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Courtesy of the UCLA Library

The other Hollywood

BY RANDI SCHMELZER

Astronomically priced but architecturally challenged properties flood the Southern California market, but a new exhibit at UCLA’s Young Research Library offers a peak at some genuinely swoon-worthy real estate.

“The Other Hollywood: Modernist Architecture and the Los Angeles Film Community” is a compilation of photographs and drawings of celebrity-affiliated projects designed by four renowned mid-century architects: Richard Neutra, Lloyd Wright, S. Charles Lee and A. Quincy Jones. On display are photographs and drawings of a mini-mart built for the exclusive use of a silent-film star, Gary Cooper’s crib and Westwood’s famous 1937 venue, the Bruin Theater.

Organized by Thomas Hines, professor emeritus of history and architecture, the three-month exhibit features rarely viewed images from the YRL’s Department of Special Collections, some on display for the first time. And in an effort to counter the concept that modern architecture was “stylistically monolithic,” the show covers the genre’s style spectrum, from the geometric-inspired designs of Neutra and Jones to the free-form Expressionism favored by Lee and Wright, eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Highlights include photos of Neutra’s 1933 Universal Pictures headquarters, a sleek, salient structure on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Blocks away stood Wright’s Yucca-Vine Drive-in Market, built in 1928 for Raymond Griffith. Why the silent-screen star required his own mini-mart is unclear, but with its low-hovering roof and zigzag design, the striking structure was a precursor to the neighborhood’s innumerable mini-malls. Jones — whose firm designed the Young Research Library itself — is represented via a modernist, motif-encompassing Holmby Hills villa, designed in the early 1950s for screen heartthrob Gary Cooper. And Lee’s 1937 Bruin Theater in Westwood (named for UCLA, of course, and now the Mann Bruin) is also a focus; its streamlined, Art Deco design emphasized the architect’s personal proverb, “The show starts on the sidewalk.”

In displaying mid-century actors’ and producers’ passion for sophisticated architecture, the exhibit also intends to rebuff the idea that “Hollywood taste” was shallow and frivolous — at least in terms of aesthetics. And although most of the featured buildings have been demolished, if they stood today, they would likely be the toast of hipsters a—nd honchos alike: “The Other Hollywood” is truly the stuff of a SoCal realtor’s dreams.

“The Other Hollywood: Modernist Architecture and the Los Angeles Film Community.” July 1-October 15. Charles E. Young Research Library lobby. For more information, call (310) 825-6925 or log on to www2.library.ucla.edu/news/2152.cfm.