1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (92 page)

Long perceived as a completely different city than its more glamorous, informal, and beachy neighbors to the west, downtown Los Angeles was little more than a business destination that became a ghost town after 5
P.M
.

However, exceptional attractions have sprouted up in the past decade, making for an easy (if sometimes hilly) half-day walking tour. The new Walt Disney Concert Hall is the sparkling centerpiece and architectural landmark courtesy of celebrated architect Frank Gehry. It’s an undulating mass of shiny steel that billows like a galleon ship at full sail, and the permanent home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which takes advantage of state-of-the-art acoustics that came with its $270 million-plus price tag. Included in the complex, along with a small café and an arty gift shop, is the acclaimed Patina, one of L.A.’s finest restaurants (see p. 824). It’s all part of the Music Center, which includes three more
theaters across the street: the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (former sometime home of the Academy Awards), the Ahmanson Theater, and the Mark Taper Forum, where some of Los Angeles’s exceptional and unjustly overlooked theater scene occurs. (The Tony and Pulitzer winner
Angels in America
was developed here.)

With its postmodern design, the Walt Disney Concert Hall is an example of architectural deconstructivism.

Just two blocks away is the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, opened in 2002 as the seat of the L.A. archdiocese, an unconventional and austere structure considered by many to be a stunning example of modern ecclesiastical architecture and by others to be uninspired and ungainly. To honor the ethnic melting pot of Los Angeles, the welcoming Madonna is deliberately multiracial. She was created by local sculptor Robert Graham, who also designed the Great Bronze Doors that display more than 50 pre-Christian symbols. Frequent organ recitals fill the airy space with the sound of the 42-ton instrument’s 6,000 pipes.

Two blocks south of the Music Center is the first part of the exceptional two-building Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), a sterling, below-street-level geometric structure, holding a permanent collection of American and European art from 1940 to the present; significant retrospectives are frequently held here. Several blocks away is the second building, the MOCA at the Geffen Contemporary, which holds rotating shows.

For formal dining, try the pan-Latino/South American feast at Ciudad, the flagship restaurant of Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, the chef duo known as the Too Hot Tamales. A casual venue that’s alive with an appreciative crowd who come for the always innovative menu, this is a fun restaurant and the best place in L.A. to open your eyes to the variety and genius of all things
cocina latina.

W
ALT
D
ISNEY
C
ONCERT
H
ALL
: Tel 323-850-2000;
www.musiccenter.org
.
O
UR
L
ADY OF THE
A
NGELS
: Tel 213-680-5200;
www.olacathedral.org
.
M
USEUM OF
C
ONTEMPORARY
A
RT
: Tel 213-626-6222;
www.moca.org
.
When:
closed Tues–Wed.
C
IUDAD
: Tel 213-486-5171;
www.ciudad-la.com
.
Cost:
dinner $40.
B
EST TIMES
: Oct–May for walking weather.

Six Feet of Separation

Los Angeles, California

Go ahead: Admit your visit to Los Angeles won’t be complete without seeing a celebrity. If you’re not picky about whom or how, there is one guaranteed way to get within 6 feet of a genuine superstar.
The cemeteries of Southern California are filled with some of Hollywood’s biggest icons, who, although inaccessible in life, now welcome any and all visitors to drop by and pay homage.

Hollywood Forever, formerly named Hollywood Memorial Park, is a slightly gothic graveyard with an abundance of artistic and curious markers and a fitting view of the
“Hollywood” sign in the distance. Find out who’s resting beneath an exact replica of the Pioneer Rocket or the oversize bronze replica of a guitar-wielding Johnny Ramone. Owner Ted Cassidy allows regular tours and quirky events, including a colorful Day of the Dead celebration in late October or early November, with over a hundred homemade folk art altars, food, music, and folklore. Summer weekend movie screenings against the wall of a mausoleum also draw crowds. Among the dearly departed are Rudolph Valentino (note lipstick prints on his marble tomb), Cecil B. DeMille (who lies facing Paramount, his old studio), and Douglas Fairbanks Senior and Junior.

The more sterile but even more luminary-filled Pierce Brothers Westwood Memorial Park is oddly located in the center of a cluster of office buildings near U
CLA
. It’s a small place but boasts perhaps the biggest star in the galaxy, Marilyn Monroe. If you drop by on August 4, the anniversary of her death, you’ll see the floral tributes that cover the area near her wall vault. In a wall nearby are the ashes of Truman Capote. Delightful longtime collaborators Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Billy Wilder are all within a few feet of each other, while out in the center grassy area are Natalie Wood, Frank Zappa, Roy Orbison (the latter two in unmarked graves), and many more.

The two Forest Lawn cemeteries at Glendale and Hollywood Hills are more parklike and expansive, and downplay their famous occupants—a curious thing, since they were designed to encourage people to see cemeteries as places to visit. At the Glendale location, along with some bad statuary and rolling green hills, is the tucked-away, tiny bronze grave marker for Walt Disney. George Burns and Gracie Allen are together again in a mausoleum, as are Carole Lombard and Clark Gable. In Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, you’ll find Liberace (in a disappointingly sedate tomb) and nearby Andy Gibb, while the Nelsons—Ozzie, Harriet, and Ricky—are reunited in a bittersweet family plot.

