Oct. 3, 1942: Abbott and Costello outside the Hollywood Canteen at the opening ceremony, in a Times photo.
Cahuenga Boulevard south of Sunset Boulevard, former location of the Hollywood Canteen, via Google Street View.
One of the important locations in the Georgette Bauerdorf killing is the Hollywood Canteen, a club for enlisted men at 1451 N. Cahuenga Blvd., where she volunteered as a hostess. When Bauerdorf was killed, investigators initially focused on a “dark, husky soldier” who insisted on jitterbugging with her “against her wishes,” according to The Times. (More about that later).
At the time of her death in 1944, Bauerdorf was one of about 100 hostesses at the canteen, which served about 3 million servicemen during World War II and immediate postwar era.
Servicemen line up to get into the Hollywood Canteen in an undated snapshot.
A bit of research shows that there were actually two Hollywood canteens. The first was operated by the U.S.O. and got underway January 1942, at Hollywood and Cahuenga boulevards.
The more familiar Hollywood Canteen, headed by Bette Davis and staffed by members of the Hollywood guilds, opened Oct. 3, 1942, at Cahuenga and Sunset boulevards in what had been a nightclub known as the Barn. In a previous incarnation, the club had been the Gay White Way (1938).
The Gay White Way, 1938.
The canteen offered meals and shows by popular bands of the day such as Kay Kyser’s orchestra and entertainers such as Bob Hope and Jack Benny. The canteen provided a chance for servicemen to rub shoulders with Hollywood stars like Marlene Dietrich and Deanna Durbin, and an opportunity to chat or dance with hostesses such as Bauerdorf.
And jitterbugging at the canteen could apparently be dangerous. In 1944, junior hostess Florida Edwards sued the canteen for $17,250, alleging that she injured her spine in a fall after being tossed by a “jiving Marine.”
Actress Lorraine Krueger’s Hollywood Canteen ID card.
What’s important for our purposes is that every employee was photographed and fingerprinted.
Georgette Bauerdorf’s Hollywood Canteen ID card, published by the Los Angeles Mirror, May 16, 1949.
Bauerdorf was fingerprinted, photographed and given a laminated ID card. And despite the claims in “Severed” that Elizabeth Short also volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen, no photo, fingerprints or ID card was ever produced.
And recall that the canteen was for servicemen – no officers allowed, despite the claims in “Severed” that Elizabeth Short met Matt Gordon there. In addition to all the other impossibilities (Elizabeth Short arrived in Los Angeles in mid-1946, the canteen closed in 1945) as an officer, Matt Gordon would not have been admitted. This is why I say “Severed” is 25% mistakes and 50% fiction.
A little more than a year after Bauerdof was killed, the canteen closed Nov. 22, 1945. Harry Fitzgerald, who managed the canteen’s stage performances, said of its closing: “We have had some great performers here, but we have had some greater sailor, soldiers and Marines. They proved it — and now that the war is over and the boys and girls are coming home the purpose of the canteen has been fulfilled and we are closing our doors.”
After World War II, the Hollywood Canteen was the Hollywood Auditorium (1949) and Le Grand Comedy Theater (1959).
Le Grand Comedy Theatre, 1959.
The Hollywood Canteen was demolished in December 1966, as shown in this Times photo.
To be continued.
