What are the opening hours?

Tuesday 12pm - 4pm Wednesday 12pm - 4pm Thursday 12pm - 4pm Friday 9am - 4pm Saturday 9am - 4pm

World of Wonder

World of Wonder also manages the global rights for all international versions of RuPaul’s Drag Race and consults on Drag Race Canada (BBC Three).

World of Wonder is the pioneering international entertainment creator of groundbreaking Emmy Award-winning feature and television programming, films, and unparalleled documentaries and series that give a voice to outsiders and marginalized communities. The world’s foremost LGBTQ+ and drag entertainment brand, World of Wonder is the multi-award-winning LA based media company that has been bringing

the best q***r talent, stories and counterculture to mainstream audiences for almost two decades. Founded in the UK in 1991 by executive producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, World of Wonder produced pioneering and headline-grabbing programmes such as The Adam and Joe Show (CH4), Power Le****ns (Sky One) and Housebusters (CH5). Expanding state-side in 1994, the team went on to produce award-winning factual entertainment, reality television and documentary content to critical and commercial success; as well as launching a specialist SVoD service and producing popular live conventions, podcasts and merchandising. Television highlights include: Emmy® Award winning RuPaul’s Drag Race (VH1/Logo), RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars (VH1), RuPaul’s Drag Race UK (BBC3), Million Dollar Listing LA & NY (Bravo), Dancing Queen (Netflix), Werq the World (WOW Presents Plus) and Gender Revolution: A Journey with Katie Couric (National Geographic). Nine of World of Wonder’s documentary films have premiered at the Sundance Film festival including Becoming Chaz, Party Monster and Whirlybird - which took home 2020's Sundance Institute | Amazon Studios Producers Award for Documentary Features. Other award-winning films and documentaries include, Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, Monica in Black and White, and Emmy Award-winning documentaries, The Last Beekeeper and Out of Iraq (all currently available to watch on WOW Presents Plus). Expanding its digital footprint, World of Wonder launched its specialist subscription on demand (SVoD) service, WOW Presents Plus. Landing in the UK in 2017, the SVoD is also available in America and 160 other countries and features World of Wonder content; including various titles across the Drag Race brand, digital series such as UNHhhh and Morning T&T and many of its documentary and film content. World of Wonder also produces RuPaul's DragCon, the world’s largest drag culture convention. Welcoming more than 100,000 attendees across LA and NYC in 2019 (with Vegas scheduled for January 2021), the company expanded internationally in 2020 with RuPaul’s DragCon UK taking place in London to a sold-out crowd. World of Wonder also co-produces the official RuPaul's Drag Race: Werq the World Tour, and the official RuPaul's Drag Race UK Tour. Co-founders Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey authored The World According to Wonder, celebrating decades of production and have been honoured with the IDA Pioneer Award, named on Variety's Reality Leaders List, and chosen for the OUT100 list for their trailblazing work in the LGBTQ+ community. World of Wonder was also selected for Realscreen's Global 100 list, which recognises the top international non-fiction and unscripted production companies working in the industry today. World of Wonder creates out of a historic building/gallery space in the heart of Hollywood.

09/03/2025

"Television cameras seem to add ten pounds, so I make it a policy never to eat television cameras."
Kitty Carlisle Hart
– September 3, 1910

She danced on Broadway, was pals with Rudolph Valentino, filmed with The Marx Brothers, and she was a confidant of Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, and Cole Porter.

Born Catherine Conn, the daughter of a strict Jewish family in New Orleans, Hart wrote: "I wasn't allowed to go to the movies. It was considered oh, not proper for children to go to the movies. " So, as a kid, she was taken to concerts instead.

She went to Hollywood in 1934 and made three films before her big break the best Marx Brothers film, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1936), where she met Moss Hart, who visited the set with Cole Porter.

Moss Hart had a long, successful collaboration writing with George Kaufman, the first playwright to win a Pulitzer Prize. Hart and Carlisle married in 1946, and Hart introduced his wife to the upper crust of New York society and notables of the theatre world.

She made her television debut in 1949, appearing regularly on the panel of the game show I'VE GOT A SECRET. She was the only panelist to appear on every episode of the original TO TELL THE TRUTH from 1956 to 1991. Hart: "People remember me from television, not from A NIGHT AT THE OPERA. They have no idea that I played the lead and did all the singing, but they do remember television."

