L.A.’s Old Magazine Stores – A Lost Era

Part 1 – Some Old Magazine Stores and the Secret Magazine Warehouse.  By Paul Hunt

Back in the 1960s and 1970s Los Angeles still had a few scattered shops that sold old magazines, comics and pulps.  They were dusty, piled high with stacks of great colorful old magazines, and offered up pretty cheap entertainment.  I’ll list a few of these as I remember them, all of them now long gone.

ABC Book and Magazine Research.  7064 Hollywood Blvd.

All that I have left is a rubber stamp inside a paperback book.

When I was a teen ager I lived with my Grandparents a couple blocks west of La Brea on Hawthorne Ave.  I attended Hollywood High School, so I was very familiar with Hollywood Blvd., and all the great old book shops.  Week day evenings I sold the Examiner for 2 hours at the corner of La Brea and Hollywood.

I soon noticed that just east of Hollywood and La Brea, in an old store front, was a magazine store called ABC Book and Magazine Research.  I started going in there on Saturdays with my meagre newspaper sales money and to me the dusty old place was a wonderland.  The proprietor was classic, a thin, nervious man in his sixties with thick glasses.  He looked like an old scrooge and had about as bad a temperament as one could get.  He despised children and young folks, and never, ever, gave out a happy “hello” salutation.

I was always overly polite, because if old scrooge would have let me, I would have stayed there all day rooting through the piles and piles stacked everywhere.  All the important weekly magazines were there, Life, Look, Post and stacks of magazines going back into the 1930s.  The store was also jammed with paperback books, and at that time period that I was there most of the used paperbacks were from the late forties to the 1950s.  Let your imagination soar, Dell mapbacks, Avon Murder Mystery Monthlies, you name it.  He would stamp all the paperbacks with his sloppy rubber stamp, but notice that he was “renting” the books – bring one back and pay 8 cents and get another one to read.  Not bad, most paperbacks were 25 cents or 35 cents in those days, so if you wanted to read a batch of science fiction you could do so cheaply.  In 1960 a gallon of gas was about 25.99 cents, a pack of cigarettes 25 cents, a coke was usually a dime or 15 cents.  See how little your dollar is worth now?

I didn’t pay much attention to the comics at that time, I had already been through a comic book crisis in my earlier years.  I subscribed to the first “Mad” comics and was spending my hard earned money from paper routes and weed pulling on war comics and horror comics.  My parents went ballistic when they saw my collection of all those now rare comics and trashed them and forbid me to ever buy another one.  They even marched me into the local drug store and told the owner not to sell me any more comics.  I was devasted by this.  I didn’t really understand that I had done anything wrong.  I had worked for the money and spent it on something I loved to read, but there was a big propaganda campaign in the fifties telling parents that your kid’s mind would be warped forever because all the writers of the comics were communists.  So because of my earlier bad experience I shied away from the comics.  Now that I was in High School, my focus was on “serious” magazines like Life, Look, and Post.  I was also reading a lot of science fiction paperbacks.

Old scrooge would only let me stay in the shop for 20 or 30 minutes, and then demand that I buy something and leave.  I could always find a great paperback, and I never brought any back.  Screw the 8 cents, I wanted to keep the books forever.

ABC had to move sometime in the 1960s, and they moved to a smaller shop almost directly across the street on the north side of Hollywood.  I think they were gone by the 1970s.  I had discovered Pickwick Bookshop by then and was spending so much time there that I forgot about ABC Magazine and the old grouch who owned it.

Marlow’s Bookshop,    Hollywood Blvd. and Argyle.

Marlow’s at Argyle and Hollywood Blvd.

The following is from one of the Hollywood Boulevard Bookstore Follies articles.  I’m reprinting it here with some additional comments.

The first stop is right on the corner of Hollywood and Argyle,  MARLOW’S BOOKSHOP.  Owned by -you guessed it – a gentleman named Marlow, this store opened in the early 70s.   It has a general stock of used books, but specializes in back issue periodicals and in research (mainly for the film industry).  A graduate engineer before he got into the book business, Marlow said he recently got a call from the filmmakers of All The President’s Men.  They needed to duplicate the library of The Washington Post for some of the scenes, so  Marlow rented them an entire set-up of 10,000 books.  It was a rush job , he put it together overnight so the film company could start shooting the scene the next day!

