HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD: Marian Gibbons and The Founding of Hollywood Heritage docx

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Marian Gibbons and the Founding of Hollywood Heritage
GIBBONS
HOORAY
FOR
HOLLYWOOD
HOORAY
FOR
HOLLYWOOD
Marian Gibbons
and
The
Founding of Hollywood Heritage
Marian Gibbons
with
James C. Simmons
have been blessed throughout my life by many, many
dear friends and extended family, all of whom have
been so very important to me over the years. Looking
over the pages I am reminded over and over again didn’t
we have such fun? Haven’t we shared a grand journey!
I
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irector Frank Capra loved to tell the story about a group of
Japanese soldiers on a Pacific island near the end of World
War II. They had fled to a cave after the American invasion
and appeared ready to die rather than surrender. The
situation looked bleak. Capra recalled: “Finally, some American GI had a
bright idea: Promise them a trip to Hollywood. It worked. The Japanese
soldiers surrendered, and after the war they eventually got their trip.”
For much of the past century Hollywood has endured as the film

capital of the world and a symbol of glamour and hope to millions of
people from Baltimore to Bombay. But while the idea of Hollywood
continued to flourish, the actual city went into sad decline in the sixties
and seventies.
When Gib and I had lived there back in 1949, a car trip to Hollywood
was a gala event. This was a beautiful city then and a wonderful place to
shop. But when I bought my house on Bryn Mawr Drive in 1978, Hollywood
had fallen into a sorry state of decline, with an unsavory reputation for
flagrant prostitution, blatant drug dealing, and serious crime. In 1981, Time
magazine characterized parts of Hollywood as “weekend war zones.”
All the glamour and excitement of former years seemed to have left.
Like many a starlet, seduced and abandoned, Hollywood showed those
telltale signs of aging and destruction. An arsonist torched the Hollywood
Library, with its wondrous collection of books on film. The Hollywood
Hotel and the legendary Garden of Allah were both lost to developers.
While the Hollywood movies often were carefully preserved, the city’s
landmarks were not. Like clips on the cutting-room floor, many of the
most important buildings in the city were lost to the wrecker’s ball or
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VI
HOLLYWOOD FALLS ON HARD TIMES
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through neglect.
Few people knew or cared about the historic buildings of Hollywood,
those relics from the golden age of filmmaking. The city had no historical
society. Hollywood was famous everywhere in the world but Hollywood.
When I visited Russia and told the people I met that I was from Los
Angeles, they often asked, “Is that near Hollywood?” But in Southern

California at the time, no one gave a damn about what should have been
one of Los Angeles’s greatest assets.
Some halfhearted attempts at preservation had been made, but plaques
were placed on the wrong buildings, and “remodeling” often resulted in
gaudy boutiques and T-shirt shops in total irreverence of the city’s past and
historical accuracy. Over three million tourists a year flocked to Hollywood
expecting to experience some of its glamorous history. But except for
Grauman’s Chinese Theater, there was nothing much for them to see in
Hollywood itself. So they all trooped over the hill to the Universal Studios
theme park.
This was the state of affairs in 1978 when I happened upon that
demonstration to raise money to preserve the original barn where
Hollywood’s first feature film had been made. And I thought it was
disgraceful. So I determined to do something about it. At first I tried to
work through the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, but it proved to be
an absolutely worthless organization for the purposes of historical
preservation. A few years later I gave an interview to a reporter, who asked
me about the HCC. “All our Chamber of Commerce does is raise enough
money to pay their salaries,” I told her. Then, to my horror, she quoted me.
I learned then and there not to speak my mind with reporters!
I learned about a group called the Hollywood Revitalization effort,
founded by Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson, the representative for our
district. When I went to see her, she explained that both the Los Angeles
city government and the council office funded the group. She put me in
touch with Rusty Flinton, who worked for the committee. I visited their
office in the Equity Building in Hollywood and volunteered my help. They
were pleased as could be to get me as a volunteer. Soon I met another
volunteer there, Mildred Heredeen, a delightful older woman. We hit it off
from the start! She was writing promotional articles for the revitalization
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of Hollywood and doing a great job. She also agreed that it was shameful
that there was no preservation society and said she would help me start
one. One day in 1979 the two of us were at the corner of Hollywood and
Vine having coffee in a small shop and talking about how best to form a
preservation society, when Christy Johnson approached our table and
introduced herself. She was a paid consultant for the HRC. She told us that
she had heard we were setting up a historical preservation society and
wanted to work with us. We were delighted!
Neither Christy, Mildred, nor I knew any of the politicians, and I knew
from previous experience that without their support our hope for a
historical society was doomed. Mildred was a good writer, doing
promotional writing for Hollywood Effort, and Christy was a fine historian,
having written a book on Hollywood architecture as her master’s thesis.
But whom to contact for political help?
Then, one of those strokes of fate happened. I had a phone call. A funny
little voice asked, “Is this Marian Gibbons on Bryn Mawr? “Yes, it is,” I said.
“Well,” she said, “my name is Mary Herbold. I live just down from you on
Primrose. Our regular postman is on vacation and the man they’ve put on
is bringing me all your magazines. Now, I’m not quite finished with them.
But when I am I will give you a call and you can come down and have tea
and I’ll give you your magazines.”
I thought this was as cute as she turned out to be a tiny little lady who
was brilliant. She was in her seventies then and smoked constantly. She
usually had on a chenille robe, which was liberally dotted with cigarette
burns. I feared she would burn herself up. Thank goodness she didn’t.
“What is it you want to do here?” she asked over tea. I told her of my
thoughts of starting a historical and preservation society. “What a good
idea!” she enthused. “Do you know John Ford?” I hadn’t the vaguest idea

