Reyner Banham was an interesting figure in urban studies in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Born in England, he fell in love with Los Angeles as a child, while devouring Hollywood-set silent movies. As an adult, he became a foremost architecture critic in an age when that profession barely existed, focusing a great deal of his writing on L.A. He died in 1988, just as he was about to move to New York to teach at NYU. At the time of his death, architect Philip Johnson asserted that Banham was “really one of the founders of architecture criticism, which has now become a worldwide profession.”

In 1972, the down-to-earth academic was the subject of a fun 51-minute BBC documentary, Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles, that had him act as tour guide through the city he loved best. Watch for the amusing scene that has his friend, the artist Ed Ruscha, explain to Banham why the architecture of L.A. gas stations is so great.