The Matchcover Storyteller

He was William Wallace Naylor; he stood 6’3” and weighed 330 pounds.

They called him “Tiny”.

He was a restaurateur, and really successful at it. He’d owned more than a dozen Tiny’s Waffle Shops in Central California before moving to L.A. and opening Tiny Naylor’s Drive-In in 1949 at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and La Brea. It was considered one of the best examples of what was called “Googie architecture”. It then became one of the most popular in that golden age of Hollywood. Humphrey Bogart said the design looked like a huge bird about to take off.

Tiny Naylor died in 1959; the restaurant thrived till 1980 and was demolished in 1984. Meanwhile, Tiny Naylor’s had grown to be at least an 8-restaurant chain. A shopping mall is there today.
Tiny also owned a slew of Biff’s Coffee Shops, named for his son. Between the two names, there were more than 40 locations across southern California. By 1999, there was one left, in Long Beach. Biff stayed in the business, but sold his last enterprise, Du-Par’s, in 2018 at age 79.