Notice the 50% off sign in the window.  This came about when Marlow had stopped over to Hollywood Book City.  While chatting with Book City owner Alan Siegel, he complained that business was a little slow.  “Why don’t you have a sale?” said Alan, “It will bring in some new business.”  Marlow said he would try it, but didn’t know how to start.  Alan generously loaned Marlow a beautiful large banner that said “Anniversary Sale, 50% Off”.  Marlow borrowed the banner and put it up on his shop (not shown in the photo).  It worked so well that he kept the banner up there permanently, and refused to give it back to Alan. “That damned banner cost me over a $100,” said Siegel.  “No good deed goes unpunished on this street” he said sadly. To make matters worse, a couple of Marlow’s customers claim that he doubled the price on most items in order not to sell too cheaply.  I can only say that these are at the moment unsubstantiated and unproven claims, but certainly in the realm of bookstore lore.

I used to drop by Marlow’s from time to time, mainly looking for early bound periodicals.  Marlow was a stocky man in his 60’s and seemed to have a short fuse, especially when asked for a discount.  At some point in the 1980s he was forced to move out and eventually ended up on Lincoln Ave. in West Los Angeles.  Along the way he had rented a lot of storage units and jammed them full of periodicals.  Every so often one would turn up with unpaid rent and be sold to some book scout pretty cheap.

Marlow fell ill and hired a young African American guy to run the shop, and he kept it open after Marlow died.  He didn’t know much abut the book business, but he was a really nice young guy and was eager to learn.  He had some consignment deal with Marlow’s family and he tried to make a go of it.  I think the store closed in the 1990s.  Marlow always had a big selection of magazines and it was a great place to browse.

Garvin’s Hollywood Book Store and the Secret Magazine Warehouse.

Paul Hunt, Keith Burns and Bruce Cervon enter the Secret Magazine Warehouse

Jack Garvin, 1987

The story of the Secret Magazine Warehouse is a douzy.  I’ll start it here with reprinting the original article about Kovach, Mark Trout, and Jack Garvin.  Then I’ll add in some additional information that is part of the legend of Nick Kovach’s massive warehouse.

Walking on a few doors will bring you to HOLLYWOOD BOOK SHOP.  This store has been here about three years, although one of the owners has been in the book business in Hollywood about 10 years.  They carry a large general stock of used and out-of-print books. The partners, Jack Garvin and Ray Cantor are polar opposites, at times engaging in bitter quarrels.  Garvin, a stocky man who resembles Nikita Khrushchev, started as a book scout, operating out of a garage behind some storefronts on Adams Avenue, east of Western, a once rich area that has seen better days.  He is also into minerals and geology, and this specialty led him to buy equipment to cut geodes and polishing machinery to further enhance specimens that he buys.  Jack is a chain-smoking, gruff man to deal with, Ray the nicer of the two, but they have built up an excellent stock of books.  See my articles on Jack Garvin called “The Rock Man” elsewhere on this site.

Recently (1970s) they purchased a large warehouse stuffed with magazines and pamphlets.  The story behind this is an odd one.  There was a periodicals dealer down in the South Los Angeles area by the name of Nick Kovach, who was dealing in scholarly periodicals back in the 1950s.  When the Russians launched Sputnik, it was a big kick in the rear to the U.S. educational system, which all of a sudden woke up to the sad fact that this great country was falling behind in science and technology.  Kovach found himself to be center stage in the arena of scientific and mathematical periodicals, courted by libraries across the country who needed this material.  He bought and sold enormous quantities of paper goods and magazines, filling up many warehouses.  In later years he realized that the collections included a lot of non-scientific stuff that was of no use to the libraries at the great universities and corporations.  So Kovach started to dispose of tonnage of this stuff, which was mainly popular culture and mainstream magazines.

