Calling all cowboys!
Starting in the 1920s and lasting well into the 1950s, B-western movies were all the rage. Cheap to make and sure to find an audience, it was said a western was made every ten days. Real cowboys, as well as actors dressed as cowboys, used to hang out in full Western regalia – big Stetsons, low-slung belts, chaps, spurs, and often pistols – at the intersection of Gower Street and Sunset Boulevard in hopes of picking up day work on a movie. Casting agents would contact prospective actors on the pay phones in the back of Columbia Drug, formerly on the southeast corner, or swing by and load up a truck of extras to film in the Valley. The area was christened Gower Gulch.
These were rough men, accustomed to living by cowboy laws and working as true range riders. But as the landscape began to change, with the range breaking into homesteads and even subdivisions of the very valley where they filmed, the heyday of cattle runs came to an end. So, many displaced cowboys, in search of a job where riding a horse still mattered, even if it was for a movie, came to Gower Gulch.
Info
Address Southwest corner of N Gower Street and Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028 | Getting there Paid on-site lot | Hours Always open| Tip Amoeba Music (6400 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028), three blocks west of Gower Gulch, is a great record store with many in-store concerts in an intimate setting.
Rarely is it wise for coarse men with firearms to sit aimlessly. Quarrels are bound to arise and sharp words can trigger violence. Once at Gower Gulch, when cowboy/actor Johnny Tyke allegedly said to Jerome “Blackjack” Ward, “I’ll cut your heart out,” Blackjack pulled out his .45 and fatally shot Tyke in the head. Ward was acquitted on the shaky claim of self-defense, even though no weapon was found on Tyke’s body. A fellow cowboy actor testified his dog had dug up Tyke’s knife in the bushes near the fight. Blackjack later went on to pistol whip a man in a bar with the same gun, unloaded this time.
In the 1970s, the strip mall on the southwest corner of Gower and Sunset was remodeled with a kitschy Western backdrop to pay homage to the legacy of the loitering drugstore cowboys of Gower Gulch.
Back
To the online map