Hollywood Musings

The Judy Lynn (Photo: Apartments.com)

I came of age at the foot of the Hollywood Hills, where Orange Drive ended at Franklin Avenue.

When I looked out south from our apartment balcony, I could see the back of the fabled Chinese Theatre a block away on Hollywood Boulevard. In view just beyond that was the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, home of the first-ever Oscars ceremony in 1929.

From the east window of my bedroom, I looked out at the Magic Castle next door and could see the bell tower of the Hollywood United Methodist Church at Franklin and Highland and the intersection of Hollywood and Highland. Further down, the shiny black First Interstate Building at 6255 Sunset Boulevard, then also the home of Motown Records. I worked in the mailroom at Motown several years later.

At 14, my life had become a magical journey of discovery. I was given free rein to explore Hollywood with my twin brother.

We were already familiar with the lay of the land around Franklin and Orange because Dad managed The Magic Hotel (now the Magic Castle Hotel) right next door to our apartment building. He had been doing that since 1974. Read more about that HERE.

Brother Chris and I worked there for years.

Magic Hotel Front Desk (Photo: Photo: Pody Hansbrough / Color: Russell Colombo)

Neither one of us could believe our good fortune when our mother agreed to let us stay with Dad permanently in 1977.

We had been coming to see Dad on our summer vacations after Mom moved us back to Miami. Before that, we lived in Crestline – a small burg in the San Bernardino Mountains near Lake Arrowhead.

We moved around like army brats and for a time were always the new kids: Miami to Buena Park to Crestline to Miami to, finally, Hollywood.

But Hollywood…

Much of the magic had to do with Dad, who instilled in me a sense of wonder.

By the time we lived with him permanently, he was well into his sixties.

But he never lost his enthusiasm, his grace, his sense of humor – his unbeatable charm.

When I was in my thirties, a coworker once told me I was “The Pan.”

While I wasn’t down with being compared to a satyr, I took her comment to mean I was ageless, like Peter Pan. She should see me now.

She had never met my father. If she had, she would have been blown away.

I remember visiting Hollywood with the family in 1967 or 1968. Dad had already relocated there from Miami.

Is it weird to say that Hollywood even smelled different? Maybe it was the lack of humidity…

I remember distinctly the aroma of the brush and foliage in Griffith Park – a kind of clean, dry sweetness that was new to me, not laden down with the heavy, moist air of Coconut Grove.

My mom moved us out to California in something like 1970 – my twin brother, niece Cathy and me.

We first lived in Buena Park, the home of Knott’s Berry Farm, with Mom’s cousin Floss. She had been living in a rustic little home off Beach Boulevard since the 1940s. There was an ancient spinning wheel in the front window.

Cathy was too little to go to school, but Chris and I finished out first grade at St. Pius V Catholic School.

This was the first example of being uprooted, a pattern of disjointedness that would continue until our high school years.

At this time, Dad lived in an apartment building called The Judy Lynn on Carlton Way. We visited frequently. Next door was a long old bungalow-style house with a red roof. Dad told me that it used to belong to Tom Mix. I didn’t know who the fuck that was.

Turns out, Mix was a famous cowboy actor from the silent movie days.

By that time, though, the house was rife with hippies.

What was that smell? Not the hippies I just mentioned, but the sweet smell I was talking about earlier. Gardenias? Jasmine? I’ll have to get to the bottom of that.

The Apartment at Franklin and Orange  (Photo: Taylor Yale)

I’m enjoying setting down these memories. Thanks for coming with me on the journey.

Enjoy these posts? I’d love it if you would subscribe.

Crestline and Life “Up the Hill”

Roof Collapse: Goodwin and Son’s Market

My friend Mark recently sent me a photo of more than eight feet of snow outside of his house in Twin Peaks, California, a community in the San Bernardino Mountains near Lake Arrowhead.

He told me that many residents said that they hadn’t seen snow like this in 40 years.

Looking at the photo sent me down a rabbit hole of nostalgia.

Part of my childhood was spent in Crestline, also not far from Lake Arrowhead. Crestline was dubbed Little Switzerland, and many of the homes resembled chalets. I remember a street named Zurich Drive, and my aunt and uncle lived on a dead-end named Zell Court. I also remember a kid named Chris Dietrich, who used to brag that his parents owned a bar called The Yodeler. That kid loved to brag.