Along came a roving dealer named Mark Trout, who traveled around the country in a van, looking for this kind of material.  He “leased” the rights to an old, long closed-down bowling alley in South Los Angeles from Kovach  that was jam packed with just the right stuff that he wanted:  popular magazines, like Life, Time, Fortune, and the such.  Trout made a great amount of money over the years selling this at flea markets.  One time, at the Rose Bowl flea market, Trout showed up with a stack of over 50 Number 1 Life magazines in mint condition. The collectors went berserk.  After milking the contents of the bowling alley for a number of years, Trout offered to transfer the “lease” to Jack Garvin and his partner.  All the great popular magazines had been removed and sold by Trout, but the place was still jammed with pamphlets, ephemera and lesser-known periodicals.  Garvin pulled out van loads of great stuff, including a world-class collection of pamphlets and rare broadsides on the subject of American radicalism, which he is selling to libraries at big prices. Garvin and Canter go down to their bowling alley once a week and pack their old van full of paper goodies and rare ephemera.  “It’s like owning a gold mine,” Jack once told me.  “Every once in a while we hit a particularly good vein!”  And it is enough material for years to come.

When Jack’s partner Ray dropped dead after a 45 minute screaming match with Jack one night, Jack Garvin became the sole owner of Hollywood Book Shop, (after paying off Ray’s wife).  I talked Garvin into moving out to Burbank, which he did, but that meant he had to dump the Secret Magazine Warehouse on someone else.  Garvin found a young couple who took over the “lease” on the bowling alley.  In a funny incident, Garvin told me that he and Ray had to use flash lights because there was no electricity in the basement of the bowling alley.  When the new prospects came in, the pretty lady buyer, a school teacher, found the main power switch and boom – the whole place lit up in a blaze of lights!  Garvin said “I can’t believe we never thought of that…..all those years in the dark stumbling over stuff…”

The new owners moved a lot of the items into a storm cellar at the corner of Gardner and Sunset.  The old Pacific Electric ran in a diagonal through the intersection, and just NE next to an old building was a large storm cellar.  The couple began hauling magazines out to the Tuesday night antique show at the Great Western Exhibit Center.  They did a pretty good business there but eventually they split up and the man rented space in Burbank for a few years.  Eventually, he vanished, along with the remains of the popular magazines.

This was only the story of the bowling alley.  The main warehouse that Nick Kovach owned was an old supermarket, plus three or more storefronts on Florence Avenue.  The places were packed with periodicals, millions of them.  Maybe billions.  After Kovach died an antique dealer Jerry Aboud and his partner Robert Mann contacted Kovach’s son and made a deal to “Lease” the billions of magazines.  Actually, the most valuable things in the warehouse were a set of microfilms that Kovach had made of the early copies of the Panama Star, one of the first newspapers in the Americas.  Kovach somehow found the originals in some archive and donated them to the country of Panama.  He kept the microfilm masters that he sold to university libraries around the world.  The Panamanians loved Kovach, and he was feted on many trips to the country, where he was guest of honor at State  dinners.  He had given them status as a civilized country. However, when it came to beauty, Mr. Kovach was a failure to the Panamanian men.

Success at magazines, failure as a judge of beauty.

Mr. Kovach was a judge in the July 1964 Miss Panama contest that was held at the Panama Hilton Hotel in Panama.  He and the other judges had voted for a dark beauty, Gloria Navarete.  According to Kovach, the audience was rooting for another girl, who he claimed had “spindly bow legs”.  When the result was announced the audience started screaming at Kovach and the other Judges, and attacked the stage.  Kovach and the others ran for their lives out the back door of the Panama Hilton, with a mob after them.  They threw rocks and bottles and even tried to ram Kovach’s car as he raced away.  Beauty in Panama is not what the old gringo sees, it is what the macho men of Panama says it is.  It took Kovach a while to recoup his honor with the men of Panama.

Bob Mann and Jerry Aboud kept working the Kovach warehouse for about a year.  The place was packed to the ceiling, with huge crates stacked full of periodicals.  They eventually turned the warehouse over to Jimmy Brucker, who had become half owner of the Burbank Book Castle, and also half owner of the building itself, with its 10,000 sq foot basement.  The problem with the Kovach warehouse was that at the time it was located in a gang area near Crenshaw and Florence. It was an old supermarket at 4801 Second Ave., with apartments on the second floor.  The building is still there, but now remodeled.  It was best to go there early in the morning and be gone by about 3pm.  Weekends were especially bad, as the drug dealers were on every corner in the surrounding area, and gunfire was frequent as darkness approached.

