Mulholland Drive - From Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley
During our driving tour of Hollywood, Carrie McCoy and I had already experienced several adventures. First, we had viewed a LACoFD training exercise at the Hollywood Bowl. For lunch, we stopped at Legendary Paul Pink’s Hot Dogs on La Brea Ave. After lunch, we drove toward Mount Lee to take pictures of the Hollywood Sign. Then, we departed Hollywood, via the Yellow Brick Road, better known as Mulholland Drive.
In its first mile, Mulholland Drive climbs from Cahuenga Pass to the
crest of the Hollywood Hills. A quick series of switchbacks and hairpin
curves introduces the neophyte motorist to the full Mulholland Drive
experience. As Jim Morrison once sang in Roadhouse Blues, "Keep your
eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel." If you do not, you could
easily leave the roadway or mix with oncoming traffic. Until you pull
over to let them pass, many drivers will tailgate you there at any
speed. Over the decades, auto and motorcycle racing on Mulholland Drive
has cost many lives. Since we were on a sightseeing tour, I pulled
aside often, thus allowing traffic to clear.
Our first stop was at the Hollywood Bowl Overlook.
Although the view down-canyon to the Hollywood Bowl was disappointing,
the view east to Hollywood and Downtown Los Angeles was classic. In
the foreground were the Hollywood Freeway and the Capitol Records Building. Seven miles east was the Emerald City,
better known as the skyline of Downtown Los Angeles. From the
overlook, on that clear day, we could see the LA Basin in all of its
glory.
With tour buses often crowding the small lot, Hollywood Bowl Overlook parking is limited.
Just west of the overlook, there is adequate, if crumbling street-side
parking. From there, however, one must cross through traffic to see
the views. Like many places with limited parking and extraordinary
views, people tend to linger. For them, it is like owning the view
without having to pay for it. I walked in, looked around, took my
pictures and returned to my vehicle.
While walking back to my car, I looked up to see an infamous, yet iconic single family home. Designed by architect Harry Gesner,
the "Haynes House", as it was originally known, came to roost on its
prominent hillside location in 1975. Although another of Gesner’s
houses inspired the Sydney Opera House, the Gesner house at 7000 Macapa
Drive has inspired more scorn than praise.
With its Gesner-signature roof design, what I call the "Paraglider House" is the antithesis of Frank Lloyd Wright's “organic architecture”.
According to FLW, building atop the crest of a hill destroys the hill.
Viewed from the Hollywood Freeway below, the structure looks like an
overgrown beach shack, silently screaming, “Look at me. Look at me”. I
would prefer a house above the Hollywood Bowl Overlook that could
project itself into group consciousness with less blatancy.
The public record on the Paraglider House is mixed. In early 2010, the
owner had listed it for $2,695,000, or almost exactly one thousand
dollars per square foot. Apparently, it sold later that year for $2.0
million. Even that was expensive for a thirty-five year old,
three-bedroom, three-bath house encompassing 2,698 square feet. In
essence, someone bought the view, not the house. In October 2011, a Google Street View showed the house stripped to the studs and under reconstruction. As of this writing, construction was ongoing.
As
one might experience anywhere on Mulholland Drive, our sojourn west
included many tight turns and a few confusing street signs. Needing a
rest, we stopped at one of many turnouts provided along the road by the
Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy. By then we were well away from Hollywood and approaching the San Fernando Valley.
Having grown up in Burbank, California, I knew how hazy the sky could
be in The Valley. From our perch atop the Hollywood Hills, we marveled
at the clear sky and long views.
To our right, we could see Mt. Lee, famed for its Hollywood Sign and
named for early Los Angeles car dealer and broadcaster Don Lee. At the
top of Mt. Lee stands a communications tower that dates back to at least
1941. In the late 1930s, the first Los Angeles television broadcasts
emanated from that tower. During my high school days in the 1960s, you
could still drive to the top of Mt. Lee and enjoy a 360-degree view of
Los Angeles and the Valley. Today, a gate far below prevents traffic
from surmounting Mt. Lee. From our vantage that day, we could see an
end-on view of the Hollywood sign, clinging to the far-right slope of
the mountain. My father's memories of Los Angeles television history
follow below.
