STAKING THEIR NAMES ON IT : Many well-known local firms have kept a link with their founders as part of their identity.

You can tell a lot about a place by knowing a little about the people who started the best-known businesses there. The knowledge tells you, for instance, what it has taken to succeed and survive in the local economy.

Although Southern California is sometimes accused of having a short memory about its past, not all its businesses have been flashes in the pan. In fact, it has no shortage of long-established, successful companies.

So, examine a measure of local immortality--people whose names are still attached to the companies that they founded here and whose corporate legacies include widespread name recognition.

Who were they? Not unlike many of today’s Southland entrepreneurs, they were often immigrants who came here flat broke. Most commonly, they were fortune seekers, dreamers and unorthodox risk takers. And, also not unlike today, they sought some imaginative way to tap this rich market.

Here is a little background on some of the region’s most venerable names in business. The ground rules for inclusion were that the companies must be Southern California-based, that they were founded here, still carry their founders’ names and have been around for a long time.

This list is not exhaustive. It also leaves out local companies that were founded elsewhere, have moved away, were started in the recent past, dropped or never used their founders’ names, do not have high name recognition or no longer exist.

There are many, many companies in those categories, but sic transit gloria.

MARK C. BLOOME CO.

Anaheim-based tire retailer, now owned by Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

Mark C. Bloome (1902-), after emigrating from Canada to Southern California, opened a gas station in 1924 on Slauson Avenue in Compton. Using razzle-dazzle promotions--among them glassware giveaways and woman attendants on roller skates--he built his business into a chain of service stations across Los Angeles.

In the 1950s, under the guidance of his son-in-law Jerry Fields, Bloome’s stations gradually began to specialize in selling tires. The chain pioneered the concept of the large, clean tire store selling all major brands, with service bays facing the street and air-conditioned waiting rooms. The family sold the business to Petrolane Inc. in 1972; Goodyear purchased it in 1986. It currently operates 45 stores in Southern California.

BULLOCK’S

Los Angeles-based department store chain, now a unit of R. H. Macy Co.

John G. Bullock (1871-1933), born in Canada, founded his Los Angeles department store in 1907 at Seventh and Broadway, with financial backing of his former boss Arthur Letts, owner of the Broadway Department Store down the street. Later, he bought out Letts’ interest and expanded his chain to several stores, each operated independently. In 1970, after their purchase by Federated Department Stores, the Bullock’s and Bullocks Wilshire chains were made into separate entities. (Bullocks Wilshire dropped the apostrophe in its name as part of its effort to establish its own identity.) Both chains were purchased by Macy in 1988.

MARIE CALLENDER PIE SHOPS INC.

Orange-based chain of coffee shops, now owned by Wilshire Restaurant Group.

Marie Callender (1907-), with husband Cal and son Don, began making pies in a rented Quonset hut in Long Beach in 1948, then selling them wholesale to coffee shops and restaurants.

A decade later, the Callenders began opening their own restaurants, specializing in such basic fare as soup, chili, sandwiches, pie and coffee. The family sold the business, which has grown to 153 restaurants in 16 states, to Ramada Inns in 1986, which sold it in May of this year to Wilshire Restaurant Group.

WALT DISNEY CO.

Burbank-based entertainment and theme park company.

Walter Elias Disney (1901-1966), a one-time Missouri farm boy with a talent for drawing, moved to Southern California in the 1920s and began making animated cartoons in a Hollywood garage. Despite early setbacks, he hit it big with Mickey Mouse and built a billion-dollar entertainment empire.

After his death, the company stagnated and was almost taken over by a corporate raider. But, under new management, it has become a hugely profitable entertainment conglomerate in the 1980s.

DOUGLAS AIRCRAFT

Long Beach-based aircraft builder, now part of McDonnell Douglas Corp.