Jimmy spent many months in the warehouse, looking through things.  Most of the popular titles had long ago been moved to the bowling alley that Mark Trout had gotten early on.  A huge quantity of periodicals were things that had no reason to exist, like thousands of copies of the Los Angeles Board of Education news.  But there were gems.  A storefront next to the supermarket was full of bound periodicals, many great titles in beautiful and sturdy library bindings.  Jimmy gave me the keys and told me to start pulling things for the shop.  So for over 1 year I went down to the warehouse once a week with Keith Burns and our friend Bruce Cervon, a famous Magician and expert on old magazines.  We hauled van loads over to the Book Castle in Burbank, stopping only to fuel up at a fantastic all you could eat Chinese restaurant on Crenshaw.

We found many gems and brought over thousands of periodicals.  It was like being in magazine heaven, although it was not easy working with the old wood crates, which had rusty nails sticking out everywhere.  In addition, I was also nervous about making too much of a ruckus with the crates, I didn’t want to be swarmed by the millions of plump silverfish that were hiding inside some of the magazines.

 

After a year or so, Jimmy wanted to move it all into the basement of the Book Castle.  We had some long discussions and finally he let me go through the warehouse and mark the crates that were good enough to maybe sell some day.  Jimmy’s truck driver, a genial pot-bellied guy named “Big Bob”, would get a local crew and load a semi- truck and haul it out to Burbank, where I would hire another crew to help unload the thousands of magazines pouring in.  In the end we brought in thirteen semi-trucks of magazines, completely filling the entire basement of the Book Castle with a billion magazines.  It was hard, dirty work, the crates of magazines had layers of dust an inch thick.  But the first truck they brought over was the hardest and almost killed us.

Here’s the thing about semi-trucks.  They look really solid, like there is no chance of tipping it over.  Wrong.  The crew at the Kovach warehouse had grossly over-loaded the trucks, like to the ceiling.  Thus we learned our first lesson on how to unload a truck that is 20 tons over weight.  We started just unloading from the back door of the truck, crate after crate.  We should have gone down the center of the truck, leaving the crates on the edges, and then worked our way back.  That was the lesson we learned.

Since the first truck was so full, several of us were working inside, and when we reached 1 magazine over the half-way mark, the truck flipped up, the back end with the wheels went flying upward, crashing us inside to the front (where the stilts were) and slamming us with 60 pound wood crates full of dusty magazines.   It was a miracle nobody was killed.  Once the dust cleared and we crawled out of the back of the truck we could not believe what had happened.  The back wheels were sticking up in the air.  There was no tractor attached, it was down at Kovach’s getting another load.  Dust and smoke swirled out of the back opening.  Birds were landing on top of the trailer.  A crowd was gathering.  We shouted to the outside crew to bring us a ladder so we could climb down. One of our crew announced that he needed a beer, and he went off to the local bar.  We didn’t see him for a week.

Summers in Burbank are hot, and this late afternoon it was near 100 degrees.  We were drenched in sweat and magazine dust.  We started trying to figure out what the hell we were going to do.  About 100 people had gathered around.  Mostly they wanted to know how in heck we had accomplished that feat, something nobody had ever seen before.  The problem was how were we to get the damn wheels back on the ground.

My friend Stan remembered his high school geometry class.  It’s simple he said.  We go back into the trailer and carefully start shifting the magazines forward toward the back door.  “It’s just like a teeter-totter” he said.  When we get the load balanced the wheels will just come easily down to where they were.  We just have to be careful.

We got on the ladder and climbed back into the trailer.  The dust had settled a little, but with the heat it was still like being in an oven.  We formed a chain and gingerly started passing crates one at a time to the back and out to guys on ladders.  After this had gone on a while I got nervous and told the guys to take the ladders away and stand back.  We now had enough room to slide crates toward the back, trying to judge when the tipping point would come, and the gentle trailer wheels would shift down.  We finally reached that point.

