A Drive Through Bunker Hill and Downtown Los Angeles, ca. 1940s

There is no audio. Original source: www.archive.org...
Thought I'd put it on KZbin...

[@MrLalaxtc]

This is a completely different city and downtown than LA now.. All those Victorians and about 99% of those buildings are gone. Its all high rise office buildings now.. There is nothing recognizable in this video except city hall and the Biltmore... This video looks more like San Francisco..

[@gabrieldusk]

Los Angeles Public Library . It does look like San Francisco almost a twin city.

[@rhiannonrhiannon6285]

It's too bad...these buildings are so beautiful.

[@artdecotimes2942]

@@rhiannonrhiannon6285 so was the time, beyond words

[@robertchilders8698]

I got to live in one of those old " Victorian houses"?! They had cheap rooms to rent! some were into board and room houses in their last years! most all gone now!

[@andiroidYT]

This is the closest we are ever going to get to time travel (at least, to the past...) so if anyone else has old footage please get it digitized ASAP before it rots away. I'm thanking you on behalf of future humankind. Yes, I have that authority.

[@NeyooxetuseiDreamer]

+andiroidYT hahaha you must be new here on earth

[@andiroidYT]

śmierć matki I sense mental problems.

[@goku180000]

I very much agree with you, the closest thing we will have to time travel! I hope we can see more vintage videos soon

[@techno4ugeeks14]

andiroidYT well said im so thankful

[@m.d.grimes1622]

I'm responding to a comment that you made 4 years ago...now that's time travel. :)

[@Prospero510]

Absolutely wonderful to see this! Cannot thank you enough for posting this. It is just criminal that the real Bunker Hill is gone -- and our light rail, too! I think so often about this period, here, and it such a joy to see some little bit of it brought to life like this. Wow!

[@joparebr]

Wow the quality is amazing!

[@DeltaSniperZRR]

Where are all those wonderful classic cars now?... :(

[@AssassiNinja]

Yes! Cars from the 1910s and 1940s Needs to come back cause cars these days are ugly

Most likely in junk yards or crushed or in collectors hands.

[@rudolfschenker]

Right, they're ugly....not to mention 1,000 times more safe, reliable, comfortable, and efficient....

[@thomasmcginley7944]

Reliable my left nut! If a 2017 car blew a head gasket, it would be to expensive to fix because of all of the pointless computers & sensors would have to be reset. If a 1940s car blew a gasket, it would be an easy fix. And there was no charging ports, built in touch screen or any modern-day bullshit distracting the driver, not to mention no smart phones for texting & driving.

[@imloved53]

Mojo Risin in japan!!!

[@MensAsses33]

All of those apartment buildings and homes were razed. That's a big reason why we have the homeless problem today. Cities used to have an abundance of cheap residential hotel rooms for rent, you could arrive in a city on a train, and have a cheap room to stay in that night. No applications, no credit check. The next day, you could find a job, start right away. And the room you were in was totally affordable. People ate at the many inexpensive cafeterias downtown. All of that affordable stuff is gone.

[@robertchilders8698]

Very well said!! that is exactly why we have homeless today! 1 can remember renting a room for 50¢ a night. That's when we had " Angels Flight" and for upscale resturants- " Clifton's Cafeteria"! I can remember walking at night in "skid row" and feeling safe!

[@hebneh]

Obviously the 35mm professional movie camera that was shooting this footage was clearly visible, since the guy at 3:42 waves at it, and other pedestrians can be seen staring at it as well. This undoubtedly was filmed to use for back-projection in Hollywood film scenes with characters in what were supposed to be moving cars. Such backgrounds were particularly useful in this period of the late 1940s as film noir stories were especially popular - murder investigations, double-crossing gangsters, etc. in gritty urban settings.

[@RonDylewski]

Yes, I believe this was shot for rear projection "process" shots, which is why there are two angles; one for a two-shot of people sitting in the front seat and then a side shot for the CUs of the driver. I'm guessing they would have also done an angle for the passenger, but that's not included here. Bunker Hill was essentially the back lot for dozens of classic (and not so classic) noirs.

[@TheNickman217]

LA Noire

[@scott-mercer]

Prior to 3:30, every single thing visible was torn down except for the Second Street tunnel portal, seen directly ahead at the very beginning, and the Kawada Hotel at Hill and Second. I would say 95% of the visible buildings in this video were torn down.