As Hart's charming wife, she protected her husband's secrets. She was married to Hart for the last 15 years of his life, and although he died 1961 at just 57 years old, she lived another 46 years, never remarrying. In Steven Bach's DAZZLER: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MOSS HART (2001), Bach reveals that throughout the marriage, Hart had plenty of assignations with men. Kitty Hart never made a public comment about the book, but until the end, she continued to de-gay her husband's story despite his affairs with agent some of the men mentioned in his dazzling love letter to the theatre, ACT ONE (1959). After his death, Hart sealed her husband's diaries and blocked any materials that contained evidence of his gayness.

Photo: publicity still for SHE LOVES ME NOT (1934)

09/03/2025

Stars, statements, and legends! 🤩 Meet the iconic celeb guests joining us this season on , and watch Season 7’s Meet The Queens NOW STREAMING on ! https://bit.ly/4oMPX0M

NEW RuPaul’s Drag Race UK is coming soon:
🌎 worldwide ex. UK & Canada
🇬🇧

🆓 Sign up to watch Ep 1 for FREE on premiere day, link in bio

👑 MEET THE QUEENS 👑

t.grande

trademark

09/02/2025

"Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'."
Billy Preston
– September 2, 1946

It was once said that Billy Preston had the wildest organ in town. He was absolutely one of the greatest keyboard players in Pop Music History, and probably also the best session player of the Rock era.

He is one of several gifted humans referred to by fans and music historians as the "Fifth Beatle", and probably the truest. At one point during the 1969 recording sessions for GET BACK, John Lennon proposed the idea of having him as an official Fifth Beatle. At the time, Paul McCartney said: "It was bad enough with four Beatles".

Always in demand, Preston collaborated with, played keyboards for, and recorded with: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Nat King Cole, Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Sam Cooke, Sammy Davis Jr., Aretha Franklin, The Jackson 5, Quincy Jones, Sly Stone, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Preston was the very first musical guest on the very first show of a brand-new television series called SATURDAY NIGH LIVE on October 11, 1975.

He wrote Joe Cocker's biggest hit, YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL TO ME. He also composed ME & MRS. JONES and he had a string of hits in the 1970s: OUTA-SPACE, WILL IT GO ROUND IN CIRCLES, and a duet with Syreeta Wright, WITH YOU I'M BORN AGAIN.

Preston is the only person to share songwriting credit on an album by The Beatles with GET BACK. He was a part of The Beatles' 42-minute final public performance on January 30, 1969, on the roof of the Apple building in London.

It was known in the music industry that Preston was gay with a penchant for young male hustlers. Preston admitted that he could never come out of the closet because of his church, and he felt that the music industry would never support him.

Preston liked drugs, and his drug of choice was crack. After an overdose, he was in a coma for six months. Preston took that final bow in 2006, gone at 59 years old.

His gayness was no secret from The Beatles or the other artists he worked with. He often took boyfriends on tour with him. He was sort of outed by Keith Richards in his memoir LIFE (2010).

09/01/2025

"Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs."
Lily Tomlin
– September 1, 1939

In a 60 year career, Lily Tomlin has been awarded two Tonys, a pair of Peabodys, six Emmys, a Grammy, a Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle award, plus the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. She was nominated for an Oscar for her amazing performance in Robert Altman's NASHVILLE (1975). Other great Tomlin performances include THE LATE SHOW (1977) with Art Carney, 9 TO 5 (1980) with two other women, and ALL OF ME (1980) with Steve Martin.

Tomlin was raised in Detroit. She claims she always wanted to be a performer. She did school plays and stand-up in Detroit before moving to New York City. Tomlin: "When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific."

In 1969, she joined NBC's crazy sketch comedy series ROWAN & MARTIN'S LAUGH-
IN, introducing many of her famous characters including: the irascible, prune-faced telephone operator Ernestine; the precocious six-year0old sandbox philosopher Edith Ann in her oversize rocking chair; and The Tasteful Lady, imperious and upper class, who never fails to puncture her own pretense.

“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.”

Tomlin met talented Jane Wagner in 1971. After catching as After-School Special written by Wagner, Tomlin invited her to collaborate on her comedy album AND THAT'S THE TRUTH. Tomlin: "In 1977, I was on the cover of TIME. The same week I had a big story in NEWSWEEK. In one of the magazines, it said I live alone, and the other magazine said I live with Jane. My publicist called me and said: 'TIME will give you the cover if you'll come out'. I was more offended than anything that they thought we'd make a deal. But that was 1975. It would have been a hard thing to do at that time. Everybody in the industry was certainly aware of my s*xuality and of Jane.

The couple has been together more than 50 years. They married on New Year's Eve 2013. They live in in a big pink stucco house that was once owned by W.C. Fields.

"I wanted to be acknowledged for my work. I didn't want to be that gay person who does comedy."

