Harry M. Sugarman already had big expectations as a boy when he sold popcorn at the Wyatt Opera House in Redlands.
A student at Lowell School in Redlands, the story goes, he told friends of his goal of making it big in show business. “Some day I will build a theater here, and it will be a theater, not a barn,” reported the Redlands Daily Facts.
True to his words, years later, Sugarman’s new Redlands Theater opened Dec. 27, 1928. And he made sure there was plenty of Hollywood dazzle, “with rays from powerful searchlights punctuating the blackness of the circumambient night, a blaze irradiated from the corner of Vine and Cajon that needed no stars, film or otherwise to help the galaxy of lights,” wrote the Daily Facts, a bit star-struck, on the following day.
For Sugarman, then 31, such a gala event would become a very regular accomplishment in his promotion of Hollywood and all of its celebrations. He would even be called “Mr. Hollywood” by one columnist for decades of work in and around show business, though he never spent time on either side of the camera.
And today, more than a half-century after his death, virtually no one remembers his name.
His career was certainly worth celebrating, starting with his significant role in the creation of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the tourist attraction honoring those in the entertainment industry with stars on sidewalks along Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street. Sugarman owned restaurants and hotels, was one of the first directors of Hollywood’s Santa Claus Lane Parade, and even took on the task of reopening Hollywood Boulevard’s spectacular Egyptian Theater.
Anybody who was anybody in Hollywood from the 1930s into the early 1950s knew “Sugie.” His Tropics restaurant in Beverly Hills was a Rodeo Drive night club and restaurant where the well-known and well-to-do came to be seen. After selling the Tropics years later, he made a spot-on prediction that Rodeo Drive would soon grow into the West’s prominent fashion hub, rivaling Fifth Avenue in New York.
That’s quite a resume for the man who came to the U.S. from England at age 3 in 1901. He and parents of Russian descent lived on East Central Avenue in Redlands, but years later moved to Los Angeles. Sources give conflicting information about Sugarman, either that he dropped out of school or graduated from Los Angeles High School.
In any event, he found work as a young man in a Hollywood men’s clothing store. His personality and interest in the entertainment industry enabled him to become friends with his customers including young struggling actors such as Charlie Chaplin, “Fatty” Arbuckle, and Rudolph Valentino, explained Roslyn Rozbrook in a 1998 biography of Sugarman in Los Angeles Magazine.
The direction of his life changed significantly at age 21 when he fell in love with 17-year-old Mary Gore, daughter of Mike Gore, a leading theater executive. On Nov. 28, 1919, the couple eloped and were married in Santa Ana. The decision infuriated her father who insisted they later be married in their Jewish synagogue, the Los Angeles Evening Citizen-News reported Dec. 19.
After smoothing over things with his new wife’s family, Sugarman soon became his father-in-law’s business partner. He would later become president of the West Coast Junior Circuit, which provided films and vaudeville entertainers for theaters through the West, starting in the mid-1920s. He also got involved in opening new theaters, such as the Redlands Theatre and, two years earlier, Ontario’s Granada Theatre.
In 1932, Sugerman was named manager of the Egyptian Theatre which had been closed for some time in those early dreadful years of the Great Depression. He always seemed to add a special touch to anything he did, such as for the opening of the 1933 film, “State Fair.” To promote the film starring Will Rogers and Lew Ayres at the Egyptian, he blocked off part of Hollywood Boulevard and set up a carnival that included horses, elephants and monkeys, according to Rozbrook.
He left the Egyptian in late 1935 to take over the Tropics restaurant and night club in Beverly Hills. It became a familiar place to readers of national gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.
On March 8, 1950, she wrote about the day Sugarman’s South Seas-themed restaurant was opened years earlier.
“It was a hole in the wall, holding about 19. Ninety-five squeezed into the opening. Jackie Coogan’s mother, a friend, cooked a big turkey, brought a couple of loaves of bread, put up a card table and started making sandwiches. They almost had to get the riot squad but such fun.”
Her column often included items about “Sugie” and his customers. On Sept. 24, 1945, she reported details of “Shirley Temple’s first wedding anniversary. She’s having a party thrown for her on the spot where she first met her husband John Agar. It’s at the Beverly Tropics with Harry Sugarman hosting.”
In later years after selling his restaurant, Sugarman served as president of the Hollywood Improvement Association, an offshoot of the Chamber of Commerce. That group’s ambitious task was to find ways to revive the excitement and glamour of Hollywood that had faded a bit by the late 1950s.
“While brainstorming with other members, he came up with the idea of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which was inspired both by the foot- and handprints outside Grauman’s Chinese and by Sugarman’s old drinks menu which featured celebrity headshots framed in gold stars,” Rozbrook wrote.
He presided over the ceremonies for the celebrities honored with a permanent star beginning in 1960. For more than a decade, he was directly involved in the selection of honorees and the unveiling of the stars along Hollywood or Vine.
“He worked so hard at reviving the city’s lost glamour that people started calling him ‘Mr. Hollywood’,” said Rozbrook.
But his work on behalf of the Walk of Fame and Hollywood ended when he died following a heart attack and subsequent surgery in 1972.
For the next three decades, popular Johnny Grant, a radio host and producer, became the spokesman for the Walk of Fame and host of other Hollywood events. As Grant rose to be the most visible figure at most Hollywood glamour events, it helped diminish Sugarman’s legacy, Rozbrook wrote. Grant was lauded as the honorary mayor of Hollywood and was often called “Mr. Hollywood” for his public persona.
“But that distinction belongs to Harry Sugarman, a behind-the-scenes mâcher (that’s Jewish for a wheeler-dealer) … who was friends with everybody who happened to be anybody in the movie business.”
Sugarman does not have a star on the Walk of Fame despite his role in creating the attraction. I inquired if he had ever been considered for a star, but a Chamber of Commerce comment said he was not because he was just “a business executive.”
His “star” certainly quickly faded to black at his death. Obituaries for him in 1972 were no more than two paragraphs in the Los Angeles Times and in wire service articles of United Press International.
Chinese exhibit
The San Bernardino County Museum has a photographic display through July 26 on “Chinese Pioneers: Power and Politics in Exclusion Era Photographs.”
The California Historical Society exhibit offers many photos of early Chinese settlers and businessmen and their unpopular treatment in California. The exhibit also includes a look at their experiences in the San Bernardino area.
The museum is open Tuesdays through Sundays, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 2024 Orange Tree Lane, Redlands.
Tour date
Tours of the historic Phillips Mansion will be held Sunday by the Historical Society of the Pomona Valley. The tours of the mansion, at 2640 Pomona Blvd., Pomona, will be from 2 to 5 p.m. and cost $10. Tickets must be purchased before the day of the tour at pomonahistorical.org.
Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Empire history. He can be reached at joe.blackstock@gmail.com or on X @JoeBlackstock. Check out some of the past articles at Inland Empire Stories on Facebook at facebook.com/IEHistory.