[@gcrav]

Four 1947+ Studebakers, two 1947+ Chevy trucks, and one rumble seat hot rod. Charming old LA on the cusp of some really bad decisions about transportation systems. Coulda been a contender if they upgraded the municipal railway system instead of trashing it.

[@neildickson5394]

The first two cars are the dark Lincoln on the right, and the yellow Packard Clipper Taxi on the left. Imagine, a Packard as a cab?

[@lesterfrothinger3451]

Makes me wish time travel were possible.

[@AssassiNinja]

Yes I would like to go back in the 1910s and 1940s

[@jimdayton8837]

AssassiNinjaPlays I would like to go back to the 60's or 70's.

[@feelthespheal4480]

I would like to go back into the 1500

[@jimdayton8837]

Feel the Spheal Goodbye.

[@kaylaleave]

Lester Frothinger let’s make time travel possible

[@OSTARAEB4]

Most likely, this is 1947 to 1949. I don't see any 1949 Fords which are distinctive. The license plates are light in this B/W film. California's License plates were black background in 1945, and went to school bus yellow in 1947 were yellow background with black print. The 1940/41 Ford we see directly in back after the turn at 0:55 has this plate and the top right corner has what looks to be the silver and black year validation tab on the license plate. California switched to the black background with yellow letters in 1950. Like NY State and their plates from 1927 or so through to the mid-1980's with the red, white and blue "Liberty Plate", California, New York, and Pennsylvania basically had this color pattern on their plates back when states made and changed them every year. My guess is this footage is 1947, and definitely Bunker Hill area of Los Angeles. Tragic so many of those Victorians were gone by the early 1960's for the ugly corporate towers and building the Harbor Freeway which was probably sometime in the late 1940's, early 1950's.

[@ostaraeb4293]

MrSting17 Appreciate your reply MrSting. Boston is an amazing city. It's probably the most European of American cities and small enough to not be too big. The Universities and various colleges are quite amazing offering a vast array of studies. It certainly isn't the Red Light district by that forty-five year old Boston City Hall. I remember that ugly Central Artery.

[@kikiholland3695]

The funicular car is "Angel's Flight".

[@kikiholland3695]

Olvera St. isn't hard to find, it's walking distance from Union Station.

[@Grancino1697]

Closest thing to time travel. You can almost feel the suns warmth from nearly 70 years ago. All those people, never knew they were captured for posterity.

[@lincbond442]

This footage is close to 70 years old and it is the next best thing to stepping into a time machine. It was shot by Columbia Movie Studio in 1948 for the 1949 film "Shockproof" starring Cornell Wilde. Jim Dawson's "Bunker Hill" book goes into some of the specifics of this film clip. The book also discusses all of the films shot on and around Bunker Hill.

[@calady11]

Great video! My father lived in a rooming house in an old Bunker Hill home in the mid-1940's. In one part of this video I noticed a place I used to work at in the 1970's, so that was nice to see!

[@techno4ugeeks14]

calady11 ur lucky u grew up in a good era unlike my era the social network era self entitled idiots

[@gabrieldusk]

The film starts on Second st. going north makes a left on Grand, going south (MOCA) makes a right on 5th where The Los Angeles Public Library is, and makes another right on Flower going north. Such an amazing piece of Los Angeles Lost.

[@brucegibbins3792]

This is so darn fascinating, like I've just gone through the looking glass and found this wonderful place I had never seen before - just snips of background in period movies about private eyes and bad guys and hot dames, but who notices that at the time of viewing. Its the action out front that holds our focus and attention. Bunker Hill - once the choice location for the well-to-do, but by the time this film was shot, long inhabited by folks who had no choice at all. And then they tore it down. Fortunately for posterity we have access to wonderful film clips such as this one to look at and allow us to think of a time of long ago - I time we sometimes wish we could go back to or re-create for ourselves, but we can't.

[@patrickneylan]

Raymond Chandler's The High Window (1943): "Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town. Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows with spindle turrets … On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles."

[@davidolenick2280]

I wish some one would go back and make that trip again. I was mesmerized the whole time. I loved it.

[@TJamesBell]

They did. Here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jXqrl6CfqLJ_hbs

[@enna1913]

The L.A. of young Bukowski and Fante. Thanks!

[@annettezilinskas2384]

Yes! Fante's Bandini (his alter ego) lived at Alta Vista Hotel on the other side of the 3rd street tunnel.

[@benthemiester]

I saw a sign that said, "paint any car for $32.50" Wow. You cant even fill up your tank with that anymore.

