HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD: Marian Gibbons and The Founding of Hollywood Heritage docx

࣎ Marian Gibbons and the Founding of Hollywood Heritage GIBBONS HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD Marian Gibbons and The Founding of Hollywood Heritage Marian Gibbons with James C. Simmons have been blessed throughout my life by many, many dear friends and extended family, all of whom have been so very important to me over the years. Looking over the pages I am reminded over and over again didn’t we have such fun? Haven’t we shared a grand journey! I • 124 • irector Frank Capra loved to tell the story about a group of Japanese soldiers on a Pacific island near the end of World War II. They had fled to a cave after the American invasion and appeared ready to die rather than surrender. The situation looked bleak. Capra recalled: “Finally, some American GI had a bright idea: Promise them a trip to Hollywood. It worked. The Japanese soldiers surrendered, and after the war they eventually got their trip.” For much of the past century Hollywood has endured as the film capital of the world and a symbol of glamour and hope to millions of people from Baltimore to Bombay. But while the idea of Hollywood continued to flourish, the actual city went into sad decline in the sixties and seventies. When Gib and I had lived there back in 1949, a car trip to Hollywood was a gala event. This was a beautiful city then and a wonderful place to shop. But when I bought my house on Bryn Mawr Drive in 1978, Hollywood had fallen into a sorry state of decline, with an unsavory reputation for flagrant prostitution, blatant drug dealing, and serious crime. In 1981, Time magazine characterized parts of Hollywood as “weekend war zones.” All the glamour and excitement of former years seemed to have left. Like many a starlet, seduced and abandoned, Hollywood showed those telltale signs of aging and destruction. An arsonist torched the Hollywood Library, with its wondrous collection of books on film. The Hollywood Hotel and the legendary Garden of Allah were both lost to developers. While the Hollywood movies often were carefully preserved, the city’s landmarks were not. Like clips on the cutting-room floor, many of the most important buildings in the city were lost to the wrecker’s ball or ࣎ VI HOLLYWOOD FALLS ON HARD TIMES Gibbons_bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 124 Hollywood Falls on Hard Times • 125 • through neglect. Few people knew or cared about the historic buildings of Hollywood, those relics from the golden age of filmmaking. The city had no historical society. Hollywood was famous everywhere in the world but Hollywood. When I visited Russia and told the people I met that I was from Los Angeles, they often asked, “Is that near Hollywood?” But in Southern California at the time, no one gave a damn about what should have been one of Los Angeles’s greatest assets. Some halfhearted attempts at preservation had been made, but plaques were placed on the wrong buildings, and “remodeling” often resulted in gaudy boutiques and T-shirt shops in total irreverence of the city’s past and historical accuracy. Over three million tourists a year flocked to Hollywood expecting to experience some of its glamorous history. But except for Grauman’s Chinese Theater, there was nothing much for them to see in Hollywood itself. So they all trooped over the hill to the Universal Studios theme park. This was the state of affairs in 1978 when I happened upon that demonstration to raise money to preserve the original barn where Hollywood’s first feature film had been made. And I thought it was disgraceful. So I determined to do something about it. At first I tried to work through the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, but it proved to be an absolutely worthless organization for the purposes of historical preservation. A few years later I gave an interview to a reporter, who asked me about the HCC. “All our Chamber of Commerce does is raise enough money to pay their salaries,” I told her. Then, to my horror, she quoted me. I learned then and there not to speak my mind with reporters! I learned about a group called the Hollywood Revitalization effort, founded by Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson, the representative for our district. When I went to see her, she explained that both the Los Angeles city government and the council office funded the group. She put me in touch with Rusty Flinton, who worked for the committee. I visited their office in the Equity Building in Hollywood and volunteered my help. They were pleased as could be to get me as a volunteer. Soon I met another volunteer there, Mildred Heredeen, a delightful older woman. We hit it off from the start! She was writing promotional articles for the revitalization Gibbons_bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 125 hooray for hollywood • 126 • of Hollywood and doing a great job. She also agreed that it was shameful that there was no preservation society and said she would help me start one. One day in 1979 the two of us were at the corner of Hollywood and Vine having coffee in a small shop and talking about how best to form a preservation society, when Christy Johnson approached our table and introduced herself. She was a paid consultant for the HRC. She told us that she had heard we were setting up a historical preservation society and wanted to work with us. We were delighted! Neither Christy, Mildred, nor I knew any of the politicians, and I knew from previous experience that without their support our hope for a historical society was doomed. Mildred was a good writer, doing promotional writing for Hollywood Effort, and Christy was a fine