I lived at 221 Darfo Drive with my mother, twin brother and Cathy, our niece.

We moved from Miami to Crestline twice, one of many shuttles across the country perhaps intended as a means of de facto reconciliation between my mother and father. They never got divorced, but they were never really together either.

Dad moved to Hollywood in 1967. I still remember him waving as he turned left onto Kirk Street from Tigertail Court in Coconut Grove in his blue 1967 Chevy Impala.

Hollywood was 90 minutes from Crestline. Dad would visit, and I could see that there was some sort of stab at the illusion of family, but something wasn’t right.

My relationship with my father was as loving as could be, but my mom and dad weren’t fated for long term romance. I didn’t see any of the lovey-dovey, television-style mom-and-dad stuff going on.

All that being said, Crestline was a different experience for us. Moving from the sea-level, humid climate of South Florida to a dry California air at an elevation of five thousand feet took some getting used to. At first, my lungs were sore, likely the result of trying to get used to the thinner air.

Even after I lived in Hollywood years later, the same thing would happen when I would visit Crestline.

Hold on. We lived in Buena Park for a very short time after we moved from Miami. Buena Park is the home of Knott’s Berry Farm. I remember going the end of first grade at a Catholic school called St. Pious V. More about that in a future blog post.

I remember living in two rental houses before we moved into our house on Darfo Drive.

We walked a lot in Crestline – exploring the terrain on and around Darfo Drive, checking out the A-frames, pine trees, blue jays…

We walked along a brook, mostly with Dad – and we carved our names – Roger, Chris, Cathy – on a little tree.

Years later, we saw those carvings high up on the now-mature tree, our names expanded along with the growth.

My brother and I took the bus to school. Cathy was something like four. Not old enough for kindergarten yet when we moved to Crestline for the first time. Chris and I were starting second grade. Mom would drop us off at a fire station across from Lake Gregory. That part of the lake was not set up for swimming, but we saw people fishing over there. There was also a beach area a little further down the road. You had to pay to get in, and you could rent paddleboards. We couldn’t swim then, but when we came back for fifth and sixth grades, we started going to that beach regularly. We learned to swim in Miami when we were third graders.

In the fifth grade, my then best friend appeared: Glen Ross. Glen and I hit it off almost immediately and were fast friends in fifth and sixth grades. Our birthdays were three days apart. because I bounced all over the place so much, we lost touch for a long time. I am happy to say we are in touch once again thanks to Facebook.

The first time it snowed, we were in awe. I thought it was like a moonscape. The only other time we saw snow was when we drove through Flagstaff, Arizona on the way to California. But this was a different animal altogether.

We weren’t used to bundling up, but we soon got used to it. There were these plastic discs with nylon handles on the sides, and we’d go careening down embankments.

There are home movies of our First Communion along with a pair of sisters, the Goodwin twins – daughters of the owners of Goodwin and Son’s Market – the only game in town for groceries. We looked like dual brides and grooms, all decked out in our finery.

My friend Mark told me that the roof of that store collapsed under the weight of the recent snow.  I wish them the very best.

Photo: Mark Mulkeen

More to come.

Enjoy these blog posts? I’d love it if you would subscribe.

Steeped in Hollywood Magic

Photo by Paul Deetman on Pexels.com

I used to live at the foot of the Hollywood Hills with my father and twin brother.

We lived at 7011 Franklin Avenue, in a beautiful old apartment building wedged between the iconic Magic Castle and the 40-unit hotel Dad used to manage called the Magic Hotel – now the Magic Castle Hotel. If you took Orange Drive a block north to Franklin, you would either have to make a turn at the signal or head straight up to the Castle or to our building.

The apartment was an L-shaped garden court-style building, and I would guess that it was built in the 1930s.  Our place was perched on top, and you could open the French doors, step onto the small balcony and take in a very nice view toward Hollywood Boulevard and beyond, including the back of the Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and much more.

Chris and I, already wowed by Hollywood, were not lost on the magic of the location, and I can’t speak for him – but looking back I understand how much I took it all for granted.

