Out of the Shadows: A Hollywood Theater Impresario Emerges from LA’s Notorious Black Dahlia Murder Case

The middle-aged theater owner who preferred a discreet lifestyle suddenly found himself in the media spotlight only ten days after the Black Dahlia’s murder. Someone had gathered Elizabeth Short’s personal items stored in the Greyhound bus depot in Los Angeles and mailed them to a local newspaper. Among her belongings – which had been soaked in gasoline to obscure any evidence – was a “little black book” containing more than 75 names, including those of Hollywood personalities. On its cover the name Mark M. Hansen was emblazoned in gold letters.

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At 58 years old, Mark Hansen’s freewheeling Hollywood lifestyle began to unravel. The Los Angeles Examiner had announced that “a wealthy Hollywood night club and theater owner” should be investigated in connection to a recent murder that rocked the city.1

Hansen’s troubles began on January 15, 1947, when a nude body of a young woman was found in a vacant lot in a Los Angeles suburb. Although the city was no stranger to sensational murders, this one was particularly gruesome: her face was severely beaten and her mouth had been slashed from ear to ear in a satanic smile. The killer had drained the victim’s body of blood and had washed and scrubbed her clean. But most shockingly, her body had been severed in half through the abdomen.2

Mugshot taken of Elizabeth Short 1943 for underage drinking. Courtesy Santa Barbara Police/Wikimedia Commons.

The victim was 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, also known as the “Black Dahlia.” Elizabeth, or “Betty,” was an attractive brunette lured by Hollywood’s dazzling lights and stories of fame and fortune. She was raised in Medford, Massachusetts, and like so many young women who ventured to Tinseltown she dreamed of becoming an actress. While in Hollywood, she had briefly roomed at Hansen’s bungalow or “boardinghouse” on Carlos Avenue. Detectives had a hard time tracing her movements because she drifted in and out of motels and boardinghouses and never really held a steady job. Short instead lived off the generosity of casual acquaintances and boyfriends, one of whom may have been her killer.

Hansen’s bungalow was across the street from the imposing First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood.3 Hansen had rented rooms to young women down on their luck along with aspiring dancers who might audition for his nightclub. But the middle-aged theater owner who preferred a discreet lifestyle suddenly found himself in the media spotlight only ten days after her murder. Someone had gathered Short’s personal items stored in the Greyhound bus depot in Los Angeles and mailed them to a local newspaper. Among her belongings – which had been soaked in gasoline to obscure any evidence – was a “little black book” containing more than 75 names, including those of Hollywood personalities. On its cover the name Mark M. Hansen was emblazoned in gold letters.4

Short’s murder occurred during an era in which both prosperity and despair defined a postwar Los Angeles. Sandy beaches and year-round sunshine beckoned visitors to a sprawling landscape of glamour and palm trees, while nightclubs, dope rings, prostitution, and gambling thrived in its steamy underworld. Bullet-riddled bodies and police corruption made headlines along with the married lives and opulent mansions of movie stars. Hollywood movies mirrored the contradiction with themes of romance and optimism in The Harvey Girls (1945), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), and Miracle on 34th Street (1947), while the offbeat and low-budget B or noir films The Lost Weekend (1945), The Naked City (1948), and He Walked by Night (1948) revealed the underbelly of urban life.5 Yet, for all the popularity of crime and violence depicted in Hollywood’s film noir and sensational press coverage of individual murders, Los Angeles homicide rates actually fell to a low from the end of World War II until the mid-1960s.6 Hearst-owned newspapers nonetheless capitalized on public fear with front-page headlines like “Unsolved LA Crimes Ripped by Grand Jury” accompanied by photos of seven women (including Elizabeth Short) whose gruesome murders were never solved.7

Perhaps naively, Hansen walked into this urban paradox. His double life embraced both a risqué nightclub of attractive girls and a traditional family nestled in a secluded canyon home. In a bizarre event that resembled a noir movie plot, Hansen became a victim when a disgruntled nightclub dancer looking for fame shot and wounded him. Several months later, an investigator told the Los Angeles deputy district attorney that Hansen’s numerous real estate holdings and association with a Hollywood nightclub and girls like Elizabeth Short could invite blackmail.8