who she was talking about. “Well, John Ford is considered the father of
Hollywood!” she said. “You’ll have to talk with John Ford!” “I’d like that,” I
said, “but I don’t know John Ford.” “Well, I do!” she said, and went straight
to the telephone.
“John,”she said, “I’ve got a lady here I think you should talk to. Hmmm,
Yeah, hmmm, all right. We’ll be there Wednesday morning.”
“There”, she said, “we’ll get him interested, for I know he will be!” I did
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my homework before we called on Mr. Ford in his beautiful home on
Normandy in Hollywood. He had been Los Angeles County supervisor for
the Third District for over twenty-five years and had a reputation as an
honest and trustworthy politician. I could not have found a more
influential mentor. When I told him what I wanted to do, he was more
than enthusiastic. “Why haven’t we done this before?” he exclaimed. “How
can I help?” I told him that I didn’t know any of the politicians and had
discovered in Wisconsin that it was a very necessary part of the plan. “Well,
I know them all,” he said. “Who do you want to see? “ I had to admit that I
knew so little of local politics and hadn’t a clue how to proceed. “I know
what you need,” he said, and went to the phone. “This is John Ford,” he
said. “Put me through to Tom.” He chatted with “Tom” for a bit then said,
“We’ll be in to see you next Monday.”
The following Monday, John Ford, Mary Herbold, and I were ushered
straight into Mayor Tom Bradley’s office. It was obvious that Mayor Bradley
had a close friendship with Mr. Ford (I later learned that John Ford had
crafted Tom Bradley’s successful run for mayor of Los Angeles). Once the
mayor knew just what Mr. Ford and I wanted to do, he called in a deputy
and gave orders to respond to our calls and keep him informed on our
progress. He became one of our most enthusiastic supporters. And that

didn’t hurt our cause one bit. We were quickly on our way to becoming a
real organization.
Borrowing from several historical societies, I wrote bylaws for our
group and took them up to Sacramento to be checked over by a deputy in
the secretary of state’s office, to be sure that we would qualify as a 501(c)3
nonprofit society. Our corporation papers were notarized in 1979 as
Hollywood Heritage, Inc.
About this time I found myself one day at the office of the Hollywood
Revitalization Committee and met Frances Offenhauser and Susan
Peterson, two young women who were both architects. The HRC had
hired them to do a study of the overall plan for restoring Hollywood to its
former glory. They immediately said they wanted to join in our efforts.
Soon afterwards we decided upon our officers and directors. I was the
president, Christy the vice-president, and Frances our secretary. John
Anson Ford was our chairman of the board, Susan, her husband, and
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Mildred were on the board of directors. At that point we were ready to go
public. My daughter, Jane, the publicist, gave me a list of important people
to contact. I sent out a notice of our first meeting. Much to our surprise, a
good many showed up and joined our organization.
One of the first things we did was to undertake a survey of Hollywood.
We were surprised to discover that there were over one hundred buildings
from the twenties and thirties worthy of being saved. This was most
unusual in a city of this size. But Hollywood had escaped urban renewal in
the sixties and seventies when other cities were gutting their downtown
areas. Instead, Hollywood simply stood still for thirty-five years.
We handful of ladies set about educating people in both the film and
the business communities about the importance of saving the physical