Wham! The back of the trailer slammed down without warning.  The door of the trailer came down like a guillotine, then back up, then down, then up, crashing along its tracks.  Crates tumbled over, we went flying around the inside of the trailer like loose rag dolls.  Everything became quiet.  Then someone on the outside started to clap and pretty soon a large cheer went up from the crowd of neighbors watching this clown show.  “You did it” someone yelled.

We called it a night, lucky to be alive.  We all needed a few beers.  But we now knew how to unload the next 12 semi-trailers that came in over the summer.  We never pulled a stunt like that again!

Coming Part 2:  Last Days of the old Magazine shops of Los Angeles.

 

 

 

Hollywood Boulevard Bookstore Follies – Part 4

Bookstores on Hollywood Boulevard in 1976 – Continued

by Paul Hunt

Hollywood Book City

Hollywood Book City.  Photo by Wayne Braby

Walking to the next block, we now arrive at what can loosely be called the Cal Worthington of the used book business, HOLLYWOOD BOOK CITY.  This store has the largest stock of used and out-of-print books in Los Angeles, somewhere around a quarter of a million books if you care to count.  The store is co-owned by Alan Siegel and Jerry Weinstein.  And here we must pause and say a few words about Los Angeles’ first family of books, the Weinsteins.  They are to books what the Kennedys are to politics, there seems to be a never-ending supply of them.  As far as I can tell, each and every Weinstein is a bibliophile at birth, having both ink in the veins and a natural instinct for buying and selling books.

The Weinstein dynasty is particularly strong at this location, as Jerry’s sister is married to partner Siegel.

Now where were we?  Oh, yes, BOOK CITY.  The store has a large general stock of just about everything you can think of, including one of the largest sections of books on art and books on the arts, cinema, theater, graphic arts, architecture, television and radio history. The store is well laid out, with different sections clearly marked, and even an upstairs balcony to rummage through.  Book City seems to agree with my theory of constant expansion to avoid overcrowding.  It was not too long ago that a large hole was made through the west wall, adding on what is now mainly a section of new books at discount, and remainders.  Now it seems that the east wall is going to get the same treatment and on or about June 1st the book hunter will find a new doorway leading into the “scarce, rare and antiquarian department.”

Hollywood Book Shop bus cd

Walking on a few doors will bring you to HOLLYWOOD BOOK SHOP.  This store has been here about three years, although one of the owners has been in the book business in Hollywood about 10 years.  They carry a large general stock of used and out-of-print books. The partners, Jack Garvin and Ray Cantor are polar opposites, at times engaging in bitter quarrels.  Garvin, a stocky man who resembles Nikita Khrushchev, started as a book scout, operating out of a garage behind some storefronts on Adams Avenue, east of Western, a once rich area that has seen better days.  He is also into minerals and geology, and this specialty led him to buy equipment to cut geodes and polishing machinery to further enhance specimens that he buys.  Jack is a chain-smoking, gruff man to deal with, Ray the nicer of the two, but they have built up an excellent stock of books.

Recently they purchased a large warehouse stuffed with magazines and pamphlets.  The story behind this is an odd one.  There was a periodicals dealer down in the South Los Angeles area by the name of Nick Kovach, who was dealing in scholarly periodicals back in the 1950s.  When the Russians launched Sputnik, it was a big kick in the rear to the U.S. educational system, which all of a sudden woke up to the sad fact that this great country was falling behind in science and technology.  Kovach found himself to be center stage in the arena of scientific and mathematical periodicals, courted by libraries across the country who needed this material.  He bought and sold enormous quantities of paper goods and magazines, filling up many warehouses.  In later years he realized that the collections included a lot of non-scientific stuff that was of no use to the libraries at the great universities and corporations.  So Kovach started to dispose of tonnage of this stuff, which was mainly popular culture and mainstream magazines.