Over several decades, the tragic murder of Elizabeth Short has spawned its own consumer industry. A TV movie with Lucie Arnaz and a later Brian De Palma film have appeared, along with the Black Dahlia video game and the Black Dahlia Murder death metal band. James Ellroy’s 1987 novel invited a number of true-crime spin-offs from John Gilmore to Donald Wolfe. Many have speculated on the killer’s identity, including former LAPD detective Steve Hodel, who accused his father, Dr. George Hodel, of Short’s murder. Only recently has Mark Hansen’s name resurfaced. Piu Eatwell’s Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America’s Greatest Unsolved Murder (2017) argues that former hotel bellhop Leslie Dillon was the murderer and Hansen was his accomplice. Where other writers see a massive bungle in the murder investigation, Eatwell believes that the LAPD instead covered up Dillon and Hansen’s involvement.9 Eatwell’s book’s revised edition is due out this fall. A follow-up Rolling Stone interview mentioned that the late Conwell L. Keller, former member of the LAPD’s Gangster Squad (a special unit targeting organized crime), believed that Hansen didn’t act alone but was in fact the real killer. Mary Pacios, author of Childhood Shadows: The Hidden Story of the Black Dahlia Murder (1999), initially suspected that Hansen murdered Short but concluded that actor Orson Welles killed her.10 Regardless, evolving Black Dahlia conjectures, conspiracies, and speculations have enshrouded Hansen’s status as a prominent theater and nightclub owner, prompting Hollywood historians to take another look.

Ad page including Three Little Pigs Inn Club, Hollywood Filmograph, Jan-Feb 1933. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Hansen’s lucrative theater business indeed had won esteem among Hollywood’s elite. As “Hollywood’s noted impresario,11 Hansen was president of his own theater chain and later business manager and co-owner of the Florentine Gardens, a swanky Hollywood nightclub featuring a host of musicians, showgirls, and trapeze artists. His extensive real estate holdings included the Three Little Pigs Inn Club and the Cabin Club, both “neat and orderly” dance gardens offering affordable food and beer.12 Hansen owned not only movie theaters but office buildings and car dealerships along Hollywood Boulevard.13 The savvy businessman was also community minded: he joined the newly formed Rotary Club in Oxnard, California, then became a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks Lodge #99 in Los Angeles where he helped the fraternal society organize entertainment.14

For a Hollywood man-about-town, Hansen was rather ordinary in appearance. He was a marked contrast to the rather flamboyant Sid Grauman (1879-1950), former vaudeville impresario turned owner of Hollywood’s most opulent movie palaces. Grauman had laid a cement forecourt at his celebrated Chinese Theatre where movie stars could plant their hand- and footprints. He never married but loved to stage lavish movie premieres and hobnob with Hollywood’s rich and famous.

Unlike Grauman, Hansen avoided the spotlight. His movie houses were local or neighborhood theaters: the Marquis Theater in West Hollywood opened in 1925 and boasted 1,800 seats and a $30,000 organ,15 but absent were lavish premieres with high-intensity searchlights crisscrossing the night sky and movie stars arriving in stretch limousines. In 1915, Hansen married Ida R. Nelson, whose parents, like Hansen’s, were also Danish, and the couple had two daughters. At 5 feet 8 inches with a slightly chubby frame and weighing about 165 pounds, he had blue eyes that peered underneath his dark bushy brows and a prominent sharp nose. His light brown hair began to turn gray as he approached middle age, and he spoke with a Scandinavian accent.16