Donald Wills Douglas (1892-1981), a pioneer aircraft engineer, moved to Los Angeles and founded his own airplane company in 1920 in a back room behind a Santa Monica barbershop. A decade later, Douglas developed the DC (for Douglas Commercial) series of aircraft, which accounted for more than half of the world’s airline seats until the end of the 1950s, by which time Boeing’s wildly successful 707 had ushered in the jet age and taken away Douglas’s lead in commercial airplanes.

The company’s delay in entering the jetliner market hastened its merger with McDonnell in 1967. Douglas stepped down as chief executive that year at age 75.

DUCOMMUN INC.

Los Angeles-based aerospace manufacturer.

Sometimes called the state’s oldest company, it began in 1849 when Swiss watchmaker Charles Louis Ducommun (1820-1896) set up a watch shop that became a general store near the center of the pueblo of Los Angeles. Early in the 20th Century, Ducommun’s heirs diversified by becoming suppliers to the area’s fledging aircraft manufacturing industry. Ducommun family members still occupy key executive positions, but in recent years the company has hit hard times, including four straight years of losses.

EVEREST & JENNINGS INTERNATIONAL

Los Angeles-based maker of wheelchairs and medical equipment.

Herbert A. Everest, paralyzed in a mining accident, needed a wheelchair, but those used in the 1930s were made of rigid wood and wicker. They didn’t fit in a car, so Everest and his friend Harry C. Jennings (1888-1964), also a mining engineer, puttered in a West Los Angeles garage and came up with a folding wheelchair made of lightweight aircraft tubing and fabric. From that beginning has grown the world’s largest wheelchair manufacturer, with annual sales of $191 million.

FLUOR CORP.

Irvine-based engineering and construction company.

John Simon Fluor (1867-1944), a Swiss immigrant who, in the 1890s, worked with his brothers in the construction business in Oshkosh, Wis., moved to Santa Ana in 1912 and founded Fluor Construction Co. In 1915, the company got its first oil and gas construction contract, which led eventually to mammoth refineries and other energy industry projects. Fluor remained active in his company until he died, and his heirs and relatives still fill a number of key positions at the publicly traded, $5-billion firm.

HUGHES AIRCRAFT

Culver City-based defense and electronics firm, now a unit of General Motors.

It is not known exactly when, but in the early 1930s--not long after the brilliant, eccentric Howard Robard Hughes (1905-1976) purchased the RKO movie studio and began to spend considerable time in Southern California--Hughes formed an aircraft division of his Houston-based Hughes Tool Co. In essence, it was a bookkeeping entity to pay for the experimental racing planes that he built and housed at Glendale airport.

In 1941, he moved Hughes Aircraft to Culver City, where it developed aircraft with non-metallic “skins”--culminating in the gigantic Spruce Goose. After World War II, Hughes steered the company into defense electronics and eventually communications satellites. In 1953, it was made a separate corporate entity whose profits went to the charitable Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and in 1985, it was sold to GM.

IRVINE CO.

Newport Beach-based land developer.

James Irvine (1867-1947), son of a San Francisco merchant-turned-Orange County sheep rancher, took his father’s share of a huge Orange County ranch and built it into an agricultural giant, raising mostly beans and sugar beets. Under his sons and granddaughter in the 1950s and later, the company began to develop the land as Orange County became a major population center. The family’s foundation sold the company to a group of investors, including Donald Bren, in 1977. Bren now has a controlling stake and serves as chairman.

LAWRY’S FOODS INC.

Los Angeles-based specialty foods and restaurants company, now owned by Thomas J. Lipton Co.

Lawrence L. Frank (1887- 1970), after a successful career with his brother-in-law in the Van de Kamp’s bakery business, incorporated his own company--using his nickname--to operate restaurants and similar businesses. The centerpiece was Lawry’s The Prime Rib, which has become a fixture on La Cienega Boulevard.

In 1938, he began selling his own brand of blended seasoning salt to Lawry’s The Prime Rib customers; that modest beginning has grown into a $200-million food products business that includes Lawry’s California Center, a sprawling manufacturing and restaurant operation near downtown Los Angeles. Lipton, the tea maker, has owned Lawry’s since 1979.

