El Hotel De Los Lios [1938]
Marciano Deschamps
The design of this large apartment building dated from the late 1920s. The building had a strongly vertical composition with stepped Art Deco ornamentation above the first floor windows and at the cornice line. Architect Max Maltzman probably designed the building before he became an architect and completed it just after he received a provisional certificate to practice architecture in CA in 01/1930. (He got the permanent certificate in 04/1930.) Unfortunately for him, he received his license just as the building market took a steep dive, although Los Angeles still had more commissions than almost anywhere else in the US. During the 1930s-1940s, the Ravenswood Apartment Building changed ownership frequently. In 1933, the Los Angeles Property Management Company, Limited, operated the Ravenswood for its owners. According to the Los Angeles Times of 09/25/1938: "In one of the largest realty deals here this year, sale of the Ravenswood Apartment Hotel at 570 North Rossmore avenue along with a vacant site adjoining the building at the north for $750,000 was announced yesterday. With consummation of final details yesterday, the ownership of the seven-story apartment building, one of the largest in the West, passed from the George Pepperdine Foundation to a buyer for whom title was taken by the Title Insurance and Guaranty Co. of San Francisco. It is understood that eastern capital acquired the property." (See "Rossmore Avenue Hotel Purchased for $750,000," Los Angeles Times, 09/25/1938, p. 13.) An article in the same newspaper in late 11/1938, disclosed the buyers to have been Lloyd S. Harriman and Milton Meyer. (See "Realty Field Here Surveyed," Los Angeles Times, 11/29/1938, p. A3.) Between 1938-1943, the Harriman/Meyer ownership group sold the property to Albert Ichelson. In 05/1943, the Los Angeles Times called the Ravenswood "one of the largest and best-known [apartment] structures in the city" and related that the Continental Realty and Management Company, Incorporated, had bought it from San Francisco investor Albert Ichelson. Continental then resold the buildng to Theodore Kosloff for more than $750,000. In 09/1981, the Ravenswood had an asking price of $8.1 million, a price that also included a three-story, 13-unit apartment block at Clinton Street and Rossmore Avenue. The Kor Group, purchased the Ravenswood in 2000 and, during its first three years of ownership, restored many of the building's original features.
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99% of this takes place in a hotel room they have to occupy so not to get thrown out before they can get a financial backer to visit them for a upcoming show they are producing. Frank Albertson gets thrown in as the straight guy/schmock and almost becomes the center of everything as the brothers are toned down here. Lucille Ball & Ann Miller are briefly here, but don't have any material to work with. They are just the dames. Donald MacBride as the hotel manager does get some good moments, inclduing the catchphrase of the movie - "Jumping butterballs!"
Jumping butterballs! Watch as in the pursuit of theatre and the dollar, the Marx Brothers bring disease to a hotel room -- measles, a tapeworm, laryngitis, and "hail and farewell" Bellamy and Nazi appropriated salutes.
The Marx are forced to settle for some very weak farce material, nearly all set in a hotel room. The source play wasn't written for them and the film struggle to fit both Harpo and Chico. Groucho's one liners are the least of his 30s films as well. There's less boring time with a normal couple than in the Sam Wood films, but they are not replaced by good jokes. Very sluggish as well.
About the arrangement of this post: being a Bunker Hill blog and all, in Part I, we cover the Olive Street Bunker Hill killings right off the bat. In Part II, we focus on the apartment-hotel-location in question, the Astoria at 248 South Olive Street.
Not ten days later, on May 27th, 1938, Chicago wife and mother Mrs. Florence Johnson was attacked and murdered by a brickbat-wielding killer, from which Chicago picked up a man, identifying himself as one Thomas Crosby; he is covered in scratches and fresh blood (he insisted he had been killing chickens, but lab work quickly identified the blood on him as human).
Collins sold the unimproved lot to local real estate man Edwin W. Smith in May 1905. By July Smith had pulled permits for a hotel he shall name The Astoria. It was built in mere months and opened in January 1906.
Friday, May 27, 1938, Robert Nixon had murdered Florence Johnson about 5:30am. When Nixon was seized immediately thereafter, he gave up the location of Hicks, and made a confession 11:00pm Saturday night, the 28th. He and Hicks then confessed again, together, two hours later, at 1:00am Sunday morning.
Nixon drew a map of the Washington hotel for investigators, then confessed to raping and beating Alda Deery and Virginia Austin. He subsequently produced a map of the Lorraine Hotel, and confessed to the violent attack on Betty Bryant.
