Los Angeles Visionaries Association

Join LAVA for our revived free monthly Sunday Salon series. We return to South Broadway, to the mezzanine of Les Noces du Figaro, which was recently opened by the family behind Figaro Bistro in Los Feliz. This handsome space was formerly Schaber’s Cafeteria (Charles F. Plummer, 1928), and the mezzanine features wonderful views of the Los Angeles Theatre.

On the last Sunday of each month , LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another. If you’re interested in joining LAVA as a creative contributor or an attendee, we recommend Salon attendance as an introduction to this growing community. We also recommend the eclairs.

Read about the original Sunday Salon at Clifton's Cafeteria here.

The Salon will be broken into two distinct presentations each lasting about 45 minutes. You are encouraged to arrive early if you wish to order food and beverages from the counter downstairs, and bring your meal upstairs. 

Presentation One:

Brent E. Walker, author of Mack Sennett's Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of His Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel, takes us on a journey through the life and career of movie comedy pioneer and Keystone Film Company founder Mack Sennett, via a lecture with slides and film clips. Sennett, mythologically famous for his Keystone Cops, pies in the face, the discovery of film giants Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson, also had a very important and direct influence on the growth and development of Los Angeles during the 1910s and 1920s. Brent presentation will bring a fascinating Angeleno, his city and time, to life.

Presentation Two:

Dydia DeLyser presents Take Nothing for Granted: The search for the first neon sign in America, and research in the era of the Internet (co-authored with Paul Greenstein). Internet and published sources alike all describe, as the first neon sign in America, a 1923 sign saying "Packard," erected for Earle C. Anthony, Inc., a prominent Packard dealer, on the corner of 7th and Flower Streets in downtown Los Angeles. But no one has ever provided a photograph of the sign in its original location, or referenced a primary source to support this claim. This presentation details Dydia and Paul's search for the sign, and shows how their painstaking archival research proved every other source wrong.

Writer and social historian Joan Renner explores the dark side of Southern California in a presentation focusing on crime photos from the Herald-Examiner collection, with material drawn from two fascinating stories covered by legendary Los Angeles newswoman, Agness “Aggie” Underwood. One of the cases to be presented is the mysterious death of film star Thelma Todd in 1935. Also presented will be the tale of Helen Wills Love, who, after committing murder on New Year's Eve in 1936, willed herself into a coma!

Sponsored by the LAPL Photo Collection and Photo Friends.

Discover the story of Hope Foye, a progressive young singer whose voice impressed legends such as Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Dubois. However, a subpeona to appear before the McCarren Committee in 1949 changed her life forever.  "Red Hope: The Blacklisting of Hope Foye" will be screened at the Mayme Clayton Library and Museum in Culver City. The film's subject, Hope Foye, will be at the screening to discuss her life and career. 

Free. Donations welcomed.

Join LAVA for our revived free monthly Sunday Salon series. We return to South Broadway, to the mezzanine of Les Noces du Figaro, which was recently opened by the family behind Figaro Bistro in Los Feliz. This handsome space was formerly Schaber’s Cafeteria (Charles F. Plummer, 1928), and the mezzanine features wonderful views of the Los Angeles Theatre.

On the last Sunday of each month, LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a structured Salon featuring formal presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another. If you’re interested in joining LAVA as a creative contributor or an attendee, we recommend Salon attendance as an introduction to this growing community. We also recommend the eclairs.

Read about the original Sunday Salon at Clifton's Cafeteria here.

The Salon's theme will be Jazz Age Los Angeles, and the two talks (45 minutes each) will focus on that theme at the intersection of Crescent Heights and Sunset Blvd.

You are encouraged to arrive early if you wish to order food and beverages from the counter downstairs, and bring your meal upstairs. 

Please note that there will a morning and afternoon walking tour of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Hollywood on Saturday, June 29, and that our Salon presenters Martin Turnbull and Marc Chevalier will be making short appearances.

