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The city council is waiting for the developers' report on the environmental effects of ripping down the building before it decides whether to lift its historic status. From the look of things, the Garden Court may have received only one last stay of execution.
But whatever happens, it seems unlikely that Hollywood can ever return to its former glory. Los Angeles and its suburbs have gone west, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The movie stars, the affluent and much of the industry have moved along with them to Beverly Hills and Malibu. Left behind is the shell—streets still hugged by low buildings, as in some abandoned Midwestern downtown. Yet, even today, the name Hollywood retains its mystical appeal. In a sense the name and the place diverged long ago—the name symbolic of faded glamour; the place filled with the shiftless, the criminal and the crazy.
But occasionally, as the evening traffic—prostitutes and pimps, bedraggled mental cases and loiterers—begins to saunter up the boulevard, one can sense something of old Hollywood. In front of the Chinese Theater, a knot of tourists may be gathered, staring at the imprint of Jean Harlow's heels in the cement, TO SID: IN SINCERE APPRECIATION: JEAN HARLOW: SEPT. 29, '33.
In places along the boulevard, the sun's slanting rays silhouette the remaining palms. And in the familiar salmon glow of a Western sunset, one can almost see a jaunty Charlie Chaplin, high-stepping up the boulevard, on his way, perhaps, to the ballroom of the Garden Court.
—By Russell Leavitt