FIRST PAGE • PREVIOUS PAGE • NEXT PAGE

TAIL O' THE COCK — The photo above is of the Tail o' the Cock at 44 S. La Cienega Boulevard, aka "Restaurant Row."  There was another at 12950 Ventura Boulevard — both popular dinner joints famous for their America menus (steak, prime rib, etc.) and bar scene.  The Tail o' the Cock claimed to be the first place in Los Angeles to serve Margaritas and it may well have been, I don't know.

As one might gather from the name, the big selling point at Tail o' the Cock wasn't the food so much as the cocktails.  It was a popular place for people to meet for drinks, especially late in the afternoon.  An awful lot of Hollywood deals were consummated there over martinis.  It was where a voice actress named June Foray met with two animation producers — Jay Ward and Bill Scott — and they told her they wanted her to play a new character named Rocky the Flying Squirrel.  And there were probably less important roles cast there involving big Academy Award productions.

SCOT'S — Scot's was a small chain of McDonald's knock-offs and we used to go to the one located on the Southwest corner of Pico Boulevard and Westwood — land that now contains a Barnes & Noble.  Their mascot was a sexy lady wearing kilts and doing a dance and they had a huge drawing of her towering over the main building.  One suspects the lady and the chain's name was because someone thought, "Hmm...maybe people go to McDonald's because they think it's Scottish."  Or perhaps the thought process was that people weren't that familiar yet with McDonald's — this was before that company's big advertising blitz — and that they'd go to Scot's, thinking it was the place they had in mind.  Either way, there was nothing else at Scot's that had anything to do with Scotland.

The menu was pretty much what McDonald's then had plus a few extra items such as pizza.  When they finally closed down, the structure at Pico and Westwood went through a year or three of name changes.  For a while, it was Pride's, then something else, then something else.  They finally cleared the land and built a new fast food place which I'll tell you about in the next entry.

THE LONE RANGER RESTAURANT — Around 1970, food places began popping up around Southern California sporting the name of great cowboy stars.  You had your Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich places which, through changes of ownership, evolved into the current chain that bears Roy's moniker.  In their original form, they were more like Arby's but much better.  You also had around L.A., five or six Lone Ranger restaurants, including one at Pico and Westwood and another over on Wilshire a few blocks west of Bundy.  I remember liking the name and the looks of the places and being very, very disappointed in the cuisine.  It was difficult to bite into one of their burgers and not get to wondering what had become of Silver.

But there was a reason to go the Lone Ranger restaurants and that was that on weekends, the Lone Ranger himself would appear at one of another of them.  And I don't mean any old out-of-work actor in a mask.  This out-of-work actor was Clayton Moore, himself...and boy, did he still look good in the costume.  To this day, I'm kicking myself that for some reason, it never dawned on me to take a camera and get my picture with Kemosabe.

Moore would arrive in a very nice trailer/dressing room, accompanied by a very Caucasian lady in an Indian squaw costume.  She called herself "Tonta" and she was apparently an executive in the Lone Ranger business, which I think was then the Wrather Corporation.  Mr. Moore would shake hands and pose for pics and sign autographs, largely for folks who I don't think were aware that they were in the presence of the guy who'd played the role for years on TV.  If you said something to him that indicated you knew who he was (i.e., Clayton Moore, not the Lone Ranger), you'd see a glimmer of delight behind the mask and he'd talk to you in a whole different way, answering questions about his films and TV appearances.  He might even take you into the trailer for the kind of conversation he couldn't have in front of the general public where he always had to be The Masked Man, as opposed to the actor.  And if you were really lucky, he'd give you a silver bullet.  He didn't give those to just anybody.

Despite this, and for reasons obvious to anyone who actually ate at one, the Lone Ranger restaurants were a quick flop.  I think they all closed in less than a year. But it was worth enduring the burgers to shake hands with Clayton Moore and, yes, I still have my silver bullet.

Click here to go to the NEXT PAGE