09/01/2025

THIS WEEKEND ONLY! 👑🛍️ Sn**ch 30% off the entire store in our Labor Day Weekend Sale, site wide and in-person! No code needed, offer valid thru Sept 2 @ 11:59PM PT

🛒 Start saving on official merch now at store.worldofwonder.com

08/31/2025

"oh god it's wonderful / to get out of bed / and drink too much coffee / and smoke too many ci******es / and love you so much." From STEPS by Frank O'Hara

Vincent Warren
– August 31, 1938

Vincent Warren was an elegant, brilliant ballet dancer and also the great love of poet Frank O'Hara's life. They fell in love in summer 1959, and soon after they met (O'Hara was 33 years old and Warren was 20) Warren began appearing in O'Hara's poetry. In STEPS, O'Hara's ode to Warren, the closing stanza is the quote at the start of this piece, but starting with "How funny you are today New York/like Ginger Rogers in SWINGTIME/and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left."

Although Warren is their subject, the poems don't mention O'Hara's lover by name, out of Warren's fear that his mother would read them and discover he was gay. Instead, O'Hara playfully encoded Warren's name down the left-hand side of his poem YOU ARE GORGEOUS AND I'M COMING. There are many tributes to Warren in O'Hara's collection, LOVE POEMS (TENTATIVE TITLE), published in 1965.

After his intense relationship with O'Hara ended, Warren went to Canada where he became a much-admired dancer. He was a stunner who was often compared to Rudolf Nureyev.

Everything changed in 1966, when O'Hara was killed in a jeep accident on a beach on Fire Island. O'Hara's death devastated Warren, but it was also a turning point pushing him to become a serious artist.

Warren danced with New York City's Metropolitan Opera Ballet and then, most famously, with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal. As he grew older, Warren became a formidable Dance Historian. His legacy is the Bibliothèque de la Danse Vincent-Warren, the largest Dance library in Canada.

Warren and Les Grands Ballets had a triumph with TOMMY, a ballet version of The Who's rock opera. The production premiered in 1970, then played on Broadway and toured extensively, bringing a younger audience to ballet.

Warren was taken by cancer in 2017, at 79 years old. His obituaries, his Wikipedia page, and his IMBD bio, all leave out the O'Hara part of his story.

Photo by Jack Mitchell

08/30/2025

"In the 1920s, you were a face. And that was enough. In the 1930s, you also had to be a voice. And your voice had to match your face, if you can imagine that."
Joan Blondell
– August 30, 1906

Booze, bootleggers, and broads, you've got to love Blondell in those pre-code films. She worked in 90 films and was also a dependable guest or regular on dozens of television series. She never reached the very top like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, or Katharine Hepburn, yet Blondell had a career that lasted for more than 50 years. She's one of those actors who moved gracefully from leading roles to supporting player, from showgirl to character actor.

Her looks and demeanor made her perfect to play shop girls, clerks, and gangster molls. Her working-class characters were so spot on that Blondell could never convincingly play an upper-crust lady. She was best at portraying gum-smacking dolls always ready with a wisecrack. Film fans in the 1930s identified with her blue-collar image and her moxie. She played the hard luck dame who has no time for self-pity, or the tough-talking best friend.

With big round eyes, chubby cheeks, beauty mark, and bighearted smile, Blondell seems approachable and thoroughly American, the opposite of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, exotic women with perfect cheekbones.

Blondell stated that she never fought for better roles or a higher salary. She liked being a working actor, glad for that weekly salary, owning a house and an automobile, things denied her growing up.

She worked hard for her money, making as many as eight films a year. Blondell: "I never got away from that small salary, never did. I didn't fight enough. They'd bring in other studio stars for Warner pictures and I'd say: 'Oh, you know I could have done that'. I didn't even see the stuff I was in at the time. I just went home and skipped it all, from the rushes to the premiers. Every day was filled with work and my only relief was to get home.

Blondell's final credits rolled in 1979, gone at 73 years old. She is proof that the best kept secret about the Golden Age of Hollywood is just how hard people worked.

08/29/2025

"I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know why I didn't."
Edward Carpenter
– August 29, 1844

Gay Rights Activist, Socialist, Feminist, Pacifist, Vegetarian, Nudist, Mystic, Poet, Essayist, Sandal–wearer, challenger of most values of modern Western Civilization, Edward Carpenter had an impact on the culture and politics of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. He enjoyed friendships with Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster, Isadora Duncan, and Emma Goldman.

Unusual for his day, he gave public lectures for the working-class. He practiced what he preached, giving away most of his money and earning a living as a sandal-maker, lecturer, and journalist.

