Some old Hollywood hangouts look set to last forever. If there's ever a nuclear war, it won't be cockroaches that survive. It'll be the Formosa Café.
It started in 1925 when a retired prizefighter set up an old trolley car on property owned by film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. It became an actors' hangout and began accumulating too much Hollywood history to describe. The walls are lined with unsolicited celebrity photos going back seven decades.
The original room, the one that started as a trolley car, is still in use; squint hard and you can imagine Paul Newman, Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor hanging out there when they were sprouts. Other structures have been added since, roughly quadrupling the area. The newer parts are plusher and more dimly lit.
The Hollywood connection is still lively -- the parking lot is where Shannen Doherty allegedly smashed a beer bottle on somebody's windshield five years ago. Despite fears that its use in a scene in "L.A. Confidential" a few years ago would change it, this continues to be an entertainment industry dive (a certain amount of Hollywood business gets done here, but the conversations you overhear are more likely to be just the usual grousing).
The food? Basically good old American Cantonese with a couple of not-quite-convincing Thai dishes.
-- Charles Perry, Times Staff Writer
