Issue: Issue Summer 2008

From the Editor

This is a very exciting time for Hollywood but even more so for this publication. This issue is the first of our new quarterly schedule. Discover Hollywood now will publish seasonally with Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer issues. Soon our website will expand beyond with many additional features. Discover Hollywood began as a list of cultural venues in a booklet published by the Hollywood Arts Council in 1979.

It evolved into a once a year publication, then went bi-annual in 1994. It went from newsprint to glossy and, like Hollywood, is growing and expanding. Ours is a specialty magazine created for people who love Hollywood. Our mission is to provide residents and visitors with information to access and explore the unique culture and lore of Hollywood. Unique certainly is a word that describes our own Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Todd Everett’s article gives us a sense of this amazing place in the center of our community and backs onto another Hollywood icon, Paramount Pictures. Hollywood Forever is more than the final resting place of our early settlers, including the woman who named Hollywood, or the man who was the original “Latin lover,” it is an oasis and a destination. Speaking of destinations, the new Kress is a wonder to behold.

Hollywood’s last building boom was in the 30’s and the S.H. Kress building was one of the last masterpieces built in that era. Today it has been spectacularly restored as a restaurant and entertainment venue par excellence. James Barrett takes us there in his article, A Star is Reborn. I love the beautiful neighborhoods and homes that line our streets and dot our hillsides. I was thrilled to tour the painstakingly redone former home of both Judy Garland and Sammy Davis, Jr. I couldn’t believe that this one house had belonged to two incomparable entertainers. There’s so much to discover and now we’ll have two additional issues each year to bring you even more to discover and to love about our town, Hollywood.