[@aaronmarks4327]

No you didn't you saw rent a car $2.50 a day and a few blocks down you saw paint a car 32 paints

[@CaliBornNraised916]

true but 32 bucks back then could buy you a lot. Tricky thing we call inflation

[@edoardoruggeri1]

Things get more expensive with time but you also earn more. It's called inflation. Not even a company's CEO could reach a $100,000/year salary

[@edoardoruggeri1]

***** Yes indeed. Now if you make $135 per week you are among the poorest in the US

[@Veaseify]

***** He must have had a great job! If this is 1948 a dollar was worth about $12.50 today so it was $30 to rent a car in today's money, don't know if they had the Under 25 surcharge back then, probably not. There is another longer film where you can see gas for .25 a gallon and people were writing about how cheap things were but that was 1946 and the dollar was $12.80 in today's money so it works out at $3.20 a gallon..

[@kingz9916]

My mother moved to Rampart St near Downtown LA and actually worked in Downtown LA in about 1947. She probably road around these same streets during that era. Nice video.

[@724bigal]

Look at the asphalt! Its the same junk then, that is there now!!!!

[@neildickson5394]

There's a great old Dick Powell movie 'Cry Danger' from 1951. A lot of it was filmed on Bunker Hill. He actually lives in a trailer with sweeping views of LA. Unusual combination, today it would be a zillion dollar house. Lost LA?

[@jans2887]

Love that movie

[@davehowarth5710]

love the old gas stations

[@mikerossscuba]

I remember a lot of L.A. as a little kid, like the paddle traffic signals (3:39). This was a comparatively "clear" smog day in ' 40s L.A. For decades after, the smog got so bad on a "Stage one smog alert" that you couldn't see a half-mile. Back then, folks were allowed to burn their trash in back yard incinerators, and the leaded gasoline filled the air of L.A. with noxious vapors. Called the "Valley of the Smokes" by the indigenous peoples who lived in the L.A. "basin" centuries before the Spanish, the whole place is surrounded by what is known as a "temperature inversion layer," which trapped the smoke from early campfires to "modern" day pollution from factories and cars made prior to unleaded gas and catalytic converters. Just looking at this film, I can feel the intense, mind-numbing L.A. heat and the lung-searing smog.

[@Joskemom]

+mikerossscuba Anyone watching this film the day after this was taken would think "so what, what is the big deal". To see this film today, I was just fascinated and thanks for the history narrative. It is so cool to look back in history. On another youtube video it is showing the last few low rider cruises at the 6th street bridge. That is going to look wild 70 years from now.

[@TheLadyjazzy1]

+mikerossscuba now it's just CHEMTRAILING 24/7.

[@ultrakool]

mind-numbing and lung-searing. lol Yeah, but L.A. was no bigger than modern day Tucson, in the 40s. Late 70s L.A. was truly pre-EPA, lung-searing. lol

[@scott-mercer]

Go away useless brain.

[@chichi41]

Actually, those traffic signals were called Acme's.

[@RoyAH.]

I always wave back to the guy at 3:42...

[@terminatorkid1997]

Same

[@gabrieldusk]

Amazing piece.

[@techno4ugeeks14]

RAH ! Lol

[@ura239]

NO GANGBANGERS IN SIGHT!...

[@aaronmarks4327]

there's some a 4:15

[@mikevalley2892]

Aaron Marks Well at least there aren't hoards of illegals hanging out on the streets like there are now.

[@bago510]

Mike Valley Man you're a Racist fucking Moron. White supremacy is a sick disease.

[@ura239]

NO I WENT 2 SCHOOL iN DOWNTOWN LA BUT I WAS NEVER A PART OF ANY GANG BUT THERE WAS PLENTY IN JEFFERSON HS.

[@ura239]

DONT FORGET THAT ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE THE ONES THAT DO ALL THE DIRTY WORK ASSHOLES. YOU OUGHTA BE THANKFUL THEY ARE AROUND INSTEAD OF FUKN HATING THEM AND TRYING 2GET RIDDA THEM .... PLUS THIS ALL USED 2B MEXICAN TERRITORY.

[@Vwjl1207]

I drove the exact route while this video was playing. Grand Ave from 2nd to 5th seemed much longer back then. I drove pretty slow but I always reached 5th much sooner than the video. I wonder why? Great video. Kind of haunting too since most of the buildings are gone.

[@JuanCarlos-vf5xg]

LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA . GREAT PLACE TO LIVE SINCE THE 1920 'S TO 1960 "S. 40 YEARS AND AFTER THAT DOWN THE HILL .

