New: Old Hollywood History Tour

Bone up on the fabled city's past during a walk-around, tidbit-filled outing.

Perhaps, in the past, while calling upon Hollywood Boulevard, either to attend a movie, sip a martini, or accept an Oscar, you said to a friend as you passed by the storied, decades-old structures something along the lines of "if these walls could talk."

Silicon Valley hasn't yet introduced an app for wall-talkery, though, surely, that will be quite the hit one future day, as people rush to get it, eager to know what their home's opinion of them.

But, for now, we rely on tale-packed tour guides to intrepret what the walls might have to say and what the walls have seen.

The latest tour in Tinseltown, the Old Hollywood Walking Tour, is a new venture from the Hollywood Entertainment District. It's an every-last-Friday-of-the-month deal, and it runs about 90 minutes, from 10 a.m. right through to 11:30. One bonus: There'll be a Saturday morning tour on June 17.

The focus of the tour? The years 1886 through 1960, and how, "in fewer than 50 years," Hollywood's story sent it from citrus-sweet burg to starry center of movieland. (Surely that, itself, sounds like a screenplay.)

Price? It's twenty bucks, and you'll need to make an advance reservation. Things you can expect to see? "The first tourist attraction in Hollywood" as well as the "oldest remaining residence on the Boulevard."

April Brooks Clemmer, a member of the Hollywood Heritage Preservation Committee, is the knowledgable guide.

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For a peek at some of the places you might strut to while calling upon one of the world's most famous small towns, there are photographs, and further to-knows, at this site.

For a chance to hear walls talk... Well, an app may be a little far down the road on that. But tours that illuminate characters and places go a long way to connecting the thread of time in our history-loving, Hollywood-happy minds.

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