Los Angeles Visionaries Association

The fabulous Robbie Cress over at the Dear Old Hollywood blog revisits the actual locations featured in the Judy Garland version of "A Star is Born. "

What a treat to look upon '50s era Los Angeles with new eyes, treating the background landscape as the main attraction.

Did you know that the Jack in the Box at Cahuenga and Sunset was once a big deal drive-in with car hops and everything, called Roberts Drive-In? It's where Norman Maine finally tracks down Esther Blodgett.

Kinda weird and cool that the drive-in was replaced by a drive-tru, but sad that Jack in the Box was too inflexible to reference its predecessor in design or ornamentation.

Quentin Tarantino has been called many things in Los Angeles. But the moniker "home town hero" may fit best.  On February, 19, 2010, the Hollywood Reporter shared the news that  Tarantino had provided financial aid to the New Beverly revival theater, and L.A. landmark, when it was in danger of closing.    New Beverly's owners had a right of first refusal/negotiation option to buy the building themselves but had difficulty raising the cash. When its landlord announced that it had found a willing buyer for the building, Tarantino, who had been semi-quietly paying the theater's $5,000 rent since 2007,  stepped in and purchased the building outright.

Like many native Angelenos, Tarantino had spent formative years at the New Beverly, absorbing classics and hard to find flicks. It's nice to know that those trips to the New Beverly instilled an appreciation for old theaters. Perhaps he's saved the L.A. theater in recompense for blowing one up in "Inglourious Basterds." 

NYC-based, young adult author Melissa de la Cruz, a California native, made a quick trip to Los Angeles last week. Coincidently (or not), Warner Brothers just bought a pitch by RJ Cutler to direct the movie adaptation of her book, Au Pair.  Drew Barrymore's Flower Films will be producing.

de la Cruz visited a small Catholic girl's school, the Ramona Convent Secondary School, in Alhambra. Usually, Southern Californian youth benefit from the area's proximity to the pop culture industry.  This time,  it sounds like Hollywood benefited from one school girl's persistence

it took Esther Leung, 17, a senior at Ramona and a big fan of the "Blue Blood" series, nearly two years to nail down a date when the De La Cruz could visit the school.