Here is a promo from the episode on John Belushi’s death from the Canadian documentary series, “Final 24,” which is shown on the Discovery Channel in the United States.

Belushi died in a bungalow behind the Chateau Marmont on the Sunset Strip on March 5, 1982, 30 years ago today.

Via Vintage Los Angeles: Most of this was taken around Sunset Plaza.

This would have been in 1959.

Description from auction company, published on YouTube in February 2011:

The Garden of Allah was a famous apartment complex in West Hollywood, California, on Sunset Boulevard between Crescent Heights and Havenhurst, at the east end of the Sunset Strip.

Although built in a Spanish-Moorish style of architecture, it derived its name not from Islam but from stage and screen actress Alla Nazimova, its original owner. Originally known as The Garden of Alla, it was a single mansion at 8080 Sunset Boulevard, built in 1919. It became notorious for the wild parties allegedly held there by the openly lesbian Nazimova.

As her acting career declined, Nazimova built a complex of 25 villas around the main building in 1927.[1] The complex had the address of 8152 Sunset Boulevard. Though Nazimova later sold the property, she continued to live in one of the villas on the grounds.

The Garden of Allah became home to many celebrities and literary figures. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived there for several months in 1937-38 at the beginning of his final sojourn in Hollywood. (He wrote himself a postcard while there: “Dear Scott — How are you? Have been meaning to come in and see you. I have living [sic] at the Garden of Allah. Yours, Scott Fitzgerald.”) Humorist/actor Robert Benchley was a frequent resident. Fitzgerald’s biographer and lover Sheilah Graham later wrote a book about the place called The Garden of Allah (New York: Crown, 1969).

In spite of the fact that it was among the landmark buildings of the west side of Los Angeles, it was torn down in June 1959 and replaced by a bank with a strip mall behind it. Actor Francis X. Bushman and his wife, who had been at the opening party, attended the closing party as well.

It has been widely rumored that it was the destruction of the Garden of Allah and its replacement with a strip mall and parking lot, that inspired the famous line in Joni Mitchell’s song “Big Yellow Taxi”, “They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.” Mitchell lived in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles, which is next to the former site; however if this rumor is true, Mitchell must have learned about the Garden of Allah after the fact, since she did not move to Los Angeles until the late 1960s, by which time it had already been demolished.

William S. Hart was a resident of Hacienda Park, the precursor neighborhood along the eastern half of what would later become the Sunset Strip. Hart’s house is still there, preserved now as a city park. The house faces DeLongrpe, but the property butts up against the east side of the Sunset Tower Hotel and backs against the 8300 block of the Strip.

8000 Sunset Blvd.

TMZ is leaving its headquarters in the commercial center at 8000 Sunset on the Strip — the one-time site of Schwab’s Drug Store — and moving to the outskirts of Marina del Rey:

Warner Bros.-owned celebrity news organization TMZ is in final negotiations to sign a long-term lease for headquarters office space at a former post office distribution center near Marina del Rey, according to multiple commercial real estate sources.

…TMZ, which operates a popular website and syndicated television newsmagazine show, would move into the new offices in early 2013.

Though TMZ would leave its current headquarters space in West Hollywood, its new Westside offices would still be within the so-called thirty-mile zone from which the website derives its name. (The TMZ, or Hollywood studio zone, is the area within a 30-mile radius of the intersection of West Beverly and North La Cienega boulevards.)

Enjoy that Westside traffic, guys!

This is about 10 miles east of the Strip on Sunset but still interesting historically.

January 16, 1964

Whisky A Go Go opens on the Sunset strip. Ex-Air Force mechanic Elmer Valentine gives rock ‘n’ roller Johnny Rivers a one-year contract at his nightclub, the third in a blossoming Whisky franchise. To keep patrons grooving between sets, DJ Rhonda Lane spins from a glass booth suspended above the crowd. Her improvised moves birth what we know as go-go dancing, and Valentine hires more fringe-frocked dancers as the go-go craze catches on.

Scores of legends have since gotten their start at the Whisky, from Alice Cooper to Buffalo Springfield to the Doors. In 1986, after a four-year closure and the uprooting of its booths, the space re-opened and welcomed hard rockers like Guns ‘n’ Roses and Metallica. The Whisky is a still a staple on the Sunset club docket today. This Friday, leather-clad twentysomethings can nosh on potato skins and sip Jack Daniels while jamming to Farr Beyond Driven, a Pantera tribute band.

River Phoenix

The sudden death of the actor River Phoenix outside a Hollywood nightclub two weeks ago was caused by “acute multiple drug intoxication” involving lethal levels of cocaine and morphine, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said today.

The office of the county sheriff said in a separate statement today that its investigation of the 23-year-old actor’s death had found “no evidence of foul play,” and the coroner’s office ruled the death accidental.

Mr. Phoenix, a star of films like “My Own Private Idaho” and “Running on Empty,” fell into convulsions and died on the sidewalk outside a popular nightclub about 1 A.M. on Oct. 31.

Scott Carrier, a spokesman for the coroner’s office, said toxicological tests had found not only the dea

dly levels of cocaine and morphine but also traces of marijuana, the prescription sedative Valium and an over-the-counter cold medication.

Mr. Carrier said that it was not known how Mr. Phoenix had taken the cocaine and morphine but that no needle marks had been found on his body.

He would be 41 years old now.