1940s

Myself, wearing a shirt featuring the cover of Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which is an image of a cowgirl surrounded by flowers, and jeans, standing just outside the door with a view of the other Tudor cottages behind me.

Spending my Birthday the Faux English Village Gram Parsons Once Called Home

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Charlie Chaplin was, and remains, an important icon of motion picture history. His on screen antics are classic, and his contribution to the industry in a variety of ways cannot be underestimated. One way he sought to improve production at his studio, which he built in 1917, was to provide housing for employees close to…

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Myself standing in front of the barn, behind me a large white sign atop the porch that reads "Hollywood Heritage Museum Lasky-DeMille Barn Est. 1913"

Farm to Fame: Tales of Glitz, Glamor & Eminent Domain at the Hollywood Heritage Museum

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At the turn of the 20th century despite its bustling downtown core Los Angeles still had many agricultural elements and in 1901 Jacob Stern built a little barn on the corner of Selma and Vine, just one block south of what would become the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Over the next century the little barn…

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Overall view of the living room, which valentines hanging from a desert landscape painting.

Cupid has Arrived!

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After ringing in the New Year it was time to decorate for Valentine’s Day. For most of my life I haven’t much cared for Valentine’s Day, but I have been charmed by the adorable vintage valentines I find at antique malls and now our living room becomes a place bursting with hearts! In decorating for…

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Myself, wearing a brown cowboy hat, a green patchwork cowboy shirt, with a red tee underneath reading "Red Dog Saloon" and featuring a cartoon image of a dog, and green courdory pants, standing in front of a museum exhibit wall that has a large image of a bear wearing a pink cowboy hat, and text reading "Imagined Wests If you close your eyes and picture ‘the American West,’ what do you see? A desert landscape? A frontier town and tumbleweeds? National parks and majestic mountains? How about the Kansas prairies, the forests of the Olympic Peninsula, or the Hawaiian Islands? Do you picture a cowboy on horseback? Native Americans? Or the variety of people in Los Angeles or another Western city? This gallery explores the tales we tell about the West, both he ones we call ‘Westerns’ and the wide rage of other stories rooted in the region. Many of our ‘Imagined Wests’ - the places and characters we picture when we close our eyes - come to us through popular culture. Film and television, music and writing, visual art and fashion, performance, and even museums have given us so many Wests. When we mix these stories together, the American West may look different from our first associations. But the West has always been home to a variety of interconnected peoples and the stories we all create here."

The Autry: A Look at the American West, both Real and Fiction

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With a love of westerns, it’s no wonder one of my favorite museums in Los Angeles is The Autry, which is dedicated to the American west. Recently they opened Imagined Wests, an exhibit that showcases how the American West is presented in pop culture. In addition to Imagined Wests, there were a few other interesting exhibits,…

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An English cottage style complex with an arched gateway reads "The Jim Henson Company" and atop one building is a large statue of Kermit the Frog dressed in Charlie Chaplin's The Tramp outfit, of a black suit, bowler hat, and bamboo cane.

Over 100 years of Entertainment History at the Jim Henson Company Studio

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What do Charlie Chaplin, Gram Parsons, and Kermit the Frog all have in common? They have all worked inside this quaint English cottage inspired complex. If it weren’t for the large statue of Kermit the Frog dressed like Chaplin’s “The Tramp” this collection of buildings may be unassuming, but instead he highlights the unique and…

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