{"id":6927,"date":"2017-12-05T09:44:39","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T14:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6927"},"modified":"2017-12-18T06:17:14","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T11:17:14","slug":"hooray-for-hollywood-travel-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6927","title":{"rendered":"Hooray for Hollywood! – Travel Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Walk

photo: Vicki Weisfeld<\/p><\/div>\n

A Los Angeles vacation wouldn\u2019t be complete without a trip to Hollywood! We shunned the swarms of shills for \u201chomes of the stars\u201d bus tours and instead took a prearranged walking tour along the few compact blocks of Sunset Boulevard where the movie studios, the radio and television networks, and the recording industry all got their starts. Amazing, really.<\/p>\n

Our guide, Philip Mershon, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the area and will cheerfully answer any questions once the tour is over. Maybe he\u2019s like the Aztec messengers who memorized their speeches and had to begin from the beginning again if interrupted. He\u2019s personable, and he did a great job. (Philip Mershon\u2019s Felix in Hollywood<\/a>).<\/p>\n

On Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, we trod portions of the \u201cWalk of Fame,\u201d the 2500-some plaques representing leading lights of radio, television, movies, and theater. You can\u2019t help exclaiming over the names you recognize and wondering, who are all these other guys?<\/p>\n

Grauman’s Theatres<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Grauman's

photo: wikimedia, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

Sid Grauman was an early Hollywood theatrical entrepreneur, and his \u201cChinese Theatre\u201d is justly famous for its over-the-top orientalist d\u00e9cor. It\u2019s a bit of a mob-scene. Amusingly, it\u2019s a popular stop among Chinese tour groups, though there isn\u2019t a thing authentically Chinese about it. Hey, that\u2019s Hollywood. Many celebrities have left their hand or footprints\u2014or both\u2014in the cement of the forecourt\u2014including Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe, under a scrawl of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,<\/em> and local (Paterson and Asbury Park, N.J.) talents Lou Costello and Bud Abbott.<\/p>\n

A quieter spot was Grauman\u2019s Egyptian Theatre down the block (I admit never having heard of it), which was the site of Hollywood movie premieres for many years. Its d\u00e9cor turned out to be timely, as the theater opened in 1922, just days before the discovery of King Tut\u2019s tomb, a public relations coup even Grauman couldn\u2019t have engineered.<\/p>\n

\"Grauman's

photo: Vicki Weisfeld<\/p><\/div>\n

The lobby was designed to be small, with the illuminati instead gathering outside in the spacious forecourt, packed with starstruck admirers on both sides of a central aisle. The theater underwent numerous infelicitous renovations over the years, but since the late 1990s, American Cinematheque largely restored the original appearance and brought its technology up-to-date.<\/p>\n

Behind-the-scenes tours of the Egyptian<\/a> are offered only once a month, but it\u2019s worth checking out what is playing there (and at the companion Aero theater in Santa Monica), because actors and directors often participate in these screenings. We missed this, but in November, the two theaters had scheduled in-person visits from Dick Van Dyke, Patrick Stewart, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Lawrence, Judi Dench, and many others, along with screenings of their films past and present.<\/p>\n

Why Starve Yourself?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

We had lunch next door at the historic Pig \u2019n Whistle<\/a>, where Judy Garland had her fifteenth (?) birthday party. The richly decorated eatery was an early favorite of Hollywood stars and tourists alike.<\/p>\n

Books to Toss into Your Suitcase:<\/span>
\n<\/strong>The Day of the Locust,<\/em> the classic by Nathanael West
\nA Better Goodbye<\/em> by John Schulian, gritty noir about Hollywood’s sex trade (here’s my review<\/a>)
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Los Angeles vacation wouldn\u2019t be complete without a trip to Hollywood! We shunned the swarms of shills for \u201chomes of the stars\u201d bus tours and instead took a prearranged walking tour along the few compact blocks of Sunset Boulevard … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[59,56,67,104,78,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academy-awards","category-film","category-television","category-the-morgue","category-travel","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1NJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6931,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6927\/revisions\/6931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}