george mann – Page 2 – On Bunker Hill

From the George Mann Archives: W.C. Fields in “Home Movies” (1928)

Today On Bunker Hill is proud to present another little something special from the archives of George Mann, an artifact that predates his astonishing color photographs of Bunker Hill by about thirty years.

If you enjoyed the recent posting of George’s silent footage of W.C. Fields on stage as a worried Mormon husband about to hop into the sack with a bevy of Earl Carroll showgirls, you’ll thrill to see the lively home movie footage of Fields yucking it up with a tennis racket, filmed when both performers were appearing in the Earl Carroll Vanities.

You met him here first, but our pal George Mann is becoming quite the internet sensation. Critic Leonard Maltin dedicated much of a recent blog post to Mann’s rediscovered silent film footage of Fields and the Three Stooges.

Keeping watching this space, as there more amazing short films coming from the George Mann Archives, starring some incredible entertainers. And for now… more Bill Fields!

Two New Mann Images – Final Days of the Flight!

Hillzapoppin‘ in the OBH! A couple swanky new color images emerged from the greater Mann grotto and the good people at the archives wanted to share them with you. Ain’t they the best?

This image is later than the other Manns (Menn?) we’ve seen. (Given the specific progress made on the Union Bank tower, I’d peg this photo at September 1966). By comparison, here’s one of late-50s vintage you’ve seen before:

The Community Redevelopment Agency got their wreckers and worked from top to bottom; started with the Elks in the autum of 1962, then hit the Hulburt (middle) and finished the Ferguson on Hill in ’63.

With Angels Flight’s Western Wall removed, you then see these two characters in images of the Flight, but they were chewed up pretty quickly.

But back to our original Mann photo up top. To the east of the flight on the other side of the tunnel, the Royal Liquor’s still there, and so’s the McCoy house above.

Royal Liquor–AKA St. Helena Sanitarium–always amuses because before Los Angeles became last refuge for the hunted and the tortured, it was just a sunny place to go for salubrious living:

Now let’s cross the intersection, down Hill a bit…

…turn to see that Olivet and Sinai have passed each other. The Hill Crest and the Sunshine, of whom we’ve spoken quite a bit recently, gone, again, the CRA working down from Olive to Clay, the HillCrest lost in the autumn of 1961 and the Sunshine goes ca. 1965. There’s the McCoy House and St. Helena, although now the latter, known as My Hotel for some time, became the Vista Hotel between 1942 and ’47 (and the actual full name of its corner booze boutique, despite what the neon read, was Royal Gold Liquors). Vaguely visible looming behind in the mist, the Belmont.

The former front door of the Ferguson Café apparently a swell place to park your faded yellow jalopy. In September of 1966. Now, not so much.

Hey, at least the light pole and fireplug are still there.

Thanks to George Mann’s son Brad Smith, and daughter-in-law Dianne Woods, for allowing us to reprint these copyrighted photographs and tell George’s story. To see George’s photos of theater marquees, visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/brad_smith

For a representative selection of photographs from his archive, or to license images for reproduction or other use, see http://www.akg-images.co.uk/_customer/london/mailout/1004/georgemann/

St. Helena/Vegetarian Café, USC Digital Archives; Ems & Casa Alta, personal collection

All the More Mann

Ahoy Hill hipster! It‘s been an exciting time here On Bunker Hill. Through the grace of George Mann‘s family, the other day Kim posted twenty-one images of BH in living doomed color. One of those featured the Sunshine Apts. with the Hill Crest looming o‘er; a few days later the esteemed Jim Dawson posted all about the Sunshine, including a new Mann image that showcased a year‘s worth of growth where the Hill Crest once stood. And now, for your edification and delectation, more.

I begin my post as did Kim not with shots of Bunker Hill, but with a George Mann image nonetheless. This is the Sentous Block, designed in 1886 by R. J. Reeve; the same year Reeve designed the U. S. Hotel and the Phillips Block.

Louis Sentous was one of the great French pioneers of Los Angeles who‘d arrived penniless, panned for a little gold and became a successful cattle rancher, trading meat and dairy at the Plaza until he bought the nearby piece of property (bounded by Sunset, Spring, Main and Macy) that was to bear his name.

The Sentous Block is best known around noirsville as where Mike Hammer cruises over to the Jalisco Hotel in Kiss Me Deadly; it also contained the Bamba Club, which doubles as the Round-Up in Criss Cross. (Both on the Spring St. side of the Sentous; our image shows the Main St. side.) For more than you would ever want to know about this, go here (seems like contributor Beaudry needs a girlfriend or something).

