Saturday, June 22, 2013

Miss Lube Rack

For those who thought 
she was good for nothing.
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Try guessing who this is 
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before scrolling down.
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Who Was Miss Lube Rack 1951?
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It Was Not Nancy D'Alesandro (Pelosi)
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 The photo is real but it is not of Congressional Representative Nancy Pelosi. 

The photo was taken in 1951 at the Muller Brothers Oldsmobile Tires and Carwash in Los Angeles, California by Life Magazine.  The photo was one of many that appeared in a photo documentary about the world's largest automotive service station.   The idea for the beauty contest was to celebrate the 3,000,000th vehicle to go through the car wash.  This according to a May 16, 2012 article published in the blog site of John Straub.

Nancy Pelosi was born in 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland, where her family had deep political roots. Pelosi would have been 11 years old at the time that the photo was taken.

The photo turned out to be an interesting artifact of Hollywood history and the Muller family, who settled in Los Angeles in 1893.  The family empire began with a fish market, which was later sold so they could establish Hollywood's first ice company.  In the 1920's the Mullers entered the automotive business, which later resulted in a massive automotive complex with an Oldsmobile dealership and Firestone Tire store.  The center also included a car wash, cafe, body shop, home appliance center and auto parts and supply store. According to the Foundation to support Hollywood Heritage, the Muller car complex was located on the corner of Sunset and Ivar. It was not uncommon to see Hollywood celebrities at the car complex getting their cars washed or serviced. 

The complex was conveniently located across the street from the Muller family home.  The area where the family once lived later became the site for the RCA Building and today it is the home of the Los 
Angeles Film School. Today, the former site of the world's largest service station is now home of another famous Hollywood landmark, the Cinerama Dome Theater. 
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