GrooveCentralLA

What I groove on

14 Sep 2012

The Man Ben Davidson

There was a memorial for Oakland Raider great Big Ben Davidson down in San Diego. Ben passed away on July 2nd, he was 72 years old. There were many of the old school Raiders in attendance whose stories were amusing and clean yet there was always the feeling that they were holding back. Otis Sistrunk (University of Mars), an overweight Marv Hubbard (” I used to be a fullback now I am a full front “), George Atkinson (criminal element), John Vella, Rod Sherman, Tom Flores (ex Raider head coach), Phil Villapiano, and many others honored Ben with their presence. A few told stories of their old friend (like how Big Ben got his friends in the Hells Angels Oakland Chapter to help insure prompt payment of rent at one of the apartment buildings he owned  or when Ben and a teammate after a night of heavy drinking took a shortcut through a pasture only to be confronted by an angry bull. The bull charged Ben (who was 6’8″ and close to 300 pounds) and had him between the horns, drove him back into thick bushes. The bull ran away leaving a moment for Ben’s teammate to check on his health. Ben stood up , dusted himself off, and said  ” If I wasn’t so damn drunk I would have been able to pull that guy off his motorcycle.”)

Ben was more than a Raider. He won two Rose Bowls and a National Championship at the University of Washington. He won a NFL Championship (Before Super Bowls) with the Green Bay Packers and took his bonus money and bought an apartment building which was very unusual both then and now. He continued buying apartment buildings his whole life and worked construction in the off season. But as a Raider he shined – winning multiple awards as their defensive end. He also broke Joe Namath’s jaw, speared Lenny Dawson, and almost took Bob Griese’s head off, but was convinced “they had it comin.”  

Ben, who grew up in East Los Angeles, spoke fluent Spanish, which came in handy for his many motorcycle trips to Mexico, Central America, and South America putting over 100,000 miles with his good friend and teammate Tom Keating (who also passed away recently). In his travels Ben visited over 100 different countries and collected over 2400 beer bottles from around the world which now reside at a bar in Normal Heights, San Diego.

His acting career included movies Mash, Conan the Barbarian, and Behind the Green Door (Ben played a non participating Bouncer) and T.V. classics from the 70’s and 80’s as Chips, Happy Days, Charlie’s Angels, and Duke’s of Hazard to name a few. Of course he had one of his biggest roles as a spokesman for Miller Light for 17 years. Ben visited over 100 U.S. military bases around the world shaking hands and visiting hospitals.

Ben and his wife

Among the speakers at the memorial were the national and local presidents from the Muscular Dystrophy Association who tearfully related how much Ben had done for them not just raising money and playing in golf tourneys around the country, but visiting the children at the hospitals who had been taken down by the disease. According to them Ben Davidson had given as much as any celebrity and always asked what he could do more. Ben supported other charities in San Diego and across the U.S.

Many a family member and friend spoke that day , but one of the more moving tributes was given by Ben’s mailman who spoke of him as a generous, intelligent, thoughtful, giant of a man who became his friend.

I think that says a lot.

Ben and his 3 daughters

 

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07 Sep 2012
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Gaylord Wilshire – Quack but Cool Cat

Gaylord Wilshire

” Get your I-ON-A-CO electric belt.”” It ironizes your iron and cures everything from baldness, cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes and almost any other disease and will change your hair back to its original color.” Ravings from a “pompous-fake,”  a “pointed bearded charlatan, “a natty dressed quacksalver”?  Henry Gaylord Wilshire  was all those things, but he was also a friend of the great writer Jack London, socialist politician and writer Upton Sinclair, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, science fiction writer H.G.Wells, and Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel. He co-formed the exclusive Los Angeles Country Club and helped establish the California Club, the city’s first private men’s club.  But Gay, as he was called by friends, is known primarily as the namesake for the most important thoroughfare in the history of Los Angeles.

