Hollywood Boulevard: Third Time’s a Charm

Jill's Journal: After twice heading to Hollywood Boulevard only to find it shut down for a movie premiere, we finally made it on a “normal” day. (I use that term loosely, as there’s nothing normal about Hollywood Blvd. or Tinseltown!)

By the way, this is what the very famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre looks like with a red carpet laid out for a premiere. The movie set to premiere on that particular day was “This Means War.” If we’d wanted to stake out a spot, we could have waited and seen Reese Witherspoon and her co-stars walk down that red carpet just a little after we were there. Nah. That might be fun for us adults to do once, but we’re not going to put our little kids through that madness.

Here’s Grauman’s on a regular day. Right on Hollywood Blvd., this iconic landmark has been here since 1927. Built by Sid Grauman, the man who is credited with “inventing” movie premieres, this theatre was the home of the Academy Awards a few times in the 1940s. In addition to premieres and other big events, it’s still a regular theatre.

Grauman’s Chinese Theatre is built to look like a giant Chinese pagoda. Looking up, it’s easy to be taken by the unique exterior. But it’s in looking down that one sees the theatre’s enduring legacy: the 200+ celebrities whose handprints and footprints are immortalized in concrete in the forecourt.

It didn’t take long for the girls to find one of the three horse hoofprints also in the concrete. This one was Roy Rogers’ Trigger.

George Burns along with his cigar.

Marilyn Monroe, with Jane Russell immediately to the left. Monroe wanted to add her famous derriere and Russell wanted to add her equally famous bosom, but both were deemed a little too risqué for the time.

His and Hers: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

Star Wars (the premiere was one of the many held at Grauman’s over the years).

Tom Hanks. I’m not sure if he has really small feet or if Erika has really big feet!

Will Smith (with Matt Damon just below). “Parents just don’t understand.” (Does that age me?)

George Clooney. Swoon.

Jack Nicholson. “You can’t handle the truth!”

Robin Williams. Carpe diem.

Harrison Ford. Indy!

The only thing on Hollywood Blvd. more famous than Grauman’s might be the Walk of Fame. There’s over 2,400 stars emblazoned in the sidewalk on both sides of the street. They cover 15 blocks, plus a few side streets. This sculpture, featuring starlets of the past (that’s Mae West in the front), marks the head of the Walk of Fame, which began in 1960.

These may not have been the first stars laid in the sidewalk, but they’re the very first two stars one sees from the westernmost start of the Walk of Fame: Elvis Presley and The Beatles, side by side.

The girls love Elvis. :)

And I love this picture of little Victoria, with her strong personality and little 4-year-old baby tummy, telling her sisters off about something. And they’re taking it! She is going to rule the world someday. Aren’t third children supposed to be easy going? She blows all birth order theories out of the water. Happily, when she’s not mad, she is the sweetest, most loving little thing in the world. But, boy oh boy, does she have a temper (and a stubborn streak).

Mickey Mouse! Oh my, how the girls are looking forward to Disneyland. Soon.

But we have raised these girls right. They were more excited about running across Jerry Moss’ star than Mickey Mouse’s! How many little kids even know who Moss is? (For that matter, how many adults outside of the music or Thoroughbred industry do?) Moss is the “M” in A&M Records, who helped launch the recording careers of acts like Sting and The Police. He also happens to own one of the greatest fillies of all time, the 2010 Horse of the Year Zenyatta (who was, incidentally, named after a The Police album). The magnificent Zenyatta…that’s why the girls were so excited. :)

Speaking of Sting…!

Also on Hollywood, just steps from Grauman’s, is the Kodak Theatre. This is where the Academy Awards are held these days.

Here’s the view from Hollywood and Highland and our last glimpse of the Hollywood sign. It’s a fitting farewell to our time in Los Angeles.

Dodger Stadium Tour

Jill's Journal: Whether you’re a Los Angeles Dodgers fan or a baseball fan or even the most casual of sports fans, a tour of Dodger Stadium is a slice of Americana well worth taking. We absolutely loved our close-up tour of the stadium.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Dodger Stadium is the third-oldest major league baseball park in the United States. Only Fenway and Wrigley have it beat. But no one is bigger; with 56,000 seats, Dodger Stadium is the largest in the country.

In this day and age when even the iconic Yankee Stadium has been rebuilt, Dodger Stadium remains fresh and modern, even at age 50. It was the first stadium to feature a cantilevered design, meaning each and every seat has an unobstructed view of the playing field (a very new concept when it opened in 1962).

Here’s the view from the top of the park. Yes, that’s the unusual sight of dirt over the playing field. Dodger Stadium hosts all sorts of events in the off-season, ranging from concerts to papal visits to motorcross and monster truck rallies (hence the dirt!).

This is the Dodger dugout from above…

…and the bench from inside the dugout. How cool is that?

The girls don’t appreciate yet how awesome it is that they got to sit in the dugout!

And drink out of the players’ water fountain…

And get a glimpse inside the players’ tunnel. Seriously, how awesome is this?

Or how about a walk through the Vin Scully Press Box?

The official scorer sits at this table. The legendary Scully is behind the far wall.

Here’s where the organ player sits and plays…Dodger Stadium still has a real, live person on the organ. The current organist has been here for 25 years and she knits in between songs!

