Los Angeles's Bunker Hill

by Dawson, Jim

• ISBN13: 9781609495466
• ISBN10: 1609495462
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-07-01
• Publisher: History Pr

Summary

When postwar movie directors went looking for a gritty location to shoot their psychological crime thrillers, they found Bunker Hill, a neighborhood of fading Victorians, flophouses, tough bars, stairways and dark alleys in downtown Los Angeles. Novelist Raymond Chandler had already been there exploring the real-life "mean streets" that his hardboiled detective, Philip Marlowe, prowled in the writer's exacting prose. But the biggest crime was going on behind the scenes, run by the city's power elite. And Hollywood just happened to capture it on film. Using nearly eighty photos, writer Jim Dawson enlarges the record of L.A. history with this grassroots investigation of a vanished place. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. 5
Introduction	p. 7
Reel Life on the Streets	p. 11
Bunker Hill, Los Angeles	p. 22
Hard-Boiled Memories	p. 29
Bunker Hill Goes Hollywood	p. 44
Last Double Bill and Testament	p. 70
There Once Was a City Here	p. 86
High Crimes and Misdirections	p. 105
A Selective List of Films Shot on Bunker Hill	p. 116
Bibliography	p. 155
About the Author	p. 159
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Author Jim Dawson writes a grassroots history of the vanished neighborhood of Bunker Hill, where Los Angeles's Center City skyscrapers stand today; Bunker Hill was through the 20th century a steep, slowly decaying neighborhood that inspired famous writers including Raymond Chandler and became the backdrop of dozens of film noir, which he also writes about.