For something that happened over 60 years ago, I can vividly remember my first celebrity sighting. It was around 1957 that I saw the legendary Buster Keaton, song and dance man Donald O'Connor and glamour girl Ann Blyth make personal appearances in the Thrifty Drug Store in the shopping center on the corner of La Brea Ave. and Rodeo Road, now known as Obama Blvd. I particularly remember O'Connor being introduced and coming out in a brightly lit area with a fair number of spectators ringing the scene. (Thanks to a parallel thread I started on a neighborhood message board, that was in the area normally occupied by the Thrifty diner.)
While I have thought about this event occasionally over the years, it never occurred to me to figure out the nature of that event. I mean why those stars and at that location? I guess one reason is that there really wasn't any way to get an answer, except maybe to ask my parents while they were alive. But like so many other things, as I once wrote a few years ago, unknowable facts in the past become easily answered in the internet age. And a simple Google search today for "Buster Keaton Donald O'Connor Ann Blyth" revealed instantaneously that Donald O'Connor and Ann Blyth starred in "The Buster Keaton Story" which was released in 1957. So that appearance by the trio was a promotional event for the release of the movie.
It took a little more searching to figure out why they appeared at that particular location. We moved into the adjacent Crenshaw area in 1952, and even then it was a largely a minority neighborhood, predominantly African-American, but with a relatively large concentration of Asian-Americans and a few holdover whites. I could see such event at the nearby Crenshaw Center (now Baldwin Hills Plaza) which featured department stores and specialty shops, and whose 1947 opening indeed was star studded with Mel Torme, among others, celebrating the opening of this shopping center so newsworthy that it was covered in Life Magazine. But the La Brea/Rodeo shopping center only contained Thrifty Drug Store, Alpha Beta Market, and a small arcade area that included a small barber shop, maybe a shoe shine stand, and a couple of other stores. However after a little digging I discovered that the Thrifty drug store was the largest location of that chain in the country at the time and was reminded that the property was also home to Thrifty's corporate headquarters. And when the complex opened in 1952, there was a star studded celebration that included Anne Baxter and Tony Martin.
So who knows what other big name celebrities may have passed through that modest looking shopping center over the years..
It took a little more searching to figure out why they appeared at that particular location. We moved into the adjacent Crenshaw area in 1952, and even then it was a largely a minority neighborhood, predominantly African-American, but with a relatively large concentration of Asian-Americans and a few holdover whites. I could see such event at the nearby Crenshaw Center (now Baldwin Hills Plaza) which featured department stores and specialty shops, and whose 1947 opening indeed was star studded with Mel Torme, among others, celebrating the opening of this shopping center so newsworthy that it was covered in Life Magazine. But the La Brea/Rodeo shopping center only contained Thrifty Drug Store, Alpha Beta Market, and a small arcade area that included a small barber shop, maybe a shoe shine stand, and a couple of other stores. However after a little digging I discovered that the Thrifty drug store was the largest location of that chain in the country at the time and was reminded that the property was also home to Thrifty's corporate headquarters. And when the complex opened in 1952, there was a star studded celebration that included Anne Baxter and Tony Martin.
So who knows what other big name celebrities may have passed through that modest looking shopping center over the years..
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