In the spring of 1945, filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter Ben Hecht were hard at work on their latest project—Notorious, a story of expatriate Nazis hiding out in South America. Hitchcock and Hecht had pulled together the plot from parts of a Saturday Evening Post serial and real-life spy tales from Hitchcock’s friends in the Ministry [...]
September 1, 2011 | Posted in
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It takes some keen architectural detective work, but if you look closely along Colorado Boulevard, you’ll see telltale traces of some of Pasadena’s lost movie houses. Repurposed marquees, empty ticket windows, and distinctly arched roofs give us clues to where they once stood. In the second part of our Ghost Theaters feature, we look at [...]
August 22, 2011 | Posted in
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You see them up and down Colorado Boulevard—marquees, ticket windows, and arched roofs—the empty shells of some of Pasadena’s former movie houses. As we did in our signs feature, we take a look at the stories behind some of these picture houses of yesteryear. Clune’s Pasadena Theatre/Fox Pasadena Theatre (1911-1953) – 61 W. Colorado Blvd. [...]
July 29, 2011 | Posted in
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“German Aliens Must Go On Records,” stated the headline in the Pasadena Star-News on January 26, 1918. “Registration in Pasadena Will Begin at Police Station Feb. 4.” “All natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the German empires or imperial German government being males of the age of 14 years and upward, who are within [...]
June 30, 2011 | Posted in
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It’s an increasingly rare sight in Pasadena: signs remaining for businesses that have long since gone. In this feature, we take a look at several that have endured and the stories behind them. 1. Crown City Bank – 1176 E. Colorado Boulevard This tile mosaic dates from 1906, when the small Crown City Bank opened [...]
May 16, 2011 | Posted in
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As a purveyor of Western mythology, Altadena dentist-turned-author Zane Grey got most of the publicity during his years in the city. For a brief period, however, a real-life icon of the American West lived nearby. From 1926 until his death in 1928, “cowboy detective” Charles A. Siringo, a former lawman and Pinkerton agent, resided in a [...]
April 1, 2011 | Posted in
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Perkins Palace once cast its seamy glory on Old Town during the heyday of L.A.’s punk, new wave and metal years. (That’s the ’80s to you, kids.) Long before this, however, the district had a musical venue of a different sort—and the details of its existence remain far more mysterious. The Club Onyx, at 109 [...]
February 23, 2011 | Posted in
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City Hall may boast an impressive Christmas tree, but our neighbors to the north in Altadena have the Rose City beat when it comes to holiday displays. Christmas Tree Lane and the colorful lights of the Balian Mansion have become beloved parts of area tradition. Near December 24th, Santa Rosa Avenue, as it is known the [...]
December 14, 2010 | Posted in
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Driving by the empty Pacific Hastings Theatre the other day, I remembered when it used to be the premier spot in Pasadena to see new movies. Even after theaters like the AMC in Old Town and Paseo opened, nothing could beat the experience of the Hastings’ massive 60-foot screen. The theater closed in 2007, and [...]
November 10, 2010 | Posted in
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From its earliest settling by Midwesterners, the Arroyo area attracted writers. One of the best known was Charles Fletcher Lummis, who in 1884 walked from Cincinnati to L.A. for a job as a reporter at the Los Angeles Daily Times. This was a brilliant publicity stunt, of course, and he arrived in town a famous [...]
June 28, 2010 | Posted in
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