LITTON INDUSTRIES

Beverly Hills-based electronics company.

Charles V. Litton (1903-1972), owner of an electron tube company in Northern California, sold his firm in 1953 to conglomerate builder Charles (Tex) Thornton, who merged it with his fledgling Electro-Dynamics Corp. in Southern California. Litton’s name was attached to the combined firms in 1954 because of the good reputation that his products enjoyed among brass at the Pentagon, the company’s major customer. Litton never worked for the $5-billion, Beverly Hills-based company that bears his name.

LOCKHEED CORP.

Calabasas-based defense, aircraft and electronics firm.

Barnstormers and flight pioneers Allan Haines Loughead (1889-1969) and his brother Malcolm struck it rich giving aerial sightseeing tours at an exposition in San Francisco in 1915. His efforts to start an aircraft factory were mostly failures, however, and only a rescue by a group of investors in 1932 kept Lockheed Aircraft Corp., which he started in 1926 and sold in 1929, from going under.

The company, which now generates revenue of more than $10 billion annually, has used the phonetic spelling of Loughead’s name since its founding to avoid unfortunate mispronunciations, such as “lug-hed.” Allan legally changed the spelling of his name to Lockheed in 1934.

METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER PICTURES

Culver City-based movie and television producer, now part of MGM/UA Communications.

In 1924, Loews Corp., owner of a chain of movie palaces badly in need of more films, bought and merged three Hollywood production houses: Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Picture Corp. and Louis B. Mayer Productions. Producer Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974) had departed his failing company in 1922 and never participated in MGM. Louis B. Mayer (1885-1957) became the unquestioned boss of MGM in its “golden age.”

The film company, nearly bankrupt in the late 1960s, has been controlled for two decades by financier Kirk Kerkorian, who has used it in a series of complicated financial dealings and a foray into Las Vegas hotel-casinos. MGM’s famed Culver City studio is now owned by Lorimar, its film library belongs to Turner Entertainment Co., and the parent MGM/UA is being acquired by Australian conglomerate Qintex.

NORTHROP CORP.

Los Angeles-based aircraft and electronics manufacturer.

John Knudsen Northrop (1895-1981), a tireless inventor with only a high school education, worked with flight pioneers Allan Loughead and Donald W. Douglas before starting his own company in 1939. He was known for wildly inventive designs, such as the ahead-of-its-time flying wing. He retired early from the company in 1952, bitter and disappointed after the Air Force canceled his flying-wing program. But he lived long enough to see the idea resurrected in the new Stealth bomber, which had its maiden flight this year.

RALPHS GROCERY CO.

Compton-based supermarket chain, now a unit of Campeau Corp.

After his career as a bricklayer was curtailed by a hunting accident, George Albert Ralphs (1850-1914) became a grocery clerk and, in 1873, went into partnership with his boss in a store at Sixth and Spring streets in Los Angeles. Later, his brothers Walter and Newell bought in and the business became Ralphs Bros. Grocers.

By providing free lodging and stables for farmers bringing their crops to market, the Ralphs were able to lock up huge supplies and cut prices below their competitors’. The family-run company was sold to Federated Department Stores in 1967; acquired by Campeau Corp. in 1988, it has more than 140 supermarkets throughout the area.

ROBINSON’S

Los Angeles-based department store chain, now a unit of the May Department Stores Co.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1882 from North Bridgewater, Mass., Joseph Winchester Robinson (1846-1891) opened the Boston Dry Goods Store near the corner of Temple and Spring streets downtown in February, 1883. It was an immediate success, and Robinson became a prominent figure in the community.

After his untimely death at age 45, the store--by then renamed Robinson’s--went through a succession of managers until his son, Harry Winchester Robinson (1877-1933) took control in 1924. May bought the chain in 1986.

SMART & FINAL IRIS CORP.

Los Angeles-based specialty warehouse grocery chain, now 88%-owned by French food conglomerate Etablisement Casino.