Automobiles had yet to make an appearance and the Rio Porciuncula still had enough water to sustain a run of steelhead when Wilshire bought 35 acres in Los Angeles for $52,000 in 1895.   He filed subdivision papers announcing his plans to carve a wide magnificent boulevard, but his creation would travel just 1200 feet, then empty into trash filled brush. It was an abandoned barley field as recorded in “Hancock’s Survey of Pueblo Lands” ( Major Henry Hancock, father of Hancock Park’s founder G.Allen Hancock, was the city’s surveyor at the time). Gay had little to do with the growth of the boulevard and several attempts have been made to change the name of the street.   No one would suspect that Wilshire’s 4 block long dusty road would someday connect with El Camino Viejo and other fragments of Indian and Mexican dirt roads, become 16 miles of the grandest boulevard in Los Angeles, and lead us out of the horse drawn era. It would be the first to traverse the entire city, from downtown to the sea.

Having inherited a lot of dough from his father, Gay was known for his voracious hunger for the spotlight, and like a few gents I know, would erupt in long oratories almost always accompanied by groans by those surrounding. He was called the “Millionaire Socialist” but also was a grapefruit grower, gold miner, billboard mogul, inventor, publisher, and made and lost several fortunes. He ran for office at least six times and never won (including office for the British and Canadian Parliament).  His second wife Mary McReynolds studied with Freud and Jung in their early days and eventually opened a psychoanalytic practice in Brentwood. She became the primary earner of the family and bought one of the first homes in Palm Springs.

An I-ON-A-CO Belt

At first, the I-On-A-Co electric belt sold well, but the research institutions and doctors who supported it in the advertisements were made up. It turns out the device was a leather collar wrapped around eight pounds of meaningless wire coils that plugged into a wall socket.    The American Medical Association was hot on his trail when he called it a day on September 6th 1927.

Gay was quite the guy and we would do well to have more characters like him around us. So next time you roll into the H.M.S. Bounty bar (at 3357 Wilshire), when it comes time to take a leak you will be doing so at the residential hotel “The Gaylord”, a once proud establishment named after Henry Gaylord Wilshire. Give the guy the nod and go back into the H.M.S. and pound three more.  Groove.

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22 Aug 2012
5 Comments

Have You Seen the Planet Disneya?

Walt

Ten days before his 65th birthday, dying from lung cancer, Walter Elias Disney wrote down two words on a piece of paper, then rolled over and took his last breath. The date was Dec. 15th, 1966. The man who brought us “the Magic Kingdom”  had lost his battle to the “Big C”.  Walt’s life was filled with honors and awards (Walt holds the record for both the most Academy Award nominations (59) and the number of Oscars awarded (22) for he won far more battles than he lost. After losing one of Disney’s first characters, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, to Universal Pictures in 1928 it took 78 years for the Walt Disney Company to reacquired the rights to Oswald, through a trade with NBC Universal, where NBC got the rights to longtime ABC sports commentator Al Michaels and Disney got Oswald. (Sounds to me like when the Red Sox traded the Babe to the Yanks for cash so Boston owner Harry Freese could finance the musical “No, No, Nanette.”  I always thought Oswald was weak in the booth). In 1980 Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina named a minor planet “Disneya”.  I believe I have seen this planet late at night, deep in the Mexican sky.

Oswald

But one of Walt’s biggest and most difficult battles was with P.L.Travers, the writer who created Mary Poppins, but despised Hollywood’s sickly sweet portrayal of her magical nanny. This stormy relationship will be explored in a new movie  called “Saving Mr. Banks” with Tommy Hanks portraying Walt and Emma Thompson the   Australian writer.  Travers wrote Mary Poppins which was an immediate success and spawned several sequels in 1934. Travers’ Poppins was a vain, arrogant, aloof disciplinarian who distributed nasty scornful penalties and  punishments instead of the  familiar “spoonfuls of sugar”.  Traver’s Mary Poppins was inspired by her own emotionally deprived upbringing where her boozy father failed as a bank manager and died young leaving the family helpless.

P.L. Travers

Walt spent 14 years wooing Travers who hated Disney’s animated films, but finally relented after a deal was struck which included a $100,000 advance, 5% of the profits, and full script approval . She despised  the sweetening of the Poppins character, the hugely popular songs, and the addition of animation. Omitted from the guest list for the premier, she begged Disney for an invitation which she received. At the event she reportedly approached Disney and told Walt that the animated sequence had to go. Disney responded by walking away saying ” Pamela, the ship has sailed.”  Enraged at what she considered shabby treatment from the main Walt and despite several attempts, she never allowed another Disney/Poppins adaptation. Although she never married she adopted an Irish baby boy, separating him from his twin brother. She refused to take the pair; the boys united later. Travers died in 1996 at the age of 96.