[@JuanCarlos-vf5xg]

DOWN THE TUBE.

[@Vettejocke]

This is awesome footage. What I'd like to know is who made these videos? Was it a city organization? Because I have seen videos like these documenting L.A. from the 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s and they all follow the same format.

[@neildickson5394]

I wondered what that was as I thought aside from city hall, LA had no tall buildings to speak of back then. But, that looked like a pretty imposing building.

[@ChrisGirard]

Grand Ave. used to look a bit like Van Ness Street in San Francisco had it not been razed. The only thing I recognize about this Bunker Hill is how wide the road is. I wonder if anyone could have imagined that building rows of lifeless and insular office cubes would have obliterated a neighborhood and the sense that it is on top of a hill. Such a botched plastic surgery! At least this is one of the few places in LA that has no traffic now thanks to that wide road.

[@metronome9848]

Cole Phelps

[@nathanhanretta2060]

+Metronome nope don't even try

[@deving3306]

+Metronome Optimistic, Cole.

[@michelle.pearl.]

Badge 1247

[@Piwork69]

I recognized Grand as it passes the AT&T building and makes a right on 5th Street.

[@cjb1951]

Who might still be alive in this footage? Maybe the young girl walking with her mum @ 2.32 mins or the young boy walking up to Angels Flight Pharmacy @ 2.48 mins, I guess they would be both in their early 70's if still alive.

[@ASSAULTREBEL1]

Christopher Brown my grandma would have been about 28 years old. She just died last March and was 99.

[@barebarekun161]

My grandmother would be in her late teens during this time but then again she's not living in LA. She's alive at 93. '

[@Nidwayy]

Awesome quality

[@christopher_contreras]

Damn awesome video it's so clear and a fine image of the United States we will never see again and awesome v 8 manufactered vehicles

[@muiscnight]

what car is that at 4:35 I wish classy cars were still popular now. Everyone wants angry looking cars with black wheels lol

[@jimdayton8837]

It's a '47 Mercury. I agree with you, cars used to be classy. My favorite cars are from the 60's-70's. Nowadays cars are overpriced plastic junkers.

[@jimdayton8837]

***** Looks like a '39 or '40 Lincoln.

[@ostaraeb4293]

+Mr Eighty, It is not a Lincoln but a regular Ford which looks like a 1946 or perhaps a 1947.

[@jimdayton8837]

OSTARAEB4 No, no, no. It's definitely not a 46 or 47 Ford! If it's not a Lincoln it might be a '40 Ford.

[@ostaraeb4293]

+Jim Dayton , Sorry Jim. Are we talking about the follow car as I assume? It is not a 1940 Ford as they were more noticeable. It is a basic nondescript 1946 or 1947 Mercury. At about 4:13 along the curb is a Buick. Lincolns of the time had a much more solid and masculine looking grille.

[@DonDraperism]

This is the closest we're going to get to time travel, at least for now. Saw the area my grandparents lived when we were kids in the late 60's. Nice to see again.

[@edwardjames50]

No exceptions. The ENTIRE Bunker Hill area was razed in the '60s, in the name of "progress". Even these streets are gone, and the hill itself was lowered by forty feet. What was a unique, charming neighborhood is now the site of homogenized glass and steel cereal boxes. It was forced on the city by fat-cat beaurocrats who saw the opportunity to line their own pockets with many millions as a result, while destroying irreplaceable history and displacing people who called the neighborthood home.

[@Handiman544]

Be careful what you wish for. Back in the 40s, life expectancy for males was like 52, we didn't have a lot of antibiotics so many people died of diseases that have been wiped out today. You had to conform or you were made fun of or discriminated against. Women were relocated to the kitchen. Smoking was rampant and legal everywhere. Don't even talk about racism, that was a given.

[@zombywoof4603]

The RCA Victor TV ad features a mule and an elephant sparring with boxing gloves, and reads "Pick a sure winner!" That means it's an election year, before November. The ad for the "Hollywood Bowl Symphonies Under the Stars" has dates July (something) to Sept., 5 - which matches the 1948 Summer Program. The woman pictured even looks like Kathryn Grayson. The "smog" people are talking about is probably the typical low cloudiness - the marine layer - you get in the LA Basin in May and June. So, I'm going to go with June, 1948. Also, for the people who are romanticizing this neighborhood, this is this is how Raymond Chandler described this part of town in the Phillip Marlowe novel The High Window, in 1943: Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town. Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows with spindle turrets. They are all rooming houses now, their parquetry floors are scratched and worn through the once glossy finish and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and with cheap varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles. In and around the old houses there are flyblown restaurants and Italian fruitstands and cheap apartment houses and little candy stores where you can buy even nastier things than their candy. And there are ratty hotels where nobody except people named Smith and Jones sign the register and where the night clerk is half watchdog and half pander. Out of the apartment houses come women who should be young but have faces like stale beer; men with pulled-down hats and quick eyes that look the street over behind the cupped hand that shields the match flame; worn intellectuals with cigarette coughs and no money in the bank; fly cops with granite faces and unwavering eyes; cokies and coke peddlers; people who look like nothing in particular and know it, and once in a while even men that actually go to work. But they come out early, when the wide cracked sidewalks are empty and still have dew on them.

