Architect Julia Morgan designed this 1926 building for the Hollywood Studio Club, a one-time home of Marilyn Monroe, Rita Moreno, Kim Novak, Barbara Eden and nearly 10,000 women seeking employment in the film industry

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 25, 1980

In celebration of International Women’s Day, I’m dedicating today’s Etan Does LA post to the Hollywood Studio Club (HSC): a Los Angeles landmark that spent nearly 50 years as a temporary home to generations of the most beloved actresses that ever worked in Hollywood…plus at least one famous founder of a controversial philosophical movement. 

The Hollywood Studio Club was a chaperoned dormitory open to aspiring Hollywood professionals of all stripes. You could be an actress, dancer, scriptwriter, secretary, stuntwoman, whatever – as long as you were a woman and working in the film/TV business, or trying to, you could stay at the HSC…assuming you were able to provide letters of reference and parental permission. Your rent got you two meals a day, training in various aspects of the performing arts, exercise classes and rehearsal spaces. There were dances, teas, fancy dinners, plus a whole building full of similarly situated women with whom to practice and share career tips. And no men allowed above the first floor. That rule was strictly enforced. 

The HSC was founded in 1916 in the basement of the Hollywood Branch Library. In its earliest days, the Club was made up of aspiring actresses who had recently moved to LA to break into the nascent silent film industry. They would rehearse plays, share career advice and generally act as a support system. Librarian Eleanor Jones was concerned for the welfare of these young women, especially about their often substandard living conditions. She contacted the local YWCA, who set aside a meeting hall for the Club to meet in. In short order, various film industry and civic organizations put up the funds to buy an old house at 6129 Carlos Street (see pictures here), which could house up to 20 women at a time. Vanity Fair lists actresses ZaSu Pitts (A Little Princess, Greed), Marjorie Daw and Julanne Johnston; screenwriters Agnes Johnston and Sarah Y. Mason (who won an Oscar for adapting Little Women); film editor Anne Bauchens and publicist Margaret Ettinger as early residents. 

By the early ‘20s, the movie business was exploding, and the HSC was outgrowing its current home. At the same time, Hollywood was developing an image problem when it came to how it treated young women. A major scandal broke involving the aspiring actress Virginia Rappe, who died after attending a party thrown by Fatty Arbuckle. While Arbuckle was later acquitted of manslaughter in the case, the case brought to light the very real plight of the “extra girl” – young midwestern transplants moving to Hollywood with their hopes and dreams, only to be exploited, sexually and otherwise.

And so the idea of a new, bigger headquarters for the HSC served a dual purpose: to solve a very legitimate need for safe housing for a large number of women flowing into Hollywood, and to help show the world that Hollywood was committed to moral reform. Financing came from many industry luminaries, including Mary Pickford, Marion Davies, Norma Talmadge and Cecil B. DeMille’s wife Constance. Will Hays, a former politician and the first chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (later the MPAA), reportedly gave the largest single contribution at $20,000. The major film studios followed suit, and worked with the YWCA to fund the new building at 1215 Lodi Place. 

To build the thing they hired Julia Morgan, California’s first licensed woman architect, and a favorite of William Randolph Hearst (she designed both the Hearst Castle and his Los Angeles Herald-Examiner building downtown). She was also the architect of several other YWCA buildings. Morgan designed a graceful, straightforward take on the mediterranean revival style, with tall arched entryways and windows, iron balustrades on the balconies, decorative masonry and a distinctive painted frieze above the front entrance. This great 1950 photo shows a lovely interior courtyard with shaded pergolas and Spanish-style terra-cotta roof tiling, plus ample room for sunbathing, free from the prying eyes of starstruck looky-loos on the outside. 

And my oh my, were there ever stars among HSC’s tenants. Among the 10,000-odd women who stayed at HSC over the years were Rita Moreno, Kim Novak, Marie Windsor, Sally Struthers, Donna Reed, Sharon Tate and Barbara Eden (pre-I Dream of Jeannie). Marilyn Monroe was a boarder in 1948-’49; she admitted to posing nude to earn the $50 she needed to make rent. Perhaps the most surprising notable was Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, who lived at HSC in the mid-twenties while trying to make it as an actress and scriptwriter. There’s a great story, recounted in a 1975 issue of the LA Times (and retold on the HSC’s Wikipedia page), about Rand being selected as the recipient of $50, for being the neediest woman in the Club. She used the money for lingerie. 

By the mid-‘60s, the idea of a chaperoned dormitory had become old-fashioned. Societal norms were changing, and it was more acceptable for an unmarried woman to live in the same place as her paramour. The Club began to lose money. It stopped serving meals, opened its doors to women in all areas of the entertainment industry, and by the mid-’70s had become a hotel for transient women. A final nail in the coffin was the prohibitive cost of renovating the HSC to bring it up to modern fire codes. In 1975 the Hollywood Studio Club closed its doors for good. 

In the decades since, the building at 1215 Lodi Place was used as a Job Corps Center for the US Department of Labor. More recently the city of LA started using it as a crisis housing facility for women. 

When I visited, I saw a woman exit the building and sit down on the stairs in front for a quiet moment on her phone. I asked her what it was like inside, and she told me that the interior design was nicer than other places she’d stayed, like they actually cared about the appearance of the place. Something struck me about that. Even 50 years after the Hollywood Studio Club last hosted an actress, this building still maintains some thing of its legacy, helping women in need to feel safe and valued.

Recommended Reading

+Hollywood Studio Club NRHP nomination form

+View photos & scrapbooks from the Hollywood Studio Club at the YWCA of Los Angeles Collection (CSUN Special Collections) 

+The Lost History of L.A.’s Women-Only Hollywood Studio Club (Vanity Fair, 2019)