The Culver Hotel – Curlett and Beelman, architects – opened in 1924, the brainchild of city's founder, Harry Culver. Curlett and Beelman also designed the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard for Louis B. Mayer, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Sid Grauman. The first Academy Awards were handed out there in 1927, but the Culver Hotel has its own history. It was central in Laurel and Hardy shorts like "Putting Pants on Philip" (1927) and in many of the Our...
more »The Culver Hotel – Curlett and Beelman, architects – opened in 1924, the brainchild of city's founder, Harry Culver. Curlett and Beelman also designed the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard for Louis B. Mayer, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Sid Grauman. The first Academy Awards were handed out there in 1927, but the Culver Hotel has its own history. It was central in Laurel and Hardy shorts like "Putting Pants on Philip" (1927) and in many of the Our Gang shorts that Hal Roach churned out, and Red Skelton, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and Ronald Reagan maintained part-time residences here. But it's most famous because short people stayed here – it was the home of the small actors and actresses who played the "Munchkins" when The Wizard of Oz was being filmed a few blocks west at MGM in the late thirties. Later, the hotel was owned by John Wayne, who eventually donated it to the Los Angeles YMCA. It was repurchased and restored in the nineties, and became a hotel again. It's perfect now, and now the Cowardly Lion dances is his fountain in the plaza, forever. He's ignoring the severe Art Deco across the way. That's the "new" Culver City. ~ Thursday, February 13, 2020
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