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Echo Park was the original center of the film industry in Los Angeles, before the studios moved to Hollywood just before World War I. Mack Sennett’s studio was located in Echo Park until the end of the silent era, and a large number of silent comedies were shot in the neighborhood, as were several Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Our Gang, and Three Stooges shorts. Tom Mix also built his studio here, just over the hill in the Silverlake area, and many Westerns were shot in hills of Echo Park, East Silverlake and the Elysian Hills. Some of the earliest screen performers, including Gloria Swanson and Tom Mix bought homes in the Angelino Heights and surrounding neighborhoods before also moving to Hollywood and other areas. The area has continued to be used as a location for films such as Farewell, My Lovely, Echo Park, Mi Vida Loca and Quinceanera. The 1960s television series Gilligan’s Island was shot in the area as well as scenes in Michael Jackson’s 1982 music video Thriller, as were parts of the original 1953 film version, The War of the Worlds. The Manor, a house in the television series Charmed, is also located here. The area is popular with modern filmmakers for the pre-World War II look of some districts.
Before World War II Echo Park was a middle class neighborhood, nicknamed “Red Hill” for a concentration of political radicals living there. Postwar flight to the suburbs resulted in Echo Park becoming overwhelmingly Latino; although other ethnic groups have always had a presence in the neighborhood. Many working-class Chinese immigrants have settled in Echo Park due to its proximity to Chinatown, and the area overlaps the Little Manila district of Los Angeles, home to thousands of Filipinos, and a small enclave of African-Americans has existed there, east of Alvarado Blvd. and west of Bonnie Brae Street, since the 1920s. Renowned 70s beauty queen, actress and model, Veronica Porsche, third wife of boxer Muhammed Ali, came from this neighborhood. Since the early 1900′s, Echo Park has been known to attract the creative, underground, independent, and iconoclastic elements of society. Famous artist residents have included such luminaries as writers Leo Politi,Carey McWilliams, and Ayn Rand, painters Carlos Almaraz, and Philip Dike, famed muralist Kent Twitchell, actors Anthony Quinn, Steve McQueen, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Webb, actress Ann Robinson, king of the Hollyood “gorilla men” and designer and builder of the Martian in George Pal’s The War of the Worlds, Charles Gemora, architect and Richard Neutra disciple, Harwell Hamilton Harris, book seller and art dealer Jake Zeitlin, famed wood engraver Paul Landacre, opera singer Marilyn Horne, conductor Henry Lewis, jazz great Art Pepper, film director John Huston, African-American playwright, poet and screenwriter, Lemar Randle Fooks, as well as Edward Middleton Manigault, who exhibited the nation’s first exhibtion of modern art. The painter Jackson Pollock, also made his home here as a child.
Echo Park was also home to Art Ingals, who in 1956 built the first Go-Kart in history out of a store front on the 1900 block of Echo Park Blvd, and who started an industry that counts over 1 million competitive racers and several million weekend enthusiasts world-wide. Professional baseball player, Luis (Lou) Gomez, who had been an outstanding prep star at Belmont High School, played for the Minnesota Twins, the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Atlanta Braves during the 70s and 80s, resided here as well. Baseball immortal Babe Ruth himself maintained a bachelor’s pad at the Crown Hill apartments in South Echo Park for much of the 20s and 30s.
Jerry Rubin, famous American social activist and member of the Chicago Seven, lived here and ran a legal and civil rights office on the south-west corner of Echo Park Avenue and Sunset Blvd. for much of the 70s and 80s. In 1993, the movie Mi Vida Loca was filmed in Echo Park. This movie described the Latino gang culture in the neighborhood at the time.
The commercial district along Sunset Boulevard suffered greatly in the 1950s from the condemnation of the residences in nearby Chavez Ravine to build Dodger Stadium. The area in the immediate vicinity of the park itself became seriously beset by problems with drugs and gangs in the 1970s and 1980s. During the 1960s and 70s, the area became known as a hippy enclave, and attracted many young musicians, artists, and craftspeople. Some residents during that era included J.D. Souther & Glenn Frey of the Eagles, Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, and Frank Zappa. The writer and poet Charles Bukowski was known to frequent the local dives, as did actor, Reservoir Dogs and movie tough-guy, Lawrence Tierney. The hilly northern part of the district that is adjacent to Elysian Park is called “Elysian Heights” and has always maintained a genteel character.
In recent years the neighborhood has experienced a considerable amount of commercial and residential gentrification, attracting gay pioneers, musicians, artists, young singles and entertainment industry workers, as well as a variety of new clubs, restaurants and retail storefronts along Sunset Boulevard and Echo Park Avenue. Echo Park has become the new center of an underground fashion scene with boutiques popping up all over Echo Park Ave. A new generation of young home buyers has moved into the area the past 5 years. Finding that they had been priced out of the upscale neighborhoods of Silver Lake, Atwater Village, and Los Feliz, they have flocked in droves to the still reasonably priced and picturesque green hills of Echo Park. There has been a good deal of resentment on the part of the original longtime residents, a diverse mix of old hippies, 50s Reds, radicals and intellectuals, actors, craftsmen, Latinos, Filipinos, Greeks, Jazz musicians, city workers, retirees, bikers, surfers, Eastern European immigrants, and film and television workers, as many have been priced out of their homes and communities by white yuppies, a phenomonenon documented in the movie Quinceanera. As property values have increased across the border, many previous residents (overwhelmingly Latino) have been evicted from rental units in favor of settling yuppies (overwhelmingly White), creating a degree of wealth among previous home owners but displacing the majority rental-unit dwelling population.
In 1969, Keith Barbour recorded a song titled “Echo Park”.
