This Pussycat Purrs Again – A Look Back at Hollywood Boulevard in the 70s
Tag: Historic Hollywood
The 1970s: bell bottom jeans and long, unruly hair was the look on Hollywood Boulevard. Just as fashion has changed, so has our street, and today, with the iconic Pussycat Theater resurrected as a film set, it’s time for a look back at the time-period.
The Pussycat Theatre – now the Hologram USA Theatre –was an accepted aspect of pop culture in what can be considered the “golden age of porn.” The theater opened in 1974, occupying a 1913-era space once known as the News View Theatre and later, the Ritz. As the Pussycat, the theater was decorated with crimson carpeting and chandeliers, and the owner even created custom in-house merchandise such as cups and popcorn tubs decorated with the Pussycat Bikini Girl with a logo reading “It's Cool Inside” in the container. There were T-shirts and matchbooks, too.
The Pussycat showed Deep Throat for a record ten years, earning $11,000 weekly during peak screening times, right up until the theater closed in 1981. It held 666 seats and reputedly often had lines around the block for screenings of the just-over-an-hour film.
But it wasn’t just a porn theater. The basement housed The Masque, a rocking club that became a legend in its own right. The club opened three-years after the Pussycat, in 1977, founded by London-based Scottish business man Brendan Mullen. He took out a lease on that 10,000-square-foot basement – and nuclear fallout shelter – in 1973. Mullen once said “Other Hollywood merchants hated me…I was perceived as street riff-raff contributing to the ‘decline of Hollywood Boulevard’…” Indeed, the club was frequently the target of police-raids, but it served as a hip and radical venue for gigs by the likes of the Ramones, the Alley Cats, the Dead Kennedys, and even the Go-Gos. With a somewhat secret entrance in the alley off Hollywood Boulevard at Cherokee and Las Palmas, it also had some darker days, with a murder in the club resulting in a day-glow orange outline of the body that lasted as a part of the décor. The club closed in 1978.
The Masque was located in the basement of the Pussycat Theatre. (courtesy photo)
The Pussycat Theatre building was hardly the only spot to deal in salacious fare.
Further down the boulevard was The Institute of Oral Love and The Academy of Nude Wrestling. Massage parlors like the Sundance were open along the boulevard, too.
There were photo booths right on the street, a big hit with tourists, kids, and street people. The Frederick’s of Hollywood world headquarters, including its lingerie museum occupied a large corner store-front and floors of offices. Musso and Franks was a dining fixture then, as now, red leather booths shiny. The Scientology Church was just beginning to amass its real estate in the area, directed by founder L. Ron Hubbard. Among the properties that the church purchased were the former Christie Hotel building at 6724 Hollywood Boulevard, an elegant building that was constructed in 1922, and went through several permutations as the Drake Hotel and the Hollywood Inn before the church took it over as a test center, looking to attract new-arrivals to Hollywood in the 70s.
Just down the block, the B. Dalton’s chain of book sellers occupied the venerable spot that was once the Pickwick Bookstore. While Scientology has thrived, B. Dalton’s has long closed. But the Larry Edmunds book store remains down the block, a classic, with its trove of film books and paraphernalia.
Speaking of film, most of the cinemas along the boulevard were a world away from porn at the Pussycat. What is now Disney’s El Capitan was a general release theater called the Paramount, operated by Pacific Theaters. And 1974 was the year that Grauman’s Chinese played the LA-set film noir Chinatown for eight successful weeks. At the Egyptian, the last big film premiere at that location was Funny Girl in 1968, but the theater continued to screen mainstream films in the 70s.
Mann's Chinese Theatre, circa 1970s. (Courtesy photo)
Where the massive Hollywood and Highland complex now soars around the Chinese Theater, in 1974 there was a twelve-story office building housing the First Federal Savings & Loan Association of Hollywood, a mid-century Modern-style high-rise, five small retail shops, and parking lots.
Around this time, the iconic Hollywood-sidewalk stars became more prolific, drawing tourists to the Boulevard. Although Hollywood Boulevard is constantly changing, its appeal to film fans and film makers remains constant.
Genie Davis is a multi-published novelist and journalist, and produced screen and television writer. Passionate about everything-Los Angeles, you can see her work in the arts on her own www.diversionsLA.com.