Mark Marinus Hansen arrived in New York City on March 25, 1910, aboard the steamship Lusitania. The huge ship, made famous when the Germans torpedoed and sank it off the Irish coast in 1915, had previously shuttled passengers across the Atlantic to New York via Liverpool. He was 18, unmarried, and a steerage passenger during the six-day crossing. Hansen was born on July 25, 1891, to parents Maren Katrine and Søren Christian Hansen in Aalborg, a small town that lies in northwest Denmark.17 By the 1900s many Danes saw opportunities with America’s swift industrialization, and their Western European and Protestant roots afforded them easy assimilation into US society. One of Hansen’s contemporaries, actor Karl Dane (1886-1935), hailed from Copenhagen, and the two celebrated a birthday party singing Danish songs.18

Hansen’s life in America would resemble the rags-to-riches stories of the early Hollywood moguls. His humble background as a saloonkeeper in the rural agricultural communities of Montana and North Dakota was far from the bright lights of America’s movie capital.19 But by the early 1920s, he would manage his own movie theater in Minneapolis and then travel to the scenic coastal community of Oxnard, approximately 60 miles west of downtown Los Angeles.20 At the turn of the century, Oxnard was mainly an agricultural town with a large sugar beet factory. But its growing workforce rapidly attracted businesses that brought hotels, fraternal organizations, saloons, concert halls, and an Andrew Carnegie-funded library to the commercial downtown area. Within a decade, movie and vaudeville theaters sprang up along with an opera house.

The owner of Oxnard’s opera house was Guy Douthwaite, a successful theater proprietor later credited as building the first drive-in theater in California. Douthwaite sold Oxnard’s opera house to Hansen, who hoped to turn it into a vaudeville theater. But the building’s dilapidated state suffered a series of arson attempts: in 1922, a fire permanently damaged it, including $6,000 worth of Hansen’s equipment.21 When representatives from the Robertson-Cole Studios traveled to Oxnard to discuss opening a studio near the town’s sand dunes, the Chamber of Commerce was not interested. “I worked my head off trying to get local men interested in building a studio either in Oxnard or toward the sand dunes,” Hansen bemoaned. “I think we made a mistake not going after this business a little stronger than we did.”22

Undeterred, Hansen purchased the Lyric and the New Victory theaters in Oxnard. He scooped up major studio releases like Robin Hood (1922) starring Douglas Fairbanks and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), accompanied by a seven-piece orchestra, four violins, and 100 leather-bottom chairs. Scaramouche (1923) with Ramon Navarro and Alice Terry screened at the New Victory and was the movie’s first showing outside of LA.23 The town was amused when the New Victory premiered The Arrival of a New York Financer in Oxnard (1923), which featured many local citizens including Mark Hansen as a taxi driver. His good fortune apparently brought rewards: Hansen purchased a “handsome new Hudson coach” and proudly drove it around town.24

Hollywood soon beckoned. Oxnard local newspapers closely monitored Hansen’s initial foray into the movie industry while they bragged about how their small-town boy was “turning into a real promotor.”25 By 1923, he purchased the Larchmont Theatre for $60,000 with a seating capacity of 1,000 and added the Marquis and the New Western.26 He also owned or controlled the Burbank (formerly the Victory Theatre), the Fox Arroyo, and the Knoll.27 His coup was the Mar-Cal Theatre (later spelled Marcal) on Hollywood Boulevard, just two blocks east of the famed Hollywood and Vine intersection.

The Marcal was like a second home to Hansen, and he never parted with it. The theater, whose name was an amalgam of owners Mark Hansen and silent screen actress Alice Calhoun, opened in 1926 and was designed by Los Angeles architect William Allen. The Marcal seated approximately 1,500, and its early California architecture featured an interior with pastel shades of old rose, gold, and blue along with a modern ventilating system. Two sections of the mezzanine were completely enclosed in glass – one for theater parties and the other for a smoking room.28 When “talking” pictures arrived, the Marcal was the first theater to include Qualitone – a low-cost synchronized sound-on-disc system for smaller independent theaters.29 Cecil B. DeMille’s The Godless Girl (1928) and Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) screened at the Marcal along with a few oddities like Elysia (Valley of the Nude), a 1934 exploitation documentary of a nudist colony. The movie’s racy content prompted the city’s vice squad to apply adhesive tape to cover revealing lobby photos and serve Hansen a two-day notice to pull Elysia.30