Dr. Loron N. McGillis: “The call letters for the first Los Angeles television station were W6XAO. They transmitted from the communication tower atop Mt. Lee. When the station came on in the early evening, we watched on our 7" Motorola TV.
During the day, they broadcast the traditional Indian Head test
pattern, with emanating black and white bars. There was also a news tape
running across the bottom of the screen. In 1948, the station became KTSL and in 1951, they changed again, to KNXT. In the 1980s, they changed again to the current KCBS TV.”
Panning my camera to the left, Spokesmodel Carrie McCoy
appeared in my rangefinder. With lush vegetation behind her and a
smile on her face, I could not resist taking yet another picture of the
original “Valley Girl”, from Burbank, California. “Look”, Carrie said,
“From here, you can see Universal City and Warner Bros. Studios”.
As
I looked down from a curve on Mulholland Drive, the most prominent
building in view had a huge sign that read, “NBCUniversal", with no
separation between those two iconic names. In a not-so-subtly way, the
resident media giants NBC and Universal Studios had melded into one. It
reminded me of the dark days in the 1970s, when executives briefly
renamed Warner Bros. Studios, “The Burbank Studios”.
When the next intergalactic mega-media firm takes over NBCUniversal,
that prominent office tower will display yet another in a long list of
corporate logos.
Even in Los Angeles, few people remember who built what we now call the
NBCUniversal Building in Universal City. In the 1970s, at the height of
his wealth and fame, oilman J. Paul Getty commissioned the building as
the Getty Oil Company headquarters. Although the building looks
rectangular to the casual observer, its narrow lot and adjacency to the
Hollywood Freeway dictated a trapezoidal shape. Although any form
other than rectilinear creates triangular offices and wasted space,
Getty and his oil company had money to burn. To make the edifice look
more impressive, Getty specified an exterior clad in Italian marble. In
1976, prior to completion of the building, J. Paul Getty died.
In
1984, when giant Texaco Oil purchased Getty Oil, the building became
the Texaco Building. In 1985, when Texaco lost in court to Pennzoil,
that smaller company became sole owner of both Getty Oil and the Getty
Building. If there was ever a Texaco sign at the top of that building,
it did not last for long. As with media companies, Old Energy
oil companies come and they go. Only their buildings remain to hint at
their former glory. Exactly how the Getty Building morphed into the
NBCUniversal Building, I cannot say. If history foretells anything, that
building will not be the NBCUniversal Building forever.
Panning to the right of the Getty/Texaco/Pennzoil/NBCUniversal Building,
I realized that I was looking down upon both Universal Studios and
Warner Bros. Studios. In the 1960s, Universal Studios was a relatively
small affair, with a concentration of buildings and activities on
Lankershim Blvd., in North Hollywood. With the advent of the Universal
Amphitheater, the Universal Studios Tour and Universal City Walk, most
of the “back lot” succumbed to development. For reasons unknown, there
is only one exception to that over-development.
On a hillside lot, overlooking the corner of Barham Blvd. and Buddy Holly Drive,
a haunted house once stood. Having sneaked up to the house with my
high school friends, I know that it was haunted. At night, we could see
a dim light glowing inside the house. As we approached from below, I
tripped over a half buried headstone and fell headlong down a muddy
slope. Using a flashlight, we read the names and dates of death on
several tilting headstones. After determining that one grave was that
of a child, we scrambled back to our car, never to return. That haunted
house is gone now, but remnants of the circular driveway are still visible on Google Earth.
All good ghost stories and all good Hollywood auto tours must end.
Carrie and I still had one last stop to make at the intersection of Mulholland Drive and Interstate I-405. There, we planned to visit with Coney the Traffic Cone, where he stood guard over the missing bridge lane at Mulholland Drive in Sepulveda Pass.
By James McGillis at 04:53 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link
