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Seven Seas, Los Angeles, CA (bar) |
Dustycajun
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Nov 16, 2007
Posts: 3916
From: Santa Barbara, CA
|  Posted: 2010-04-04 09:41 am Permalink
Here is another photo folder and matchbook style from the 7 Seas.
DC
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Dustycajun
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Nov 16, 2007
Posts: 3916
From: Santa Barbara, CA
| Posted: 2010-08-14 1:00 pm Permalink
An early matchbook from the Ray Haller era at the 7 Seas,
 
and a newer napkin from after the Bob Brooks era spotted on ebay.
DC
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bongofury
Grand Member (6 years) 
Joined: Oct 15, 2002
Posts: 1473
From: Ventura County
| Posted: 2010-11-17 12:27 pm Permalink
I have a documentary about Hollywood in the 40s or 50s with a shot down Hollywood Boulevard showing part of their neon sign. I will try to dig that up and get a screen snap.
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Dustycajun
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Nov 16, 2007
Posts: 3916
From: Santa Barbara, CA
| Posted: 2010-11-17 4:54 pm Permalink
Bongofury,
Always look forward to your movie screen grabs.
I just picked up a photo holder from Bob Brook's 7 Seas with a great photo of the interior showing some party animals with three nice sized Leeteg paintings on the wall.
The party animals.
The Leetegs
DC
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Sabu The Coconut Boy
Grand Member (8 years) 
Joined: Aug 20, 2002
Posts: 2784
From: Carson, California
| Posted: 2010-11-17 4:56 pm Permalink
Nice score, DC!
That's one of the better photo folders I've seen. Usually the background is too dark to pick out any details.
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Dustycajun
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Nov 16, 2007
Posts: 3916
From: Santa Barbara, CA
| Posted: 2011-02-09 4:31 pm Permalink
Thanks Sabu, it is a nice clean photo.
Just got a menu from the Seven Seas Restaurant, it came from the more "Tiki" period after Bob Brooks. It uses the same logo Tiki with the clam shell-friutbasket-on-the-head that is shown on the matchbook.
The food items
Close up of the Tiki rendering.
The drink page.
There are some funny drink descriptions so I did a few close ups so you can read them.
The Tiki rendering.
A nice menu.
DC
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bigbrotiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 25, 2002
Posts: 10560
From: Tiki Island, above the Silverlake
| Posted: 2011-02-09 10:42 pm Permalink
Indeed! I knew one like that -matching the matchbook- must exist, but had never seen it.
[ This Message was edited by: bigbrotiki 2011-02-10 10:56 ]
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Dustycajun
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Nov 16, 2007
Posts: 3916
From: Santa Barbara, CA
| Posted: 2011-02-10 7:56 pm Permalink
So the Tiki was on the menu, the napkin, and the matchbook.
Here is a postcard I have from the Seven Seas.
I started looking closely at it and wham, there it was, that same dang Tiki on the left side in the back of the bar. Looks like he is even wearing the same kind of headdress.
The photo is poor quality so hard to get much of a close up.
DC
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bigbrotiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 25, 2002
Posts: 10560
From: Tiki Island, above the Silverlake
| Posted: 2011-02-11 01:15 am Permalink
Yessss, excellent photo archeology, DC! This shows again that often, when a Tiki rendering is kinda unique and specific, it was based on an existing piece, not just on the graphic designer's imagination.
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Dustycajun
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Nov 16, 2007
Posts: 3916
From: Santa Barbara, CA
| Posted: 2011-03-19 1:55 pm Permalink
Found another souvenir photo folder from the Seven Seas featuring four lovely dancers from the floor show.
DC
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Dustycajun
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Nov 16, 2007
Posts: 3916
From: Santa Barbara, CA
| Posted: 2011-05-25 5:19 pm Permalink
I got a more "modern" postcard from the Seven Seas.
Devoid of Tiki but still running the Polynesian floor shows.
The back of the card advertises the Original Rain on the Roof, so they must have kept that feature till the end.
DC
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Tattoo
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Sep 24, 2005
Posts: 151
From: Los Angeles
| Posted: 2011-07-18 6:56 pm Permalink
A bar napkin from the Bob Brooks era:
A postcard from the Ray Haller era featuring ol' Bing Crosby:
and my 7 Seas collection so far.
Can't seem to find any recent stuff but an interesting insight into an old Hollywood nightspot.
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Dustycajun
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Nov 16, 2007
Posts: 3916
From: Santa Barbara, CA
| Posted: 2011-07-29 5:05 pm Permalink
Tattoo,
Nice collection of Seven Seas swag.