Louis lasted until 1911; his building til 1957.

Just goes to show. Not everything ornate that was torn down in the last fifty years was on Bunker Hill. You owe it to yourself to learn the names and faces of the Amestoy Block. The Bath Block. The Gollmer Block. The Wilson Block. The Stimson Building. The Westminster Hotel. The Martz Flats. Ad nauseum.

But on to Bunker Hill!

Ah, the Astoria.

Nothing says deep arcaded entry and red-tiled bell tower like “Astoria”. Yes, one can not help but marvel at the incongruity of Bunker Hill naming systems. I wrote earlier in OBH about the red-tiled onion domed Minnewaska, the fairly Franco-Renaissance Sherwood, and while it hasn‘t been explored yet, the decisively Mission-styled 1904 Mission Apartments at Second and Olive spent much of its young life known as, of course, Castle Craig.

Astoria, the Greek word for quail, is also the part of Queens known for being full of Greeks. That notwithstanding, at the time of its construction, Astoria connoted the Astoria, Queens that was then the “Hollywood of the East.” Plus it had been named for John Jacob Astor. All sorts of cachet. Perhaps the developers thought that despite the arches and fauxdobe, the rather otherwise traditional use of the bay windows prevented naming the structure something vaguely Missiony like “Ramona Hotel” or “PortolÃ Apts.”

In any event, of the Astoria much has been said.

Next to the Astoria is the 1916 Blackstone Apartments, with the nice Beaux Arts garlands upon‘t. Not a whole lot happened there, an ex-cop caught violating the Wright Act, and there were some lady bootleggers; while the Widows Protective League Los Angeles Branch Council met at the Blackstone, a widow took poison and offed herself there the very same year (1929); and Ross Page, younger brother of the widely-known “Farmer” Page, was busted there by the vice squad while running two bridge games and a poker game in August of ”˜25.

I will let Matt Weinstock of the Times do the talking for me:

That din emanating from Bunker Hill these days is the relentless pounding of the jackhammers tearing down the ancient Blackstone Apartments, 244 S Olive St., next door to the top of Angel‘s Flight.

Until the demolition crew went to work on it, the Blackstone was nine stories high, counting the floors from the back entrance in the alley, which was kept locked. However, if you entered on Olive St., as most people did, you were on the third floor, and from there it was only a six story building. I learned this many years ago in visiting a departed colleague, J. Farrington Barrington Arrington, who lived there.

And so another quaint landmark passes and now, when I go into a building on what purports to be the main floor it will really be the main floor, not the third. Progress marches on.

”“ July 2, 1964

The Sawyer Apts:

Not one of the gingerbreaded, parapeted wonders of the Hill. So where was it? 327 South Hope, that‘s where. (God bless City Directories and old phone books.) And bless George Mann for shooting something other than the Usual Suspects. Sure, 327 is on The Map, but this is a color pic. And yet”¦again, one always needs more; there‘s something about placing oneself in the landscape. So, comparing maps, and building outlines, and digging through photo archives”¦

”¦in this William Reagh photo, ca. 1955:

The tree in our color image is the tree dead center above, and the large building jutting out to the right of the frame (Richfield tower visible behind) from Hope and plunging down the hill toward Flower, that‘s the Sawyer.

I want to stress again the wonder of finding the unexpected. Mann shot what others did not. After Angels Flight, arguably the most photographed structures on the Hill were the Castle and the Salt Box. Which meant photographers turned their collective back on this:

We stand adjacent to a bit of spindlework at 333 South Bunker Hill, between, of course, the Salt Box behind our left shoulder and the Castle on the other side of 333. Whitey there on the right with the dentils is 326 South Bunker Hill, but its real address is 325 South Grand, as this is the backside of the Kenneth Apts. Its blue neighbor with the deep columned entry is 322/318; it had a non-conjoined counterpart of 319/323 at Grand and together they were known as the Alta Cresta. Its beige neighbor to the north with the porch is 310 and there‘s a small house behind it that‘s either 306 or 302 South Bunker Hill.

And then the white house with the cross-gabled red roof, that‘s 256 South Bunker Hill. That one is extra cool because it‘s where Liz the exotic dancer/modern painter/serial killer (Indus Arthur) lives in Angel‘s Flight. In fact, it‘s not two minutes into the movie when Liz commits a murder right on the benches above the Third St. tunnel, and the landlady sticks her head out and screams! To wit:

And the big brick building behind that is the backend of the Alto Hotel, 253 S. Grand.