In 1891, after a chance meeting on a train, he and George Merrill, an uneducated worker, became lovers. In 1898, when Carpenter was 54 years old and Merrill was just 32, they set up house together, unheard of in England which was profoundly anti-gay after Oscar Wilde's trials three years earlier. Carpenter and Merrill lived openly as a couple for the next 30 years, until Merrill's passing. Their love affair, crossing the classes, was the inspiration for their friend E.M. Forster's novel MAURICE.

Carpenter felt that it was natural for people to settle down into a single deep permanent union, but also normal that along the way they should experience a variety of relationships and s*xual adventures. He visualized a society with love and devotion between individuals without jealousy, eschewing social opinions, or religious and legal unions. Carpenter considered s*x a good thing and not a cause of human sinfulness. His opinions were revolutionary in his era, and they'd make MAGA's heads explode today.

Merrill died unexpectedly in January 1928. In May 1928, Carpenter suffered a stroke. He was taken in June 1929, exactly 40 years before the Stonewall Riots.

Carpenter managed to avoid scandal and disgrace like Wilde. He made no secret of his relationship with Merrill, he was discreet, but they lived in isolation in the countryside. His controversial books avoided prosecution despite having been investigated by the morals police many times.

08/28/2025

"If one is past 60, coming out is almost like saying that most of your life you've been too embarrassed to admit it or to speak up."
Nancy Kulp
– August 28, 1921

Nancy Kulp is much loved by baby boomers for her role on that silly, super successful television series, THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES (1962-1971), portraying the prim, efficient Miss Jane Hathaway, secretary to banker Milburn Drysdale (Raymon Bailey). She and Drysdale managed the fortune of the Clampetts, who had relocated to Beverly Hills after striking oil on their property in rural Tennessee. Hathaway was always called "Miss Jane" by the Clampetts. She was attracted to the sweet, simple-minded Jethro Bodine (Max Baer, Jr.), nephew of patriarch Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen).

Critics dismissed the series, saying it was strained and unfunny, but viewers found it hilarious, and it went on to have an even longer life when it went into syndication. During its first two seasons, it was the Number One program in the USA. From 1962 to 1964 it averaged 57 million viewers at a time when the USA had 190 million people, so nearly a third of the country tuned in each week.

Kulp served in the US Navy during World War II. After the war she worked as a television reporter in Florida. She relocated to Hollywood in the early 1950s looking to work in the publicity department at a studio. She caught the attention of George Cukor, who cast Kulp as a comic spinster in THE MODEL AND THE MARRIAGE BROKER (1951). She played a variation of this role for the rest of her 38-year career. One critic wrote: "Kulp has the face of a shriveled balloon, the figure of a string of spaghetti, and the voice of a bullfrog in mating season.

In 1989, Kulp came out of the closet, sort of. Boze Hadleigh interviewed her for his book HOLLYWOOD LE****NS, where she said: "I find that birds of a feather flock together. Does that answer your question?" Hadleigh published his book in 1994, after all the subjects were dead. Kulp never formally came out of the closet, but her gayness was no secret in the biz.

Her final credits rolled in 1991, taken by cancer at 69 years old. She appeared in 250 episodes of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES.

08/27/2025

"I don't think of myself as gay. That doesn't mean that I'm not gay. I just don't define myself by my s*xuality."
Tom Ford
– August 27, 1961

Thomas Carlyle Ford has not only made himself a part of his own product, he's his own muse.

He moved from his native Austin to New York City to study Interior Architecture at Parsons. During that era, he hung out at Studio 54. The club's disco-era glamour is a major influence on his designs. Ford: "I didn't realize I was gay until I moved to New York City. I was 17 and I just went crazy."

Ford lived in Paris in the mid-1980s, working as an intern at Chloé. The job involved sending clothes out on photo shoots, which is how he fell in love with fashion. He spent his final year at Parsons studying fashion but still graduated with a degree in architecture.

In the 1990s, Ford was creative director of Gucci, turning around that venerable house from bankruptcy to huge profits. He then acquired The House of Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) in 1999, again, serving as its creative director. He left in 2004 to start his own company with a line of women's and menswear, eyewear, and accessories.

In 2016, Ford was named one of GQ's 50 Best Dressed Men and CFDA's Fashion Award for Menswear Designer of the Year. His designs are classic, deceptively simple, sophisticated and above all, s*xually seductive.

He's a vegan, drinks in moderation, and is been open about using fillers and Botox. He has a 24,000-acre ranch outside Santa Fe that he shares with his smooth fox terriers who have appeared on the runway and in his films. The ranch has an entire fictional town that is used as a filming location for Westerns. Ford also has a townhouse in London, a Hamptons estate once owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and a Palm Beach mansion with a view of Melania Knauss n**e sunbathing.

