Article
Lost LA
How Central Casting Found "Racial Types" For Classical Hollywood Films
Hollywood's struggles with diversity long predate #OscarsSoWhite.
Article
Lost LA
How Did Hollywood End Up in...Hollywood?
Why did the film industry choose to locate in L.A.? Thank the weather – as well as the city's open-shop, anti-union labor policies.
Article
Lost LA
Who Was Sister Aimee? The Incredible Story of L.A.’s Famous Evangelical Priest
When Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared into the Pacific in 1926, Los Angeles grieved. Five weeks later, the larger-than-life evangelist resurfaced in an Arizona border town.
Article
Lost LA
How a Cowboy Standoff Gave Hollywood’s Gower Gulch Its Name
Real cowboys waiting to be hired as Hollywood extras once hung out at the site of the Western-themed strip mall.
Article
Lost LA
Charles Lummis Meets the Movie People
After the film industry came to Los Angeles, Lummis advised several producers and directors. He called them “the most conscienceless pirates” he'd ever met.
Article
Lost LA
A Socialist's Campaign for California Governor, And the Dirty Hollywood Politics That Sunk It
MGM and other Hollywood studios helped defeat Upton Sinclair's 1934 "End Poverty in California" campaign for governor.
Article
Lost LA
Labor and the Origins of Hollywood’s Thirty-Mile Zone, or TMZ
Thirty miles in radius, the Hollywood Studio Zone grants the film industry a specific geography within the L.A. metropolis. (And yes, that's how TMZ got its name.)