If you live on the eastside of West Hollywood, the news helicopters start buzzing overhead around noon every Oscar Sunday and don’t stop for hours. On the westside, traffic detours and park closures pile up for the parties. Annoying? Sure. But I suspect most of you reading this feel like I do: it’s worth it. Our city has a deep association with Hollywood’s biggest night and I take pride in that.
West Hollywood didn’t become a city until 1984. But by then it was already a century deep in Oscar history.
At the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Formosa Avenue, where The Lot at Formosa now stands, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks established their studio in 1919 on a site that had been in production since 1912. Together with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, they founded United Artists and renamed the property United Artists Studio. I live nearby and never tire of the feeling when I walk by that our city holds such an important part of Hollywood history within its borders.
Samuel Goldwyn eventually took control. The lot turned out Wuthering Heights, Guys and Dolls, Some Like It Hot, and West Side Story. Frank Sinatra had a bungalow on the property, recorded several albums there, and did his variety show there. His bungalow still stands. In 1977, after George Lucas wrapped principal photography on Star Wars at a studio in England, he came back to West Hollywood to reshoot the Cantina scenes. The sound facilities on that lot earned multiple Oscar nominations and several wins. It’s that kind of place.
Warner Bros. bought the site in 1980. Private investors took over in 1999 and renamed it The Lot. Today it’s The Lot at Formosa, and HBO signed a 10-year lease in 2021 occupying all seven sound stages. Miramax moved in as its new headquarters in January of this year, buying a library of United Artists and Goldwyn films going back to 1919. More than 100 years later, the same corner is still where Hollywood gets things done.
Oscar Gold, Shot Right Here
The corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Formosa Avenue has more Academy Award history than most people walking past it will ever know. The Best Years of Our Lives won seven Oscars including Best Picture in 1946. West Side Story won ten, including Best Picture, in 1962. In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture in 1968, and the lot’s own sound department took home Best Sound the same night. Wuthering Heights was nominated for Best Picture in 1940. So was The Little Foxes in 1942. Some Like It Hot earned six nominations in 1960. Stagecoach won two Oscars in 1940. The Gold Rush. Scarface. Robin Hood. All of it. Shot right here in West Hollywood.
The Method on Santa Monica Boulevard
If you head west, a half a mile or so, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd. holds a former bank and now a Hollywood institution — Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. The world-famous establishment moved in during the 1970s, after starting on Hollywood Boulevard in 1969. Strasberg came out from New York to work with students. Al Pacino trained there. So did Robert De Niro, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Alec Baldwin, Angelina Jolie. The building sits just west of Fairfax. Every major studio in town is a short drive away. Every serious actor wants in.
Swifty’s Party at the Strip
Irving Paul Lazar. The talent agent known by most as “Swifty.” Rumor has it he got the moniker because he closed three deals for Humphrey Bogart in one afternoon. He’d been doing his Oscar party since 1964. It started out as a small dinner at the Bistro in Beverly Hills, then one year at Tavern on the Green in New York, then various spots. He found Spago, in WeHo, and never left. Some could argue the event helped to put West Hollywood on the map. It became the place to be on Oscar night in Los Angeles. No argument, no competition. Through the years the guest list included every icon under the stars. One observer put it plainly at the time: “In this town, if you want to have power, you create something that everyone wants. And everyone wanted to go to Swifty’s party.” Lazar hosted it until his death in December 1993. He was 86. The original Spago closed in March 2001. It still sits mostly empty. There’s no plaque. No sign of what once was. A true miss, if you ask me.
Spago has its own history to tell. Puck opened at 1114 Horn Avenue in January 1982. Opening night, Rolls-Royces on the Strip. For a generation it was Spago’s (and Morton’s) right here in West Hollywood that held court as two the Hollywood’s most popular eateries to see and be “scene.” The building had been Cafe Gala before that, back in the 1940s. First gay bar in West Hollywood. Cole Porter was there regularly. Judy Garland. Cesar Romero. Puck took the lease and it became something else, but that corner already had four decades of history in it.
Vanity Fair Picks Up the Thread
Steve Tisch and Graydon Carter launched the Vanity Fair Oscar party in 1994 as a direct successor to Lazar’s event, starting at Morton’s in West Hollywood. When Morton’s closed, Carter moved it to the Sunset Tower on Sunset Boulevard in 2008, where it stayed until 2014. The guest list had grown past 1,000 people by then. West Hollywood kept running out of room.