relics of Hollywood’s past. We quickly gained support from some of the top
names in the film industry. Actor Ed Asner joined Hollywood Heritage and
warned: “We are dream merchants and as such should be careful not to
dissipate our mystery for purely pragmatic reasons. The continuing
erosion, both physical and spiritual, of the entity known as Hollywood is
an irreparable loss to us all.”
Our first big battle came over the world-famous, hat-shaped Brown
Derby Restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard. In the thirties it was said that
no day went by without at least one article about the Brown Derby being
published somewhere in the world. Herbert Somborn (actress Gloria
Swanson’s husband) had opened the restaurant for business on Valentine’s
Day 1929. Immediately, the stars began coming in crowds for lunch and
dinner. Somborn died in 1934. A few years later, the Hollywood Brown
Derby opened on Vine Street just south of Hollywood Boulevard. It didn’t
take long before the Hollywood Derby became the place to see the movie
stars. The building was owned by Cecil B De Mille, the Derby rented it and
hired Robert Cobb to run it. He became the stuff of Hollywood legend one
night in 1937.
Weary of a steady hotdog and hamburger diet, Cobb prowled hungrily
in his restaurant’s kitchen for a snack. Opening the huge refrigerator, he
pulled out a head of lettuce, an avocado, romaine, tomatoes, some cold
breast of chicken, a hard-boiled egg, plus cheese and some old-fashioned
French dressing. He started chopping and added some crisp bacon he
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swiped from a busy chef. Cobb’s midnight invention was so tasty that Sid
Grauman, who was with Cobb that midnight, ordered a “Cobb salad” when
he came into the restaurant the next day. Cobb put it on the menu, and the
salad became an overnight sensation with Derby customers. People like

movie mogul Jack Warner regularly dispatched their chauffeurs to pick up
a carton. Over the coming decades the Brown Derby restaurants served
over four million Cobb salads.
(As a footnote: Sid Grauman was a Hollywood legend in his own right.
He built the famous Chinese Theater and started the practice of movie
stars pressing their hands and feet into wet concrete in front. He also built
the nearby Egyptian Theater and the Million Dollar Theater on Broadway.)
Such stars as George Burns, Gracie Allen, George Raft, Cary Grant, and
Barbara Stanwyck became Derby regulars. Clark Gable proposed to Carole
Lombard in Booth 54. In the sixties Kim Novak, Ernest Borgnine, and Steve
McQueen were frequently seen there. By this time the hat-shaped
restaurant had a large addition to one side, while the original structure
now served largely as an entrance and a lobby. In the late seventies, the
restaurant received a facelift.
In 1980 the owner of the Wilshire Boulevard Derby abruptly closed the
restaurant, laid off all the staff, and prepared to demolish the building. But
a waitress phoned in a tip about the impending destruction to Martin Weil,
an architect, at the Los Angeles Conservancy. He called me with the news.
We at Hollywood Heritage were stunned when we heard it. We had always
assumed that the Brown Derby had been nominated for historic-landmark
status. But it hadn’t. So it came as a real shock when we learned that we
could lose such a famous building. We rushed into action to save it. When
we arrived the next day, we were horrified to see a bulldozer sitting behind
the back wall of the restaurant with its blade just inches away. A chain-link
fence surrounded the restaurant. Soon police, city officials, and
preservationists were all involved. I pleaded with a guard to take me to the
owner. I was convinced we could work this out satisfactorily. The owners
were Jim and Brooke Young, the granddaughter of Gloria Swanson, the
famous actress from the silent era. Jim Young was there and quite
perplexed as to how they should handle the situation. They told me that

