The Dutton's in North Hollywood is in the midst of a clearance sale and will be gone by mid-March, Davis Dutton tells Daily News columnist Dennis McCarthy. Davis and his wife Judy are moving to Washington state, where they will continue trading in rare books online.

Dutton was a grad student traveling through Europe in 1961 when his parents, working at Paramount Studios, sent him a telegram saying, "Come home." They had just bought a little liquor store on Laurel Canyon Boulevard they were turning into a bookstore.

"For the first few weeks after we opened, people would stagger in, take a look around at the bookshelves and ask where the vodka was," Dutton said, laughing.

"It had always been my parents' dream to own a bookstore. When I came home from my trip, I told my dad I'd give the store a year."

He wound up giving it most of his life. After a brief career as a magazine writer and editor, Dutton came home to run the family business for good in 1976.

His brother Doug oversees the independently run Dutton's stores in Brentwood and Beverly Hills. Those stores are not closing.

Via CaliforniaAuthors.com