Hollywood’s festive Santa Claus Lane was rebranded “Boulevard of the Stars” for the 1932 holiday season. Instead of the traditional Christmas tree decorations trimming Hollywood Boulevard’s lamp posts, 178 famous faces from the motion pictures festooned the mile-long stretch from La Brea Avenue to Vine Street.
The glamorous theme was announced by Hollywood business leaders at a luncheon held in the forecourt of the Egyptian Theatre on October 28. A week later, Claudette Colbert unveiled the prototype: an oil painting of herself framed in a five-foot silver wreath, topped by a miniature Christmas tree and pair of red stars, each three feet in diameter.
At Hollywood and Highland, Joan Crawford and child actor Jackie Cooper could be found at the southwest and northwest corners, respectively. Mary Pickford was featured in front of the Roosevelt hotel, which she financed in 1926 with her husband Douglas Fairbanks whose nearby portrait shared a lamp post with Greta Garbo.
Across the street, Fredric March and the cast of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Sign of the Cross” clustered around Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Similarly, Universal Pictures promoted “The Mummy” with Boris Karloff’s portrait outside the Egyptian.
The stars of Warner Bros. lit up the block around the studio’s theater, with comedian Joe E. Brown on the corner at Wilcox.
On the east end of the Boulevard of the Stars, Western film actor Tom Mix in his trademark ten-gallon hat kept a watchful eye on Vine Street, across from Clara Bow and Rex Bell’s shared lamp post on the southwest corner. The Hollywood power couple would go on to open their popular It Cafe inside the nearby Plaza Hotel five years later in 1937.
Some stars were reportedly amused by their placement on the Boulevard: Marlene Dietrich in front of a “cut-rate” drug store; Clark Gable by an automobile park; Tallulah Bankhead outside a travel bureau.
Ginger Rogers was somehow left off altogether. To make up for the oversight, Mervyn LeRoy, her director on the set of The Gold Diggers of 1933, commissioned a replica and gave it to the actress as a Christmas present.
To incentivize people to check out all 178 portraits, the Hollywood Boulevard Association held a contest to see who could identify each film star—not just correctly, but creatively.
More than 20,000 entries poured in, everything from simple letters to an elaborate miniature of Boulevard of the Stars noting every actor’s placement with a battery-operated streetlight system. Built in 10 days by Beachwood Drive resident Porter Featherstone, it was dedicated to Thomas Edison “whose genius made possible the brilliance of the ‘stars’ on Hollywood Boulevard,” read an inscription.
Leading up to the awards ceremony at the Egyptian on January 13, 1933, the most clever submissions were displayed in the theater’s forecourt.
In first place with 484 points (out of a possible 500) was Ruth Estella Michaels, a five-and-dime salesgirl who won $100 (approximately $2,500 in 2024) as well as a screen test with a studio for her hand-painted pictures of the Hollywood holiday exhibition. Featherstone’s miniature took the second-place prize, a large electric radio clock worth $280; third-place Mary Jane Stenger received a chair donated by Barker Bros.; and in fourth was Dorothy Dubrow who earned a silver set for being the only person to accurately name all 178 stars.
Boulevard of the Stars didn’t bring yuletide cheer to everyone. Local newspapers were inundated with letters lamenting the decision to turn Santa Claus Lane into “Publicity Lane” for the sake of film studios.
Others criticized the artistic liberties taken with the portraits that “even the mothers of the stars couldn’t recognize,” Stacy Kent wrote in Movie Classics magazine. “We thought the one of Clark Gable had a distinctly jaundiced appearance … All in all, we thought the Mickey Mouse portrait was the most life-like. That was one picture we knew instantly, and didn’t think it might be George Arliss instead of Mae West.”
***If you can identify either of these film stars, please leave a comment! I think the actress could be Elissa Landi...
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