Gentle reader,
We are so grateful to everyone who gets this streaming webinar channel newsletter, but especially to our paid subscribers. Their generous support ($50/month or $100/year) makes it possible for us to advocate to save Beaulyland, Marilyn Monroe’s house and other special landmarks at immediate risk of being lost, and to keep eyes peeled for demolition threatened houses that can be moved to Altadena. We couldn’t do it without them!
Email updates on this channel are infrequent since we aren’t producing new webinars, but we post regularly on our main newsletter, where you’ll learn about upcoming Esotouric tours like the new Hollywood Noir (11/29) and Richard’s special birthday walk exploring two lesser known National Register Districts, Alvarado Terrace and South Bonnie Brae Tract with a stop for cake in a gothic mansion garden (11/15).
Today’s video is pretty exciting for lovers of historic nightclubs and streamline moderne architecture: it shows that the facade of Hollywood’s landmarked Earl Carroll Theatre is once again painted in the precise shades of green selected by master architect Gordon B. Kaufmann (Los Angeles Times, Santa Anita Park) to evoke speed when viewed from a moving vehicle.
The color scheme, recreated from flecks of the original paint still present under many layers of advertising signage—most recently, a recreation of the 1969 Aquarius Theater mural created for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)—is Part One of a long-promised restoration that was a condition of permitting for the huge apartment house to the west.
We’ve been advocating for the City to hold developer Essex to that condition, especially once the building was listed for sale. It’s great to see work back on track.
Part Two will bring back the neon portrait of showgirl Beryl Wallace (namesake of The Wallace on Sunset apartments), who with her partner Earl Carroll made the nightclub the place to be seen in pre-war Hollywood.
The lovers died in a 1948 plane crash, and soon will have a second beautiful memorial that illuminates the night once more.
We’ll be checking back on the Earl Carroll to see the neon go up. For now, those green stripes are an alluring, minty hint of what’s to come.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles’ past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city’s soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip (11/8) • Richard’s Birthday: Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (11/15) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/22) • Hollywood Noir (11/29) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (12/6) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (12/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 12/21) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (12/27)