Plan a do-it-yourself tour by tapping into the website
www.findagrave.com
, or better yet, sign up with the highly entertaining and obsessively informed Scott Michaels and his 3-hour Dearly Departed tour around town, which includes driving past the actual sites of death of everyone from Nat King Cole to Janis Joplin. It really brings it all alive.

H
OLLYWOOD
F
OREVER
: Tel 323-469-1181;
www.hollywoodforever.com
.
P
IERCE
B
ROTHERS
W
ESTWOOD
M
EMORIAL
P
ARK
: Tel 310-474-1579.
F
OREST
L
AWN
G
LENDALE
: Tel 800-204-3131 or 323-254-3131;
www.forestlawn.com
.
F
OREST
L
AWN
H
OLLYWOOD
H
ILLS
: Tel 800-204-3131 or 323-254-3131;
www.forestlawn.com
.
D
EARLY
D
EPARTED
T
OURS
: Tel 323-466-3696;
www.dearlydepartedtours.com
.
Cost:
3-hour tour $35.

Where America Reinvents Itself

Los Angeles, California

After show-biz pioneers Cecil B. DeMille and Jesse Lasky were drawn to the climate-blessed West Coast in 1911, Hollywood ceased being a real place and became a concept, a glittering Tinseltown synonymous with
glamour and ambition. However, it has long been true that the only stars you are now likely to see on Hollywood Boulevard (premieres aside) are those embedded in the sidewalk.
Known as the Walk of Fame, the pathway honors 2,200 or so legends of film, television, radio, theater, and recording art, and runs along Hollywood Boulevard from La Brea Avenue to Vine Street where it turns left and heads down to Sunset Boulevard.

But Hollywood is currently in the midst of a Times Square–like revival, with new attractions that are actually luring highbrow locals and celebrities to an area that for decades has been known as gritty and rife with riffraff and cheap tourist shops. A major catalyst of the upgrade and an anchor of the neighborhood is the Hollywood & Highland Center, a stylish complex and shopping mall that pays homage to its surroundings with whimsical tributes to Hollywood’s heritage, such as a red-carpet–like pathway embedded with quotes from industry insiders. Its centerpiece is the Kodak Theatre: Take a guided tour and get a behind-the-scenes view of the 3,400-seat theater designed as the permanent home for the Academy Awards.

From here, it’s an easy walk to Grauman’s Chinese Theater, a movie palace of a bygone era built to impress. This historic landmark still shows new releases and regularly hosts premieres, but it’s most visited for its fabulous Asian design and an impressive collection of handprints and footprints of some of Hollywood’s best-known stars from 1927 to the present. Of the 160-some imprints, look for those of Mary Pickford, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, and Marilyn Monroe. Other prints lean toward the odd: Jimmy Durante’s nose, George Burns’s cigar, and R2D2’s wheels.

Brave children peer into the mouth of the
Jaws
shark replica at Universal Studios.

While many of the major studios are located elsewhere (such as Studio City in the San Fernando Valley), filmmaking has been going on at nearby Paramount since the 1920s, and you can experience it through tours or tapings of live T
V
shows. But for the best glimpse of how movies are made, head over the Hollywood Hills to Universal Studios in Universal City. Though it’s been a working studio for decades, it has become a major tourist destination thanks to its popular tour of the world’s largest television and movie studio. Suitable for the whole family, skeptics included, the tour includes special effects rides that let you experience an avalanche and an earthquake, thrill rides that get you up close to the
Jurassic Park
dinosaurs, and tales of the amazing world of filmmaking.

Whether you’ll actually have a star-sighting during your tour is questionable. But some spots around town have relatively decent odds. One such place is the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. A celebrity hangout for 75 years, and host to the first Academy Awards in 1929, the hotel just had a full-blown face-lift, and its high-beamed art deco lobby, decorated swimming pool by David Hockney, smartly redone bars, and well-regarded jazz club Cinegrill are all star attractions.

And don’t forget to look for that famous “Hollywood” sign. The 50-foot-high sign was placed atop Mt. Lee in the Hollywood Hills in 1923 as part of a promotion for a real estate development called Hollywoodland. The last syllable detached and crashed during a landslide, but the 450-foot-long part that remains has been restored and elevated to landmark status. The best view is from Sunset Boulevard and Bronson Avenue: Get your cameras out!

W
HERE
: 6 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
Visitor info:
Tel 323-469-8311;
www.hollywoodchamber.net
.
H
OLLYWOOD
& H
IGHLAND
C
ENTER
:
www.hollywoodandhighland.com
.
K
ODAK
T
HEATRE
: Tel 323-308-6300;
www.kodaktheatre.com
.
G
RAUMAN’S
: Tel 323-464-8111;
www.manntheatres.com
.
Cost:
movies $12.
P
ARAMOUNT
S
TUDIOS
: Tel 323-956-1777;
www.paramount.com
/studio.
U
NIVERSAL
S
TUDIOS
H
OLLYWOOD
: Universal City. Tel 818-622-3801;
www.universalstudioshollywood.com
Cost:
tours $55.
H
OLLYWOOD
R
OOSEVELT
H
OTEL
: Tel 800-950-7667 or 323-466-7000;
www.hollywoodroosevelt.com
.
Cost:
from $259.
B
EST TIMES
: July–mid-Sept for the outdoor Hollywood Bowl’s concert season, which includes hosting the L.A. Philharmonic (
www.hollywoodbowl.com
).