Along came a roving dealer named Mark Trout, who traveled around the country in a van, looking for this kind of material.  He “leased” the rights to an old, long closed-down bowling alley in South Los Angeles from Kovach  that was jam packed with just the right stuff that he wanted:  popular magazines, like Life, Time, Fortune, and the such.  Trout made a great amount of money over the years selling this at flea markets.  One time, at the Rose Bowl flea market, Trout showed up with a stack of over 50 Number 1 Life magazines in mint condition. The collectors went berserk.  After milking the contents of the bowling alley for a number of years, Trout offered to transfer the “lease” to Jack Garvin and his partner.  All the great popular magazines had been removed and sold by Trout, but the place was still jammed with pamphlets, ephemera and lesser-known periodicals.  Garvin pulled out van loads of great stuff, including a world-class collection of pamphlets and rare broadsides on the subject of American radicalism, which he is selling to libraries at big prices. Garvin and Canter go down to their bowling alley once a week and pack their old van full of paper goodies and rare ephemera.  “It’s like owning a gold mine,” Jack once told me.  “Every once in a while we hit a particularly good vein!”  And it is enough material for years to come.

Cherokee Book Shop

Cherokee Book Shop.  Photo by Wayne Braby

A couple of doors further we arrive at one of the finest book shops in the world.  CHEROKEE BOOK SHOP. Established about 25 years ago, it has a large selection of Americana, occult, fine bindings, first editions, fine illustrated books, military history, and so on without end.  Upstairs is the famous comic room with 200,000 comics.  They also now have about 20,000 old Playboy Magazines.  Browsing through the store I noticed a couple of interesting items in a glass case near the counter.  One was a large folio Bible printed in London in 1683.  I’m not much for buying and collecting old bibles, but this one was quite unusual.  I am not referring to the fact that it is bound in a rich, glistening morocco, or that the morocco is covering heavy oak boards.  It is the fore-edge painting that attracts attention, mainly because it is an “open” painting, clearly visible where the book is lying on the table.

Inside Cherokee Book Shop. Photo by Wayne Braby

Inside Cherokee Book Shop. Photo by Wayne Braby

Another interesting item (among thousands) is a limited edition of “The Life of Our Lord,” by Charles Dickens, published by Merrymount Press in 1934.  This also is in full red morocco..  Laid in the front inside cover is a cancelled check that Dickens made out to “self” for five pounds, not a small sum when you glance at the date August 27, 1864.  One can’t help wondering what that illustrious gentleman spent  the money on:  was it something special or just enough to cover some day-to-day expenses?  Curious as we are, we will never know.  Also to be found inside this volume, placed loose between two pages, is an old invitation to a dinner on November 2, 1867, in honor of Dickens’ “forthcoming” departure on a trip to the U.S.  The banquet took place at Freemason’s Hall, Great Queen Street, London.  Ahh, if we only had a time machine, we could put that invitation to good use.  And don’t forget to take along some items for Mr. Dickens to sign, maybe even the Merrymount edition of “The Life of  Our Lord.”  Now that would be a rarity, having a signed edition of a book that was printed sixty-five years after the author’s death. Since we don’t yet have a time machine, if you see a copy, be advised that it is either a “spirit signature” or a forgery.

Atlantis Books. Photo by Wayne Braby

Atlantis Books. Photo by Wayne Braby

Leaving Cherokee, we go down the  Boulevard a couple of blocks to ATLANTIS BOOKS.  This is one of those secret bookstores, one that you have probably walked past and never seen because it sits well back from the Boulevard, tightly packed into the rear of an alcove.  Even if you have the exact address you may miss it, so I’m going to give you two important landmarks.  The first is Mr. Howland’s miniature jewelry store and watch repair stand, which sits at the front of the alcove.  The second landmark is to watch the names of the stars embedded in the famous sidewalk.  When you see the name “Rochester” (Legs, do yo’ stuff!) you will be there.

The store itself is deceptively large, but not large enough for the seventy thousand volumes nestled into every nook and cranny (no lie, the store actually does have little nooks and crannies.)  Sometimes the new arrivals are piled so high on the counter that the only thing visible of the owner is an occasional puff of smoke from his pipe that drifts over the top of the stacks, lazily floating up toward the ceiling.  You know right away that this is your kind of store.