But Hansen knew that controversy generates business. By the 1950s, the Marcal had long passed its heyday as a first-run house and instead relied on revivals and special screenings. The theater needed a box-office draw and found it with Salt of the Earth, a story about labor unrest in a New Mexico zinc mine. The problem was that the movie was made by a small group of blacklisted Hollywood Communists, so no local theater would touch it. Nonetheless, Salt opened at the Marcal on May 20, 1954, and ran for 11 weeks, earning over $30,000. In fact, the film’s Los Angeles run was the longest in the US notwithstanding that independent distributors subsequently refused to do business with the Marcal.31

The Marcal Theatre, 1931. Courtesy Bison Archives.

Nevertheless, the Marcal was a staple in the Hollywood community. As a revival house the theater offered classics like Tumbleweeds (1925; reissued in 1939), featuring a special appearance by its leading star William S. Hart, and later sponsored a “Disney Binge” with screenings of Bambi, Dumbo, Pinocchio, Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. For a while, the theater broadcast a weekly radio show, The Hollywood Amateur Hour, and regularly hosted an annual Christmas benefit for the Children’s Hospital. The theater also became a temporary home to the nondenominational Peoples Church of Hollywood.32 Occasional mishaps occurred, like when a man claiming he was a former LAPD officer and his accomplice robbed the Marcal and initially escaped during a gun battle that left the lobby floor bloody and strewn with money.33 Meanwhile, Hansen had moved his family into a modest home in the affluent Hancock Park section of Los Angeles, where the two girls attended public school. His wife, Ida, was a big fan of old movies: she kept busy raising her children while selling tickets at his theaters.34

From his office on the second floor of the Marcal, Hansen watched his movie business blossom. He created his own company, Hansen Theaters Inc., and operated 21 theaters throughout Los Angeles City and County. In 1926, Paramount Theatres acquired Hansen’s movie houses and promptly placed him on its board of directors.35 By the late 1920s, the Danish immigrant who had come to America with a limited education and no money had become a millionaire.

But times were tough for theater owners, and Hansen lost considerable money during the Depression. Fox West Coast Theaters president Charles Skouras stepped in and took over Hansen’s chain, and for a while Hansen operated the Vogue Theatre in Hollywood (although he continued to hold on to the Marcal).36 In a tumultuous financial market, Hansen turned to other real estate investments like commercial buildings and a used car lot.37

The Florentine Gardens stood one block east of the Marcal and provided Hansen with a new venture. The nightclub was one of many in Hollywood that had cropped up since the repeal of prohibition. The warehouse-size structure opened on December 28, 1938, and seated 1,000; it resembled a Moorish palace flanked by palm trees and bas-relief iconic columns with “Florentine Gardens” in bright green letters atop its white façade. While the Sunset Strip featured upscale nightspots like Ciro’s, the Café Trocadero, and the Mocambo, the noisy Florentine on Hollywood Boulevard catered to those who could afford the 50-cent admission and dinners from $1.50.38 The Florentine’s blueprints of June 1938 showed an entrance foyer with two staircases that led to the large circular dining room surrounding a dance floor. The classy Venetian Room (later renamed the jazzy Zanzibar Room) was adjacent to the right, while a large second-story dome roof stood high above the main dining room.39 Architect Gordon B. Kaufmann and Los Angeles Times general manager Norman Chandler collaborated on the project. Records at the Huntington Library in California reveal that the Times-Mirror Company initially owned the Florentine Gardens and leased it to restaurant owner Guido Braccini. In 1944, Times-Mirror sold the nightclub to Flogar Inc., the firm of renowned architect S. Charles Lee.40)

The Florentine Gardens, 1945. Courtesy Bison Archives.

