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San Pedro’s Warner Grand Theatre has become more than just a revered 1930s...
The Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro during its 80th anniversary celebration in 2011. (Daily Breeze staff file photo by Steve McCrank) Jack L. Warner and his fellow movie moguls from Hollywood’s...
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The long, strange journey of Hermosa Beach’s Biltmore Hotel
Undated postcard shows the Hermosa Beach shoreline, dominated by the hotel. Noble Park on The Strand in Hermosa Beach covers a small city block directly adjacent to the beach. It’s a lovely little...
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Doak Aircraft Company embodied the value of innovation and entrepreneurial...
Testing the Doak Model 16 at Edwards AFB. From the U.S. Navy’s All Hands magazine, October 1959. Doak Aircraft Company operated in Torrance for only a little more than two decades, but the vision and...
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Greg Noll’s legendary surfing exploits began in the South Bay
Ten athletes, coaches and a broadcaster were inducted into San Pedro’s Sportswalk To The Waterfront in 2009. Inductee and former big wave surfer Greg Noll has a laugh at the start of the event. (Daily...
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Alpine Village: Bringing a bit of Bavaria to the South Bay
August 2016 Daily Breeze photo. In April 1967, a group of investors with German roots announced a plan to bring a bit of Bavaria to the South Bay. The members of the German South Bay Club Inc. planned...
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Bill “Tiger” Reese lived up to his billing as “The Voice of San Pedro”
Tiger Reese, a fixture at San Pedro High football games for 55 years, announces the San Pedro-Narbonne game in 2001 with the help of his longtime spotter Carlos Trevino, left. (Daily Breeze staff file...
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The Turtles began a meteoric rise to 1960s music stardom in Westchester
The Turtles in 1967 (left to right): Al Nichol, Chip Douglas, John Barbata, Mark Volman, Jim Tucker, Howard Kaylan. (Wikimedia Commons) Howard Kaylan was born Howard Kaplan on June 22, 1947, in New...
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King’s Hawaiian founder built an empire on those amazing sweetbread rolls
King’s Hawaiian Bakery and Restaurant in Torrance. (September 2016 Daily Breeze photo) Robert Rokuru Taira found his calling in Hawaii in the period after World War II, after serving in the U.S....
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Inglewood High School has had a long and sometimes turbulent history
Inglewood High School. (2014 Daily Breeze staff file photo by Scott Varley) Inglewood High School was founded when the new Inglewood Union High School District formed in 1905, three years before...
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Indie surfing documentaries found an audience in the South Bay before...
A surfer catches a wave during high surf at Hermosa Beach in 1963. (Daily Breeze file photo) In 1966, director Bruce Brown’s surfing documentary, “Endless Summer,” became a breakout box office hit. Its...
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Small track at Ascot Park played a big role in auto racing history
Ascot Park, August 1990. (Daily Breeze file photo) Motor sports of all kinds owe a great debt to Ascot Park, where all manner of engines roared for 33 years. The half-mile dirt track on 37 acres of...
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George Carson: Soldier, merchant, rancher and South Bay patriarch
George Carson. Undated file photo. George Carson had led a full life well worth chronicling even before he met and married Maria Victoria Dominguez and became the patriarch of one of the most important...
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Triangle Shopping Center occupied its own corner of Redondo Beach history
The Triangle Shopping Center in 1949, bounded by Hermosa and Pacific avenues bottom and top, and Beryl Street (left center). Buildings for the four major stores are in place, including Owl-Rexall...
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John Shidler and Rosemary DeCamp become a Torrance power couple
Rosemary DeCamp in a publicity still from the 1951 film, “On Moonlight Bay.” Rosemary DeCamp first met John Ashton Shidler in 1928, while she was attending Mills College in Oakland, Calif., and he was...
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Catalina Island builds an “Airport in the Sky”
The idea to build Catalina Island’s “Airport in the Sky” first was floated on April 8, 1930. D.M. Renton, general manager of the Santa Catalina Island Company, announced plans to lop off the top of a...
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Peeling back the layers of the Red Onion’s history
The Original Red Onion in Rolling Hills Estates is the last surviving restaurant in the chain. (November 2016 Daily Breeze photo) The man who brought the Red Onion restaurant chain to culinary...
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Why John S. Gibson has those places named after him in San Pedro
Councilman John S. Gibson, undated file photo. (Daily Breeze photo) If you’re driving down Figueroa Street south through Wilmington along the edge of the 110 Freeway, you’ll find that it changes its...
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On vacation
The South Bay History blog is on vacation this week. It will return on December 2.
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Wall mosaics in LAX passageways lead travelers home
Mosaic on the wall of the Terminal 6 passenger walkway at LAX. (November 2016 Daily Breeze photo) The mosaic starts with vertical strips of tiny tiles in different shades of blue on the wall to your...
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Film star Dana Andrews finds a home in Rancho Palos Verdes
Dana Andrews, undated 1940s-era publicity photo. When Dana Andrews moved his family – wife Mary Todd Andrews and their three children, Katherine, Stephen and Susan, to the Palos Verdes Peninsula from...
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