This is one of the luxury suites. Three-quarters of the front glass wall slides open for easy access to the attached balcony.

The Dodgers have won five World Series, six if you count their time in Brooklyn.

Speaking of Brooklyn, the Dodgers took their final home plate with them to Los Angeles when they left Ebbets Field.

We’ve never taken the girls to a baseball game, but we would like to now after touring Dodger Stadium. Amazingly, Rob's paternal grandmother bought season tickets (eight rows behind home plate!) when the stadium opened in 1962. The tickets were transferred to Rob's maternal grandfather around her death in 1969. He is gone now too, but his family still has the tickets. They are planning to let them go this year...after 50 years! Baseball isn't inexpensive family entertainment anymore. It costs big money to go to a game now and the price of season tickets rivals that of a small new car.

The views from the stadium aren’t too shabby either. There’s downtown L.A.

One can also see the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory from Dodger Stadium, if you can make them out through the smog. The air looks much worse in pictures than it does in person…really!

Griffith Park Observatory

Jill's Journal: Most major cities, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world, have an iconic park associated with them. Los Angeles is no exception, although the legendary Griffith Park almost didn’t happen. In 1896, Welch immigrant and wealthy mine speculator Colonel Griffith J. Griffith bequeathed 3,015 acres (or about five square miles) to L.A. for use as a park. At the time, L.A. had only 100,000 residents and the land was about a mile outside of the city. The city hesitated briefly, declaring it too far out of town, but soon accepted anyway. If only they could have seen into the future. In the century since, the 10+ million inhabitants of the L.A. area cover every square inch surrounding Griffith Park, which itself now covers over 4,200 acres.

The showpiece of Griffith Park is Griffith Observatory, one of the most visited landmarks in Southern California and the most visited public observatory in the world. The same Griffith who donated the park land had a great interest in astronomy and donated $100,000 a century ago to the City of Los Angeles to build an observatory on top of Mt. Hollywood. He wanted to make the sciences, particularly astronomy, more accessible to the public. The Observatory wasn’t formally opened until 1935, long after Griffith’s death.

Today it houses all sorts of science exhibits with a strong focus on astronomy and, with the exception of the planetarium, is free to the public. However, I suspect most of the millions of annual visitors are there for the iconic building itself – which is truly beautiful – and the surrounding views, some of the most spectacular in the city.

Did I mention the views? One has an excellent view of downtown L.A., which you can just barely see at the horizon in the middle of this photo due to the almost ever-present smog. It really did seem like a clear day until we tried to look out a distance. I don’t think air quality in L.A. is quite as bad as it’s supposed to be in Beijing, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for you either.

Hundreds of scenes in movies and television have been filmed at the Observatory, most notably some pivotal moments in “Rebel Without a Cause” with James Dean in 1955. It was “Rebel” which brought the Observatory into worldwide consciousness outside of L.A. Although this monument is of Dean, a plaque notates its more of an acknowledgement of the Observatory’s long and prosperous relationship with Hollywood. Note the Hollywood sign just over to the right of the monument in the background.

And here it is closer up. There’s that pesky smog again.

Like the Hollywood sign, the unique Observatory can be spotted from many places around L.A. I’ve heard it called the city’s “hood ornament,” which seems to be extra fitting since L.A. is such a car society.

The Hollywood Sign

Jill's Journal: Under overcast skies on a little hike today in the cold (only 59 degrees…so chilly by Los Angeles standards!), the girls got their first glimpse of the famed Hollywood sign. They were decidedly underwhelmed even though I told them it’s probably the most famous sign in the world. They’ll appreciate it someday, right? At least that’s what Rob and I tell ourselves. In the meantime, we grown-ups loved the chance to see it again.

If you’ve ever wondered how the sign came about, it was built as a giant billboard in 1923. Mules hauled 4,000 light bulbs, plus telegraph poles and other building materials up the side of Mt. Lee in the Santa Monica Mountains to the now-famed site. It was intended to promote a new, upscale housing development in the hills above Hollywood and originally said, “Hollywoodland.” At night the sign blinked from the 4,000 lights that were installed, which was truly a spectacular show for the time. The sign was only expected to be left up for 18 months, but the dramatic growth of the film industry in the area soon caused it to be a landmark recognized internationally. It was decided to leave the sign up permanently.

By 1949, the sign was in major disrepair. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce came to the rescue and began repairing and rebuilding the sign, but removed the last four letters to make it say more appropriately, “Hollywood.” They also decided not to replace the light bulbs due to the cost of lighting the massive sign. However, the repairs and TLC served as only a brief respite for the sign. Time, deterioration, vandalism, and accidents left it in horrible condition by the 1970s. Rocker Alice Cooper was among those who publicly campaigned to restore the sign and replace it with steel letters, which was accomplished in 1978. Each letter cost nearly $28,000 to replace and the money for each one was donated by individuals ranging from the aforementioned Cooper to Hugh Hefner to Gene Autry to Andy Williams. The letters are each 45 feet tall.

Another interesting fact: Actress Peg Entwistle committed suicide off the “H” in 1932. These days, the sign is barricaded and equipped with alarms, motion sensors, and closed-circuit cameras.