historian, having written a book on Hollywood architecture as her master’s thesis. But whom to contact for political help? Then, one of those strokes of fate happened. I had a phone call. A funny little voice asked, “Is this Marian Gibbons on Bryn Mawr? “Yes, it is,” I said. “Well,” she said, “my name is Mary Herbold. I live just down from you on Primrose. Our regular postman is on vacation and the man they’ve put on is bringing me all your magazines. Now, I’m not quite finished with them. But when I am I will give you a call and you can come down and have tea and I’ll give you your magazines.” I thought this was as cute as she turned out to be a tiny little lady who was brilliant. She was in her seventies then and smoked constantly. She usually had on a chenille robe, which was liberally dotted with cigarette burns. I feared she would burn herself up. Thank goodness she didn’t. “What is it you want to do here?” she asked over tea. I told her of my thoughts of starting a historical and preservation society. “What a good idea!” she enthused. “Do you know John Ford?” I hadn’t the vaguest idea who she was talking about. “Well, John Ford is considered the father of Hollywood!” she said. “You’ll have to talk with John Ford!” “I’d like that,” I said, “but I don’t know John Ford.” “Well, I do!” she said, and went straight to the telephone. “John,”she said, “I’ve got a lady here I think you should talk to. Hmmm, Yeah, hmmm, all right. We’ll be there Wednesday morning.” “There”, she said, “we’ll get him interested, for I know he will be!” I did Gibbons_bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 126 Hollywood Falls On Hard Times • 127 • my homework before we called on Mr. Ford in his beautiful home on Normandy in Hollywood. He had been Los Angeles County supervisor for the Third District for over twenty-five years and had a reputation as an honest and trustworthy politician. I could not have found a more influential mentor. When I told him what I wanted to do, he was more than enthusiastic. “Why haven’t we done this before?” he exclaimed. “How can I help?” I told him that I didn’t know any of the politicians and had discovered in Wisconsin that it was a very necessary part of the plan. “Well, I know them all,” he said. “Who do you want to see? “ I had to admit that I knew so little of local politics and hadn’t a clue how to proceed. “I know what you need,” he said, and went to the phone. “This is John Ford,” he said. “Put me through to Tom.” He chatted with “Tom” for a bit then said, “We’ll be in to see you next Monday.” The following Monday, John Ford, Mary Herbold, and I were ushered straight into Mayor Tom Bradley’s office. It was obvious that Mayor Bradley had a close friendship with Mr. Ford (I later learned that John Ford had crafted Tom Bradley’s successful run for mayor of Los Angeles). Once the mayor knew just what Mr. Ford and I wanted to do, he called in a deputy and gave orders to respond to our calls and keep him informed on our progress. He became one of our most enthusiastic supporters. And that didn’t hurt our cause one bit. We were quickly on our way to becoming a real organization. Borrowing from several historical societies, I wrote bylaws for our group and took them up to Sacramento to be checked over by a deputy in the secretary of state’s office, to be sure that we would qualify as a 501(c)3 nonprofit society. Our corporation papers were notarized in 1979 as Hollywood Heritage, Inc. About this time I found myself one day at the office of the Hollywood Revitalization Committee and met Frances Offenhauser and Susan Peterson, two young women who were both architects. The HRC had hired them to do a study of the overall plan for restoring Hollywood to its former glory. They immediately said they wanted to join in our efforts. Soon afterwards we decided upon our officers and directors. I was the president, Christy the vice-president, and Frances our secretary. John Anson Ford was our chairman of the board, Susan, her husband, and Gibbons_bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 127 hooray for hollywood • 128 • Mildred were on the board of directors. At that point we were ready to go public. My daughter, Jane, the publicist, gave me a list of important people to contact. I sent out a notice of our first meeting. Much to our surprise, a good many showed up and joined our organization. One of the first things we did was to undertake a survey of Hollywood. We were surprised to discover that there were over one hundred buildings from the twenties and thirties worthy of being saved. This was most unusual in a city of this size. But Hollywood had escaped urban renewal in the sixties and seventies when other cities were gutting their downtown areas. Instead, Hollywood simply stood still for thirty-five years. We handful of ladies set about educating people in both the film and the business communities about the importance of saving the physical relics of Hollywood’s past. We quickly gained support from some of the top names in the film industry. Actor Ed Asner joined Hollywood Heritage and warned: “We are dream merchants and as such should be careful not to dissipate our mystery for purely pragmatic reasons. The continuing erosion, both physical and spiritual, of the entity known as Hollywood is an irreparable loss to us all.” Our first big battle came over the world-famous, hat-shaped Brown Derby Restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard. In the thirties it was said that no day went by without at least one article about the Brown Derby being published somewhere in the world. Herbert Somborn (actress Gloria Swanson’s husband) had opened the restaurant for business on Valentine’s Day 1929. Immediately, the stars began