WIN A TRIP TO HOLLYWOOD! Be on DR. KILDARE!

Okay, ladies and gents. This is what you've been waiting for! I've got a HUGE PRIZE here for some lucky fan. All expense paid trip to Hollywood, California and a part on Dr. Kildare! The real Hollywood. Not the Florida, Hollywood. The one with the odd footprints and handprints and paw prints in cement. The one where a guy dressed like Charlie Chaplin used to wander around Hollywood Boulevard freaking me out. THE Hollywood.

Make sure you read all the details. You wouldn't want to miss out on this one because of not crossing a "t" or dotting an "i."

Of course, some time travel at your own expense* is required. This contest IS from 1963. But on the upside, I don't see any date for when the contest entries had to be in. So don't let the fact that Dr. Kildare has been off the air for decades stop you from entering. And if you're a guy, well...times have changed. This might be the trip for you too! I'm sure we could take the skirt in with some seams and make a smart short pant suit for you.

Dream big my friends. DREAM BIG!












Click on any image to see it larger.

*This contest is brought to you by the June 1963 Modern Teen magazine. This website has no responsibility to help you with your time travel should you win this prize. If you do win this prize, or know of anyone who has, please contact the editor because MAN, I WANT TO HEAR ALL ABOUT IT! 

**My condolences to Mr. Chamberlain if he actually had to go through with this.

REPRINTS! REPRINTS! REPRINTS! in 1963

A long time ago, in what seems like a different universe, if you wanted reprints of a photo to which you did not have a negative…and you got magazines…and you looked at the tiny ads in the back…












(SOURCE: ‘TEEN, October 1963)

Explain to me how these “companies” made money if within a few pages, and often on the same page, there were 14 ads for photo processing? How was a girl to choose?

I did have one friend who sent in a photo of herself and got back a packet of prints. They were fine. She handed them out to everybody. I think I might still have it, but as usual have no idea of where it might be.

Home of the SINGING COWBOY

This house was on my morning circuit of Toluca Lake. By that time it was no longer owned by Gene Autry. Toluca Lake, unlike Beverly Hills, is more of a "real" neighborhood. Yes, the houses are very very nice and very very expensive, but, unless things have changed dramatically, they look like normal houses. There were never any ostentatious palaces. Even Bob Hope's house was pretty simple looking from the outside. Of course, I've been gone for a long time so it might have been turned into Narcissism Avenue with McMansions everywhere. Shudder the thought. There was one street that at Christmas time was magically transformed into a beautiful wonderland of lights just like other neighborhoods across the country.

Hard for me to imagine that there are people who don't know anything about Gene Autry, but I imagine that most of the younger generation haven't a clue about who he was. I remember how stunned I was when I went to a video store and asked for a Danny Kaye movie and got a blank stare back from the young Goth behind the counter. I knew I'd crossed over into old age and was happy to be there.

Orvon Gene Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s. Autry was also owner of the Los Angeles/California Angels Major League Baseball team from 1961 to 1997, as well as a television station and several radio stations in southern California.

Although his signature song was "Back in the Saddle Again", Autry is best known today for his Christmas holiday songs, "Here Comes Santa Claus" (which he wrote), "Frosty the Snowman", and his biggest hit, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".

He is a member of both the Country Music and Nashville Songwriters halls of fame, and is the only celebrity to have five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

I think it's time for me to pull out my old Autry CDs and dream of what seemed to be a simpler time. Of course, it wasn't, but Gene could make you feel that with a song in your heart, a well trained horse under your butt, and a funny sidekick anything in life could be overcome.

HOLLYWOOD, once upon a time

For 8 years my zip code was Hollywood. My post office was in Hollywood and was always an interesting place to visit. The last few years I lived in Los Angeles my mail carrier was kind enough to deliver my vacation hold mail instead of making me go to the post office. By that time there were far too many certifiable crazy people on the streets that I simply avoided Hollywood at all costs. Let's just say Reagan opened the doors of the institutions and when the people got out they were given a bus ticket. When asked where they wanted to go they said "Hollywood." Suddenly the lovely Armenian community was inundated with people who followed you down the street yelling.

These images of Hollywood are from another time. I don't know the date this was published, but I imagine it might have been bought by my mother when she took a trip across country in the early 40s with some girlfriends for a visit to Hollywood years before she met my dad.

Click on any image to see it larger.

This is one of those flip-down multiple image post card folders, published by the Longshaw Card Company. I have not included all the images. My favorite is the one of Warner Brothers, my old neighborhood. I lived right behind Warners and Universal Studios back lot. I used to walk by Warners every morning on my walk through Toluca Lake. My apartment complex was at the base of the mountain behind the studio and was recently in the news as the place actor Corey Haimes died. It was strange to turn on the news and see the complex on my screen. "Home!" was my first thought.

I haven't been to my old neighborhood for many years and the last time I drove through it was unrecognizable. It was all very corporate with high rises everywhere. Small apartment buildings and little office buildings were gone. At least the Smoke House restaurant is still there, just out of view on the card. It's a Hollywood institution even if it was in the "valley."

Whatever you think of Hollywood it's still just a place where people live and work. It's a fun place to live when you're young, but not a place where I wanted to grow old.