"Schwab's Drug Store" Founder Jack Schwab 1980 Mt. Sinai Cemetery

Jack Schwab (October 6, 1904; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - March 17, 1980; Los Angeles, California) was a businessman. 

Along with his brothers, they founded Schwab's Pharmacy, best referred to as Schwab's Drug Store, a one time celebrity hangout. 

Jack Schwab is interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.

Schwab's Pharmacy was a drugstore located at 8024 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, and was a popular hangout for movie actors and movie industry deal makers from the 1930s through the 1950s.[1]

History

Schwab's Pharmacy was opened in 1932 by the Schwab brothers, Bernard, Leon, Martin, and Jack.

Leon, Jack, and Bernard Schwab

Schwab's Pharmacy in Hollywood became the most famous and longest operating outlet of their small retail chain.[2] Like many drug stores in the United States during the mid-twentieth century, Schwab's sold medicines and had a counter serving ice cream dishes and light meals.

Schwab's closed in October 1983.[3] 

Five years later, on October 6, 1988, the building was demolished to make way for a shopping complex and multiplex theater.

Sidney Skolsky, a syndicated Hollywood gossip columnist for the New York Daily News who was the first journalist to use the nickname "Oscar" for the Academy Award in print, made Schwab's famous in the 1930s. He used the drugstore as his office, and called his column in Photoplay, the premiere movie magazine in the U.S. at the time, "From A Stool At Schwab's."[4]

Schwab's Pharmacy was featured in Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950). 

A persistent Hollywood legend has it that actress Lana Turner was "discovered" by director Mervyn LeRoy while at the soda counter at Schwab's. While the 16-year-old Turner was discovered at a soda counter, the location was not Schwab's but another establishment, the Top Hat Cafe, farther east on Sunset Boulevard at McCadden Place, directly across the street from Hollywood High School where she was still a student. The person who discovered her was not LeRoy but The Hollywood Reporter publisher William Wilkerson.[5][6]

Today there is a replica of the establishment at Universal Studios Florida[7] selling Ben and Jerry's ice cream and drinks.[8]

Schwab's was never really referred to as Schwab's Pharmacy, but as Schwab's Drug Store.

References

1. Alleman, Richard (2005). Hollywood: The Movie Lover's Guide : The Ultimate Insider Tour to Movie L.A. Random House. p. 73. ISBN 0-7679-1635-2.
2. William-Ross, Lindsay (21 March 2009). "LAistory: Schwab's Pharmacy". LAist. 
3. "Schwab's, Hollywood Drugstore, Shut". The New York Times. United Press International. 25 October 1983.
4. "Daughter of Famed Hollywood Columnist Sidney Skolsky Passes". The Marilyn Monroe Collection. 2 March 2010.
5. Ponder, Jon (4 June 2013). "Schwab's Drug Store: Where Lana Turner Was Not Discovered". Playground to the Stars.
6. Wilkerson, W.R., III (1 July 1995). "Writing the End to a True-to-Life Cinderella Story". Los Angeles Times.
7. "Schwab's Pharmacy / Universal Studios Florida™". 
8. "Schwab's Pharmacy Menu / Universal Studios Florida™". 

Edward Dmytryk reads The Hollywood Reporter at Schwab's Pharmacy