And last but not least”¦

Mystery House!

At least it‘s a mystery to me. It‘s not within a gallon of Ethel of the DT, of that I‘m pretty certain. Mann shot all over, Point Loma, Catalina”¦so here‘s this Victorian Exotic Revival that‘s going for something Indo-Moorish, though what that is I can‘t say ”“ do you know? There‘s what appears to be a “701” on her stairs. OBH readers are the best and the brightest: whence came this sweetheart and whither did she go?

William Reagh photo courtesy California State Library Digital Archives

For a representative selection of photographs from his archive, or to license images for reproduction or other use, see http://www.akg-images.co.uk/_customer/london/mailout/1004/georgemann/

Meet George Mann

Bunker Hill is a lost Los Angeles neighborhood, and On Bunker Hill is a memorial website that was born over the course of a year’s collaboration. The contributors followed their own particular obsessions down the historical rabbit hole, coming up with aspects of the community’s lore that were placed on a virtual map, so interested visitors could explore at their leisure.

Although On Bunker Hill is no longer being updated, people continue to discover the site and contribute their own insights and memories through the comment section. But occasionally, someone comes along who has something more to offer than a comment or a link, and so we bring the On Bunker Hill blog back to life for a brief moment, so this someone can take their rightful place among the ghosts.

Enter George Mann.

Born in Santa Monica in 1905, by his early 20s he was a vaudeville star as the hilariously taller half of the comedy dance team Barto & Mann. Dewey Barto [real name Dewey Smoyer and the pop of comedienne Nancy Walker] and George debuted their act on the west coast circuit in 1926 and by March 1927 were featured on the other Broadway, at New York’s celebrated Palace Theatre.

Of their east coast debut, Zit’s Theatrical Newspaper raved “Ten minutes before they went on at the Palace last Monday afternoon nobody thought very much about Barto & Mann; ten minutes after they came off stage, the whole Broadway world was talking about them… Acts like these only come along once in a while.”

Appearing at L.A.’s Orpheum in March 1928, they were praised in the L.A. Times as “a knockout team,” though their set at the Hillstreet the following month discomfited one reviewer: “The act presented by Barto & Mann was one of those hectic affairs in which the participants did everything from a climb up the proscenium arch to a near-back-flip into the orchestra pit. The excellence of the dancing and clowning in the early portions of the act led one to expect a much more worthwhile finale than the one offered, which, unfortunately, bordered plainly on vulgarity.”

One man’s vulgarity is another’s hilarity: scope out this rare filmed appearance, from the 1933 Texas Guinan vehicle “Broadway Through A Keyhole,” and decide for yourself!

As Vaudeville faded, Barto & Mann joined the Broadway cast of Olson and Johnson’s Hellzapoppin’ (though they’re not in the 1941 film), with featured billing from 1938 through 1942. The team split up in December 1943.

Around this time, George Mann married Powers Agency model Barbara Bradford and shot a series of film noir-inspired images of his young bride.

In his post-performance life, George Mann turned his imagination to entrepreneurial enterprise and professional photography, which brought him to Bunker Hill. In the late 1950s, when the neighborhood’s days were known to be numbered, he arrived atop the peak with his camera to document some representative scenes, returning in November 1962 for additional shots.

These never-before-published color images of old Bunker Hill were originally displayed in 3-D viewers of Mann’s own design, which were leased to various Los Angeles businesses, including Hody’s Drive-Ins, and other restaurants, bars and doctor’s offices. Mann would swap out the photo selection regularly, so if these evocative scenes of Bunker Hill weren’t available, one might peep at Calico Ghost Town, Catalina Island, Descanso Gardens, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Pacific Ocean Park, Watts Towers or Palm Springs.

In his 3-Dimensional Bunker Hill set, created to distract anxious patients and hungry tourists, George Mann captured a seldom seen side of this lost Los Angeles neighborhood: the gracious avenues and genteel decay, the old people, their cats and their gardens, abandoned newspapers, vacant lots, the shadows and the sunlight. We are in his debt.

George Mann died in 1977, and his extraordinary photographic archives are currently being organized, scanned and made available for licensing. We trust you will enjoy these rediscovered images from old Bunker Hill from the George Mann Archives.

Note: a few more George Mann Bunker Hill photos have been discovered since this entry was first written! See this blog post by Jim Dawson and this one and this other one by Nathan Marsak for more.

For a representative selection of photographs from his archive, or to license images for reproduction or other use, see http://www.akg-images.co.uk/_customer/london/mailout/1004/georgemann/