[@zombywoof4603]

Another reason I'll go for June: The shadows are very short, meaning it's noon near the summer solstice.

[@johnhardman3]

Two of the very last Bunker Hill houses, known as the "Saltbox" and "The Castle" ( the latter can be seen in the 1955 movie "Kiss Me Deadly") were put on trailers in 1969 and moved away to a preservation site, where they were promptly destroyed by arsonists.

[@Tecun85]

This is unbelievable, I'm awed by the sights, the architecture, the people, and the ambiance in this video. It's a miracle that the individuals who knowingly (or unknowingly) made this, had the foresight and sense to document what LA was like 70yrs ago for those of us who came after. We owe these and other preservationists a debt a gratitude for giving us a window into what life looked like in the greatest city in the world in the early part of the 20th century.

[@TomYpsilanti]

What a treat to see the great cars running around when they were late models. I liked catching a glimpse of the two nicely dressed young women briskly crossing the street at about 2:20. The apartment buildings are straight out of _The Maltese Falcon_ or _Double Indemnity_! Not to be a buzzkill but is that smog you can see off towards the horizon? Thanks for posting!

[@cfrazier822]

For some strange reason, this video makes me want to watch "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" again.

[@johnathanriley8202]

Yea bro I love that film LA Norie is the modern equivalent

[@naughtmoses]

Mom and I used to take the (Pacific Electric) red car into this area in the late '40s. I went to work there in 1963, just after so much of it had been bulldozed, and the then new Music Center was opened directly north of what is now the Disney Theater at First & Grand. Things had gotten =very= seedy from Hill west and south from Temple Street. The Pasadena-Harbor (710) Freeway was built just to the west. The old neighborhood had character, though. The "new" stuff (since the late '60s) seems so sterile, cookie cutter and artificial.

[@classiclife7204]

11 year old video, but I have to say: this looks so much better than those frankly atrocious "colorized" versions in which all the cars are purple (and then turn to khaki as they fade in the distance). Beyond that: this is the working-class neighborhood LA's corporate vultures were calling a "slum" in the 40s. The vultures wanted this primo real estate, pure and simple, lied about its true nature, and "cleared" it, evicting untold thousands.

[@roberthull93534]

Los Angeles was a beautiful place at one time. Then they tore down everything for progress. It’s really terrible now.

[@MrDave54321]

City leaders work for the developers, who construct soulless buildings to replace the homes and buildings that defined the character of a neighborhood. All in the name of "progress".

[@stationofdreams8242]

Utterly mesmerizing

[@MySpace662]

Amazing footage of the past, thank you for sharing it.

[@oldi184]

Indeed and Europe was torn by war at that time but here so calm.

[@MySpace662]

It's calm because the United states had entered the war in 1941

[@canuckjoe227]

