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Sure, the “Hollywood Renaissance” is bringing on a flood of trendy clubs and upscale clothing emporia, chasing out the tchotchke shops for disappointed tourists, the tranny shoe-and-schmatta stores, and the tattoo-and-piercing parlors.  But so what?  From it’s earliest days, Hollywood was a magnet for filmmakers and filmgoers, and This

 

…used to look like this:

 

I always thought the Fox was the ugliest damn theater on Hollywood Boulevard, until I saw how it looked when it was built in the early 30’s (and well into the 50’s…check out the marquee on the right.)

Again.  This…

Evolved from this…

If Darwin was here right now, I’d give him such a pinch…! 

5 Responses to “Hollywood Blvd Disproves Theory of Evolution!”

Oh, yeah, wasn’t that a porn theatre & then some kind of church, w/ a hot dog stand next to the entrance? Between the fanny-pack sporting “visitors” during the daylight hours, the binge-drinking twenty-nothings staggering the streets at night & my being too depressed to work @ the FedExKinko’s on Vine any more, I don’t get out of WeHo & up to the Blvd. like I used to. Ah, nostalgia.

Oh, yeah, wasn’t that a porn theatre & then some kind of church, w/ a hot dog stand next to the entrance?

That was the Ritz, which is located a little further west on Hollywood Boulevard. It was built in 1940 as the News-View, and showed only newsreels. Here’s a pic of it from the 1951 Hollywood Christmas parade (and if I were one of the beauty queens on that float, I don’t think I’d relish riding the entire length of the Boulevard while breathing in the exhaust from that Army Jeep):
http://tinyurl.com/23e7oa

It later became part of the Pussycat chain of porn theaters, where a double bill of Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones reportedly ran for 8 years, before turning into the Ritz in the early 90s and ending its days as a second-run grindhouse. It’s now a Spanish language church. You can still see the distinctive Oval Pussycat Theater sign on the roof:
http://tinyurl.com/2jwnac

Not that anyone cares, but you can see the Ritz when it was the Pussycat (and showing the abovementioned double bill) in this shot of the 1977 Hollywood Blvd Gay Pride parade:
http://tinyurl.com/33ajgf

“Marymount College?!?” Yipes! A wee bit sexualized, no?

Closer examination reveals that to be a USMC jeep. Enjoyed all the photos, & the link to the Masque.

Something to say?