The Vanity Fair party has left WeHo entirely, this year moving to LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries, a $750 million building designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor that isn’t scheduled to open to the public until April. Oscar night is its public debut.
The One That Stayed
While Vanity Fair packed up and left, one Oscar night institution remains. The Elton John AIDS Foundation viewing party is in its 34th year overall today. It started in 1993 at Maple Drive Restaurant in Beverly Hills, eventually moved to the Pacific Design Center and at some point in the early 2010s crossed the street to West Hollywood Park, where it has been for more than a decade. The City of West Hollywood has been a co-sponsor since 2004.
West Hollywood Park gets transformed every year for it. Tents, pink walls, pink everything, big screens for the Oscar broadcast, a live auction, a concert. This year Lola Young performs. Tickets run thousands of dollars and it’s invitation only.
A Century of It
West Hollywood has never been where the Oscars happen. It’s been where Oscar history gets made. Pickford built a studio here in 1919. Strasberg shaped a generation of actors here starting in 1969. Swifty Lazar made Spago the most important room in Hollywood every March for nearly a decade. And Vanity Fair spent 30 years searching for rooms grand enough to match what WeHo had already been doing informally for a century.
Tonight the trophies go to the Dolby. The history stays here.
The Sinatra bungalow was knocked down a few years ago. Heard that the studio property was split up in the Fairbanks-Pickford divorce, and she left her side to the city for a park, but ended up being the DWP substation. The bungalow overlapped the property line.
Wonderful article….before the Lot became Pickford Studios it was Hampton Studios, build by producer Jesse Hampton:
Hampton Studios (1912–1918): Jesse D. Hampton built the original studio, moving his operations from East Sunset Boulevard.
Hampton Ave. is named after him.
Brian, you state: “This year the Vanity Fair party has left WeHo entirely…”. This year? No, the Vanity Fair party left WeHo a few years ago to the Wallis Annenberg in Beverly Hills. Shoddy fact checking.
Speaking of THE LOT. The north side, facing Santa Monica Blvd, is in definite need of a face lift. It has become an eye sore. I would think they have the money to do something about this.
It wasn’t spotty fact checking, it was poor phrasing. I moved the “this.” Thank you for pointing it out, much appreciated.
They repainted the north side (facing SaMo Blvd) about two years ago. It made all the difference. Something as simple as a refresh of the paint was a game changer. As to be expected — within a year or so it was covered in soot from the traffic. Nothing a basic power wash can’t fix. Why they don’t have something as cost effective and easy to do as part of their regular maintenance boggles the mind. The City requires billboards to be cleaned and maintained regularly. Why not this landmark that takes up a city block. Riddle me this?
Let’s not forget that the owners of The Lot wanted to demolish much of the historic frontage of the studio. I was also curious about the Strasberg address and although I didn’t find a bank, it has a rich history of a couple of cafes in the 20’s and 30’s, photography studio and auction house. The big meal for 25 cents caught my eye on newspapers.com, a great resource for history!
Demolish threat was in 2012 by the way.
The Vanity Fair Party was THE Big Ticket event for apres-Oscars. It took years, until 1985, for the City to figure out we needed to publicize the fact that all of these great parties were in West Hollywood rather than Beverly Hills. I remember meeting the late Robert Duval while he was taking in his trash cans in the Norma Triangle. When I lived on Huntley, the Beverly Hills Madame was still conducting her business (off site) in the house across the street. Tourists used to flock to the Hyatt on Sunset to see the comings and goings of Little… Read more »
Brian-
Thank you for the gay bar backstory of the original Spago and The Lot’s important place in cinematic history!
Way back in the late ’70’s I used to live in an apartment at the corner of Formosa and Willoughby. Once I was standing in front of the Formosa Cafe waiting for the traffic light to change when I saw people driving by and cheering and honking their horns. I then turned around and saw that they saw Buddy Ebsen just exit the cafe. He waived and walked over to the then Samuel Goldwyn studios. Years later the Formosa Cafe would be featured in L.A. Confidential.
The Formosa was the spot where all the stars working at the lot met after work for drinks.
I’m not surprised that it was. As I remember I was on my way to a gym that I belonged to that was located on Hollywood Blvd & La Brea. It was called the Holiday Spa. Back then I was working at a prop house in Hollywood. I used to walk to work from Formosa & Willoughby to SMB & Bronson Ave.
Ha, I live in that building now, still standing!