More often than not, there is a book scout leaning on the front counter, trying to sell some books to owner “Doc” Burroughs.  One can always tell how tough is the haggling over price by the amount of cigarette butts the fearless scout has deposited in the ashtray. Dr. Burroughs always wears a suit and tie, not to be flashy, but he is a Veterinarian who makes house calls only, he does not have a clinic.  In between the stops to treat sick dogs and cats, he stops at thrift stores, estate sales, and other bookstores to pick up some good inventory.  His Volkswagen station wagon is always piled with coolers full of medicine for the animals, surrounded by boxes of books, filling up the rest of the space.  It’s a winning combination because even if book sales are slow, sick animals abound, so the rent will always get paid.

The real fun at Atlantis is to slip towards the back aisles and dig around in, say, the Russian History section, or root through one of L.A.’s best World War 2 collections.  On the way out (or in), don’t forget to check out the three bargain carts that are dutifully wheeled out into the alcove each day.

Marlow's Bookshop. Photo by Wayne Braby

Marlow’s Bookshop. Photo by Wayne Braby

Leaving Atlantis, walk up to Argyle and cross the street to the south side of Hollywood and work your way back.  The first stop is right on the corner of Hollywood and Argyle,  MARLOW’S BOOKSHOP.  Owned by -you guessed it – a gentleman named Marlow, this store has been open about five years. It has a general stock of used books, but specializes in back issue periodicals and in research (mainly for the film industry).  A graduate engineer before he got into the book business, Marlow said he recently got a call from the filmmakers of All The President’s Men.  They needed to duplicate the library of The Washington Post for some of the scenes, so  Marlow rented them an entire set-up of 10,000 books.  It was a rush job , he put it together overnight so the film company could start shooting the scene the next day!

Notice the 50% off sign in the window.  This came about when Marlow had stopped over to Hollywood Book City.  While chatting with Book City owner Alan Siegel, he complained that business was a little slow.  “Why don’t you have a sale?” said Alan, “It’l bring in some new business.”  Marlow said he would try it, but didn’t know how to start.  Alan generously loaned Marlow a beautiful large banner that said “Anniversary Sale, 50% Off”.  Marlow borrowed the banner and put it up on his shop (not shown in the photo).  It worked so well that he kept the banner up there permanently, and refused to give it back to Alan. “That damned banner cost me over a $100,” said Siegel.  “No good deed goes unpunished on this street” he said sadly. To make matters worse, a couple of Marlow’s customers claim that he doubled the price on most items in order not to sell too cheaply.  I can only say that these are at the moment unsubstantiated and unproven claims, but certainly in the realm of bookstore lore.

Universal Book Store. Photo by Wayne Braby

Universal Book Store. Photo by Wayne Braby

A few doors west is UNIVERSAL BOOKS.  This store has been in business for about 10 years.  The present owner is a former insurance agent who got into the book business “because of the easy pace and the interesting people.”  Universal carries a general stock, specializing in first editions, rare and scarce books and occult.

universal-books

“I really like book people,” says the owner Jules Manasseh,, “but once in a while you get a nut in.  Like once a guy came in and went back to the shelves and started looking around.  Before long he starts goose-stepping around the store yelling ‘Sieg Heil’ and giving the Nazi salute.  I had to ask him to leave, he was bothering the customers.  Then, a couple of weeks later he came back in, tried to sneak past me wearing one of those pair of phony glasses with the big nose attached.  I guess he thought I wouldn’t recognize him.  I threw him out again.  He was a real nut.”  Well, that’s Hollywood, folks!

Gilberts Book Shop. Photo by Wayne Braby

Gilberts Book Shop. Photo by Wayne Braby

Next is GILBERT’S BOOK SHOP, the oldest book store in Hollywood.  It has been there since 1928 (although not with the same name), it was formerly The Satyr Book Store and began life actually around the corner on Vine Street.  They carry new and used books, mainly in the fields of metaphysics and astrology, and also push best-seller novels, first editions and fine sets.  You can also buy old movie lobby cards for $1.00 each on a bargain table near the door.  During World War II Henry Miller used to receive his mail here. Mr. Gilbert, the owner, is married to one of the daughters of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Don’t even think about finding any rare Tarzan books, Mr. Gilbert keeps them all at his house.