The two words that Walt wrote down shortly before he called it a day : “Kurt Russell,” the significance remains a mystery, even to the actor.      Groove.

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09 Aug 2012
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Untamed, Ready for the Good Time

Lucy Banning

” A Peach”, ” man-crazy”, ” a free-spirited ingenue”, ” the most beautiful woman in California”. My distant cousin was called all these things and much more, some less than flattering. Lucy Banning was one of the richest and most beautiful women in the latter part of the 19th century, a time when Victorian rules where the name of the game, but Lucy had enough dough to play by her own rules thanks to a inherited fortune from her old man, ” Transportation King”, Phineas Banning and the financial windfalls she collected thanks to her gaggle of wealthy ex-husbands.

Lucy was born in1876 in the 23 room greek revival mansion in Wilmington that her Dad had built in 1864.  (still there, site of the Banning Museum). A young gal when Phineas called it a day she now had dough and wanted out of Squaresville Wilmington. Her many suitors included the handsome young attorney Johnny Bradbury whose Pop was a gold-mining and real estate tycoon. The family’s name is commemorated by the famous Bradbury Building in downtown L.A., the town of Bradbury, and Bradbury Estates.

They eloped to San Francisco where they were married on Dec 4, 1893. For four years the marriage seemed to be on a smooth stretch of highway until the couple attended a party in Santa Monica and Loose Lucy cutout with another man, a fellow named H.Russell Ward, a married Englishman. Reporters found them in a San Francisco Hotel. Lucy told reporters ” It is true that I had a beautiful home, that jewels were showered upon me, but all these did not satisfy me. I left simply because I believed that I had a right to plan out my own life; to go in search of happiness.”

Lucy and Ward were charged with adultery, but like the cavalry of the old west, Lucy’s Mom came to the rescue and paid off the “Society for the Prevention of Vice” and the charges against her were dropped. Not so for the polo playing Ward who faced the charges alone. Johnny Bradbury stated that  “H.Russell Ward had exerted an undue influence over my wife, and that she would never have done what she did had it not been for his uncanny spell over her.” Reconciliation seemed complete and bliss resumed, but not so for the unfortunate  Mr. Ward.  Johnny Bradbury is not the first nor the last, to find that a strong nudge to the small of the back from a speeding train can make certain troublemakers go away – for this was the fate of Mr. Ward.  Suicide, accident, or murder Mr. Ward would not embarrass J.B. again.

Lucy’s marriage would not endure. After moving to Mexico and returning to Los Angeles divorce proceedings from J.B. were under way – for Lucy again fled to San Francisco. Just two months after the divorce, Lucy took up with Charles Hastings of Pasadena. Rumors concluded that the two would marry, but these predictions did not come true. Lucy took up acting (translation: she took up actors) and soon married Shakespearean actor Mace Greenleaf who worked at the Burbank Theater (see what happens when you slip on some tights). Mace was no Romeo off stage so Lucy dumped him and  married Robert Ross, the son of a prominent judge.  “I am through experimenting, I am prepared to settle down” declared Lucy then 42.

And so she did until 1925 when she went to the Olympic Auditorium and laid eyes on Japanese wrestler Setsuzo Ota. Witnesses said  “she tossed her evening handbag into the ring at Ota with her calling card inside.” Lucy went to Ota’s hotel room and “she took my shirts, ties, everything out of the closet and dresser, put them in a suitcase, closed it and said “We go now.”, Ota exclaimed. Ross divorced her and Lucy, 51 and Setsuzo, 31 drove to Seattle (interracial marriage was not allowed in California) to be married.

This marriage did not last long either, but not because of the usual reasons. While vacationing in Italy Lucy caught pneumonia and passed away, shortly after her 53rd birthday. According to Ota, Lucy knew she was dying and her last words were “I’ll get criticized for this too.”  Lucy left almost $400,000 to Ota, but because of lawyers and family disputes he walked away with $6,000. Setsumo Ota took his own life in 1963.