Many of you have wondered exactly when this film was made. I wondered too so I studied it carefully and decided it was made in December 1947. Below are my reasons for reaching this conclusion. It was only two years after World War II. Watching the video, I spotted five 1947 Studebakers, two 1948 Chevrolet trucks and three new 1948 Ford F-Series trucks in the whole video. I found a single Kaiser-Frazer product, a 1946 or 1947 Frazer. The other brand-new models from GM, Ford, Chrysler, Packard, Nash and Hudson are not seen at all in the video and the reason is that their new models had not come out yet (Except for Packard; their new cars began arriving in the summer of 1947. Unfortunately, no ’48 Packard is visible in the film). Likewise, I could not find any new-model Hudson or Nash. The Big Three’s new designs were not yet in showrooms, most arrived as ’49 models. The brand-new 1948 Cadillac and Oldsmobile 98 were the first two all-new designs that General Motors manufactured after the war’s end yet none are visible. These models sold well the instant they started arriving in dealerships in January 1948, one month after this video was shot. The brand-new, first-ever sedans Kaiser-Frazer manufactured were put together throughout 1946 - 1 of these cars is seen in the video (a Frazer) Studebaker began making new post-war bodies in summer 1946 - 5 are in video Packard had new bodies starting in summer 1947 - But none are visible in video Chevrolet Trucks had new bodies in summer 1947 - 2 are seen in video Ford F-Series trucks came out in November 1947 - 3 are in video (at U-Drive lot) Dodge B Series light trucks arrived sometime in 1947. 1 is seen near end of video New Hudson models came out in December 1947 - This was about the time video was made. None are seen in video, however The first GM newly designed models, the Cadillac and Oldsmobile 98, came out in January 1948 - They’re not seen in video Nash did not come out with new bodies until the 1949 model year - Of course, none are in the video Most vehicles seen in video were designed in 1938 or 1939 but, when the war started, manufacturers turned to the War Effort and car manufacturing stopped circa 1941 or 1942. After the war, the 1938-1940 designs were manufactured until a year or two after the war (Independants) or the 1949 model-year (GM, Ford and Chrysler). For those who like old cars, here are the exact times when every post-war model I found appears in the video: 0:53 - A 1941 Lincoln Zephyr begins following camera car. The taxi is a Packard Clipper, probably 1946 1:07 - 1947 Studebaker 1:17 - 1947 Studebaker (parked) 2:01 - 1947 Studebaker (parked) 2:16 - 1948 Chevrolet truck (black & white, in raised parking area) 3:20 - 1947 Studebaker - black car in building’s parking area 3:25 - 1948 Chevrolet pickup - black 4:04 - 1947 Studebaker (light color, hard to see behind a black Dodge) 4:06 - 3 brand-new 1948 F-Series Ford Trucks, a white panel next to wall, a dark stake body and a dark cube-style 4:10 - 1946/47 Frazer sedan, at right, seen from the rear. A 1947 Mercury sedan starts following camera car 4:30 - 1947 Studebaker - rear view, light color 4:48 - 1947 Chevrolet pickup at left 5:09 - Beneath Winton Building, car at extreme right could be a new model but I can’t see it well enough to decide. 5:15 - The strange-looking truck parked at left is a 1940 Dodge of the ‘cab over’ engine body style 5:58 - 1948-model year Dodge or Fargo panel truck - New post-war design just out at mid-1947 As this film was made 74 years ago, a baby born in 1947 would be 73 years-old in 2021, 10 year-olds would be 83, 20 year-olds would be 93 and so on. It’s probably a safe bet that all people aged 25 and over in the film have passed away, unfortunately, as they would all be about 100 years old at present. Downtown L.A. sure did not look very hilly to me when I drove in the city in 2002. I remember leaving Rodeo Drive and driving straight to the Downtown area. Mostly flat terrain from Beverly Hills to the skyscraper cluster, if I remember correctly and, if there were hills in the downtown section, I simply cannot remember them. Readers who want to identify a particular vehicle can tell me the exact time and I’ll do my best to help.

[@zombywoof1072]

This is rear projection footage used in a driving scene in the 1949 movie *Shockproof*. Compare: 0:45 of this video, and... kzbin.info/www/bejne/aGO6pIKMqp2Vmpo ..

[@MensAsses33]

The top forty feet or so of Bunker Hill was bulldozed away in the late 1950s or early 60s. Streets used to be steeper.

[@brennc9594]

Oh wow! This is awesome and amazing. I remember all of this before most of it was demolished for buildings that sit empty. I used to go downtown with my mother every Saturday and shop at Grand Central Market, Ted's and Giant Penny Store. It seems as if nostalgia has gotten the best of everyone on this site and sounds as it everybody prefers it the way it was. Just give me back Bullock's, May Co. and the Broadway and i'll be happy.

[@kap3bake]

interesting thing is downtown in the 80s was alot closer to this than it is today. It didnt change much until the 90s when it just boomed

[@amateurphilosopher]

It would be interesting to re-shoot this film today, using the exact same route and camera angles, then run them side-by-side.

[@EdwinG310]

i just love this video y'all. I've lived in L.A for 22 years, came here for college but this city's grown on me. Love everything bout it. This old footage proves to me, that just as them folk we see goin' about their business right here 70 years ago...we too, we just passing thru. Just passing thru son

[@dadduorp]

My gawd! For all us LA history buffs this is like stepping into a time machine! It's incomprehensible to see that all of those beautiful Victorian and Craftsman buildings were reduced to dust. As if a nuke bomb obliterated EVERYTHING that's seen in this footage! Many MANY thanks to the person who uploaded this!

