Talking Screen (Sep-Oct 1930)

The Seven Wonders of Hollywood [Continued from page SO] include it as one of our seven wonders. Nearly four years of construction were necessary to complete the Lloyd home and the result is one of the most fanciful private playgrounds in the world. Sixteen acres were turned into the similitude of a sophisticated Eden. Beginning with a hill and a few trees, artisans constructed a rare beauty spot. Hundreds of trees were planted to make a miniature woodland and an artificial brook now winds its way through the beautiful grounds. From the road, one of the interesting features, watched by hundreds of passing tourists, IS a one hundred and five foot waterfall over which the brook thins into a filmy ribbon in the long leap. The stream also sets in motion and old mill wheel. The "old mill" is in reality locker rooms for the miniature golf course. This course has five tees and six greens, upon which it is possible to play 29 holes without repeating the combination. Other games are played by Lloyd and his guests on the bowling green and the croquet grounds. Frequently crossing the brook over picturesque stone bridges and cooled by overhanging boughs is a meandering bridle path. Two other parts of the estate are the swimming pool and little Gloria Lloyd's playground. The pool is lined entirely with blue tile. A spacious bath house and parlo break the prevailing winds, affording comfortable swimming. The portion of the place devoted to the six-year-old-daughter of the house contains a completely equipped playhouse. On the Lloyd grounds are also a la;ge boating pond and a wide swimming stream. Architecturally, the estate is similarly elaborate. One of the most striking things is an Italian cascade, the long flight of stairs of which leads from a huge fountain to the house. The style of the place is Italian Renaissaoce. The many-roomed house follows the lines of an Italian noble's villa. Copies of famous villa fountains are scattered here and there about the grounds. A great barbecue pit is built in the rear. In every way it is one of the finest estates of its kind in the world. > S TO the fourth wonder — Wedged in the hills in a large cupshaped canyon near Cahuenga Pass is the famed Hollywood Bowl, which in the seven years of its existence has become not only a far-famed temple of music but also the world's largest natural out-door theatre. It is a mecca for music lovers from all parts of the world. Its summer symphony concerts draw nightly crowds of from twenty to thirty thousand people who sit enthralled by the mighty music of the masters, played by a great orchestra of about one hundred pieces and directed by some of the most ■ celebrated conductors of America and Europe. This great amphitheatre comprises an area of sixty-five acres. The Bowl proper is completely secluded from the noise of the heavy traffic on the near-by highway. Its narrow entrance widens rapidly into a level floor of about five acres, from which the hills rise approximately five hundred feet on all sides. The Hollywood Bowl, with its annual openair Easter sunrise service, its out-door theatricals and grand opera and its Philharmonic orchestra concerts, is absolutely unique in the history of music and certainly is entitled to be known as one of the seven wonders of Hollywood. THE fifth on our list will now be described. No list of Hollywood wonders would be complete without at least one sound studio. Inasmuch as the Paramount studio on Marathon street happens to be the largest film plant within the actual limits of Hollywood, The Casting Director Replies You say you speak Spanish, Italian and Greek, Hungarian, German and French like a streak? Your broad English diction is flawless and free.-" You swim in the ocean, the pond or the sea.-" You ride on a surf-board or horse till it hurts? You know how a duchess or courtesan flirts? Your form's worth a fortune? (You spent It on diet) You wear negligee and you cause a near-riot? You know how to yodel and bellow and sing? You do the fandango, the split, highland fling? You play the piano, the uke and the flute? You're hard and you're wild or you're sweet and you're cute? In short you're an actress — and clever — well, baby. Perhaps you might do in a crowd sometime . . . maybe. — Dena Reed. it is only fitting that this studio should serve as the example to be included in our lisr. This great sound studio is actually a small city. Under a system of mapping just adopted, all north and south thoroughfares through the grounds have become avenues — east and west roadways are streets. Cold statistics will give some idea of Paramounr's really remarkable size. It covers twenty-six acres besides owning an additional outside acreage of 2750 for locations; employs a total of over 2,000 people, and fills fifty separate buildings to capacity. Its mammoth dressing-room building, three stories high and covering a city block, is claimed to be the largest in the world. kND the sixth wonder — Friday night is "Fight Night" in Hollywood and most of Filmland turns out and heads for the American Legion Stadium. On El Centre, just east of Vine street, this huge, barn-like structure, with a seating capacity of only "5,000, is decidely unique among the boxing arenas of the world. A boxing stadium is usually pictured as a very masculine affair. Not so here! There's about one woman for every four men in the audience. It is the one fight arena to which a man doesn't hesitate to take his Cousin Amy from Omaha or his visiting Grandmother Prudence from Pittsburgh! Not that us fighters haven't "class" — not that its fights are "social teas"! No, indeed, the Friday night contests are made up of thirty rounds of as fast, clever boxing as can be seen anywhere in the country. Actors and actresses, directors and writers, cameramen and electricians, folks from many walks of life, all have their regular seats where they can be found week after week, and these boxing fans would as soon think of missing "Fight Night" as they would their "three squares" a day! ^ND now, last but not least — The various eating places and refreshment stands in Hollywood can safely be said to have no parallel in this or any other country. They are all so odd and different that it would be extremely hard to pick out any particular one as one of the seven wonders of Hollywood, for strictly speaking they are all wonders. Let us, then, tell you about each individually and class them altogether as the seven wonders. First, there's the Jail cafe on Sunset Boulevard. The outside is an exact replica of a first class stone ')?''\. Colored waiters dressed as convicts conduct you down a long flight of stairs into a cellar-like room where they lock you up in tiny cells and then serve you chicken or steak and, of course, all the fixing. After you eat, the cells are unlocked and you can do a bit of dancing if you wish. The Zulu Hut, made mostly of palms, is owned by Raymond McKee, the comedian. Here is where you are served chicken that IS chicken ! And you don't have to bother with any knives or forks either, because they don't have any to give you. This is, perhaps, the only place in Hollywood where it is perfectly good etiquette to eat with youi fingers. And as you eat in the light of candles stuck in ancient whiskey bottles, a Zulu savage dances and jabbers French. Opposite the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard is located the Brown Derby restaurant. No. 1, inspired architecturally by Al Smith's famous head-gear. And not far away is a giant ice-cream freezer with revolving handles — inside is an ice cream parlor. Another ice-cream stand is in the shape of a huge ice-cream cone. Great oranges slitted with apertures like Halloween pumpkins house stands where you can buy pure orange juice. A giant bull-dog with a very sad face is merely the covering for a chilihot dog stand. A sandwich shop is made exactly like a big Zeppelin. A tamale stand is made in the shape of a great tamale. These are the most spectacular and novel stands but there are many others scattered throughout the city, all of which have some bizarre and novel feature. In a land filled with many wonders, these which we have related are, in our humble opinion, the really outstanding ones — the seven great wonders of Hollywood. 85