Paul Ayers, attorney, SoCal historian, and Altadena hiking trail expert and restorer (Paul on Facebook, Paul’s channel on YouTube) has shared many remarkable location discoveries over the years, including the Little Tramp’s walking-away-alone finale spot from Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus (1928). I’m happy to host guest blogger Paul’s amazing post regarding the lost LA trolley history appearing in an early silent film. Take it away Paul.

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The first silent movie location puzzle I solved for John involved a railway scene. In his initial work, Silent Echoes, John actually asked his readers for help with a location, specifically, that of the motorcycle-meets-train segment from Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. I had a fairly extensive library of out-of-print train books, and in one, I found that the shot took place in Atwood, a Santa Fe whistlestop in northeast Orange County. (Read about The Circus walk-alone finale and the Sherlock Jr. stunt HERE).

Since that time I have identified a number of rail-related locations. These include the use of the Ontario Southern Pacific station in Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman, the Santa Fe line between Inglewood and Redondo beach in Buster Keaton’s The Goat and Lloyd’s An Eastern Westerner, the Hynes Union Pacific station in Lloyd’s Girl Shy, and the Southern Pacific’s Tropico station, also in Lloyd’s An Eastern Westerner. It is not uncommon that when John has a railroad problem to solve, he gives it to me to work on. The latest puzzle and the subject of this blog is the attempted suicide-by-streetcar from Lloyd’s 1920 two-reeler, Haunted Spooks.

Beginning about nine minutes into the film, Lloyd learns that a girl he is infatuated with is being wooed by another man. Despondent he resolves to end his life. Happily he does not succeed but in his efforts to do so, laughs are generated.

One of the attempts involves standing in front of an oncoming streetcar; this plan is foiled when the car switches to a parallel track just before hitting him. It was the location of this scene that John asked me to identify.

Based on the locations that John had already identified, it was clear that the scene was shot in Los Angeles. Accordingly, it was a fair assumption that the shot utilized a line of one of the two streetcar companies operating in Los Angeles in the 1920s, the Los Angeles Railway [LARy] or the Pacific Electric [PE] Railway.

A primary difference between the two railways was their track gauge, which is the space between the rails. PE used standard gauge of 4’ 8 ½”, LARy used narrow gauge of 3’6”. It was apparent to me that the track seen in the footage was narrow gauge. As such, it was fairly certain that the car and track used in the scene belonged to LARy.

There were certain specific aspects of the setting which provided clues as to the scene’s location. Above, the track was laid in a single block with “T” intersections at both ends, and a slight incline.

At the lower end of the block, above, a streetcar appears moving in the background. Looking in this direction, at frame right, a park-like open space lined with shrubbery is seen; here we see children observing the filming.

Looking uphill beyond the street-side shrubbery, a bare road cut is seen, while above, buildings, with specific architectural elements, are visible.

You can watch the brief scene on this non-official YouTube clip starting at 9:46.

In addition to these specific clues, one general rule guided my efforts. Silent movie scenes which involved trains or trolleys usually took place on little-used or abandoned routes; the simple reason for this was that the rail companies did not want heavily used lines to be disrupted by filming. The Santa Fe line from Inglewood to Redondo Beach provides a good example of this rule in action. Originally opened as a tourist line to Redondo, this role had been supplanted by direct PE lines to the beach city and by the late teens the line had become a seldom used freight line. This and its proximity to Hollywood, made it perfect for filming, and it was used by such diverse directors as Keaton [The Goat], Lloyd [An Eastern Westerner] and D.W. Griffith [Intolerance]. Mary Pickford filmed here as early as 1912 for A Beast at Bay – read more HERE.

There followed a three month period of trying to figure out where in the LARy system the subject trackage was. Many locations were reviewed and discarded because they did not match the specific elements discussed above. Books and maps were pored over, internet searches and views of locations undertaken, all to no avail. Ultimately the solution came, as it often does, by taking a look at a resource which seemed to have nothing to do with the problem.

The standard research map for LARy lines is the 1938 route map; it did not reveal any trackage that satisfied the specifications of the scene. In taking another look at my rail maps I found a 1906 map (above) which I had not reviewed as feeling it too early to provide an answer to my problem. What it revealed was an extension to the LARy “C Line” which by 1938 had been abandoned, thus not on the 1938 route map. This extension ended on a single block run on what was then Echo Park Road (“the block”). The block had T intersections at either end; the southern intersection was with Temple Street, the northern with Bellevue Avenue.

The discovery of the C Line extension quickly led to confirmation of the single block (green line above) as the sought location by additional proofs. Just west of the block between Temple and Bellevue was the Echo Park Playground (green triangle above), an open area that matched the park-like area shown in the frame with Harold and the children. Temple Street, which formed the south end of the block had a heavily traveled streetcar line. Looking in the other direction, a road cut seen in the film matched that on the north side of Bellevue; somewhat amazingly, the road cut survives to this day. Finally, building elements seen in the film, above the road cut, matched structures, some of which still survive, on Kensington Road, which intersects with Bellevue just to the east of the block.

A 1908 map of the same block (red line) where Harold filmed beside the Echo Park Playground.

1938 view of Harold’s block (red line) on Echo Park Road – USC Digital Library

For context the north end of the Echo Park Playground and the prominent road cut along Bellevue at back. Harold stood far out of frame at right near the south end of the playground, with the road cut behind him and the playground to his left – Huntington Digital Library

Looking north – the extant home at 1128 W Kensington appears at back

1128 Kensington – matching 1920 view north and 1941 view east – c-7334_104 FrameFinder

In retrospect one of the challenges of finding the location was its absolute obliteration by the construction of the Hollywood Freeway in the 1950s; if Lloyd were standing in the same position as seen in the subject scene he might be dodging freeway traffic. Happily with the scene and the identification of its location we have a marvelous remembrance of a bygone Los Angeles.

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Thank you so much Paul for this amazing discovery. My book Silent Visions shows where Harold filmed other failed suicide scenes from Haunted Spooks at the Millbank Mansion at 3344 Country Club Drive, at Lincoln Park, and at Hollenbeck Park.

Below the scene location today – the stretch of Echo Park Road between Temple and Bellevue where Harold stood no longer exists.