During its first few years, the Florentine offered a “family friendly” atmosphere of dinner and dancing while occasionally hosting community events. The nightclub urged parents to bring their children because “there is never any boisterousness you wouldn’t wish them to see.”41 But the family-friendly incentives did not help sagging revenues. So manager Frank Bruni brought over Nils Thor Granlund, toast of Manhattan’s cabaret scene and former chief publicist for Marcus Loew’s theater circuit. Granlund (known as N.T.G. or “Granny”) opened on March 11, 1940, as Florentine’s new Master of Ceremonies.42 His floor shows included “cuties and near nudies” with plenty of comics and knockabouts:­­­ comedian and singer Sophie Tucker, “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” entertained with her Marlene Dietrich-like voice, and burly men in gorilla suits enjoyed a romp with bikini-clad nymphs. Monogram Pictures sent its cameras to the Florentine Gardens to shoot the 1942 movie Rhythm Parade featuring a romance set against a star-studded variety show along with Granny’s commentary in his usual heckling manner. But one of Granny’s signature acts was his “participation games” when he invited soldiers and sailors to join the showgirls in horseplay. The audience relished it all.43

Before long, Hansen had stepped into the role as Florentine’s business manager. His one-story clapboard bungalow or boardinghouse at 6024 Carlos Avenue provided convenient access to the Florentine Gardens and its cadre of beautiful showgirls. On the north side of Carlos stood the red brick First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, home to a burgeoning Christian community that sponsored a neighborhood outreach, a local radio ministry, and a Cathedral Choir that lifted music to a spiritual height. To the south was the Marcal Theatre and the Florentine with its semi-nude chorus girls and free-flowing alcohol. The dichotomy of the two worlds has always been a part of Hollywood history: since 1924, the Roman Catholic Dominican nuns have led a cloistered life at the Monastery of the Angels, about a mile north of the bustling Hollywood Boulevard. But to the Danish immigrant from an austere Lutheran background who had initially settled in the rural Midwest, the big-city glamour and excitement proved to be precarious.

For a while, Ida resided in the bungalow until 1944 or 1945, when she moved to 2274 Canyon Drive, about a mile north of Carlos Avenue.44 Without his wife and family, Hansen felt free to offer rooms to young women looking for their big break in Hollywood. Inside the house was a well-stocked bar and photos of movie stars and famous show people. Outside, white marble stairs led to a quaint porch flanked by two stone pillars. Nearby overgrown plants and shrubs occasionally presented a hazard: the city warned Florentine owner S. Charles Lee that the rear property extending to Carlos Avenue lacked maintenance and could result in a violation.45 If nothing else, the dense foliage offered discretion to visitors from the Florentine Gardens to Hansen’s secluded bungalow.

Still, Hansen regularly joined Ida and his family every night for dinner. But back at the Carlos house, the atmosphere was tense. A 22-year-old boarder named Elizabeth Short lived at the residence twice, October 1–12, 1946, and October 23–November 13, 1946. On January 16, 1947, the day after the discovery of Short’s murdered body, both Hansen and Ann Toth (a friend of Hansen and a boarder at the Carlos house) voluntarily appeared at the LAPD Homicide Division to discuss their relationship with Short.46 Approximately 20 reporters and photographers crowded the room, and Toth – a hopeful actress – seized the moment to pose for pictures and give interviews. Hansen, on the other hand, abhorred publicity and declined to talk except to say that he was “nobody” and identified himself only as Ann’s chauffeur.47 Nearly a week later someone mysteriously mailed his “little black book” along with Short’s belongings to a local newspaper; Hansen said the item was a gift from Denmark and that Short stole it from him.48 LAPD Detectives questioned hundreds of suspects, and soon the Dahlia case went cold.