Proceeding west to Cahuenga and then taking a few steps south to 1952, you will find WORLD BOOK AND NEWS, a 24-hour newsstand.  The large display room also offers magazines and pocketbooks, with a generous selection of the latest comics stretching along the outside wall of the building.

A block away at 1638 N. Wilcox is BOND STREET BOOKS.  Owners Steve Edrington and Jim McDonald maintain a large stock of used and back issue comics, back issue magazines, and a good selection of movie stills and posters.  They’ve been in business here eight years and their crowded store contains lots of goodies.

Hollywood Book Service invoice. Collection of Paul Hunt

Hollywood Book Service invoice. Collection of Paul Hunt

HOLLYWOOD BOOK SERVICE  is also just south of the Boulevard, at 1654 Cherokee Ave.  The owner, Helen Hall, is the only woman bookstore owner in the Hollywood Boulevard area.  She started as a book scout but found that she had accumulated so many books that she had to open a store, which was in 1965.  With over 20,000 books, Ms Hall specializes in searching for out of print books, movie stills, posters, and magazines, used encyclopedias and sets of The Great Books of the Western World. There is a good stock of autographed movie stills, including George Raft, Cagney, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, and Edward G. Robinson.

Ms. Hall fondly recalled one of the most pleasant moments in her career as a bookseller.  She had once bought some books from a private school library, and as she was leaving the librarian gave her, free of charge, about 30 bound volumes of Railroad magazine  She took them back and set them on the floor of her shop, near the door, and the next day a customer walked in and purchased them for $250.  Now, if you could only have a windfall like that every day!

Larry Edmunds Book Store. Photo by Wayne Braby

Larry Edmunds Book Store. Photo by Wayne Braby

Back on the Boulevard again, we go into LARRY EDMUNDS BOOKSHOP.  This has the world’s largest collection of books and memorabilia on cinema.  Larry Edmunds died about 1941.  He had originally worked for the Stanley Rose Bookstore, but left Rose and went into partnership with Milt Luboviski, the present owner.

larry-edmunds-2

For you bookstore history buffs, Stanley Rose’s shop was across the street from present day Edmunds, in what is now a part of Musso & Frank’s Grill.  At the time, the 1930s, Rose was known as one of the most flamboyant of the Los Angeles booksellers.  He was a friend of the famous: Cagney, Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe were among his friends.  Rose was known to carry his satchel of fine books around town to personally show them (and sell them) to his high rolling customers, the movie producers, directors and stars.  He was also known to spend a lot of time at Musso’s, where he held court daily, as the expression goes.  Rose died after the war.

Larry Edmunds Book Store. Photo by Wayne Braby

Larry Edmunds Book Store. Photo by Wayne Braby

But back to Edmunds.  The shop has over one million items, including antique cameras and movie paraphernalia.  It is here that you will find the literature of the cinema:  books, biographies, sheet music, scripts, magazines, posters, press books, lobby cards, and so on.  A nice place to spend the summer!

Our last two stops are both on a side street, Las Palmas, a few steps south of Hollywood Boulevard.  The first is UNIVERSAL NEWS, another 24 hour newsstand.  They stock everything fro current magazines to out of town newspapers.  If they ain’t got it you’re in trouble!  A lot of Hollywood industry people stop here to pick up the latest copy of Hollywood Reporter, or the Racing Form.

Baroque Book Store. Photo by Wayne Braby

Baroque Book Store. Photo by Wayne Braby

Lastly, we come to BAROQUE BOOK STORE, which almost adjoins Universal News.  Owner Sholom “Red” Stodolsky specializes in modern literature, literary criticism, music theater, film, poetry and first editions.  You can get an added thrill to that exciting out-of-print tome you find by reading it while strapped into the electric chair that sits in the middle of the store.  Don’t worry about the volts, it’s only a make-believe mock-up from a movie set. (Who said that book dealers are eccentric?)

Now that you have the list, the only thing left to tell you is “Happy Hunting”, and I hope you are fortunate enough to have a bank account much larger than mine!