I've been spending the last couple days going through the University of Southern California's online photo archive; in particular the photo collection from the old L.A. Examiner newspaper. I found a listing for a set of photos from October 31, 1957 showing United DC-7 N6305C City of Hollywood making a belly landing at LAX. There are several shots of the plane circling, the runway being foamed, the passengers evacuating, and the ground crew cheering, along with a very relieved crew. Unfortunately there's no shot of the touchdown, even though there were a lot of reporters awaiting the landing.
Here's the link: http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/compo ... 72/rec/113
I then found a YouTube video of the landing, textbook perfect, skidding to a stop right in front of the cameras:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzb91ztlB6g
Oddly, there's nothing about the incident in the Aviation Safety Database. As to the plane, it must have been repaired; it stayed with United until June of 1963. No other history since then, but here's a surprise:
http://www.vataware.com/flight.cfm?id=703228
A Venezuelan domestic passenger charter flight? I was thrilled to see there was a DC-7 still flying passengers.
Then I took a closer look and realized it was a flight simulation page...
Anyway, enjoy the photos and video!