coming in crowds for lunch and dinner. Somborn died in 1934. A few years later, the Hollywood Brown Derby opened on Vine Street just south of Hollywood Boulevard. It didn’t take long before the Hollywood Derby became the place to see the movie stars. The building was owned by Cecil B De Mille, the Derby rented it and hired Robert Cobb to run it. He became the stuff of Hollywood legend one night in 1937. Weary of a steady hotdog and hamburger diet, Cobb prowled hungrily in his restaurant’s kitchen for a snack. Opening the huge refrigerator, he pulled out a head of lettuce, an avocado, romaine, tomatoes, some cold breast of chicken, a hard-boiled egg, plus cheese and some old-fashioned French dressing. He started chopping and added some crisp bacon he Gibbons_bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 128 Hollywood Falls On Hard Times • 129 • swiped from a busy chef. Cobb’s midnight invention was so tasty that Sid Grauman, who was with Cobb that midnight, ordered a “Cobb salad” when he came into the restaurant the next day. Cobb put it on the menu, and the salad became an overnight sensation with Derby customers. People like movie mogul Jack Warner regularly dispatched their chauffeurs to pick up a carton. Over the coming decades the Brown Derby restaurants served over four million Cobb salads. (As a footnote: Sid Grauman was a Hollywood legend in his own right. He built the famous Chinese Theater and started the practice of movie stars pressing their hands and feet into wet concrete in front. He also built the nearby Egyptian Theater and the Million Dollar Theater on Broadway.) Such stars as George Burns, Gracie Allen, George Raft, Cary Grant, and Barbara Stanwyck became Derby regulars. Clark Gable proposed to Carole Lombard in Booth 54. In the sixties Kim Novak, Ernest Borgnine, and Steve McQueen were frequently seen there. By this time the hat-shaped restaurant had a large addition to one side, while the original structure now served largely as an entrance and a lobby. In the late seventies, the restaurant received a facelift. In 1980 the owner of the Wilshire Boulevard Derby abruptly closed the restaurant, laid off all the staff, and prepared to demolish the building. But a waitress phoned in a tip about the impending destruction to Martin Weil, an architect, at the Los Angeles Conservancy. He called me with the news. We at Hollywood Heritage were stunned when we heard it. We had always assumed that the Brown Derby had been nominated for historic-landmark status. But it hadn’t. So it came as a real shock when we learned that we could lose such a famous building. We rushed into action to save it. When we arrived the next day, we were horrified to see a bulldozer sitting behind the back wall of the restaurant with its blade just inches away. A chain-link fence surrounded the restaurant. Soon police, city officials, and preservationists were all involved. I pleaded with a guard to take me to the owner. I was convinced we could work this out satisfactorily. The owners were Jim and Brooke Young, the granddaughter of Gloria Swanson, the famous actress from the silent era. Jim Young was there and quite perplexed as to how they should handle the situation. They told me that they had closed the restaurant because it wasn’t making much money Gibbons_bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 129 hooray for hollywood • 130 • anymore and the land under it had become too valuable. “Let’s be reasonable,” I said to them. “Only the original hat-shaped building is worth saving. Let’s move that elsewhere.” “Lady, you mean all you want is that hat?” he asked. “That’s all I want,” I told him. “Well, you just got yourself a hat!” he told me. And that’s how we saved the Brown Derby. The story of our fight to save the celebrated restaurant generated national and international news coverage. And Hollywood Heritage was launched. Well, we had saved our hat. But what were we going to do with it? And the rainy season was coming. Then I visited Western Extermination Company and asked them to help us. We needed to have the hat covered with a large tarp similar to what they used when they gassed a termite- infested house. I promised them some publicity in return. And this happened, as the tarp had the name Western Extermination Company stenciled across it. Our next major project involved the most important historic building in Hollywood, the Barn, home of the first film-company studio. (At Hollywood Heritage we have always thought of it as the Barn with a capital B, to distinguish it from all the other barns of much less historical interest.) One day soon afterward I was at a Hollywood Chamber of Commerce meeting, sitting next to Jack Forman, the president of Warner Brothers Studio. He was in charge of the Hollywood Historic Trust, which owned the Barn, the building that had originally gotten me involved in the business of Hollywood preservation. He told me the shocking news that Bill Welsh, the president of HRC, wanted to sell the Barn to Universal Studios for $10,000 for them to place in their theme park. “That Barn can’t leave Hollywood!” I said emphatically. “I agree,” Jack told me. “Can your group do anything about it?” “We can and we will,” I promised him. No other building embodied so much early Hollywood history as this dilapidated structure. It was in this barn at the corner of Selma Avenue and Vine Street, in 1913, that Cecil B. De Mille, fresh from New York City, set up shop in a sleepy little suburb of Los Angeles to make The Squaw Man, the first feature film ever shot in Hollywood. Gibbons_bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 130 Hollywood Falls On Hard Times • 131 • De Mille was thirty-two years old at the time and in partnership with