James Samuel Smart teamed up with H.P. Final in 1914 to start a cash-and-carry wholesale grocery business in Santa Ana. The partners opened more stores and warehouses, and in 1952, they acquired Haas Baruch & Co., a grocery wholesaler that was a direct descendant of a feed and grain business founded in Los Angeles in 1871.

Haas Baruch’s popular Iris brand was then added to the company’s grocery shelves and corporate name. Smart & Final Iris, which operates 100 stores in California and Nevada, was acquired in 1957 by Thriftimart, a supermarket chain, which in turn was purchased in 1984 by Etablisement Casino.

20th CENTURY FOX FILM CORP.

Los Angeles-based movie and television producer.

Hungarian-born William Fox (1879-1952) (originally spelled Fuchs) bought an interest in a Brooklyn movie house in 1904 and parlayed the investment into a chain of theaters. In 1915, he formed Fox Film Corp. to produce movies for his theaters, quickly buying an East Los Angeles studio and then starting his own at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue.

His Hollywood empire crumbled in the Depression, and bankrupt Fox Film was merged in 1935 with 20th Century Pictures, founded by movie pioneers Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck. 20th Century Fox, which survived half a dozen brushes with collapse and episodes of corporate intrigue in the intervening years, is now owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch.

VAN de KAMP’S HOLLAND DUTCH BAKERS

Los Angeles-based regional bakery.

From a store that they opened in 1915 at Second and Spring streets in downtown Los Angeles, brothers-in-law Theodore J. Van de Kamp (1891-1956), uncle of California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, and Lawrence L. Frank, who later founded Lawry’s Foods, made and sold potato chips. A shortage of potatoes in 1916 forced them to sell other items, most notably macaroons, under Van de Kamp’s label.

The business, known for its blue-and-white windmill logo, grew to include self-service bakery counters in grocery stores along the Pacific Coast, coffee shops and a frozen foods business. The company, whose ownership has changed several times through the years, eventually sold all but its bakery business, which still operates from a landmark 1931 building on Fletcher Drive in the Northeast Los Angeles “breadbasket,” where a number of other regional bakers are located.

VONS GROCERY CO.

El Monte-based supermarket chain.

Charles T. Von der Ahe (1882-1973), a Danish immigrant, founded Von’s Groceteria at Seventh and Figueroa streets in 1906, expanded it to a chain of 87 stores and then sold out to a predecessor of Safeway in 1929. With his sons Ted and Wil, he began a new Vons Grocery Co. in 1932, which has grown into the current El Monte-based supermarket chain with 340 stores and more than $5 billion in revenue.

WARNER BROS. INC.

Burbank-based movie and television studio, now part of Warner Communications.

Sons of Polish immigrants, the Warner brothers--Harry (1881-1958), Albert (1884-1967), Sam (1888-1927) and Jack L. Warner (1892-1978)--started in the film business in 1903 with a nickelodeon in Newcastle, Pa., and just a decade later were producing films at their own pioneering studio in Hollywood. They incorporated their company in 1923, with Harry as president, Albert as treasurer, Sam as chief executive and Jack as production chief.

Their production of the first talkie, “The Jazz Singer” in 1927, took them from also-ran status to the first tier among Hollywood studios. Harry and Albert sold out in 1956, but Jack stayed on until he sold the company in 1967 to Seven Arts, a Canadian movie company. In 1969, Warner Bros. was acquired by Kinney National, a New York conglomerate that became Warner Communications and is currently being acquired by Time Inc.

WINCHELL’S DONUT HOUSES

La Mirada-based doughnut chain.

Jukebox operator Verne H. Winchell opened his first doughnut shop in Temple City in 1948, then quickly opened others in Huntington Park and South Gate. As franchise mania swept the country in the 1960s, Winchell’s familiar yellow-and-brown stores spread to other states.

Winchell merged his company with the Denny’s coffee shop chain in 1968 and served as chairman until the 1980s. He sold his stock when Denny’s Inc. was purchased in 1984, and is now retired. The doughnut chain, with more than 400 outlets, is being acquired by Shato Holdings, a Canadian firm.