| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Pharmacy |
| Founded | 1932 |
| Founders |
|
| Defunct | 1983 |
| Headquarters | 8024 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, California, U.S. |
Schwab's Pharmacy was a drugstore located at 8024 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, and was a popular hangout for movie actors and movie industry dealmakers from the 1930s through the 1950s. [1]
Opened in 1932 by the Schwab brothers, Schwab's Pharmacy in Hollywood became the most famous and longest-operating outlet of their small retail chain. [2] Like many drug stores in the United States during the mid-twentieth century, Schwab's sold medicines and had a counter serving ice cream dishes and light meals.
Schwab's closed in October 1983. [3] Five years later, on October 6, 1988, the building was demolished to make way for a shopping complex and multiplex theater.
Sidney Skolsky, a syndicated Hollywood gossip columnist for the New York Daily News who was the first journalist to use the nickname "Oscar" for the Academy Award in print, made Schwab's famous in the 1930s. He used the drugstore as his office and called his column in Photoplay , the premier movie magazine in the United States at the time, "From a Stool at Schwab's." [4]
A persistent Hollywood legend has it that actress Lana Turner was "discovered" by director Mervyn LeRoy while at the soda counter at Schwab's. While the 16-year-old Turner was discovered at a soda counter, the location was not Schwab's but another establishment, the Top Hat Cafe, farther east on Sunset Boulevard at McCadden Place, directly across the street from Hollywood High School, where she was still a student. The person who discovered her was not LeRoy but Hollywood Reporter publisher William Wilkerson. [5] [6]
Today, there is a replica of the establishment at Universal Studios in Florida [7] and Japan, the latter themed around Super Mario. [8]
Schwab's appears in the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard . [9]
Schwab's Pharmacy appears in the Netflix limited series, Hollywood . Jack Castello's wife, Henrietta is shown to work at the store, alongside coworker Erwin Kaye. [10]
Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett. It was named after a major street that runs through Hollywood, the center of the American film industry.
Julia Jean "Lana" Turner was an American actress. Over a career spanning nearly five decades, she achieved fame as both a pin-up model and a film actress, as well as for her highly publicized personal life. In the mid-1940s, she was one of the highest-paid American actresses and one of MGM's biggest stars, with her films earning more than $50 million for the studio during her 18-year contract with them. Turner is frequently cited as a popular culture icon of Hollywood glamour and a screen legend of classical Hollywood cinema. She was nominated for numerous awards.
The Sunset Strip is the 1.7-mile (2.7 km) stretch of Sunset Boulevard that passes through the city of West Hollywood, California, United States. It extends from West Hollywood's eastern border with the city of Los Angeles near Marmont Lane to its western border with Beverly Hills at Phyllis Street. The Sunset Strip is known for its boutiques, restaurants, rock clubs, and nightclubs, as well as its array of huge, colorful billboards.
Photoplay was one of the first American film fan magazines. It was founded in Chicago in 1911, the same year that J. Stuart Blackton founded Motion Picture Story, another magazine directed at fans. In 1921, Photoplay established what is considered the first significant annual movie award. For most of its run, it was published by Macfadden Publications. The magazine ceased publication in 1980.
Ciro's was a nightclub on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California owned by William Wilkerson. Opened in 1940, Ciro's became a popular nightspot for celebrities. The nightclub closed in 1960 and was reopened as a rock club in 1965. After a few name changes, it eventually became The Comedy Store in 1972.
Gower Gulch is a nickname for the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.
The Nestor Film Company, originally known as the Nestor Motion Picture Company, was an American motion picture production company. It was founded in 1909 as the West Coast production unit of the Centaur Film Company located in Bayonne, New Jersey. While not the first movie studio in Los Angeles, on October 27, 1911, Nestor established the first permanent motion picture studio in Hollywood, California, and produced the first Hollywood films. The company merged with its distributor, the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, on May 20, 1912. Nestor became a brand name Universal used until at least mid-1917.
Christie Film Company was an American pioneer motion picture company founded in Hollywood, California by Al Christie and Charles Christie, two brothers from London, Ontario, Canada. It made comedies.
Gower Street is a street in Los Angeles, California that has played an important role in the ongoing evolution of Hollywood, particularly as the home to several prominent Poverty Row studios during the area's Golden Age. It marks the eastern terminus of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
United Western Recorders was a two-building recording studio complex in Hollywood that was one of the most successful independent recording studios of the 1960s. The complex merged neighboring studios United Recording Corp. on 6050 Sunset Boulevard and Western Studio on 6000 Sunset Boulevard.
The Hollywood Wax Museum is a wax museum featuring replicas of celebrities located on Hollywood Boulevard in the tourist district in Hollywood in Los Angeles, California, United States, with other locations in Myrtle Beach, Branson, and Pigeon Forge. Among the wax replicas on display include those of A-List stars, classic entertainers, and legendary singers.
Sunset Gower Studios is a 14-acre (57,000 m2) television and movie studio at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and North Gower Street in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. Established in 1912, it continues today as Hollywood's largest independent studio and an active facility for television and film production on its twelve soundstages.
"Dead Man's Curve" is a 1964 hit song by Jan and Dean whose lyrics detail a teen street race gone awry. It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and number 39 in Canada. The song was written and composed by Brian Wilson, Artie Kornfeld, Roger Christian, and Jan Berry at Wilson's mother's house in Santa Monica. It was part of the teenage tragedy song phenomenon of that period, and one of the most popular such selections of all time. "Dead Man's Curve" was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.
Cahuenga Boulevard is a major boulevard of northern Los Angeles, California, US. The “Cahuenga” name is a Spanish, phonetic derivative with no actual Spanish language meaning that is attributed to the Tongva village of Kawengna, meaning "place of the mountain". It connects Sunset Boulevard in the heart of old Hollywood to the Hollywood Hills and North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley.
William Richard "Billy" Wilkerson was the founder of The Hollywood Reporter, a real estate developer in Las Vegas and owner of such nightclubs as Ciro's. His series of columns known as "Billy's List" helped to initiate the red scare that led to the Hollywood blacklist. Wilkerson "discovered" Lana Turner.
Carney's is a hot dog and burger restaurant in a yellow Union Pacific rail car on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. It was brought to the site in 1978. A second Carney's, also in train cars, is located on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. A crackdown on weekly biker meetings at that location caused controversy.
The Earl Carroll Theatre was a historic stage facility located at 6230 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. It was built by showman Earl Carroll and designed in the Streamline Moderne style by architect Gordon Kaufmann in 1938. The theatre has been known by a number of names since, including Moulin Rouge from 1953 to 1964 and the Aquarius Theater in the 1960s and 1970s. From 1997 to 2017, it was officially known as Nickelodeon on Sunset, housing the West Coast production of live-action original series produced for the Nickelodeon cable channel.
The Burbank Studios is a television production facility located in Burbank, California, United States. The studio is home to Days of Our Lives, Extra, the IHeartRadio Theater, and was formerly home to the Blizzard Arena.
Sidney Skolsky was an American writer best known as a Hollywood gossip columnist. He ranked with Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons as the premier Hollywood gossip columnists of the first three decades of the sound picture era.
Since her rise to fame in the 1940s, American film actress Lana Turner has appeared and been referenced in numerous works across literature, film, art, and music. Her glamorous persona and publicized personal troubles have contributed to her recurring prevalence in popular culture.
Media related to Schwab's Pharmacy at Wikimedia Commons