Ford is a Democrat, but he has a policy of not dressing politicians of any party. Ford: "Cancel culture inhibits design because rather than feeling free, the tendency is to start locked into a set of rules. Everything is now considered appropriation. We used to be able to celebrate other cultures. Now you can't do that."

08/26/2025

"Feeling guilty is no reason for staying or going."
Christopher Isherwood
– August 26, 1904

Christopher Isherwood is a major influence on modern fiction writing with his "I am a camera" approach to narration. His memoir CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND (1976) is the tale of leaving his uptight, upper-class British life, and spending most of his 20s living in Berlin between the two world wars where he hooked up with lots of young working-class guys.

He fell for young Heinz Neddermeyer at a time when finding a room for rent was tough. He moved into the Neddermeyer's cramped apartment, and the parents moved out of their bedroom and slept on the living room floor so guys could enjoy a double bed in privacy.

In CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND, Isherwood also writes about Jean Ross, the inspiration for "Sally Bowles" in his novel THE BERLIN STORIES (1945). A section of that book is the basis for the play I AM A CAMERA (1951) by John Van Druten. It was adapted to a film in 1955. The play and film had Julie Harris as Sally Bowles. A decade later it became a Broadway musical, CABARET, then, of course, Liza Minnelli played Bowles in the 1972 film version.

Isherwood describes the relationship with Neddermeyer as an "adoption" because the boy was so much younger and not so wise to the ways of the world. They traveled together around Europe and North Africa until May 1937 when Neddermeyer was forced to return to Germany. The next day, he was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to four years of hard labor. When he was freed, he married a woman and had a son. Men at that time found ways to forget about their gay lives after the N***s sent them to prison.

Neddermeyer and Isherwood continued to correspond. In 1956, Isherwood received a letter from Neddermeyer writing that he was afraid of being arrested again, this time by the Communists. Isherwood sent him some money. Nothing else is mentioned about him in Isherwood's extensive diaries. Isherwood had no contact with him after their publication when Neddermeyer wrote that he was absolutely appalled by the candidness of the book.

08/25/2025

"A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future."
Leonard Bernstein
– August 25, 1918

Leonard Bernstein is probably more famous than any other orchestra conductor in history. He also composed three symphonies, two operas, five musicals, a mass, three film scores, and numerous songs of all sorts.

Bernstein, along with Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim were four very smart, young gay Jewish guys, all at the very heights of their talents in 1957 when they created the groundbreaking WEST SIDE STORY, one of the important musicals of the 20th century.

Bernstein was unafraid to be outspoken on the issues of Civil Rights and the Vietnam War, but he was, for much of his career, unwilling to risk exposing his gayness. Indeed, life in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, even in the arts, meant that revealing his gayess would probably have destroyed the celebrity and influence he had worked so hard to gain.

Typical for his era, Bernstein was simply another gay guy who got married to a woman because that was what you did. Like many gay men of his generation, Bernstein appeared as a devoted husband and father in public while carrying on a promiscuous gay s*x life behind the scenes. There was an arrangement with his wife that if he did not embarrass her publicly, he was free to pursue his affairs with other fellas. Among his many lovers was musical director Tom Cothran. At one point, he left his wife, the talented Chilean-born actor Felicia Cohn Montealegre, for Cothran.

In his last decade, Bernstein was surrounded by beautiful boys, each one as intoxicated, drug-addled, and wild as he was. Bernstein made up for lost time. He was finally comfortable with his gayness, and so were his collaborators Laurents and Sondheim.

Bernstein is buried in Brooklyn's Green-wood Cemetery, with the score to Gustav Mahlers' Fifth Symphony lying across his heart.

He left behind recordings and videos, plus his films and revivals of his musicals and operas, leaving a legacy to be experienced today, and in the future, if we have a future.

1957 photo by Ruth Orkin

Address

6650 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA
90028

Opening Hours

Tuesday	12pm - 4pm
Wednesday	12pm - 4pm
Thursday	12pm - 4pm
Friday	9am - 4pm
Saturday	9am - 4pm

Telephone

+14706646527

Website

https://worldofwonder.net/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when World of Wonder posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to World of Wonder:

Shortcuts

Address
Telephone
Opening Hours
Alerts
Contact The Business
Claim ownership or report listing

Want your business to be the top-listed Media Company in Los Angeles?

World of Wonder

09/03/2025

09/03/2025

09/02/2025

09/01/2025

09/01/2025

08/31/2025

08/30/2025

08/29/2025

08/28/2025

08/27/2025

08/26/2025

08/25/2025

Address

Opening Hours

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category