"Los Angeles... makes nonsense of history and breaks all the rules."
Sounds right.
Professor of the History of Architecture at University College, London,
Reyner Banham, came to Los Angeles as a visiting professor at USC in the early 1970s. While here, he made a documentary for the BBC show, "One Pair of Eyes," about Los Angeles as a City.
LA has been called an "unspeakable sprawling mess" - but not by him. He loves it - hence the name of the documentary: "
Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles." This 50-minute show reveals the Los Angeles of the 1970s and earlier. But if you don't have time to watch the whole thing, here are some highlights...
He starts his experience at LAX and turns on his car which has a computerized voice that says: "Welcome to Los Angeles: super-city of the future, metropolis of Southern California." This cheesy voice helps narrate the film and move the audience around the City with Banham.
"Freeways are unforgiving," he starts out honestly. He reveals the reality of the City and the conditions that define it.
His first stop is Olvera Street, which he calls the standard big-city tourist trap. But outside of Olvera Street, he says, Los Angeles is like nowhere else. And what was true in the early 1970s is still true now: LA is like no other place.
As a non-Angeleno, his knowledge of the City was learned as it has been by most non-natives: through the movies. (There are some great shots of early Los Angeles in the silent movies Banham watched as a youth for a penny.)
Then, from his home in England, you are transported back to LA and into "the Watts District" (which they make appear to be right next to LAX). The fictitious "audio guide" makes reference to the Redevelopment Project and takes us to the Watts Towers with a Mr. Roger's Neighborhood themed musical tour of the towers (with no mention of Simon Rodia!).
Then, they reference Mattel as the world's leading toymaker, and Banham makes a reference to a little old lady from Pasadena driving next to him in a mustang. A weak transition at best.
They mention the 405/10 freeway interchange, which "is reckoned by experts to be the most elegant [interchange] in the world." (How times have changed!)
They then arrive at the Griffith Observatory: a cameo by a James Dean look-a-like and a reference to sprawl leads to a better understanding of the City.
Banham spends time explaining the phenomenom of housing and how it developed in Los Angeles so very close to commercial, as exemplified in the Wilshire corridor. He compares it to London's development - but while London developed with the notion of "how far" based walking, in LA, distance is based on the wheel. (No, not the automobile's tires, but the trolley car wheel.)
As an architecture documentary, the film spends time talking about specific residential styles from the Spanish Colonial to the California Bungelow to Nuetra, Eames, and Wright designed homes. He visits the Gamble House and the Eames House, among others.
After being denied access to the "private city" of Rolling Hills Estates on Palos Verdes, Banham heads over to the "open community" of Venice. They talk of how it's a place for the down-and-out (which is hard to believe when today it's homes are selling for over a million dollars and the Canals are a desired location to live). They show the
now-obscured mural, "
Venice in the Snow" as an example of the creativity and arts of the community, but they spend more time on Muscle Beach and the workout of one bodybuilder! They also present a great aerial shot of the since-demolished Venice Pavilion (1960 to 2000), which the film calls a municipal auditorium.
After visiting the Yugoslav sculpture artist Vasa Mehilich in Venice who says he came to LA to create art because "In this town... you feel free," Banham takes the viewer to a surfboard "factory" in Hermosa Beach and then to the Van culture that was emerging in Los Angeles. Apparently, these vans were symbols of freedom in 1972. He interviews a musician who has installed a piano in his van so he can play whenever, whenever, and as loud as he wants.
Cutting back to a lecture at his class at USC, Banham says in comparing Los Angeles to Shakespeare's Elizabethian London: "It takes a City to support style and craft, but it takes a very great city, indeed, to impose that kind of style on the rest of world. Los Angeles has done just that."
The film then takes us to 7000 Sunset Boulevard to Tiny Naylor's drive-in with
Ed Ruscha and Mike Salsbury, art director for
West ("the local color supplement") to find out what to show a visitor in Los Angeles:
Banham: "We're talking about a town with no public monuments worth seeing. What public commercial [buildings] should we send people to see?"
Mike: "Well, this one's really a good one [Tiny Naylor's], I think, because it's not only the last of the drive-ins but it's probably one of the best."
Ed: "Maybe gas stations maybe. Well, any kind of edifice that has to do with the car."
After this exchange in the parking lot, Banham moves on to nigh time on the Sunset strip, with the a nude dancer. Yes, a nude dancer. The topless dancer transitions into the billboard overload - the outdoor art - on the Strip.
The last scene takes the viewer to the best sight in the City: the actual sunset. It openly admits that LA's sunsets are a great as they are because of the man-made pollutants that haze our sky as it burns bright at dusk.
Other notes of interest:
-He calls it Palos Verdes
Mountain, not Peninsula.
-He refers to the large expanses of Los Angeles at only 70 miles square (which was far less than it actually was in the 1970s).
-They had smoking in the lecture hall at USC.
- I like the billboard for ABC7 news on the Sunset Strip that said: "The Eyewitness News Team: you can't beat 'em. Join 'em at 6pm."
via Quartz City, a great source of links on LA and other interesting things
So far, in the last few days, there has been a great response to the LACN Call to Action #1: to take pictures of the official LA City Neighborhood Signs (that's the blue signs with the City Seal on them).