Presentation One: Martin Turnbull on The Garden of Allah

Martin Turnbull, author of The Garden Of Allah novels will be discussing life at that hotel and its infamous bungalow courtyard during the 1920s and 30s. Its bootleg liquor, fizzy flappers, all night parties defined the Jazz Age in Los Angeles. When Scott Fitzgerald when came to L.A. in the mid 1930s with his $1000/week contract at MGM, it was at the Garden of Allah he chose to land. it was also the home-away-from-home for Algonquin Round Table refugees Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott, Donald Ogden Stewart and Marc Connelly, so Fitzgerald must have feel at home. As did anyone answering Hollywood’s siren call lucky enough to get a room there. Martin’s talk will be punctuated by readings from his first novel in the series, The Garden On Sunset.

Back Story on the Garden of Allah: Formerly the movie star mansion of luminous silent screen star, Alla Nazimova, the Garden of Allah opened its doors in 1927 at the height of the Jazz Age and in no time, word got out that Nazimova’s Garden could always provide hopeful Hollywood arrivals with a pillow, a pal and a party. Over those years, a virtual who’s who of Hollywood paraded through the place: Bogie and Bacall, Errol Flynn, David Niven, Harpo Marx, Tallulah Bankhead, Artie Shaw, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Dorothy Gish, Kay Thompson, Leopold Stokowski, Orson Welles, Ava Gardner, and Frank Sinatra.

Presentation Two: Marc Chevalier on the Crescent Heights Shopping Center & the ballyhoo spirit of the Jazz Age

For his talk, Marc Chevailer, the historian of the Oviatt Building, will focus on the Crescent Heights Shopping Center, just across the street from the Garden of Allah. First drawn to the building because of James Oviatt's proposed but never realized "satellite" shop for his famous haberdashery downtown, Marc soon become ensorcelled by this beautiful French Norman revival building. Built in 1925, this towered, marble-trimmed and mansard-roofed Norman ‘chateau’ housed Schwab’s Pharmacy and the Crescent Heights Market, which fed, drugged and boozed the Garden of Allah’s voracious guests. It was where Hollywood’s movielanders shopped, schmoozed, strove and scrounged for generations … where F. Scott Fitzgerald nearly died and Marilyn Monroe got her final prescription, and where Robert Mitchum, already a star, stocked grocery shelves just for fun. 

It was home to the Sunset Medical Center, the upscale Talmadge Jones flower shop (with its Rolls-Royce delivery trucks), a bakery, a dry cleaner, a beauty parlor, the infamous Crescent Heights Market (owned and managed by a cantankerous ex-speakeasy operator from New York, who randomly overcharged Hollywood's elite for its groceries), and a pharmacy that would be bought out by Schwab's in 1932. In 1949, Googie's would build its first coffee shop next to Schwab's.

While nothing remains of it today, “the chateau that housed Schwab’s” is ripe for rediscovery. Join Marc as he presents us a rich palimpsest of Hollywood from its halcyon era as he peels back the layers of the Crescent Heights Shopping Center, a compound which was drastically remodeled in the 1960s, and demolished in 1988.

Marc Chevalier stumbled across “the chateau that held Schwab’s” while doing research for his upcoming biography of James Oviatt, the man behind L.A.’s Oviatt Building. In 2008, in partnership with filmmaker Seth Shulman, he researched/wrote/produced a feature-length documentary on the Oviatt Building’s history. An English teacher by profession, Chevalier calls Los Angeles history his passion/addiction, and credits Kim Cooper and Richard Schave for feeding it regularly.

Join LAVA for our revived free monthly Sunday Salon series. We return to South Broadway, to the mezzanine of Les Noces du Figaro, which was recently opened by the family behind Figaro Bistro in Los Feliz. This handsome space was formerly Schaber’s Cafeteria (Charles F. Plummer, 1928), and the mezzanine features wonderful views of the Los Angeles Theatre.

On the last Sunday of each month, LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a structured Salon featuring formal presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another. If you’re interested in joining LAVA as a creative contributor or an attendee, we recommend Salon attendance as an introduction to this growing community. We also recommend the eclairs.

Read about the original Sunday Salon at Clifton's Cafeteria here.

