Los Angeles Plays Itself Page #3

Now it's become second nature,

...even to people who live here.

Maybe we adopted it as a way of immunizing

ourselves against the implicit scorn,

...but it still makes me cringe.

Only a city with an inferiority

complex would allow it.

When people say "L.A.",

...they often mean "show business."

"I'm an actress..."

[Did you ever see Massacre in Blood City?"]

That's another presumption of the movies:

That everyone in Los Angeles is part

of their "industry" or wants to be.

Actually,

...only one in forty residents

of Los Angles County...

...works in the entertainment industry.

But the rest of us simply don't exist.

We might wonder if the movies...

...have ever really depicted Los Angeles.

The City as Background.

At first, Los Angeles was just

a destination, not a place.

Movie characters visited,

...they didn't live here.

"Are you sure we're still

in the United States?"

"I think Los Angeles is."

It was a resort, not a city.

When its streets and buildings

appeared in movies,

...they were just anonymous backdrops.

Nobody called Los Angeles the

capital of the Pacific Rim...

...or worried about how it stacked up

with the great cities of the world.

The varied terrain and

eclectic architecture...

...allowed Los Angeles and its

environs to play almost any place.

Lake Arrowhead,

...seventy-eight miles from

downtown Los Angeles,

...could play Switzerland,

...and Calabasas in the

San Fernando Valley...

...could play the valley

of Ling in China...

...after M-G-M excavated

some rice paddies.

More often than not,

...Los Angeles played some other city...

...Sinclair Lewis's

Zenith in Babbitt...

...Chicago in The Public Enemy...

"Say, you can let me off here. I'm going

to meet my friends on the corner."

Jimmy Cagney drops off Jean Harlow in front of

the new Bullock's Wilshire department store.

Our Art Deco "Cathedral of commerce"

had opened in September 1929,

...seventeen months before The

Public Enemy was filmed.

It was a new kind of dry goods emporium,

...located in the suburbs

for the motorcar trade.

Presumably only locals would

recognize this Los Angeles landmark,

...but as they drove aimlessly around what

is now called the Wilshire Center district,

...anyone who knows

anything about Chicago...

...might find the

cityscape strangely rural.

"From Chicago?"

"Not exactly. I came from Texas."

In The Street with No Name,

...Los Angeles played Center City.

Again and again, it has

played a city with no name.

Its landmarks are obscure enough

that they could play many roles.

The most venerable of these landmarks is the

Bradbury Building at Third and Broadway,

...dating from 1893.

It was discovered by architectural

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