So comes the close to a wild gal who set her own rules, took advice from few, and lived the untamed life on a path she choose alone.

Many thanks to Tom Sitton, author of ” Grand Ventures, The Banning Family and the shaping of Southern California”.

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02 Aug 2012
8 Comments

Lemme tellya Pilgrim

Did not serve

Don Adams (Get Smart) served with Marines on Guadalcanal. Wounded in battle, he later became a drill instructor . Eddie Albert (Green Acres) won the Bronze Star for actions during the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific. James Arness (Gunsmoke) received The Bronze Star and the Purple Heart for his actions at the Battle of Anzio. Walter Brennan (Real McCoys) served in WW 1 and was exposed to poison gas which ruined his vocal cords leaving him with the high pitch voice texture that made him a natural to play old men while still in his 30’s. Jimmy Stewart flew over 20 bombing missions in B-24’s over Europe, rose to the rank of Colonel, and was awarded many medals including the Distinguished Flying Cross. John Wayne, real name Marion Morrison, DID NOT SERVE. There were many top line actors who distinguished themselves in America’s wars (Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, and many more), but John Wayne was not one of them.

John Wayne, the quintessential war hero and patriot, never actually  served in uniform. There are some who claim that there were good reasons that kept John from service (a crumbling marriage, four kids to feed, old injuries, a skyrocketing career, can best serve at home making movies of WW2 heroes), but there were other stars under similar circumstances who found themselves in service. In 1944 Wayne received a 2-A classification, deferred in support of national interest. A month later the Selective Service decided to revoke many previous deferments and reclassified him 1-a, but Wayne’s studio appealed and got his 2-a repealed.

Author William Manchester (Arms of Krupp, American Caesar), while recovering in Hawaii from wounds suffered in the Pacific  during WW2 wrote  “One night they had a surprise for us. Before the film, the curtains parted and out stepped John Wayne, wearing a cowboy outfit and a 10 gallon hat, bandanna, checkered shirt, two pistols, chaps. boots and spurs. He grinned his aw-shucks grin, passed a hand over his face and said, Hi-ya guys! He was greeted in stony silence. Then someone booed. Suddenly everyone was booing. This man of fake machismo we had come to hate, and we weren’t going to listen to him.”

In the wake of his movies the line between John Wayne the man and the heroes he portrayed becomes blurred. Perhaps there are good reasons for his absence during WW2 and there are many who feel there are. Yet, by many accounts, Wayne’s failure to serve in the military was a very painful experience in his life. His widow (the last of three wives) said that his patriotism in later decades sprang from guilt. She wrote ” He would become a ” superpatriot” for the rest of his life trying to atone for his staying home.”

I think John Wayne was a patriot, but not a hero.

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24 Jul 2012
14 Comments

No Ordinary Street

Useless, Insignificant, Poetic

Sam the Butcher from the Brady Bunch, Colonel Klink from  Hogan’s Heros, and the Chief from Get Smart – they all lived within a couple of blocks from the  home at 231 North Bundy Drive where my family lived for close to 40 years. Our house was modest, but filled with comfort, fun, and love – all the handy work of our Mom and Dad. One can tell by the status of the TV stars that lived around us that our neighborhood was attractive, yet unassuming, built-in the 40’s.

I was disturbed when reading of Bundy Drive that it was called “notorious” and “infamous” because of the knifework on Nicole and Ron by that depraved reprobate O.J.   Bundy Drive deserves much better than to be associated with that coward.

Bundy Drive was named after real estate developer  Tom Bundy who was also a three-time winner of  the Men’s Doubles at the U.S.Tennis Championships. Tommy married May Sutton, who at age 18, won the Women’s single title at the U.S. Championship and also became the first American and first non-British woman to win a Wimbledon singles title. Their daughter “Dodo” Bundy Cheney became the first American woman to win Women’s single title at the Australian Championships.