they had closed the restaurant because it wasn’t making much money
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anymore and the land under it had become too valuable.
“Let’s be reasonable,” I said to them. “Only the original hat-shaped
building is worth saving. Let’s move that elsewhere.”
“Lady, you mean all you want is that hat?” he asked.
“That’s all I want,” I told him.
“Well, you just got yourself a hat!” he told me.
And that’s how we saved the Brown Derby. The story of our fight to
save the celebrated restaurant generated national and international news
coverage. And Hollywood Heritage was launched.
Well, we had saved our hat. But what were we going to do with it? And
the rainy season was coming. Then I visited Western Extermination
Company and asked them to help us. We needed to have the hat covered
with a large tarp similar to what they used when they gassed a termite-
infested house. I promised them some publicity in return. And this
happened, as the tarp had the name Western Extermination Company
stenciled across it.
Our next major project involved the most important historic building
in Hollywood, the Barn, home of the first film-company studio. (At
Hollywood Heritage we have always thought of it as the Barn with a capital
B, to distinguish it from all the other barns of much less historical interest.)
One day soon afterward I was at a Hollywood Chamber of Commerce
meeting, sitting next to Jack Forman, the president of Warner Brothers
Studio. He was in charge of the Hollywood Historic Trust, which owned
the Barn, the building that had originally gotten me involved in the
business of Hollywood preservation. He told me the shocking news that
Bill Welsh, the president of HRC, wanted to sell the Barn to Universal

Studios for $10,000 for them to place in their theme park.
“That Barn can’t leave Hollywood!” I said emphatically.
“I agree,” Jack told me. “Can your group do anything about it?”
“We can and we will,” I promised him.
No other building embodied so much early Hollywood history as this
dilapidated structure. It was in this barn at the corner of Selma Avenue and
Vine Street, in 1913, that Cecil B. De Mille, fresh from New York City, set up
shop in a sleepy little suburb of Los Angeles to make The Squaw Man, the
first feature film ever shot in Hollywood.
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De Mille was thirty-two years old at the time and in partnership with
Samuel Goldwyn and Jesse Lasky in a small production company called the
Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. The group had bought a film script
to Edwin Milton Royle’s popular stage melodrama, The Squaw Man, which
they wanted to shoot on site in the country around Flagstaff, Arizona. But
the film crew found the climate there to be unsuitable for their movie and
so stayed on the train until they arrived in Los Angeles.
Once the group had arrived in sunny Southern California, De Mille
rented a barn in Hollywood. He used it as his first studio, converting the
empty horse stalls into dressing rooms for his actors. Much later he
Artist’s imaginative rendering of the original Barn.
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We had our work cut out for us in trying to renovate the Barn!
The Capitol Records building, a Hollywood landmark in the background.
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Another view of the Barn.
The Barn up on movers’ skids.
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The interior was a shambles as well.
Everything was in total disarray.
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Vine Street and Selma Avenue, circa 1915.
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described the Barn in his autobiography: “It was a surprisingly large barn.
L-shaped, one of its yellowish heat-beaten wings ran along Vine Street, and
the other stretched back, parallel to Selma Avenue, into an orange grove. A
partition was set up within the barn to form a small room, a desk was
brought in for the director-general and a kitchen table for his nonexistent
secretary; and we were ready for business.”
The Barn did have one serious drawback, as De Mille noted in his
autobiography: “The roof leaked. However, I had an umbrella and Mamie
Wagner. Mamie was our film cutter. When the rains came, if I was working,
Mamie would leave her cutting and hold the umbrella over me. If she was
working at her job, I would gallantly return the compliment. Somehow we
managed to stay dry enough, by turns anyway, to keep the laboratory work
abreast of each day’s shoot.”
Hollywood at this time was a sleepy collection of houses scattered
among the orange groves. The roads were all dirt, and few residents owned
cars. De Mille declined to use his car to get from the house he rented to his
studio; instead he rode a horse to work each day. As he noted in his
autobiography:
It was possible to drive a car (if one had a car in 1914) over the
bumpy, pitted, dirt road which was then Cahuenga Boulevard, but
a horse was a much more practical means of transportation between
my home and the barn-studio. Every morning Mrs. De Mille
packed the lunch, which I carried slung over my shoulder in a

