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The venerable Villa Carlotta — home to show business A-listers in the Golden Age, and later to a generation of young actors, writers and musicians  — sits, a hollowed-out shell, on Hollywood’s Franklin Avenue. It may or may not be about to undergo a transformation into an upscale hotel. What happens to a community when it’s driven from the place where it’s made a home? One resident stubbornly hangs on, battling for the soul of a building that once buzzed with life and energy.

MUSIC:

• “Home,” by Henry Hall and his Gleneagles Hotel Band
• “Twine,” by Podington Bear
• “It’s All Forgotten Now,” by Ray Noble and His Orchestra
• “Tuesday’s Tune,” by Herschel Burke Gilbert
• “Toccatta and Fugue in D Minor,” by Johann Sebastian Bach
• “Zombie,” By Johnny Fever (Sam Fuller)
• “Csm,” by Podington Bear

Photos, top to bottom:
Carlotta exterior 2008 by Stinson Carter. 
Carlotta lobby 2015
Carlotta lobby 2014 by Stinson Carter
Carlotta courtyard 2014 by Stinson Carter
Carlotta courtyard 2015 

Thanks to Sylvie Shain (above). For more information on the campaign to save the Villa Carlotta, see its Facebook page.

Read Stinson Carter’s excellent piece about The Carlotta in Vanity Fair.

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There’s the San Fernando Valley, the one you can find on a map… and then there’s The Valley, the one that exists in the culture, whose notoriety far outstrips its size. How did that happen? How did it come to be that you can mention The Valley to people in Milwaukee or Toronto or Tokyo and they’ll know what you’re talking about? And what does it mean to call The Valley home? This week HOME looks at the tangled legacy of a place that managed to be both the iconic American suburb and an industrial powerhouse that cranked out everything  from beer to cars, and moon rockets to The Brady Bunch.

For more on the history of the San Fernando Valley, visit the Valley Relics Museum.

MUSIC:

• “Holiday Commercial,” by Alan Hawkshaw
• “San Fernando Valley,” by Johnny Mercer
• Theme from “The Brady Bunch” (Season 1)
• “It’s Not Unusual,” by Enoch Light

Photo: The Valley Relics Museum, 2015.

Thanks to Denny Tedesco, Kevin Roderick, Hal Lifson and Tommy Gelinas.