Corvair in the picture, and they were introduced in '60. (Yeah, OK, they started shipping them in '59).
     

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