Hollywood Boulevard California

HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

ON THE TINSEL BOULEVARD

We are seeing some great new changes to one of the most famous boulevards in the World. We are talking about Hollywood Boulevard where the stars

of the stars line the streets, and were until recently most folks were afraid to come any where near this street for it only represented the worse side of the
city. A place where the homeless and runaway children and youth wandered lost in Tinsel town. Porn stores and Peep shows drew a seedy crowd and

it was for sure nothing that the Hollywood City Chamber or anybody in the entertainment industry could be proud of.

Ray Bradbury in an article entitled "Celluloid City" in Southern California's Lifestyle Magazine West Ways begins the story with, "I have traveled to

Paris, Rome, London, and Dublin. When I was there, did the natives ask about New York? Nope. Washington, D.C.? Chicago? San Francisco? No way.
What did the locals in Florence, Venice and Madrid desire to hear about? California? Almost. Los Angeles? Closer. Hollywood? That's it. Hollywood! To

heck with the rest, beautiful and fascinating as they are. Tinsel town. With tons of tinsel beneath the tinsel...Commence with Hollywood and Vine.
Probably as famous as Piccadilly, the Via Veneto, or Times Square."

Hollywood Film Festival

The Hollywood Wax Museum

-
Now there is change in the air. At the most famous corner in the world, the corner of Hollywood and Vine there are four search lights shooting into the

Hollywood sky. Just at the famous corner the Pantages Theater folks in L.A. dresses up to see "River Dance", "Peter Pan", and "Phantom of the
Opera", word is that Disney plans on bringing in Lion King. Down the boulevard is the restored El Captain Theater, the new Panavision headquarters

on Selma have added to the new feeling, there is the Henry Fonda Theater.

Egyptian Theater re-opens

Just recently The Egyptian Theater has seen a multimillion dollar face lift while it has becomes the America Cinematheque new home office, all adding to

the arm in arm traffic on the Boulevard.. The Egyptian opened with Cecil B. De Mille's "The Ten Commandments" and a music performance by Lorin
Hart (who has performed for the StudioClub.com on several venues), and who's Grandmother, Leatrice Joy, stared in the 1923 silent film. The premiere

was accompanied by a full orchestra with a huge brass section and theater organ. Steven Speilberg leased the Theater for the opening of his "Prince of
Egypt". Speaking of Speilberg, word has it that he is soon to break ground on a new $70 million dollar Entertainment Theater just down the street from

THE BARN DANCE on Vine Street near Hollywood Blvd. (There is sawdust on the floor, go figure.)

Down and Out in Hollywood

[[

Here is pic of Cecil B. De Mille and some
of the crew and actors of Squaw Man

For the most part the history of Hollywood Boulevard was not the HOT and FUN glare of the
entertainment business, but it became the place where the cast-aways and the dark underbelly of that
monster industry fell to their knees. A place where runaways of all ages wandered and wondered about
this wild wild west-ern these misfits find themselves being victimized and dying on "the Vine" in
Hollywood. It was a street where the dope dealers, chicken hawks and pimps that prey on runaways
and their youthful bodies, who were lured to the wretched town by the tv and movie image of the town in
the first place. A place where the salesmen of sex and the pleasures of climax sold "Peeps" for a
quarter in the Theaters that grew down the Boulevard. A carnival, a freak show, maybe a dark circus,
a human zoo that the Hollywood Chamber, Johnny Grant and his stars along "The Walk of Fame, and
the glitter of the Biz itself could not hide from reality. But thank God, things can change. Change much
like that historic change at New York's Times Square. Hollywood Boulevard is coming back.

As a historic note, and speaking of Cecil B. De Mille and Barns...The StudioClub's cybercast of Ronnie
Mack's Barn Dance and the Speilberg theater is close to where a barn stood in 1913, that Mr. De
Mille leased for $75 dollars a month and made the movie SQUAW MAN the first movie ever made in
Hollywood. Mary Pickford used to talk about going down to "the lot" The area of town became a
interesting mix of cowboys and actors that were coming to town to lay the tinsel down. These were for
sure the early days of the beginning of the lure of the city to this day...the Entertainment Biz. The area
was referred to as "the movie colony." And I am sure took on a somewhat "Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid" feeling. "Shoot" the gun..."shoot" the camera...the little doors on movie lights are

MANN'S CHINESE THEATER

Down the street in the area surrounding the Mann's Chinese Theater and sprawling over eight and a half acres of the corner of Hollywood Boulevard

and Highland Avenue, ground has been broken and construction begun on the $388 million dollar HOLLYWOOD AND HIGHLAND project that is
described as a "urban destination entertainment center" As reported in the L.A. Weekly, "Bigger than the Getty Center, bigger than downtown's

new Staples ?Arena, bigger than the proposed Village Center in Westwood--the biggest development, in fact, to be built in Los Angeles for the last

15 years-- it is the brainchild of David Malmuth, the young and polished developer credited, while working for Disney, with pulling New York's Times

Square out of the gutter and into the glitter."