Hollywood the Unusual

If you love beautiful and zany architecture you will marvel at the gems offered in this amusing short subject from the golden age of Hollywoodland. It happily cuts to the many residential and commercial districts showing off the 'fantasy architecture' that flourished during California's building boom. There was no place on earth quite like the Los Angeles melting pot with it's global stylistic influences enthusiastically popping up all over the landscape. This homey, well shot travelogue gives us a whimsical and surprising glimpse at many lost and forgotten structures such as the 'Jail Cafe' and the 'Cave Bar-B-Q' mixed with world famous icons like the 'just opened' Grauman's Chinese theater and Brown Derby. This may make viewers wonder why Hollywood doesn't take a cue from it's past and infuse the current landscape with a few less mega-malls and a few more theme-structures that helped Hollywood become the mythic place it remains to this day.

This is an absolute MUST for all old film buffs. This is a travelogue of sorts that was made about 1927. While it is silent and in black and white, it stands out because it features so much footage of the oddest homes, hotels and businesses you'll probably ever see and all these were in Hollywood at that time. Today, nearly all of these sites are gone and the memory of only a few remain, but who would have thought of all that weird architecture being in Tinseltown--homes that looked like fairy cottages, French chateaus, Arabian palaces, etc.? About the only negative, and it's a small one, is that many of the cleaver captions on the title cards are really rather lame. But, they are easy enough to ignore and should not detract from this amazing journey.

This short film is available as an added extra on the incredibly packed DVD for THE GARDEN OF EDEN--a wonderful silent comedy romance. Considering all you get, it's a real bargain.