[@mime1926]

Theres a 1947 Mercury car in it travelling behind the POV...and a ad for "Symphony Under the Stars" at the Hollywood Bowl (5.43).

[@mime1926]

Starts on second...turns left onto Grand.

[@ninja1676]

This is our grandparents childhood and teenager hood

[@hiok2050]

Literally 90% of the historic buildings shown here have been demolished

[@johnhardman3]

Public money was used to pay for the demolition via post-WW2 housing laws.Areas were often labelled as slums by local politicians to so that the valuable inner-city land could be freed-up for the sterile drive-thru tracts of company towers and glass/concrete boxes replacing the neighbourhoods where people could once walk the streets without being arrested or shot.

[@Johnnywhamo]

No box stores or franchises, Epic. .

[@strangersound]

This is incredible! It's like a Shorpy photo come to life. :)

[@ahramsong]

yeah,it's better than now.

[@andiroidYT]

+Jimmy Song ....if you were a white middle-income male. For everyone else, now is better.

[@jjcooks7401]

I think he was talking about the overall lack of ruckus, less traffic, nice architecture. Everyone benefits from those things.

[@andiroidYT]

Jason Willis Less traffic, much more pollution, dirty unsanitary buildings, etc etc. Almost nothing was better then than it is now.

[@jjcooks7401]

The buildings were not dirty or unsanitary. Maybe some were but that wasn't the status quo. That's just what developers tell you when they want to tear down a beautiful hotel from the early 1900s and replace it with a parking lot. I could go on about urban sprawl and how that's ruined the character of our cities. But I'm typing in my iPhone and don't feel like it. All the old timers say it was better then. I believe them. But different strokes for different folks.

[@veggiedisease123]

LA is 100% worse off now that we've demolished Bunker Hill. When the city destroyed Bunker Hill, it lost its character.

[@PhillipPacheco]

Fantastic. Being an L.A. native, these have great meaning to me. Thank you.

[@ELconchesumare]

I would hate to live in these times. Everything would be black and white.

[@davedesmond7288]

As a car buff for nearly 60 years (with particular interest in North American autos of the 1940 thru 1960s), I can state that this drive was clearly filmed in the latter half of 1947. 3 or 4 of the new 'coming or going' Studebakers, introduced in May '47; plus an all-new Kaiser, released a few weeks later. Hudson, the next all-new post-war car, was only intro'd in December '47. Not one of THOSE big babies visible on the LA streets in this fascinating vintage drive…Anyone who DOES see one in this clip, I'll happily admit I was wrong!

[@kevinelliostar]

You are correct. Rear-projected backdrop for car scenes in the 1948 movie, "Shockproof"

[@quicksilver3x3]

Love this; the ladies at 2:18 remind me of my mom as a young adult making her way in the world away from Minnesota for the first time. Those 2 look like her and her friend and they were that age and in LA/Hollywood right at that moment. Amazing footage all, thanks for posting.

[@tmac8892]

forget it jake. it's Chinatown.

[@MoeGreensRightEye]

Wrong decade

[@AJ74ever]

This is fantastic. Amazing. Wonderful. My parents were young adults at this time and it's moving to see what the world looked like for them. Thank you!

[@RobertoLopezstudyis]

Those buildings and streetscapes were beautiful back then in Los Angeles! Those were the best times to visit and to live and that wonderful city in California!

[@bowlyyougottobelieve]

2:05 - Schloesser Apartments at 2nd & Olive featured in the Kubrick film "The Killing"

[@OSTARAEB4]

LOVE Los Angeles City Hall. Cannot get enough of seeing that building. It's simple in many ways, yet so majestic. Is the Lindbergh Beacon still operable? I think it's the most beautiful building in the entire city.

[@edwardjames50]

As info, that's because this was filmed to be used as a rear-projected backdrop for car scenes in the 1948 movie, "Shockproof". They needed coverage of the same areas for two different angles, in the rear and the side, depending on where the camera was placed while Cornel Wilde was "driving" a mock-up car in the studio.

[@kevinelliostar]

omg its true i found it on youtube

[@ezequielbanuelos4016]

It's looks so much like L.A. NOIRE!

[@billybob7947]

is this smog...fog ...or is it just because its black and white

[@BiggestUnicorn]

Thank you for posting this ... Wow! ... Great old cars and scenery, indeed.

