Absolute elegance permeated Bullocks Wilshire department store in its heyday.
Customers were "patrons." Women were "ladies," and ladies wore hats. White-gloved clerks wrote sales slips by hand so the vulgar "ding" of cash registers would not disturb the genteel atmosphere. The store's 14-karat-gold credit cards alone cost $400.
Chic and sophisticated Bullocks Wilshire was spelled with an apostrophe from the time the store opened in 1929 until the 1970s, when the punctuation was removed to distinguish the place from run-of-the-mill Bullock's stores.
"Salesladies thought it was horrible when the store brought in those point-of-sale cash registers in the 1970s," said Nan Williams, 69, who worked at the store during that decade and trained women on the registers.
Williams and a dwindling number of former buyers, salesclerks and models will return to the 78-year-old Art Deco landmark July 28 for two rare public tours and a trip down the aisles of mercantile memory. Los Angeles' first department store catering to the automobile is now Southwestern Law School.
Film stars didn't just shop at Bullocks Wilshire; they worked there.
"I sold clothes in the collegiate department," said June Lockhart, 82, who sometimes describes herself as "Lassie's mom."
"I had so much fun, and boy could I sell," she said in a recent interview. It was 1943, the summer before her senior year at the Westlake School for girls.
"Helen Gurley Brown worked there as a secretary, and Angela Lansbury was a salesclerk," Lockhart said.
At the end of the summer, Lockhart gave up her $35-a-week sales job for a contract with MGM at $250 a week.
Hollywood gave the store some of its character, according to Times archives and two books: "Bullocks Wilshire" by Margaret Leslie Davis and "Wilshire Boulevard" by Kevin Roderick and J. Eric Lynxwiler.
Mae West would sit in her limo as salesclerks brought designer dresses for review.
Joan Mitchell, 78, who worked there as a model and salesclerk from 1947 to 1971, hand-delivered gowns to West's penthouse at the nearby Ravenwood apartments, she said in a recent interview.
"There was a private entrance for men only in menswear," Mitchell said. "I watched Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Katharine Hepburn walk through there. Katharine bought her shoes in the men's department."
Marlene Dietrich bought her men's trousers there. She also was known to drive up late Saturday afternoon and load her car with store employees, whom she took to her Malibu house for the weekend.