But by late 1948, former bellhop Leslie Dillon began writing letters to an LAPD psychiatrist, launching the “second phase” of the Black Dahlia investigation. LAPD’s Gangster Squad grew suspicious of Dillon’s knowledge of intimate details of Short’s murder and arrested him on January 12, 1949. But Gangster Squad detectives denied him counsel and clamped a “top secret” label on the investigation so reporters could not talk to him. (The Gangster Squad didn’t always follow legal protocol.) Ultimately, detectives lacked enough evidence and had to release Dillon, who in turn slapped a $100,000 damage claim against the city. A local councilmember, incensed over the apparent police “bungle,” asked for a public inquiry into the qualifications of the psychiatrist.49 The Chief of the LAPD admitted that the administration made an error; the LA County Grand Jury launched an investigation into the “Dillon fiasco” in which Mark Hansen, who had no criminal background, emerged as a person of interest. The LAPD served a search warrant on Hansen’s house for possible bloodstains or stolen jewelry (in an unrelated case) and sent someone undercover in the neighborhood to keep a close watch on him. They even placed a bug in Hansen’s house to pick up any conversation related to Short’s murder. Nothing turned up.50

Detectives then began to probe Hansen’s relationship with Elizabeth Short. Ann Toth emerged as a witness: she testified that Hansen made “a try” for most of his female boarders, and when he wasn’t successful “out they go!” Short herself had a long roster of male companions visit her; while she lived in Hollywood from August to December 1946, she became acquainted with over 50 known boyfriends. Toth explained that Hansen didn’t allow Short’s boyfriends around his house, so she had to discreetly leave her dates a block away.51 But Hansen flatly denied that he had a “yen” for Short and balked at any suggestion that he had “intimate relations” with his female boarders. A fistfight nearly erupted when Hansen brought home a female friend and Short insisted that the woman leave. Hansen promptly ordered Short to move out the next day.52

After many years, the Black Dahlia case hit a dead end and was never solved. Today, the Los Angeles Grand Jury Testimonies and Witness Interviews in the Black Dahlia case contain 968 pages released under the California Public Records Act of 1968. But those available documents represent only a portion of the files regarding the investigation and are a maze of contradictory statements and testimonies, with missing and disorganized pages. No surprise that the 1949 Grand Jury had become “slightly confused” with the many suspects (a total of 316 including folk singer Woody Guthrie) and with both LAPD detectives and the Gangster Squad contradicting each other. Moreover, key witnesses provided conflicting testimonies and destroyed or lost crucial evidence.53 Local newspapers were also befuddled: one reported that “a Hollywood millionaire” (referring to Hansen) was a possible suspect but added that the millionaire “was cleared long ago.”54

Hansen survived the aftermath, then hit a streak of bad luck. In July 1948, a fire erupted at the Marcal, partially destroying the roof, orchestra pit, and stage, causing nearly $100,000 in damages. Hansen promptly ousted the theater’s managers, Al Galston and Jay Sutton (both managed the Hawaii Theatre, about half a block east on Hollywood Boulevard). Galston and Sutton responded by filing a $75,000 suit charging unlawful eviction.55 Over at the Florentine Gardens, trouble brewed: the company filed for bankruptcy with mounting debts of $100,000, while its auditors sued in federal court. By October 1948, Billboard announced that the Florentine was “defunct.”56 In early 1949, the Florentine morphed into the Cotton Club, an “all-Negro revue” featuring Count Basie and His Orchestra, but the owner bailed after only ten weeks. The Florentine resurfaced briefly in mid-1949 with Hansen as one of three co-owners.57 In 1951, the Hollywood Canteen Foundation converted the property into an entertainment venue for servicemen and stars and removed much of the Florentine’s attractive ornamental façade.58

In July 1949, Hansen barely escaped death. Lola Titus, who reportedly had been pestering Hansen for a job as a striptease in his nightclub, shot and critically wounded him while he was shaving in his bungalow. The heavily rouged blonde had known Hansen for several months and decided that either he was going to marry her or she would kill him. She almost did: the bullet missed his heart but his right lung collapsed. Oddly, the next day Lola admitted that she was sorry for what she did. Hansen survived, and after a boisterous trial, the judge committed Lola to a mental hospital.59

The decade closed in December 1949 with a fitting reminder of the mystery and scandal that briefly clouded Hansen’s life. Hollywood cameras rolled into the Marcal Theatre to film Destination Murder (1950), RKO’s postwar noir starring Pat O’Brien and Glenn Ford. The black-and-white movie featured an opening shot inside the lobby, where a floral-designed carpet and a “Merry Christmas” sign greeted patrons at the concession stand. The auditorium displayed a simple art-deco design with vinyl-upholstered lobby doors. Outside, the marquee advertised a double-billed revival commemorating Pearl Harbor, Flight Lieutenant (1942) and Corregidor (1943). Across the street flashed the bright lights of Hansen’s used car lot.