Here is a photo I found on-line on a family website that featured the Hawaiian dance troop at the Seven Seas circa 1970.
Would you look at those big, round, supple, tightly wrapped...... fish floats!
And here is an old napkin from the early 1940's from flickr.
And a little story about Bob Brooks and his Leetegs from the book My Nine Lives.
I wonder what became of Bob Brook's collection of 97 Leeteg paintings?
DC
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Captain Grimes
Member
Joined: Nov 09, 2011
Posts: 2 | Posted: 2011-11-09 7:24 pm Permalink
Quote:
| On 2008-11-25 15:28, Tattoo wrote:
The hardest part has been trying to figure out when the 7 Seas opened (and closed). The dateline I have come up looking at postcards and writings is
1936 - a post card that refers to a visit in 1936
1937 - Ray Haller postcard
1941 - Bob Brooks postcard
1981 - Wonderland Murder article in NY Times
So it's save to say the 7 Seas was open from at least 1936 through 1981. Another question I've had is the whole Ray Haller and Bob Brooks relation. If you ask me, they're the same person!
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I've been doing a little research in the LA Times for a project, and came up with some possible answers.
The earliest mention of the 7 Seas that I can find is from The Times' Hollywood gossip column of December 26, 1935. Here's the full quote:
Quote:
| Recent visitors at Ray Hallor's Seven Seas Cafe included Alice Faye, Jean Harlow, Dorothy Lee, the Hugh Herberts, Betty Lawford, Eugene O'Brien, and the Ray Dodges.
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Interestingly, they call the proprietor Hallor, not Haller. Ray Hallor was a fairly successful actor in the silent-film era, starring in pictures with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Myrna Loy, and a few other big names. He was killed in a car accident on April 16, 1944. The Times' obituary refers to him as an "actor and night club figure." Here's the full quote:
Quote:
| Ray Hallor, 44, stage actor, silent film player, and well-known figure in Hollywood night life, was killed yesterday in a head-on auto collision between Palm Springs and Cathedral City. All five occupants of the car were seriously injured.
After a career on the stage when he appeared with such prominent stars as Maude Adams, Hallor went into motion pictures and played a number of roles in silent films. He was reported to have interests in several Hollywood nightclubs in recent years.
He leaves a sister, Mrs. Edith Hallor Dillon of Hollywood, widow of the film director, Jack Dillon.
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A little more digging turned up some interesting stuff. A Times article from April 4, 1933, mentions that Ray Hallor escorted Jean Harlow (the same Jean Harlow who was spotted at the 7 Seas two years later) to a party at W.S. Van Dyke's house. Woody Van Dyke, of course, directed lots of pictures from the silent days through the 1940s, including "The Thin Man" series.
Another Times story -- this one from November 7, 1929 -- mentions that Hallor was arrested and fined $50 for liquor possession, having been caught, along with Mickey Walker, middleweight boxing champion, with a bottle of booze at the Hollywood apartment of an actress named Dorothy Davis.
Hallor was also named in a 1929 breach-of-promise-suit that a young woman brought against the actor Maurice Costello, a silent-film star who was apparently one of Hallor's friends, and, incidentally, the great-grandfather of Drew Barrymore.
In any case, I might be missing something, but it seems likely to me that (a) Ray Haller of 7 Seas fame was the same man as Ray Hallor the actor; and (b) Ray was not the same man as Bob Brooks, given that Ray died in 1944 and Bob was apparently still alive in the 1950s.
One last tidbit: in 1928, Ray Hallor starred in a movie called, appropriately enough, "Tropical Nights." Here's the tagline from IMDB:
Quote:
| Thrilling Battle with Death-Dealing Octopus--Guardian of Hidden Treasures of the Sea Jungle!
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Sounds like a forgotten tiki classic.
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bigbrotiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 25, 2002
Posts: 10560
From: Tiki Island, above the Silverlake
| Posted: 2011-11-10 10:25 pm Permalink
Very interesting. Great research. But why the repeated difference in the spelling of the name?
Quote:
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A Times article from April 4, 1933, mentions that Ray Hallor escorted Jean Harlow (the same Jean Harlow who was spotted at the 7 Seas two years later) to a party at W.S. Van Dyke's house. Woody Van Dyke, of course, directed lots of pictures from the silent days through the 1940s, including "The Thin Man" series.
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Van Dyke also directed some of the earliest South Seas movies:
White Shadows in the South Seas (1928) and: The Pagan (1929)
...and in Africa: Trader Horn (1931)
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