The Salon will be broken into two distinct presentations each lasting about 45 minutes. You are encouraged to arrive early if you wish to order food and beverages from the counter downstairs, and bring your meal upstairs. 

Presentation One: 29 Palms by J. Scott Smith

The presentation will consist of two distinct elements: 1) a projected 35-minute presentation during which photographer J. Scott Smith describes the origins and creative process behind his 29 Palms project. After the talk, join Scott for a pop-up gallery show featuring one or two full-scale finished works (3’ x 5’) along with a few smaller sized pieces (18.5” x 30”) on display in the mezzanine.

Artist’s Statement:

29 Palms is a mirage of sorts, a photographic re-imagining of the original oasis of twenty-nine native palms around which the desert city of the same name developed. Washingtonia filifera, the Golden State’s only indigenous palm, is featured in this collection alongside a remarkable variety of geographic transplants that flourish in Southern California’s benign climate. Captured with a large format view camera on 8 × 10” film and rendered in high-resolution 38 × 60” chromogenic prints, the 29 Palms series is both a typological study of individual palm trunks and a shimmering reflection of the region’s ethnically diverse human population.

I became aware of the extraordinary beauty of palm trunks when my beloved dog began to slow in his old age. Walking through a Santa Monica park lined with palms, I confronted their trunks at close range while Buck lingered and sniffed around the bases. Their intricate patterns evoked abstract landscapes and I resolved to create formal portraits by visually severing the columnar trunks from crown and base. I developed a fascination with the history of Southern California’s iconic palms and sought out both typical and unique specimens in public and private spaces.

J. Scott Smith’s Website

Presentation Two: Old Bunker Hill - One Family's Perspective by Gordon Pattison

Have you ever wondered what Old Bunker Hill was really like? Have you ever wished you could have been there to see it?

Well, our speaker, Gordon Pattison, can tell you and show you because he and his family lived there. The Pattison family owned the Castle and Salt Box, among others of the old Victorian buildings that were once there. Gordon will tell the story of Bunker Hill from a personal perspective, through recollections inspired from historical photographs of Bunker Hill as well as family photos taken there in the 1930s and 1940s.

Old Bunker Hill isn’t gone. It floats ethereally in memory above Hope, Grand, Olive and Hill Street. And after this Sunday Salon, it will live in your imagination, too.

To purchase a ticket for this special event, click here. If you'd like to be contacted when another crime lab tour and lecture are scheduled, subscribe to LAVA's occasional Crime Lab Newsletter.

Join us in the Cal State Los Angeles teaching crime lab for an afternoon’s inquiry into two shocking and complicated crime scenes, presented by the criminalists and investigators who were on the scene.

Lecture One focuses on a 1995 double murder at Universal City Walk. Join us as Beverly Kerr, lead forensic investigator on the case, walks us through her investigation, from the initial rooftop crime scene to the side of the Hollywood Freeway miles away, where the incident continued. The presentation will focus on the forensic techniques used in analyzing the scenes, and the landmark use of DNA evidence presented in court during the trial.

About the case: On Mother’s Day, 1995, Paul Carasi had dinner with his mother Doris Carasi, his ex-girlfriend Sonia Salinas, and the ex-couple’s young son. On returning to the Universal City Walk parking structure, Paul Carasi claimed that the adults were attacked by unknown assailants. Both women were stabbed to death, but Paul Carasi suffered only minor wounds and was apparently knocked unconscious. Minutes later, Paul Carasi’s girlfriend Donna Kay called CHP from the side of the Hollywood Freeway. She claimed she had been stabbed by a robber on the road. Her wounds, too, were relatively minor. What was it about the DNA evidence in the parking lot and on the side of the Hollywood Freeway that revealed to investigators what had really happened at Universal City Walk, and made this case suitable for a death penalty charge? You’ll get the answers in today’s in-depth presentation.

