Christmas Then and Now. And Then Again.

How Gangster Squad was almost my favorite Hallmark Christmas movie.

In Antebellum Hollywood—that is, back in those gracious, genteel days before the War on Christmas—the city fathers would really tart the place up. Illuminated tannenbaums were impaled on every lamp post, garlands of tinsel, dripping with stars and snowflakes and mug shots of Santa were strung across the street like huge, garish charm bracelets, and quaint wooden street signs would officially, if temporarily, change the name of Hollywood Boulevard to "Santa Claus Lane." Here's a taste of what the place looked like during the Christmas season of 1948:

And the reverse angle from 1950:

In 2011, my wife and I were living just a few blocks west of Grauman’s Chinese Theater when Hollywood (the metonym) took over Hollywood (the gritty and often disappointing tourist trap). The makers of a movie called Gangster Squad dressed up the Boulevard in its vintage holiday finery for the first time in half a century, so pardon me while I throw a little stardust in your eyes...

As you can see, they recreated the lamp-post Christmas trees and the street-spanning garlands. The glass cases outside the Chinese Theater contain lobby cards for She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Red River, so this sequence is clearly set in 1949, when John Wayne went through a phase, not unlike Picasso's Blue Period, in which he would only star in films named after primary colors.

Across the street was a green screen a half block long. In the 40s and 50s this stretch was the site of such iconic Hollywood night spots as the Seven Seas nightclub, so I was eager to see what the computer graphics people would put in place of the Hooters and the Baja Fresh.

The reconstituted trees in front of Grauman's were highly detailed, down to those old fashioned, egg-shaped light bulbs. But opposite the theater...

...they only built half-trees. I hope I haven't spoiled the illusion for you, and that nobody is having a fit like Sidney Greenstreet at the end of The Maltese Falcon, clawing at their computer screen and wheezing, "Fake! It's fake!"

Eventually, they brought out the picture cars, which were driven up and down the block by Teamsters in full period regalia, including fedoras. Which raises a question that—as a Golden Age film aficionado—has always puzzled me: why the hell did men wear their hats while driving? I mean, it's not like they were going to get sun stroke in the car. Was it a rule of the road, like the seatbelt law, or were they all like Indiana Jones, stapling the thing to their forehead every morning before leaving the house?

A Sunbeam Bread truck and an old Pacific Electric Red Car perform a little world building in the background.

Alas, I never got to see the Hollywood Boulevard sequence, which reportedly climaxed with the bad guys standing behind the screen of the Chinese Theater and firing into the audience with Tommy guns. On July 20, 2012, while Gangster Squad was in post-production, one of America’s many non-fictional assholes stepped inside a theater in Aurora, Colorado during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opened fire. Twelve people died, and another fifty-eight were wounded.

The film’s release was held up while new scenes were hastily conceived and shot, but the studio eventually panicked and wound up dumping the big budget, star-studded production into multiplexes during the cinematic graveyard month of January. But for one brief, shining moment, the tinsel came back to Tinseltown.

We'll leave you now with this disturbing image of Santa, courtesy of the Art Department, which reminds us that occasionally, while working the graveyard shift, the Dream Factory turns out a Nightmare.

Programming Note: Our Annual Holiday Special features a particularly egregious movie this year, so please check back in on Monday, December 23, and share the hate.