In the 1940’s and 1950’s Joe Amor and wife Gertrude ran this popular restaurant. There were 2 dining rooms and there were 2 apartments on the second floor with a stairway leading to both from the front of the building. In 1953 and 1954 I lived with my parents in one of those apartments and attended Selma Avenue School, 4th grade, several blocks away.
Despite what the narrator says about Joe, he was not born in Italy and had never been there; he was born in the Galicia region of northwestern Spain. Also, the restaurant was not called Little Joe’s; that was a different restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. Joe did the food preparation during the day and was host in the evenings, Gertrude was the cashier and also a host.
In 1956 Joe bought an English restaurant called Llords, on Little Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills, re-decorated Italian and called it La Scala. In that same year his nephew, Emilio Núñez, came to Hollywood from La Coruña, Spain, and later became head chef then part owner of La Scala after Joe sold it to fellow Spaniard, Jean Leon, either in 1957 or 1958.