THE NEW HOLLYWOOD

I appreciated Nicolai Ouroussoff’s important contribution to the debate over the revitalization of Hollywood, but his characterization of the cause of Hollywood’s demise as the flight of film and television studios in the ‘60s and ‘70s is inaccurate (“Could It Be Magic--Again?,” Nov. 23).

The urban planning theme of “vital industry abandons urban locale for suburbs, thus plunging city into decay” has been played out countless times around the country. The truth is that the studios didn’t leave in the ‘60s and ‘70s because they either never left, were never in central Hollywood or had left a generation earlier.

Generally, production facilities in existence in the Hollywood area in the ‘50s are still in use today. New studio space has been added in outlying areas, but the geographic pattern of studio production has always been spread throughout the L.A. region, and the Hollywood area retains a significant portion of this business. Since the ‘20s, a generation before the “demise” of the boulevard, Hollywood has been the location for only some of L.A. County’s film and TV production.

This is not to deny that Hollywood has suffered a serious decline in retail vitality and public safety over the past 25 years. Something did happen, but what? Perhaps not only the Hollywood Freeway, as Ouroussoff suggests, but the mobility provided by the freeway system in general that allowed Hollywood workers to live and shop elsewhere contributed. The departure of live, studio audience radio studios from Vine Street (along with the demise of that industry) didn’t help, but radio production was supplanted by television production elsewhere in Hollywood.

A more subtle evaluation of residential demographics may also provide clues, but the “flight of an industry” was certainly not the cause of Hollywood’s demise.

MARK EVANS

Los Angeles

You printed a picture of “the view east down the boulevard from Highland in 1932.” See that roadster in the lower left corner? Isn’t that a ’34 Ford, or at least a Chevy? And the car turning the corner, another ’34 at the earliest. About half an inch above the roadster: that might be a ’35 grille, and the car at the left, another ’34 Ford.

ROBERT P. JENKINS

Pasadena

Good eye! The theater banner on the right heralds “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” so let’s settle on 1936.

A clear vision of the future can only be found when the focus is on the town “with a past.” That is Hollywood’s raison d’etre and why millions still come. If the Spanish-mission style Hollywood Hotel could be rebuilt on the corner of Hollywood and Highland, TrizecHahn would be the developers that started the renaissance.

KAY ARMOUR

Hollywood

A coherent plan for the boulevard must include (1) hotels; (2) restaurants; (3) theaters; (4) nightspots/clubs; (5) museums; and (6) shopping. All of these will appease both residents as well as tourists.

Out of the six, three badly need to be addressed. The pizza joints must be replaced with upscale restaurants. It’s time to bring the Brown Derby back again. Second, nightspots. Why not a Planet Hollywood on Hollywood Boulevard? Third, get rid of the T-shirt shops. Lastly, why concentrate just on the west end? In the eyes of the world, Hollywood begins and ends on Vine Street. Remember VJ Day? Hollywood and Vine is L.A.’s Times Square.

Nobody can ever bring back the past, but they can re-create it for the future.

MIKE VALENT

Carpinteria

Movies lure tourists from around the world to this street of dreams where they shuffle between sodium-vapor street lights and crummy T-shirt parlors realizing, shellshocked, that there is practically nothing here to see.

The brilliant re-creations of Hollywood boulevard seen in “1941,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “Ed Wood” and other films have elicited a palpable lust in audiences to touch the past of this famous street in all its dusty Deco splendor. Yet unfortunately only Disney has been able to tap into this latent desire with their own re-creation of Hollywood set amid the cultivated swamps of Orlando, Fla.

While so many of the real buildings still stand, the time to save Hollywood Boulevard is now. Not by allowing the highest bidders to erect flashy, sealed-off entertainment casinos on high-traffic corners, but by preserving the historical integrity of the street, heightening the existing architecture and re-creating (and perhaps relocating to the boulevard) the gems of Hollywood memory that have been lost.

Can it be done without the totalitarian control of Disney, the commercialism of Las Vegas or the tastelessness of CityWalk? I think it can. Old Town Pasadena and Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade have proven it: Provide parking and they will come. But what Hollywood Boulevard really needs is a clear concept and controlled development vision for its future.

The refurbishment of the Hollywood Roosevelt and the El Capitan and plans for the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian show what is possible. The disastrous Hollywood Galaxy is a warning of what is probable if the Community Redevelopment Agency does not take matters quickly in hand.

JAMES WEBBER

Pasadena