Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1517535
can see how old it is and I try to guess which buildings were there when the streetlights went up. It's an amazing new perspective of the city. I learned so much history of Los Angeles during my research and design of the sets for Lessons in Chemistry. I discovered the old sitting right amongst the new in a tour of USC laboratories. The original woodwork, lab cabinets, signage, were all from the '40s-'50s, the technology was cutting edge. Looking at JPL archives for vintage shots of 1950s laboratories, I discovered that there were female chemists working in Los Angeles (a surprise). Conversely, JPL hosted a "Miss Guided Missile" contest in 1952 and didn't stop until 1970. In researching an alleyway where Elizabeth meets Six-Thirty by her trash can, I learned that trash was put in paper bags people got from the grocery store. Plastic trash bags weren't invented until the 1960s. I learned that trash pickup on a municipal level didn't begin in Los Angeles until 1956, before that, people routinely separated their trash into "recyclables" and burned the rest, leading to tremendous levels of smog that choked the city in the 1950s. As for freeways, I've lived in a Los Angeles that always had the massive freeway system seen today. But when my mother grew up in the city, they didn't exist. She lived at the time in the Adams District that was torn apart when the 10 freeway bulldozed its way across the city and left the historic Sugarhill area in ruins. I knew nothing of this until Lessons in Chemistry, but there are still visible scars across South Los Angeles today. In scouting the area for a brilliant episode directed my Millicent Shelton, we found small bridge overpasses throughout the area, dividing the one area from the other. The period houses and neighborhoods are all still there, although the community is split in two by the freeway. I scouted many grocery stores in Los Angeles looking for the perfect period store for a supermarket scene. They exist but many are massively remodeled. No one likes old vintage around their food. Most stores also have an excessive number of refrigeration units for soda and frozen food, which just became an item in the 1950s. But I did find a store with a fully intact old butcher counter, complete with a track and hooks to pull out animal carcasses for A. HASTINGS LABORATORIES. CHEMISTRY LAB ACE STAGE 2. SET PHOTO BY MICHAEL BECKER. B. HASTINGS LABORATORIES. CAFETERIA WALL MURAL. GRAPHIC LAYOUTS BY CHELSEA ALDEN IN ILLUSTRATOR. C. HASTINGS LABORATORIES. CAFETERIA. SET PHOTO BY MICHAEL BECKER. B C A