After an unexpectedly long break, I wanted to pop in and wish all of you a happy holiday season. Pictured above is a 1939 photo of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre during Hollywood Boulevard’s month long “Santa Claus Lane” transformation.
The “Santa Claus Lane” promotion was created by businessman Harry Blaine in 1928, as a way to lure shoppers away from Downtown Los Angeles. Initially, the festivities involved an official renaming of the street for the season and 100 live fir Christmas trees lining the blvd (leading me to now believe the Sid Grauman posing with a Christmas tree picture from this earlier post was from that period). Tying in the Hollywood connection, Santa Claus made a nightly trip down the boulevard in a reindeer powered sleigh, accompanied by a different movie star each evening; the first celebrity sleigh passenger being Jeanette Loff (pictured below).
In 1931, the live trees and nightly sleigh rides were abandoned, in favor of lamppost decorations and a large scale annual parade (held shortly after Thanksgiving). The Hollywood Christmas Parade would go on to inspire Gene Autry’s classic holiday song “Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Clause Lane)” and continues to the present day; although, at some point, the “Santa Claus Lane” renaming seems to have been dropped from the festivities. Pictured below is a 1976 shot from the parade, in front of the Chinese’s former neon dragon marquee.
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So, happy holidays and a prosperous new year to each of you. I look forward to resuming work on the site (not to mention conducting some extensive updates on OC Cinema) and hope you will stop back in to check out the new material.
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