Tuesday, May 31, 1938. After confessing to multiple murders to Chicago PD, Nixon and Hicks sign confessions for the Grand Jury. Meanwhile, LAPD Lieutenants Bryan and Gaskell arrived in Chicago at 6:00pm. Bryan brought with him a telegram sent to LAPD Homicide Captain Bert Wallis, from Sheriff A. J. Sevier of Tallulah, Louisiana:
June 3, 1938, Nixon and Hicks were taken from jail to perform reenactments of other Chicago crimes. First, Nixon scaled the wall and jumped onto the fire escape at Chicago Hospital, and into the room where he raped and murdered Anne Kuchta. Before he entered he drew a map of the room which showed a guitar case and souvenir walking cane, elements of the scene that had never been released to the public.
Howard Green was convicted of Assault with a Deadly Weapon and Burglary in the Zoe Damrell attack. He was sentenced October 11, 1938, and received at San Quentin February 18, 1939. Green was paroled November 28, 1941, and found work at the Richmond shipyard during WWII. Green returned to San Quentin December 28, 1948, on a charge of Grand Theft, and was transferred to Folsom June 26, 1950.
The Hotel Alexandria, opened on February 12, 1906 as an 8-story luxury hotel in downtown Los Angeles. It was sold in 1919 to the builders of the nearby Ambassador Hotel. The hotel was the most luxurious in Los Angeles for a number of years until the construction of the Biltmore Hotel three blocks west in 1923. The Ambassador Hotels System sold the hotel in 1927, and it was sold again in 1930, before going bankrupt and closing in 1932. The hotel's gold leaf ceilings, furniture, chandeliers and other fittings were sold in 1934 to pay off debts. The hotel was sold multiple times over the years until it was eventually converted to an apartment building in 2005. The hotel played host to countless film shoots including Se7en, where it served as the residence of the killer, John Doe, for a lengthy chase sequence through much of the hotel. Its ornate public rooms, marble staircases and decaying grandeur have made it a favorite of movies, music videos, television commercials and fashion shoots.
The hammer fell in the Depression. Hard times forced the Alexandria to close in 1934. Three years later, movie producer Phil Goldstone bought the hotel and reopened it in 1938, to the delight of Roddie, who was by then sole owner of the wing. But their relationship quickly soured.
The property has functioned both as an apartment and hotel, providing extended stay accommodations for guests and as a contemporary daily-rate hotel. During World War II, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), a military aviation arm of the U.S. Army, used the Shangri-La Hotel as a rehabilitation station. The Los Angeles Times reported on August 8, 1948 that a $125,000 improvement was completed after the USAAF vacated the property. Despite the change in use that occurred during World War II, the minimally altered exterior of the Shangri-La Hotel exhibits a high level of integrity.
The online photo archive of the Los Angeles Public Library (TESSA) contains many photos taken by professional photographers, including images from Rolland Curtis, Lucille Stewart, Herman Schultheis, Gary Leonard, and Ansel Adams. These artists worked for magazines, advertising firms, newspapers, studios, and even government agencies. (Stewart worked for Fletcher Bowron, Mayor of Los Angeles from 1938 to 1953.) These photographers were well known and well-respected for their craft.
Standing on the site of Fort Moore Hill during its excavation, one could look east and see the Post Office Terminal Annex (left), which was the main post office in Los Angeles. Built in the California Mission style in 1938, it processed over 4,000,000 pieces of mail daily until its decommission in 1994. Behind the Annex (in the distance) is Los Angeles County General Hospital.
If you go into business with someone, make sure you have an exit plan. And an entrance plan. William Chick didn't have either, and it probably cost him millions. The hotel wing he built in downtown LA has been closed off for 74 years; only now is a developer working on unsealing this time capsule from 1938.
Chick, according to the LA Times, ran a livery stable next to the grand Alexandria Hotel. He knew a good business opportunity, and built a fully integrated wing onto the hotel, circled below in this photo of Spring and Fifth Streets.
But back to Chick's wing. According to the Times, by 1938, the hotel and the wing were in new hands. Movie producer Phil Goldstone owned The Alexandria, and Chick's daughter Lee Roddie owned the wing. After a rent dispute, Goldstone walled off his part of the Alexandria from Roddie's wing. That wouldn't have been a problem except that Roddie's father had never built stairs or an elevator to the guest rooms in his wing. "Father made a terrible decision," Roddie told the Times in 1967 ... when the wing had only been "frozen" for 29 years. In the ensuing years, while the ground floor shops have been rented out, no owner has spent the money to fix the problem, and the upper floors have been the realm of pigeons, taggers, and perhaps a squatter or two. They're locked in time, as they were when Goldstone started building his personal Cask of Amontillado in 1938.
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