[@blsi4037]

Notice how it looked similar to San Francisco...

[@ackamack101]

I swear the building at 2:05 was used in Stanley Kubrick's 1956 film, The Killing. Same entrance, same slanted street. I probably wouldn't have recognized it if it wasn't in black and white. It looks just like the film.

[@johnnyb4187]

You are correct. You can see the 2nd st. tunnel crossing and city hall here and in the movie also. It's 2nd Street and Olive intersection not 504 Olive as in the movie.

[@misteraxl1]

So it was really realisticly remade in L.A. noire :D

[@kz1000ps]

Amazing quality on this video and also amazing how clearly it shows a slice of Los Angeles that has been completely obliterated. Bunker Hill, we never knew ye...

[@Gabriel-cf7dp]

L.A. Noire!

[@user-sm8zw4bj8q]

I wish I can go back in this time to visit this old part of LA, but then again, a person from the year 2018 will be huge in 1900.

[@nobody9126]

[ Kɪʀɪᴛᴏ ] I wish that too I can only pray to god to make it happen

[@terryasheim9038]

Check out the kids driving by in the hot rod at 1:47

[@MichaMontreal]

FABULOUS! I watched this with another KZbin window open, playing "Hit Parade USA 1942 - Top 10 - DanntaS". Perfect. Thank you SO MUCH for uploading this treasure.

[@packardcaribien]

This makes me want to dig up LA Noire

[@genebigs1749]

Amazing footage! Thanks so much for providing it .

[@ThePowerPlayz]

Eric S: I greatly appeciate this upload. While my first memories of Los Angeles are in the mid-1950s, much of what is shown in this clip is familiar to me. There are things for which I am nostalgic (relaxed pace, low prices, low wages), there is much that I much that I do not miss (overt racial bigotry and poor air quality--can't help but notice that sunny southern California was under a metallic-tasting haze).

[@jourwalis-8875]

Thank´s for uploading! This turning of the camera from going uphill to going downhill is quite amazing!

[@bacuss2112]

Wow, this is sooo cool!!! ... that guy that waves looks like he was a cool dude..

[@jhonsalchichongt3634]

*SOLO PUEDO PENSAR EN JOHN FANTE* 😢😞😭😭😭😭😭😭

[@allynmyers2708]

ask the dust

[@AridersLifeYT]

the guy waving to the camera at 3:42 - !!!

[@AridersLifeYT]

This video is oddly satisfying.

[@chewybunz]

Lots of Bunker Hill footage in the extras in the DVD of the 1950s film THE EXILES, which was shot in the neighborhood.

[@annettezilinskas2384]

Yes. A lot on Main Street were the bars they visited. Some still standing!! I think the couple lived in the Sunshine Apartments on Bunker Hill. She went to the Roxie movie theatre on Broaday, also still standing.

[@chewybunz]

@@annettezilinskas2384 What's inside the Roxy now? Can't recall what its marquee looks like.

[@rubystaging237]

it was better back then , but because there was less people inhabited the earth

[@davidcross701]

I see dead people

[@allanfisch]

Thank you for the lovely footage. The comments, not so lovely. I guess if I want to hear racism and homophobia, I'll read youtube comments. Sheesh.

[@wendileona]

I figured out where they/I was at at 3:23 - PacBell/AT&T Building! Then Biltmore and Central Library! Glad they kept those three. BUT... At Flower and 5th as they turn back North on Flower at 4:04 and I'm convinced... they improved the area. The sad thing is that the City of LA forgot to modernize the rest of Downtown! They forgot to raze ugly decrepit Downtown, Downtown.. that whole Broadway area, Hill... its still there and it looks like this but worse! Why!? - G

[@stevengallanter665]

The classic film noir KISS ME DEADLY is set in Bunker Hill.

[@caroljewell4936]

I remember the bus ride from Burbank to downtown los Los Angeles. the fumes getting in bus from windows opened. I tenner after we got off bus was so dizzy and my brother was throwing up a d pale as a ghost. comes of leaded gas from the bus.was good old days but not so good. I do not paint a perfect pic of Los Angeles then. I'm glad I now live in country. 1949 not so good in Los Angeles. I do remember fun we had touring all sights but glad we moved away in 1953. Emogene

[@Tampanda]

amazing the clarity of the footage

[@Craiglaca1]

I see they still had smog back then

[@LandondeeL]

It was from 1947 or after. At 4:25 there is a billboard advertisement for RCA Televisions. And L.A.'s first TV station, KTLA, didn't sign on until January 22, 1947.