Schwab's Pharmacy

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Schwab's Pharmacy

Company type	Private
Industry	Pharmacy
Founded	1932 (1932)
Founders	Bernard Schwab Leon Schwab Jack Schwab Martin Schwab Lena Schwab Yetta Schwab
Defunct	1983 (1983)
Headquarters	8024 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, California, U.S.

File:Menu, Schwab's Pharmacy, Los Angeles (cover) (12001959646).jpg

Schwab's menu from 1955

Schwab's Pharmacy was a well-known drugstore situated at 8024 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. From the 1930s through the 1950s, it served as a favored meeting place for movie actors and influential figures within the film industry.

History

Established in 1932 by the Schwab siblings, Schwab's Pharmacy in Hollywood emerged as the most renowned and longest-lasting location among their modest retail outlets. Similar to many American drugstores during the mid-1900s, Schwab's offered pharmaceutical products alongside an ice cream and light meal counter. During the 1930s, it inspired songwriter Harold Arlen to compose the melody for "Over the Rainbow", featured in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.Template:Fix/category

The pharmacy ceased operations in October 1983. Subsequently, on October 6, 1988, the building was razed to allow construction of a retail center and multiplex cinema.Template:Fix/category

Sidney Skolsky, a syndicated columnist covering Hollywood gossip for the New York Daily News and recognized as the first to refer to the Academy Award as "Oscar" in print, played a key role in popularizing Schwab's during the 1930s. He used the drugstore as his workspace and titled his column in Photoplay, then America's leading movie magazine, "From a Stool at Schwab's."

A widely circulated Hollywood myth claims that actress Lana Turner was discovered by director Mervyn LeRoy while sitting at Schwab's soda fountain. In reality, although Turner was indeed found at a soda counter at age sixteen, this occurred at the Top Hat Café located further east on Sunset Boulevard near McCadden Place—directly opposite Hollywood High School, where she was enrolled. The individual responsible for her discovery was not LeRoy but Hollywood Reporter publisher William Wilkerson.

Presently, replicas of Schwab's Pharmacy exist at Universal Studios in Florida and Japan, with the latter designed around Super Mario themes.

In popular media

Paramount Studios constructed a replica of Schwab's Pharmacy as a set for the 1950 motion picture Sunset Boulevard.

In the limited Netflix series Hollywood, Schwab's Pharmacy is depicted with characters Henrietta, the spouse of Jack Castello, employed there alongside her colleague Erwin Kaye.

External links

• File:Commons-logo.svg Media related to at Wikimedia Commons