But the real claim to fame of Bundy Drive are not the tennis champs or a knife wielding liar, but The Bundy Boys, a glorious group of actors, writers, painters and ner do wells, who made the Rat Pack look like the Vienna Boys Choir.  As a young lad I would play with my friend Stan who lived a couple of blocks north of where I was raised. His home was shaded by a large redwood tree which would bring splintered sunlight, cooling shadows, and possibly a hint of the location’s devilish past. On the large wooden door was a brass lion door knocker with what appeared to be a family crest with two unicorns surrounded by the words “Useless, Insignificant, Poetic .”  This was the home of The Bundy Boys some 30 years before Stan and I rolled around in that precious dirt.

The group included actors W.C. Fields, John Barrymore, Errol Flynn, Anthony Quinn, Vincent Price, John Carradine, painter and forger John Decker, screenwriter Ben Hecht whose credits include Some Like it Hot, Gone with the Wind, Wuthering Heights, and Mutiny on the Bounty, and many other notoriously  flamboyant life livers.

Gene Fowler, journalist and life long member said this: ” That brown beamed studio was a place of meeting for still lively survivors of Bohemian times, an artist’s Alamo where political bores never intruded and where breast beating hypocrites could find no listeners…these men live intensely as do children, poets, and jaguars.”

Their boozy self destructiveness was spectacular, their drunken brawls foolhardy, they spent their fortunes quicker than they made them, and all were committed to their friendship and their right to destroy their careers,  and themselves by any means necessary.

The house is gone now. Torn down along with the redwood. In its place is a sad property line to property line mansion that has the soul and depth of an ashtray. I am sure there are ghosts there, unhappy ones at that. As W.C. Fields said ” Life is a funny thing. You are lucky if you can get out of it alive.”    

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18 Jul 2012
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Vicious Combo

 A gun, a prayer-book, and a lot of booze. Though we have all faced these non-grooves at one time or another, the facts are that together they will possibly ruin your evening (not always…but that is another story). Christina Griffith was confronted with this combo and it was none of her doing, but the doings of her loathsome scoundrel of a husband Griffith Griffith. Religion, a firearm, and enough alcohol to kill a Clydesdale was about to bring a big hurt on Mrs. Griffith Griffith.

It was the sultry evening of September 3rd, 1903 in Suite 104-5 of the fabulous Hotel Arcadia, the grand dame of Santa Monica. Built in 1887 it was named for Arcadia Bandini De Baker, who was the wife of the co-founder of Santa Monica, R.S. Baker (also where the name Bakersfield comes from). Located where the Loews Hotel is today, the narrow Arcadia steps with a gold painted archway  is all that is left of the original hotel. The Colonel, as he called himself (I have tried for years to be called the Chieftain or the Commodore but as of yet none of these names have stuck) though he never was in any country’s service, made his money when, as a reporter for mining stocks, he used inside information to amass millions. A tiny gent he made up for his lack of stature by carrying a gold-headed cane and was described as a “midget egomaniac” who had the exaggerated strut of a turkey gobbler. To endear himself to society he gave the city of Los Angeles 3015 acres – creating the largest municipal park in the world, Griffith Park. He was also one of those crazy hidden boozers who publicly aligned himself with the temperance movement all the while slurping down copious amounts of brown booze.

Any semblance of respectability and social groove came to a screeching halt that night at the Arcadia.  G.G., out of his head on booze, carrying a pistol in one hand and a prayer-book in the other, demanded that his wife kneel before him. Muttering something along the lines that she was aligned with the Pope to kill him he fires a shot point-blank into Christina’s skull, the bullet hitting her left eye socket and careening away. She staggers to her feet and leaps out the nearest window, falling two stories on to the veranda roof of the Arcadia. Not what one usually sees falling on a beautiful night in Santa Monica.

A sensational trial follows, with Griffith hiring the famous mouthpiece Earl P. Rodgers and the one-eyed Christina the ex-governor of California, Henry Gage. Rodgers puts up the “alcohol insanity” excuse (who hasn’t used that one before), but G.G. is found guilty only to serve two years in the Big House.

