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Bohemian Los Angeles

University of California Press

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...................................................................................................ixIntroduction / Traversing the Hills of Edendale.........................................................................1Prologue / A World Left Behind..........................................................................................211 / "A Most Lascivious Picture of Impatient Desire".....................................................................412 / Together against the World: Self, Community, and Expression among the Artists of Edendale...........................773 / 1930s Containment: Identity by State Dictate........................................................................1154 / Left of Edendale: The Deep Politics of Communist Community..........................................................1515 / The United Nations in a City: Racial Ideas in Edendale, on the Left, and in Wartime Los Angeles.....................1896 / Getting Some Identity: Mattachine and the Politics of Sexual Identity Construction..................................231Conclusion / The Struggle of Identity Politics..........................................................................269NOTES...................................................................................................................283ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.........................................................................................................343INDEX...................................................................................................................347

Introduction

HIGH ON A HILLSIDE OVERLOOKING Los Angeles' Silver Lake Reservoir stands the Villa Capistrano, the former home of film and vaudeville sensation Julian Eltinge. Built in the late 1910s with a typically Angeleno combination of Spanish, Moorish, and Italian elements, Eltinge's villa once commanded the surrounding area like a baron's manor. At the time, the neighborhood bore the poetic name of Edendale, and it bustled with the comings and goings of the early film industry. The topography undulated with little hills and valleys, and its roads twisted and bent, following the curve of the reservoir or the slope of an incline. At some points the streets billowed out into vistas, offering brilliant views across the plains of Los Angeles and out to the Pacific Ocean. At other points, where the hills were too steep, the streets simply stopped, replaced by stairwells that continued their climb.

Few homes sat near the gardens of Eltinge's villa. The tower and terraces and the estate's high perch on the hill spoke loudly of wealth and security, and they exuded a sense of unprecedented celebrity at a moment when movie stars were first coming into existence. According to one local chronicler, Eltinge "was one of the first actors to establish a palatial home in Los Angeles," and the press was captivated by its construction, tracking even the building materials that were being used. One film buff claimed that around the house there "gathered the scent of scandal," but even that was an exotic and alluring scent: local realtors promoted their developments by their proximity to the villa, and in the 1920s you could purchase a postcard with a picture of Eltinge's manor to impress the folks back home.

Today, though, Eltinge's villa hardly dominates the landscape. It sits crowded in with homes beside and beneath it on the hill. The neighborhood it overlooks, now called Silver Lake and Echo Park, beats with the seemingly new pulse of a vibrant creative multicultural scene. There is a steady line for bands playing on Santa Monica Boulevard. The Silver Lake Film Festival, launched in 2000, attracts larger and larger audiences with its music, video, and film presentations. The gay bars on Sunset-like the Mexican restaurants and dance halls down the way-fill regularly with men and women out on the town. And the houses and apartments are teeming, it seems, with screenwriters, painters, architects, and performers struggling to craft and create. In such a context, Eltinge's home-let alone his life-seems insignificant, unrelated to the hip bohemia that surrounds it: just another time-worn house on a hill.

Much the same could be said on the opposite side of the country, in the heart of New York City's new 42nd Street, where Eltinge's presence remains as another forgotten shadow. There on the corner of 8th Avenue, the AMC movie chain operates a twenty-five-screen multiplex out of a beautiful vaudeville theater that Eltinge built in 1912 with two business partners. In fact, in 1997, AMC lifted and moved the Eltinge Theater 168 feet so that its broad terra-cotta faade, triumphal arch window, and domed auditorium could serve as the lobby for their new multiscreen extravaganza. Now as moviegoers ascend the escalator to their screen of choice, they ride beneath three portraits of Eltinge painted onto what was once the proscenium arch of his stage. But Eltinge floats there unnamed and little noticed.

That Eltinge lingers, standing watch over Los Angeles' contemporary bohemia-and hovering in the heart of New York's theater district-makes a certain sense. In the world of vaudeville, Eltinge was as successful as they come. According to some estimates, his weekly income in 1912 exceeded even that of President Taft. Indeed, the theater that was moved down the block had been financed in large part by the income he generated during his four-year run starring in The Fascinating Widow, a show written specifically for him. And Eltinge's success was hardly only local. His vaudeville shows toured the country and the world, garnering him fame and fans. He was invited both to perform for the king of England and to star in several early Hollywood films. Eltinge's success certainly warrants his standing guard at the center of the nation's cultural and performance centers.

Nevertheless, Eltinge is not a vaudeville or film star who is well remembered at the start of the twenty-first century: neither his home nor his theater is celebrated as a vestige of his life. Unlike figures such as Al Jolson, Fatty Arbuckle, and Louise Brooks-whose stage stardom and brief film careers burned them into the national consciousness-Eltinge's name and career have been lost to popular memory. And they were not lost by accident. Eltinge's career is not remembered sixty years after his death because Eltinge was a particular kind of performer-a kind that made him a star in the 1910s but whose mode of performance was scorned by mid-century and largely forgotten at century's end: Eltinge was a spectacular female impersonator. A tremendously talented performer, he brought laughter to his audiences by portraying young men in straits so dire that they could be solved only by his disguising himself as a woman, and once in that guise, he astonished them with the beauty, style, and glamour he revealed. He was hardly the only female impersonator pounding the boards at the turn of the century: such performers were a much-enjoyed staple of the vaudeville world. But he was at the top of their class: the best paid, the best known, and the best regarded, even by those who normally had little patience for such performers. And the three figures floating in the 42nd Street theater are portraits of Eltinge at work, at the height of the career that was to be...