L.A. apartments have been the scene of grisly Hollywood suicides, murders and accidents. The condo complex of 875 Bundy Ave. in Brentwood became famous after Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman were found knifed to death on June 12, 1994. (After O.J. Simpson stood criminal and civil trials for the murders, the large numbers of looky-loos caused the condo association to change the street number to 879 and change the appearance of the entrance.) Inside an apartment at 139 Fraser St. in Santa Monica, model-actress Margaux Hemingway committed suicide with an overdose of pills on July 2, 1996, the same day her grandfather Ernest Hemingway took his life 35 years earlier. In 1981, actor William Holden was found dead in an apartment at Shorecliff Towers at 535 Ocean Ave. in Santa Monica after falling, striking his head and then bleeding to death. In an apartment at 86575 Comstock Ave. in Westwood, 22-year-old comic sensation Freddie Prinze committed suicide by shooting himself in 1977. In 1976, Rebel Without a Cause co-star Sal Mineo, 37, was robbed and stabbed to death in the carport of his apartment building at 8563 Holloway Drive in West Hollywood. The daughter of TV host Art Linkletter (Kids Say the Darndest Things) jumped to her death from her sixth-floor apartment at 8787 Shoreham Drive in West Hollywood. And one of the biggest crimes in Hollywood took place in 1922 when silent-film director William Desmond Taylor was shot in the back of the head in his bungalow apartment in Alvarado Court on S. Alvarado St. in Westlake Park. The murder sent shock waves through the film community because Taylor was a celebrity, several movie figures were implicated and the neighborhood was affluent. Not only was the murder never solved (sound familiar, O.J. and Robert Blake?), but, as with most historical spots in L.A., that apartment complex is now a parking lot.

Well, I just got into town about an hour ago
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows
Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light
Or just another lost angel... city of night
City of night, city of night, city of night...

A decade later the film industry had generated a ton of money and edifices like this went up, the west facing wall of something or other on the southeast corner of North Sycamore and Hollywood Boulevard. The thirties were fun too.