In Lecture Two, Professor Don Johnson is back at front of the classroom after a year’s hiatus, presenting one of his classic crime scene walkthroughs. Join Professor Johnson as he shares his experiences as the on-scene investigator in a troubling and complicated homicide investigation. Illustrated with graphic photographs, Professor Johnson’s presentation takes you to the crime scene and puts you inside the head of first responders and investigators.

About the case: This incident involves a young woman who concealed her pregnancy from friends and family, delivered her baby at home, and disposed of the child. When the infant’s body was found in a neighboring yard, mauled by a dog, her secret was exposed. But did the mother kill her baby before abandoning it, was it born dead, or was it a victim of a dog attack? What was the significance of the strange tool discovered in the mother’s family bathroom? And how do forensic scientists prove parentage of a child whose father is unknown, and whose mother is only suspected? You’ll learn the answers to these and many other questions in this graphic and compelling homicide investigation.

On the last Sunday of each month , LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another.

Please note that there will be no LAVA Sunday Salon on April 28, 2013, due to the transportation and access conflicts created by the 24th Annual Fiesta Broadway. Past Salon experience has shown that it is not possible to hold our event while Fiesta Broadway is happening. The LAVA Sunday Salon will return on Sunday, May 26, 2013.

Presented by Jeff Schwartz (Director, Chuck Boyd Photo Collection)

Photographer Chuck Boyd was embedded in the Los Angeles rock & roll scene of the 1960s. A professional photographer, he left behind a collection of nearly 30,000 images of music legends spanning two decades. His photo collection is now overseen by Jeff Schwartz and Chuck’s siblings. Jeff is an award-winning teacher, author, and music historian. He will share images from Chuck’s archives, discuss “rock & roll archaeology,” and talk about Chuck’s life and the challenges of directing a photo archive.

This FREE program in the series The Photographer's Eye is presented by Photo Friends: Formed in 1990, Photo Friends is a nonprofit organization that supports the Los Angeles Public Library’s Photo Collection/History & Genealogy Department. Our goal is to improve access to the collections and promote them through programs, events, and online exhibits. You are invited to bring your lunch to this noontime series.

Puppetry, Hollywood, and gay history would not be the same without the Yale Puppeteers and Turnabout Theatre. Located on La Cienega, the Turnabout was a cabaret destination for audiences and entertainers who visited its performers such as Elsa Lanchester and the theatre founders Harry Burnett, Richard Brandon, and Forman Brown. More than friends, these marionette maestros were a talented gay trio who illuminated early gay culture and changed the course of American puppetry. Please join historian J. Eric Lynxwiler for this Los Angeles tale unlike any other. With special guests, Tony Urbano, master puppeteer and former performer with Turnabout, and Alan Cook, founder and director of the International Puppetry Museum.

LA in Focus is a free lecture series, with images drawn from the LAPL Photo Collection, and presented by Photo Friends of the Los Angeles Public Library: Formed in 1990, Photo Friends is a nonprofit organization that supports the Los Angeles Public Library’s Photo Collection/History & Genealogy Department. Our goal is to improve access to the collections and promote them through programs, events, and online exhibits.

Join us as we explore Sid Grauman’s first Los Angeles movie palace. The M$ set a new standard for the national movie palace building boom that swept the U.S. during the 1920’s. Designed by architect William Lee Woollett, the M$ is unique – a daring mixture of styles,art and colors. Described as a Spanish cathedral set in a Greek temple, the interior was a riot of rich colors, original art works and lush patron amenities. The M$ is currently closed to the public. Don’t miss this chance to see this amazing work of art.

More than any other Broadway theatre, the many glories of the M$ are faded or completely hidden from view. Ed Kelsey will highlight the history, illustrate the many interior alterations and celebrate what remains. We’ll take you behind the scenes - from the basement to the balcony - and share the hidden treasures of L.A.’s most unusual movie palace.

LAHTF Member Tour Admission: $10 – limit 2 tickets per member. Tickets are available exclusively at: www.lahtf.org

Tour capacity is limited and a sellout is likely. Act Now! Don’t miss this rare opportunity to experience a breathtaking masterwork. Sign on as a new volunteer, spend extra time inside and see even more! Email info@lahtf.org to sign up.