leather pouch, as I rode to work. Every evening the same pouch
carried home the precious extra negative to be stored in our attic.
It was a pleasant ride in the freshness of the morning and the cool of
the evening on horseback, past the vineyards and between the trees and
brush, which then grew wild in the pass through which thousands of cars
now boil hourly on the Hollywood Freeway. It was also a lonely ride.
Houses were few and far between. He almost never met anyone on the
road.
De Mille and his crew started shooting the movie on December 29, 1913,
on a budget of $15,000. Oscar Apfel, an experienced filmmaker from New
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York, was the actual director, with De Mille alongside him learning the
trade. De Mille even appeared on screen as an extra, playing a faro dealer!
(“It was to save the $3 we would have had to pay someone else,” he noted.)
The final six-reel film thus marked De Mille’s directorial debut and became
the first feature to be shot entirely in Hollywood. It hit the big screen the
following year and grossed over $200,000 at the box office at a time when
movie admissions were a dime.
Film historian Sumiko Higashi observed in his book, Cecil B. De Mille
and American Culture: The Silent Era, that the film introduced a new level of
sophistication to movie-making:
Apfel’s filmmaking style was technically advanced and distinguished by
composition for depth, a high ratio of medium shots, camera movement for
reframing, parallel editing, eye-level shots with occasional use of high angle
and even reverse angle shots, superimpositions and split-screen effects to
show a protagonist recalling past events, and titles as exposition and
dialogue, all characteristic of De Mille’s early features.
Recently, Hollywood Heritage screened The Squaw Man in the Barn for

members. I was there, of course. I must admit that while the movie is of
enormous historic importance, I found it damn dull as entertainment. The
story is a creaking Victorian melodrama about a man falsely accused of a
murder committed by his brother; he flees to the West to escape arrest and
marries an Indian maiden. De Mille remade the story on two other
occasions, in 1918 starring Elliott Dexter and then once again in 1931 in a
sound version starring Warner Baxter.
(As a footnote to this story, Jesse Lasky, De Mille’s boss, was a
fascinating figure in the early film industry. His sister Blanche, an actress,
married Samuel Goldwyn, who persuaded Lasky to form the Jesse L. Lasky
Feature Play Company. He hired De Mille, a director without any films to
his credit, to shoot The Squaw Man on location in the West. He released this
film and the others he made through Paramount Pictures, a distribution
company. Jesse Lasky became the vice-president in charge of production,
one of the most powerful executive producers in Hollywood during the
silent era. Lasky left the studio in 1932 to join forces with actress Mary
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De Mille at his desk in the barn.
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Pickford to form Pickford-Lasky Productions. In 1941 he produced his most
successful independent movie, Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper and
directed by Howard Hawks. He died on January 13, 1958.)
The Barn became the headquarters of Paramount Studios after Lasky
merged his company with that of Adolph Zukor, and it somehow survived
numerous decisions to tear it down. De Mille noted with pride in his
Autobiography: “In December 1956 the old barn was officially dedicated as
a ‘registered landmark’ by the California State Parks Committee of Los
Angeles, the first time that any structure or site connected with the

motion-picture industry had been singled out for that honor.” De Mille,
Lasky, Goldwyn, Zukor, and many other pioneers from Hollywood’s early
history were all there at the dedication to celebrate the occasion, including
John Anson Ford.
In time the original barn ended up on a Western set on Paramount’s
back lot, where the facade became familiar to millions of viewers as the
railroad station in the Bonanza television series, and its interior was used as
Some of the character actors starring in early motion pictures.
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a gymnasium for the studio’s stars. In the late seventies Paramount officials
offered the historic building to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce for
public viewing. And that’s where the situation stood when Jack Forman
told me the shocking news that Hollywood might lose the Barn, as it sat
up on mover’s blocks slowly growing more and more dilapidated!
I decided I had to organize a campaign to raise the money to save and
restore the building. After all, The Squaw Man changed the flickers into the
movies and started the studio system as we know it today. And the Barn is
a priceless relic from Hollywood’s earliest period. I thought the project
would unite the Hollywood film community behind its history as nothing
had done before. But first I had to convince the board members of
Hollywood Heritage to undertake the task. At our next board meeting I
brought up the subject of the Barn. I concluded by stating, “Let’s make this
our project and take control.” And I argued that there was nothing in our
bylaws to prohibit us from doing so.
Well, the other board members were not enthusiastic. They thought
the Barn was simply too big a project for us to handle. “Where will we put
the building?” they asked. I didn’t know, but I felt strongly that once we got
the Barn, then things would eventually work themselves out. The board

