Opened in 1932 by the Schwab brothers, Schwab's Pharmacy in Hollywood became the most famous and longest-operating outlet of their small retail chain. 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. In the 1930s, Schwab's was the inspiration for songwriter
Harold Arlen to write the music for the song "
Over the Rainbow" for the 1939 film
The Wizard of Oz. Schwab's closed in October 1983. 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 premier movie magazine in the United States at the time, "From a Stool at Schwab's." 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 Café, 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
Hollywood Reporter publisher
William Wilkerson. Today, there is a replica of the establishment at
Universal Studios in Florida and
Japan, the latter themed around
Super Mario. ==In popular media==