Schwab's Pharmacy

Schwab's Pharmacy was a drug store located at 8024 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, and was a popular hangout for movie actors and movie industry dealmakers from the 1930s through the 1950s. Like many drug stores in the United States throughout the mid-twentieth century, Schwab's sold medicines and had a counter serving ice cream dishes and light meals.

Schwab's closed in October 1983. Five years later, on October 6, 1988, Schwab's was demolished to make way for a shopping complex and multiplex theater.

In popular culture

Sidney Skolsky, a syndicated Hollywood gossip columnist for the New York Daily News who was the first journalist to use the nickname "Oscar" for the Academy Award in print, made Schwab's famous in the 1930s. He used the drugstore as his office, and called his column in Photoplay, the premiere movie magazine in the US at the time, "From A Stool At Schwab’s". A persistent Hollywood legend has it that actress Lana Turner was "discovered" by director Mervyn LeRoy while at the soda counter at Schwab's. While the 16-year-old Turner was discovered at a soda counter, the location was not Schwab's but another establishment, the Top Hat Cafe, further east on Sunset Boulevard at McCadden Place, directly across the street from Hollywood High School where she was still a student. The person who discovered her was not LeRoy but Hollywood Reporter publisher William Wilkerson.

External links

• LAistory: Schwab's Pharmacy