The last honorary mayor of Hollywood

Good morning, it’s Thursday, April 23. You can expect weather that will confirm your excellent decision to live in Los Angeles: temps in the mid-70s and a smattering of clouds.

In today’s newsletter, we have an exclusive about trouble brewing at USC’s business school, a Mexican immigrant keeping Dutch culture alive in Bellflower, mold-infested Park La Brea apartments, and Monterey Park’s revolt against data centers. But first, the position of Honorary Mayor of Hollywood and why it’s remained unoccupied for 18 years.

On January 10, 2008, the Honorary Mayor of Hollywood ate an omelet for lunch, went back to his penthouse suite at the Hollywood Roosevelt, and died of a heart attack. His name was Johnny Grant, he was 84 and he had been in charge, sort of, of the neighborhood for 28 years. His remains were scattered among the chaparral at the base of the Hollywood sign.

Two months later, Leron Gubler, then the President & CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, announced that the Chamber’s Board of Directors would “deliberate extensively before making a decision” on the future of the position.

Eighteen years later, there has still been no succession plan announced. Was the position unfillable because it was unpaid, time consuming, and completely ceremonial? Or because of the man who once held it?

A Johnny Grant trading card amongst novelty Oscar statuettes at a Hollywood Blvd souvenir store. (Photo by Pablo Goldstein/L.A. Material)

Well before he began his nearly three-decade reign, the chipper, ever-smiling Grant was a beloved figure in Hollywood. After serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II, he moved to Los Angeles and began hosting the radio show "Freeway Club" on KMPC. While never an A-list star, he was a USO ambassador, a well-known ladies man, and a local news mainstay, hosting infotainment segments like "Johnny Grant Backstage in Hollywood” for KTLA 5 news. And it was during these post-war decades that the concept of an Honorary Mayor took off in the Southland.

The role “was really in vogue in L.A. in the ‘60s and ‘70s," said Gubler. “They would use candidates to raise money for charity. And the one who raised the most was selected for that year. They'd go to a few functions here and there, do ribbon cuttings. That was about it."

When Grant was elected Honorary Mayor of Hollywood in 1980, the oft-maligned neighborhood was down in the dumps. But with his unflappable optimism and genuine joy for all things Tinseltown, Grant took his one real duty — presiding over Walk of Fame inductions — and turned it into a glitzy, jovial affair. He MC’d hundreds of induction ceremonies, from Britney Spears to Godzilla, with his trademark zest for showbiz excess. When it came time for him to receive the first of his own two stars, he rode onto Hollywood Blvd atop an elephant.

While Grant was not authorized to perform actual governmental duties, that didn't stop people from contacting him. "People thought he was the real mayor,” said Ana Martinez, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s VP of Media & Talent Relations who was Grant’s dining companion at the Hollywood Roosevelt’s 25 Degrees diner the day he died. “They would call him and ask him to fix a pothole." Despite his lack of real mayoral powers, he did play a role in getting Hollywood its own USPS postmark despite it being a neighborhood and not a city.

But why did the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors decline to name a new mayor?

“In my opinion, his shoes were hard to fill,” said Martinez, who as a staff member of the Chamber does not have a role in picking a new honorary mayor. Asked if she personally would like someone new to take over, Martinez paused before saying, “For me… it was very hard.”

Still, she said, “People did ask about it. There was a radio personality who wanted it.”

That radio personality was Gary Owens, best known as the announcer for Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. Alongside Angelyne, Owens was one of a handful of celebrities who made a public case for the honorary mayorship. He was prepared to fight for it and even dangled a flimsy rationale to advance his claim to the throne: Owens told NPR that Grant had chosen him as his successor.

"That's not true,” Martinez countered. “Johnny never picked a successor."

But did the Board of Directors ever make a real attempt to select a new mayor?

“They did discuss it,” said Gubler. “They decided there was no urgency to move. They thought, in respect, they shouldn’t move quickly. Later as they discussed, they felt there was not much need to replace Johnny. There was only one Johnny Grant. He went far above and beyond what the role generally entailed.”

But does Hollywood need an upbeat promoter these days? Some say the Oscars would never have dared leave, as the Academy recently announced would happen in 2029, if Grant was still holding court at the Roosevelt Hotel. 

Gubler said it was “disappointing” that the Oscars are moving, but said he wasn’t sure Hollywood needed a new ceremonial chief executive. “There’s always people who are boosters. They don’t have to be the honorary mayor.”

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In many respects, Maria Arroyo-Cervantes of Bellflower is like any number of Los-Angeles-area entrepreneurs who have founded small businesses that cater to an immigrant community. Cervantes stocks specialty foods from overseas, greets customers in their native language, and makes a fuss over holidays from the home country. 

But there is a key difference in Cervantes' case: Though she is from Mexico, her store, her customers, and her special stroopwafels and over a hundred different kinds of licorice are from Holland. 

Over the last 30 years, Cervantes has become a central figure in Los Angeles’ shrinking Dutch community in Southeast L.A. County. In our latest L.A. Material report, Laura Kondourajian writes about the unlikely woman behind Holland International Market in Bellflower.

52 tenured professors at USC's Marshall School of Business – about a fifth of the school's active, full-time faculty – expressed their concerns about Dean Geoffrey Garrett's leadership in a letter obtained by L.A. Material. Tomo Chien has all the details about the esteemed school’s troubles in our exclusive story.

NOT IN OUR SGV SUBURB: Monterey Park became the first city in California to permanently ban the construction of new data centers, tech journalist Brian Merchant reports. Organizers with No Data Centers Monterey Park and San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action pushed the city council to pass the ordinance, and voters will have their say in a ballot measure set for June 2. Living next to a data center subjects residents to a persistent roaring sound, which TikTok accounts like @jhuser713 of Southaven, MS have documented in a series of videos.

OUT OF OFFICE: Gov. Gavin Newsom has spent nearly 20% of his second term out of California, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis. The analysis found that the governor, who is broadly expected to launch a 2028 presidential campaign, has spent twice as much time outside of California when compared to his first term. That disparity may have been heightened, however, by the Covid-19 pandemic, which limited his out-of-state travel in 2020.

IPAD BABIES: The LAUSD Board passed a unanimous resolution limiting screen time for its students, citing "addiction-like use of short-form video content" that led to emotional and behavioral issues. This comes six years after a $100 million Covid-era initiative where the school district provided Chromebooks and tablets to every student who needed one, and over a decade since the controversial plan to equip every student with an iPad led to an FBI investigation.

PARK LA BROKEN: Residents at Park La Brea, the largest apartment complex in L.A., are dealing with extensive water damage and unresponsive management, reports KTLA 5. Despite being advertised as "luxury apartments" on their website, residents of Park La Brea complained about problems more befitting post-war NYC-style housing projects that the complex resembles when viewed from satellite images. Some of the issues include warped floors, leaky ceilings, moldy walls, and, in one sadly ironic case, the inability to take a shower for months.

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, @patsaperstein discovered a Hidden Mickey in Echo Park that won’t require you to drive all the way down to Anaheim:

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Anyone Who is Still Trying” by David Hernandez.

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