Lana Turner at age eighteen with her Pekingese pup "Poochie", photos by Peter Stackpole, 1939. These portraits were taken for LIFE magazine (one of the pics of Lana and "Poochie" made the cover) for an issue published in January 1940. The series was snapped at the Sunset Plaza Apartments, designed by legendary Black architect Paul R. Williams in collaboration with L.G. Scherer and built in 1936. Designed in a modernized California version of the Georgian Revival style with sweeping outdoor staircases and a large courtyard and distinctive swimming pool, the eighteen unit building off Sunset Blvd. on Sunset Plaza Drive in West Hollywood was a celebrity favorite and residents at various times included Katherine Hepburn, Dorothy Lamour, Richard Arlen, Carole Landis, James Dean, Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs, musicians Alfred Newman, Kay Kyser and Tommy Dorsey, and in later years singer and actress Bernadette Peters. Though the complex was declared a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument in 1980, a new owner decided to tear it down in 1987, replacing the beautiful Sunset Plaza Apartments with a gated mansion built for a Mexican millionaire, who died two years later.
