Whenever you read about a famous
building in Los Angeles, you are pretty sure that the story is going
to have an unhappy ending. Los Angeles as a community, as an
economy, and as a culture is very clear about the buildings and
architecture that at one point made it famous: it doesn't give a
fuck. LA will tear down anything to make a fast buck, no matter how
significant, architecturally or culturally.
It is easy to be critical of this
policy, but I think it misunderstands what Los Angeles is all about,
and tries to make it something that it is not. The people of Los
Angeles are not pretending to be shallow, they are shallow.
They are not pretending to be stupid and corrupt, they are stupid and
corrupt.
Once you understand this, then the
clouds of confusion will lift and a positive spin can be placed on
what otherwise might seem to be an obscene and offensive disregard of
their responsiblity to preserve cultural resources of our
civilization that happen to be placed in their district.
In other words, destroying buildings
that are an important part of Los Angeles history is not in any way a
bad thing, it is a good thing, because it is the true and valid
expression of the beliefs of the people who own and run Los Angeles.
To save historically significant buildings would be false to their
nature, and hypocritical.
I spent about 10 years or so of my life
(1982 - 1992 or so) in a little cabin up Laurel Canyon, 8726 Lookout
Mountain Ave. My landlady had been married to Bundy Marton, 2nd Unit
Director of Ben Hur (1959). My neighbor across the street was
Eddie Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten. This was not a rich
neighborhood, this was a funky neighborhood. I lived up the street
from Pat O'Neil of Lookout Mountain Films, and when we did our test
for The Abyss, we shot the footage in that cabin with the YFS
camera and took the footage to Pat for compositing.
I had a bank account at an anonymous
little branch of some appalling financial institution in an
undistinguished building on Sunset Boulevard, a block or two west of
Crescent Heights. In the lobby of this branch, against the wall,
was an architectural model of some building enclosed in a glass case.
One day I looked closer, and I saw that it was a model of a small
cluster of buildings, called, rather grandly, The Garden of Allah.
The Garden of Allah had
apparently been an apartment complex made up of many, 20 or more,
little cottages, what we call bungalows, each of them themed, it
seemed to me, as something out of the Thousand and One Nights.
Although it did have an Arabic feel to it, it also felt right at
home in the Hispanic bungalow tradition of that part of town. A
sign next to the model at the bank explained that this was a famous
apartment complex that used to be located on this site that it had
been torn down to build this bank, and that it had something to
do with famous actors, actresses and writers of Hollywood in the days
of silent pictures.
That was an understatement.
This was The Garden of Allah.
Our story begins in 1879 when a young
girl named Miriam Leventon was born in Imperial Russia, which in case
you did not know, was not the best place in the world to be born,
particularly if you were Jewish. She decided to become an actress
and studied with Stanislavski at the Moscow Arts Theatre, which is
incredible just in itself. Moving to NYC in 1905 she co-founded with
her boyfriend a Russian language theatre on the Lower East Side. It
was not successful, she broke up with her boyfriend, he returned to
Russia but she stayed. The director and actor Henry Miller
discovered her and placed her in a play in 1906. She had a very
successful Broadway career for 10 years under her stage name, Alla
Nazimova.
So one more time we have a brilliant
but poor immigrant who comes to America to fame and fortune. But our
story is just beginning.
She was brought to Hollywood's
attention in the very early days and from 1916 to 1918 she was a
successful actress under contract to Selznick. She made a fortune,
and apparently threw it away making her own films that were not
commercially successful. Easy come, easy go, I guess. But with a
few million left in the bank, a financial advisor suggested
she do some real estate development as a long term investment and
income property.
So at last we come to the part of the
story which is The Garden of Allah.
Alla Nazimova developed a property on
Sunset Boulevard that was a themed hotel and apartment complex whose name, The
Garden of Allah, was a pun on her first name, Alla. I don't
completely understand the sequence of events, but she went broke
building it, sold it to someone, but continued living there in one of
the Bungalows for the rest of her life.
And her life was very colorful. For
those of you who find the stories of wild Hollywood sex with famous celebrities interesting,
you could do worse than study Alla. She was apparently a pioneer of
the Hollywood lesbian subculture and a very active participant.
It was she who came up with the term "ladies sewing circle",
and there are apparently many rewarding chapters of her activities in
this area for those who study such things.
Many stars, writers and producers, stayed at The Garden of
Allah if they were working in Hollywood temporarily.
Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Dorothy
Parker. Not to mention Ernest Hemingway, Robert
Benchley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Kaufman, Charles Laughton,
Frank Sinatra, Tallulah Bankhead, John Barrymore, Marlene Dietrich,
Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, Errol Flynn, the Marx Brothers, Greta
Garbo, Ginger Rogers. Dorothy Parker was staying at the Garden of
Allah when her husband died. When a neighbor asked if she needed
something, she famously said "Another husband".
The Garden of Allah had a main
building with lobby, a restaurant, the bungalows, presumably some
rooms in the main building and of course a swimming pool and some
palm trees. It was torn down to build the most stupid of boring
boxes that we put banks into here in Los Angeles. You can see this
atrocity even today.
So let us be clear. The Garden of
Allah was a distinguished and important landmark of early
Hollywood. To tear it down would make as much sense as tearing down
the Chelsea Hotel in NYC. Those who did so should be held
accountable, even if they are dead. There are lots of ways of punishing the wicked after they are dead and we will write a separate essay on how to do so.
Los Angeles, if it wishes to be held in
any respect by the rest of the world, needs to start paying attention
to these landmarks and not destroy them. They must stop their
cultural vandalism in desperate search of a fast buck, but they never
will. This is who they are, this is who they want to be.
Shallow criminals who do not give a
fuck.
Today, if you wish to see the Garden
of Allah, you must go to Universal Studios Florida where they
built a replica in their park. It stands unused, mysterious, alone,
in Orlando.
Maybe Alla walks the abandoned halls at
night.
_________________________________________
A write up of Gardens of Allah
A description of the Garden of Allah at
Universal Studios Florida
The Youtube (unofficial) tour of the
Garden of Allah at Universal Studios Florida
Reviews of Alla Nazimova
Someone's partial list of lost
Hollywood
I was looking at Casewell-Massey soaps and found one called "Marem" based on a 1914 fragrance designed for Alla Nazimova. It's easy to get me to follow any rabbit hole, so I looked up Ms. Nazimova. I studied film history in college and loved silent films, but never heard of Nazimova. Alas, another unsung female in the early days of cinema! I have also studied modern architecture and look forward to exploring when I am in LA for a longer period of time. I have seen some buildings, but only on visits. My family is not interested in touring architecture. I really enjoyed your blog on this topic. She was amazing and the preservation of such spaces should be our legacy to future generations. Best, Neli M.
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