refused saying “We can’t take on the responsibility of a building.” At that
point I said that if the board refused, I would resign from Hollywood
Heritage and start another organization for the sole purpose of preserving
the Barn. I even wrote an official letter of resignation dated September 4,
1981, but the board sent me a letter refusing my resignation. We were at a
stalemate for several days.
Then I got a telephone call out of the blue from Frances Offenhauser,
who insisted that I meet her in the parking lot on North Highland
Boulevard across from the Hollywood Bowl. Frances took me to the edge of
the paved lot and pointed to the undeveloped land there. “Our Barn will fit
right there,” she told me excitedly. She balled up some newspapers from
the trash barrels and marked off the perimeter of the barn by placing the
balls of paper at the corners. “Frances, you are a genius!” I exclaimed.
The land there is owned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Society; and
the story of the land there is a strange and unbelievable story:
Decades before, motion-picture devotees and Los Angeles County
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Frances Offenhauser’s map where the Barn would be situated.
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A PSA Premiere. Hollywood Heritage President, Richard Adkins, myself, actor Gene Barry,
a De Mille star, Signe Hasso, and Museum Director, Timothy J. Burke.
We receive some much-needed press in the Los Angeles Times while rebuilding the Barn.
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A Thank You for the wonderful commerical these people did for us.
Barn moving party. A gala event!
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supervisors began accumulating land to build a museum that would
include the little barn as the birthplace of the first major film studio in

Hollywood. Houses were purchased through eminent-domain, and leveled
across from the Hollywood Bowl, except for one. Steven Anthony, an ex-
marine, refused to give up his home and it sat in the middle of the space
needed for the museum. A standoff, which became known in the media as
“the siege of Fort Anthony,” began. Crowds gathered and the county
sheriffs patrolled the area to maintain order. People supporting Anthony
answered his phones, wrote letters, and designed posters to fight the
eminent-domain purchase of his home. Working in the house with them,
pretending to be a supporter, was a deputy sheriff. On April 13th 1963,
when all the workers in the house were gathered around the television set
in the living room, watching as Sidney Poitier received the Oscar for the
Academy Awards’ best actor for Lilies of the Field, the deputy signaled his
partners outside to detonate the explosives they had secretly placed
around the perimeter of the home. Amazingly, except for the minor
traumas, all survived the massive explosive, but Anthony’s home was
unlivable and had to be torn down. The museum was mired in controversy
and never built. The land became a parking lot for the Hollywood Bowl.
Now, here was the county with land for a museum and no museum, and
Hollywood Heritage with a building to be a museum with no land to hold
it.
I called Supervisor Edmund Edelman, supervisor of the Third district,
and responsible for most of the cultural installations in Los Angeles, and
told him the story and our need for the place on Highland Avenue. He
immediately recognized its historical significance and made an
appointment for us to make our plea before the whole board of supervisors.
John Anson Ford went with us and spoke to the board. Not only was he
revered by the board members, he was a spellbinding speaker. As he
spoke, he said, “From this little barn, a river of information has flowed that
has changed the history of our world. We must do all we can to save this
important piece of our city’s history.” As they listened, the supervisors