Samuel Goldwyn and Jesse Lasky in a small production company called the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. The group had bought a film script to Edwin Milton Royle’s popular stage melodrama, The Squaw Man, which they wanted to shoot on site in the country around Flagstaff, Arizona. But the film crew found the climate there to be unsuitable for their movie and so stayed on the train until they arrived in Los Angeles. Once the group had arrived in sunny Southern California, De Mille rented a barn in Hollywood. He used it as his first studio, converting the empty horse stalls into dressing rooms for his actors. Much later he Artist’s imaginative rendering of the original Barn. Gibbons_bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 131 We had our work cut out for us in trying to renovate the Barn! The Capitol Records building, a Hollywood landmark in the background. Gibbons_bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 132 [...]... to the edge of the paved lot and pointed to the undeveloped land there “Our Barn will fit right there,” she told me excitedly She balled up some newspapers from the trash barrels and marked off the perimeter of the barn by placing the balls of paper at the corners “Frances, you are a genius!” I exclaimed The land there is owned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Society; and the story of the land there... millions of viewers as the railroad station in the Bonanza television series, and its interior was used as • 139 • Gibbons_ bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 140 hooray for hollywood a gymnasium for the studio’s stars In the late seventies Paramount officials offered the historic building to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce for public viewing And that’s where the situation stood when Jack Forman told me the. .. the explosives they had secretly placed around the perimeter of the home Amazingly, except for the minor traumas, all survived the massive explosive, but Anthony’s home was unlivable and had to be torn down The museum was mired in controversy and never built The land became a parking lot for the Hollywood Bowl Now, here was the county with land for a museum and no museum, and Hollywood Heritage with... eminent-domain, and leveled across from the Hollywood Bowl, except for one Steven Anthony, an exmarine, refused to give up his home and it sat in the middle of the space needed for the museum A standoff, which became known in the media as the siege of Fort Anthony,” began Crowds gathered and the county sheriffs patrolled the area to maintain order People supporting Anthony answered his phones, wrote letters, and. .. no land to hold it I called Supervisor Edmund Edelman, supervisor of the Third district, and responsible for most of the cultural installations in Los Angeles, and told him the story and our need for the place on Highland Avenue He immediately recognized its historical significance and made an appointment for us to make our plea before the whole board of supervisors John Anson Ford went with us and. .. was on the Paramount lot And he was there the day they began to shut it down preparing it for the move off the lot I was so moved by the emotional story of his last day in the barn that I called him and asked for permission to use the article He very graciously granted us permission and it was first published by us in our newsletter of October 1, 1983 Please enjoy his moving remembrance of being the last... fight the eminent-domain purchase of his home Working in the house with them, pretending to be a supporter, was a deputy sheriff On April 13th 1963, when all the workers in the house were gathered around the television set in the living room, watching as Sidney Poitier received the Oscar for the Academy Awards’ best actor for Lilies of the Field, the deputy signaled his partners outside to detonate the. .. of transportation between my home and the barn-studio Every morning Mrs De Mille packed the lunch, which I carried slung over my shoulder in a leather pouch, as I rode to work Every evening the same pouch carried home the precious extra negative to be stored in our attic It was a pleasant ride in the freshness of the morning and the cool of the evening on horseback, past the vineyards and between the. .. in the Los Angeles Times while rebuilding the Barn Gibbons_ bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 143 A Thank You for the wonderful commerical these people did for us Barn moving party A gala event! Gibbons_ bk_final3 10/1/06 4:53 PM Page 144 hooray for hollywood supervisors began accumulating land to build a museum that would include the little barn as the birthplace of the first major film studio in Hollywood. .. start another organization for the sole purpose of preserving the Barn I even wrote an official letter of resignation dated September 4, 1981, but the board sent me a letter refusing my resignation We were at a stalemate for several days Then I got a telephone call out of the blue from Frances Offenhauser, who insisted that I meet her in the parking lot on North Highland Boulevard across from the Hollywood . ࣎ Marian Gibbons and the Founding of Hollywood Heritage GIBBONS HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD Marian Gibbons and The Founding of Hollywood Heritage Marian Gibbons with James. ride in the freshness of the morning and the cool of the evening on horseback, past the vineyards and between the trees and brush, which then grew wild in the pass through which thousands of cars now. got their trip.” For much of the past century Hollywood has endured as the film capital of the world and a symbol of glamour and hope to millions of people from Baltimore to Bombay. But while the