On June 14, 1964, Mark Hansen died of a heart attack at his Carlos Street bungalow.60 Despite the home’s tumultuous history, he had never parted with it. From his office at the Marcal, Hansen had continued to operate theaters, including the Plaza in Hawthorne and a theater in Canoga Park, along with a housing project and a hotel holding corporation. He also had been active with the Salvation Army and served as the coordinator of the Junior Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles.61 More than 50 years later, his family continues the legacy of his charitable work.

Epilogue

Today, Hansen’s former neighborhood reveals a few remnants of Hollywood history. The area is about two blocks east of the Hollywood Pantages Theatre on Hollywood and Vine, where curious tourists occasionally follow the Hollywood Walk of Fame to its termination on Gower Street. The neighborhood – which includes the historic Fonda Theatre – lies just outside the boundaries of the Hollywood Boulevard Commercial and Entertainment District (listed on the National Register of Historic Places) and doesn’t see as much tourist traffic as the famed Hollywood and Highland intersection further west. Still, the area east from Gower Street to Bronson Avenue boasts significant landmarks – including former Hansen properties – that deserve to be recognized within the Commercial and Entertainment District. The former Marcal Theatre, for example, still stands and is now the Academy Nightclub. Following Hansen’s death, the building became part of Pacific Theatres and was later renamed the World Theatre (a venue for exploitation movies).62 The ornate outside façade is gone, and a dance floor sits atop the sloped auditorium that cushioned seats and an orchestra pit once occupied. Close by is the Florentine Gardens, now a Latino nightclub that has been operating since 1979 for the 18-and-older crowd. When the Hollywood Canteen Foundation pulled out, the building served as headquarters in 1955 for the AFL Retail Clerks Union Local 770 with offices and an upstairs Dental Clinic.63

The Academy Nightclub 2018, formerly the Marcal Theatre. Courtesy Angela Aleiss.

The Florentine Gardens 2018. Courtesy Angela Aleiss.

Property on or near Mark Hansen’s former bungalow, circa 1970s. Courtesy of an anonymous donor.

Ian Campbell Square, Carlos and Gower. Courtesy Angela Aleiss.

Hansen’s bungalow at 6024 Carlos Avenue is gone. The First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood petitioned to demolish the structure in 1973 and by the early 1980s erected a parking lot on the site.64 But a tragic event on March 9, 1963, left an indelible mark on the neighborhood’s history. LAPD Officer Ian Campbell and his partner Karl Hettinger approached two suspects on the corner of Gower and Carlos (about half a block west from Hansen’s house), who ordered both officers to hand over their guns. The officers were then driven to a remote onion field near Bakersfield where Hettinger escaped but Campbell was shot and killed. The event inspired Joseph Wambaugh’s 1973 bestseller The Onion Field, followed by the 1979 movie starring John Savage and James Woods. In 2012, LA city officials officially dedicated the Gower and Carlos corner as “Ian Campbell Square.”

Author’s Note

Mark Hansen’s family and relatives have graciously provided insight into his life and achievements. However, they have requested to remain anonymous and to refrain from directly quoting them. In addition, I am grateful for the support of the following institutions: Academy Nightclub; Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library; CSUN Oviatt Library; FBI Records: The Vault; Hollywood Heritage; Hollywood Property Owners Alliance; Huntington Library; Los Angeles County Grand Jury; Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation; Los Angeles Police Department; Los Angeles Public Library; Oxnard Downtowners; UCLA Film & Television Archive; and UCLA Instructional Media Collections & Services.