nodded in agreement. Soon it was decided that we would have a lease on
the Philharmonic property.
Before we could move the Barn, we first had to do some extensive
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The reconstructed Barn’s interior hung with bunting and full of memorabilia.
The Barn, now the Hollywood Studio Museum. We’ve come a long way!
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renovation. We didn’t want our building to be an eyesore for the people
who lived in the Whitney Heights neighborhood, home to a good many
actors and actresses. The Barn leaked like a sieve whenever it rained. The
first thing we did was get a brand-new roof put on. Afterward we got
volunteers to sand and paint the structure to make it look more
presentable.
The next job was to prepare the foundation and lot where the Barn
would sit on North Highland Boulevard. I learned that we had to have a
soil test to make certain we didn’t need a deep foundation to support our
building. Now, I had no idea what a soil test was or why it was necessary;
but Frances did. I arrived at the lot at 6 a.m. as requested, expecting a crew
with shovels and buckets and was scared silly to see a huge truck and a
massive drill thing arrive. I didn’t have permission to be on that land and
was scared someone would drive by and see us and I would be arrested.
They drilled five huge holes and I reckon it tested okay, for we were
allowed to proceed–and I didn’t get arrested. Then we had to construct
some trenches and pour concrete. Jim Rollins, a volunteer working with us
talked all the companies into donating their time and materials in
exchange for a tax deduction and publicity. Finally, we needed several
truckloads of gravel. On Christmas Eve in 1982 I drove my car to the site
and illuminated the foundation with my headlights while Rollins guided

the gravel trucks in to dump their loads. I was there until eleven that night.
I was exhausted! I spent that night at Jane’s house with her husband and
young son, Shane. Now we were ready to move our barn. The law said
moves had to be made in the middle of the night when there was less
traffic and the lights and overhead wires could be moved without
disrupting too many businesses. Well, I wanted to move the Barn during
the eleven o’clock news, for the excellent publicity we would gain. After
too many frustrating “no’s” I called on Mayor Bradley and asked if he could
help. “Well, I think I can do that!” he said. And he did. We had one little
hitch. Someone ignored our No Parking signs and parked his little
Volkswagen right in the middle of the path we had to take out of the
parking lot. Jim Rollins rounded up a group of strong guys and carried it
to another spot. And off we went to our lot on North Highland Boulevard,
followed by a small marching band, double-decker bus of volunteers and a
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Hollywood Falls On Hard Times
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swinging klieg light.
We still had a lot of hard work to do restoring the building, but it was
worth the labor in the end. In fact, the structure is now in better condition
than at any time since it was first built. The good people at Hollywood
Heritage have made it into one of the most unique museums in Southern
California, housing a comprehensive collection of artifacts and
memorabilia from the earliest years of the Hollywood film industry. In one
corner we have recreated De Mille’s original private office with his desk,
typewriter, and a period telephone. One display case holds his glasses,
shoes, and riding crop. The collection includes Charlie Chaplin’s 1919 movie
camera along with a 1929 movie projector that once belonged to Buster
Keaton. We also have numerous swords, spears, shields, and other props
from De Mille’s early films. The walls of the barn are hung with an

extensive collection of early movie posters and pictures, some quite rare.
Whenever I’m there on one of my frequent visits, the memories of all
our struggles to make this museum come together rush over me. I think the
Barn will always remain my proudest accomplishment. Sometimes, with a
shudder, I think about how close Hollywood came to losing its most
precious historic building to neglect and indifference. Unfortunately, this
happens much too often with other historic buildings in American cities.
But here in Los Angeles, we folks at Hollywood Heritage made a difference.
I will never forget a little boy in the 4th grade. After they had seen
slides and heard stories of some of the places that were no longer in
Hollywood. He raised his hand and asked, “We want to know…why didn’t
you save them for us?” I wish everyone ready to demolish a landmark could
see that little boy’s face and hear his words.
A few days after we moved the barn to Highland Avenue, someone sent
me a copy of an article from the Daily Variety, of October 25, 1979. The
famous writer and producer Andrew J. Fenady had written about his
experiences in the barn while it was on the Paramount lot. And he was
there the day they began to shut it down preparing it for the move off the
lot. I was so moved by the emotional story of his last day in the barn that
I called him and asked for permission to use the article. He very graciously
granted us permission and it was first published by us in our newsletter of
October 1, 1983. Please enjoy his moving remembrance of being the last
person to use the Paramount gym.
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