After prison Griffith offered the city $100,000 to build a popular observatory atop Mt. Hollywood (formerly Mt. Griffith, but had been renamed while in prison). He also offered $50,000 for a Greek Theater. Though the City of Los Angeles refused all offers because of his past, G.G. would not be denied setting up a trust fund providing for the two facilities after he was gone.

Well, the Colonel died rich, but unloved…and it shows one must consider all options and combinations before they step out into the evening.

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09 Jul 2012
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Waiting for Columbus

” In a museum in Havana there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, one when he was a boy and one when he was a man.”     Mark Twain

Washington D.C….the D.C. is short for District of Columbia – a feminized version of ” Columbus”.  Two state capitals and some forty other U.S. cities, towns, and counties also bear his name. As do countless institutions such as Columbia University and of course his landing date is a national holiday. For God’s sake they even named a space shuttle after him, but that didn’t work out so well.

The nation’s capital and many other sites around this country are named for a man who never set foot on this continent. Why, you ask?  Well, it’s not really understood…

There is a painting of Chris landing on an island he called San Salvador at the U.S. Capital Rotunda and it is true that for 12 years he hopscotched all over the Americas and was the first European to land on the beaches of many future nations, but not once did he see or touch anything that later became U.S. soil.

Why did he get the nod? Was it because he brought tobacco to Europe allowing most Europeans to bathe less and smoke more. True, tobacco became one of America’s most profitable exports, but  that came along with a deliciously healthy dose of heart disease and lung cancer .

Gold and God, conquest and conversion. Those cute, adorable, but very nasty twins of Spanish exploration. And Chris was a true conquistador wannabee. Sure, he did his mandatory raping, pillaging, and spreading of disease, but came up short  in the gold department. In his last days Chris hung out with another huge liar and self promoter Amerigo Vespucci and coughed up his last breath never receiving the recognition or riches which he so desperately sought.

Both the DR ( Dominican Republic ), Spain, and other countries claim to have some or all of Chris’s bones, but where ever those bones are, I bet they are singing “How do you like me now”.

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03 Jul 2012
4 Comments

A shot to the head gets your name on a map…

Hello, my name is Lee….Lee Vining. I don’t know why, but I’ve always wanted to say that to a fellow inebriated patron at a local establishment and perhaps I will someday. I recently spent a few hours in Lee Vining, which is off the glorious 395 on the way to Reno, Tahoe, and places further and wondered how the name of this small hamlet came to be.

Leroy Vining was not a bandito who committed crimes of the darkest hue like our friend Tiburcio Vasquez (of Vasquez Rocks fame) who was a terror throughout California in the 1860-70s and was finally captured in an adobe at the current location of La Cienega and Melrose Place in West Hollywood in 1874 . No, Lee was a miner who organized a mining camp in the area then had the misfortune of accidentally shooting himself to death in nearby Aurora, Nevada. After attempting to call the town Lakeside (sorry, already taken) and Poverty Flats (a realtors dream) the Powers that Be in 1953 settled on Lee Vining.

Makes you wonder: did Van Nuys trip on a stained carpet, fall down some stairs, and break his neck at his small sordid apartment off of Victory Blvd and then got the nod by the Powers that Be ?

Please, next time I am sitting next to you at a bar let me introduce myself: Lee….Lee Vining.

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29 Jun 2012
3 Comments

The Truth Be Told

In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold,who was one of the first of many enterprising English explorers, was sent to the New World to collect sassafras root, a highly prized aromatic plant of tremendous value back in England, and to attempt to colonize New England (which at that time was called Virginia.) Doubting the weather of the fog bound rocky shores of Maine, he sailed southward stopping at a sandy promontory where his sailors caught so much fish he named it “Cape Cod”.  His next stop was a beautiful vine draped island he named “Martha’s Vineyard” after his daughter.  Soon his ship’s hold was filled with tons of the root. The small colony of Cuttyhunk was established which was soon abandoned.

But the facts are that Bart was loading up on sassafras because it was a supposed cure for syphilis, the most evil of the  “Poxe” raging through Europe. So one could say that English Massachusetts, the most Puritan of colonies, had first been settled because of a venereal disease. Makes one look at the Puritans and the Pilgrims  with a slight nod and a wink. An enigma to the respectable, a delight to the sinister.  Groove.

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