We had been visiting Dad for years, sometimes from as close as Crestline in the San Bernardino Mountains and sometimes from Miami. My parents never divorced, but you could hardly say they were together. Chris and I – as well as our niece Cathy (we grew up as brothers and sister) – were shunted across the U.S. frequently when we were growing up, and I am still not quite sure why. Were these trips an attempt at some sort of togetherness for my parents or a way to keep us closer to Dad? Probably a little of both.

But in 1977, after Chris and I had been visiting over the summers, we asked Dad if we could live with him. Somehow, we knew he’d say yes – but Mom told him that she wanted us in Catholic school. He agreed, and we were enrolled at Daniel Murphy High School, a Dominican-run college prep institution for boys.

The fact that we only spent a half a year at Murphy is another story, and I might have touched on this before.

But good Lord – Growing up in Hollywood in the late 1970s was, at least for us, as perfect as anybody could hope for.

I am sure there are some who would argue that city life is hardly idyllic – but Chris and I loved every moment.

We worked the front desk at the hotel, later practiced music in a space Dad had built for us in the parking garage, made scads of like-minded friends and took everything in stride.

Dad’s previous apartment at Peyton Hall was too small – so he spoke to his boss about moving in next door. That man was Tom Glover, who owned a good deal of that hillside including the hotel, the Magic Castle property, our apartment building, the Yamashiro and more.

There is so much to remember.

If all of this tickles you fancy, check out the project I have with my brother, The Yale Brothers Podcast.

I’ll be back with more soon.

Unsung: The Cost of Inaction

“Don’t die with your music still in you…”

Wayne Dyer

No matter how long you have been on this planet, there’s something you still need to do.

I remember when my father started going through old papers, notebooks and letters he had stored in my aunt and uncle’s basement in Crestline, California – 5000 feet up in the San Bernardino Mountains…

I found that odd, but I knew what he was up to. He had recently emerged from the hospital after suffering a fall in the shower and developing subdural hematomas, which rendered him incapable of doing basic things like using silverware, holding a cup of tea (his favorite) or even walking.

He had fully improved by the time decided to get rid of that stuff.

I couldn’t have been more than twenty, and I just watched him as he discarded item after item. It was as if he had an agenda, and it seemed to me then that he had a taste of his own mortality and wanted to make sure he “cleaned house.”

He died of an abdominal aortic aneurysm soon after that. That day also happened to be my 21^st birthday – the day my twin brother and I were set to party it up. Our friends had a limo ready for us. Let’s just say that was a bust.

The above is not so much a digression as it is a story about what my father felt he had to do, and I kind of wish I had those discarded items to shift through to make better sense of his life and the man he was.

Do the Thing

But this post is not just about getting your house in order before you die; it’s about making sure we don’t depart this mortal coil with our work unfinished – our purpose unfulfilled.

I’m going to be 57 in July. That number is almost unbelievable – and if I let my thoughts run rampant, I am afraid that they will take me to a place of regret – the cursed domain of “should-haves,” “would-haves” and “could-haves.”

I have written before about the value of reconnecting with our inner 12-year-olds to see what resonated with us then. Forget the conventional wisdom that a pre-teen doesn’t yet have the ability to intuit what they want from life. I have a feeling that we all have an inkling of what moves us long before that. It’s only after repeated exposure to those who tell us to stop daydreaming that we begin to lose – or sublimate – our innate and God-given talents.

Look at the people who told you to grow up. Did their lives show any indication of fulfillment? Of joy?

Probably not.

Chances are good that somebody else told them to grow up, thereby continuing a generational beat-down – a downward spiral of error, if you will.

Conform or die.

Always remember this obvious fact: Death is not the exclusive domain of the old. The bell could toll at any time. Earl Nightingale, the Dean of Personal Development, once said something to the effect that if we are on course, the end could come like a snapped piece of film in a reel as we are going about our business.

What do you need to finish?

What do you need to start?

What thing have you talked about for years, for decades, that you never got around to starting?

Believe me, the urge to complete that thing will not stop dogging you. No matter how much you try to avoid it.

The result – bitterness. Regret. Failure to launch. The void.

There is something inside you that needs to be realized – something dear to you that you have cherished since you were little. It is my hope that you dust that off and begin in earnest to nurture that.

From my heart to yours: Start the thing. You will be glad you did.