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Designed by Robert V. Derrah and built in 1936, the 'Crossroads of the World' has been called America's first modern shopping mall. Located on Sunset Boulevard and Las Palmas in Los Angeles, the mall features a central building designed to resemble an ocean liner surrounded by a small village of cottage-style bungalows.
Once a busy outdoor shopping center, the Crossroads now hosts private offices. It has been used for location shooting in many films, including ''L.A. Confidential'' and ''The Adventures of Ford Fairlane''. A reproduction can be seen just inside the entrance to the Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World in Florida.
In the 1960s, the Crossroads buildings housed many tenants involved in the Song poem music industry scam business. Liberace's brother, George, was one such entrepreneur with an office at the Crossroads. Jimmy Webb, noted songwriter, sold the rights to his classic song "MacArthur Park" to another one of these con-men, and was known to sleep on the floor of his office when he was broke and homeless.
In the late-1960s, one of the offices was occupied by a porn magazine that tried out young hopefuls by photographing them in the nude. It was here that an unknown John C. Holmes went one day and showcased his unusually large "endowment", leading to the start of his notorious career in adult films.