History

Restaurant and bar history blog

Brown DerbyLos Angeles Time Machines is fascinated by Los Angeles restaurants and bars from the 1930s, '40s, '50s and '60s. Musso and Frank holds the place of honor on the main page, but he's got lengthy pages also on hotels, notable buildings, movie palaces, restaurants and bars that are no longer around, Route 66 motels and Las Vegas.

Los Angeles is full of wonderful time machines of this nature, although they are disappearing at an alarming rate. In the twenty-five years I’ve lived in or near Southern California, we’ve lost the Hollywood Brown Derby, Nickodell’s, Chasen’s, Vickman’s, C.C. Brown’s, most of the movie palaces and the list goes on and on.

He passes my quick test by getting right that the final Brown Derby site on Wilshire (pictured) was not the original locale. That was a block west, where the Equitable tower stands. He doesn't mention that there was a third Brown Derby in that stretch of Wilshire, but that's OK — it's rarely recalled. The mystery Derby was a storefront at 3927 Wilshire. It took over for the Hi-Hat, started by Brown Derby co-founder Herbert Somborn, and only lasted a year before becoming the original Perino's in 1932. The Perino's facade is visible in Sunset Blvd. when William Holden is in the tailor shop, plotting his escape from Gloria Swanson's mausoleum of a mansion, which in real life was located at Wilshire and Crenshaw. (Swanson and Somborn were exes, just to add another scrap of trivia.)

Post edited for clarity


More by Kevin Roderick:
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The Media
LA Times gets a top editor with nothing but questions
LA Observed Notes: Harvey Weinstein stripped bare
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Kevin Starr, 76, the historian of California
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Pink Lady of Malibu Canyon
LA's first presidential election was different
Pink Lady of Malibu Canyon: 50 years ago
James Dean died 61 years ago today. Now the famous gas station is gone
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1932 Olympics tourist map


 

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