Hollywood’s “evolution” – a dampening of its long-lasting combination of fame, glamour, glitter and magnetism – was not uncheerfully announced by The New York Times August 21.
That daunted many veterans of the Sunset Strip’s bright images, crowd-moving voices, performances of talented actors, musicians, comedians. “Rather than the rock ‘n’ rolly bar and nightclub kind of place it was,” wrote someone, “the Strip’ll now be just another retail corridor with expensive condos. Gone, those dizzying hours spent in famed clubs and eateries ornamented by acclaimed entertainment and much admired – rightly or wrongly – personalities ... that’s over.”
In the late 1950s, I was a public relations rep for the KFWB radio station, which, perched on Hollywood Boulevard, was vying to dominate Southern California’s burgeoning rock ‘n’ roll market. Another station located far from the Strip (a word binding both Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards together) was our competition. Both stations aimed their rhythm and blues-cum rock ’n’ roll “product” at teenagers. The surprise: The shift from rhythm and blues to rock ’n’ roll threw young girls into fits of seemingly uncontrollable, screaming ecstasy. The outspoken consternation of complaining parents sent them, abortively, to the Federal Communication Commission. At KFWB all the station’s business letters, notes, envelopes, etc, bore an innocent smiling stick figure standing on the words, “My Mommy Loves KFWB.” The result: It was obvious that parents were not in control of their daughters. And the Beatles hadn’t arrived yet.
Another emerging phenomena was the sudden, unexpected popularity in California and along the southwestern U.S. border of La Fiesta Brava bull fighting. Modest “art theaters” sprang up, showing contemporary and recovered ancient films featuring mostly Spanish and South American bull fighters. Tijuana’s Plaza Monumental bull ring, normally visited most regularly by knowledgeable, well-traveled film stars such as Orson Wells and Gilbert Roland, suddenly was awash with people who never before considered themselves aficionados of the smallest particle of Mexican culture. And the Latin American literary “boom” (works of Octavio Paz, Jalisco writers Juan Rulfo and Juan Jose Arreola, plus Carlos Fuentes, and young revolutionary artist Jose Luis Cuevas) was soon to become a gradual north-of-the-border cultural explosion.
I continued checking what ranch was furnishing next Sunday’s fighting bulls at the Monumental, consulting Mexican friends in TJ (workers at the bull ring I had come to know). My gringo friends and I avidly shouted Sunday ole’s and sought advice from Mexico’s leading matadors such as Carlos Arruza and Luis Procuna.
So it was no surprise that one noontime as I hurried along Hollywood Boulevard to my office toting a just-repaired bull fighting “capote,” a shiny convertible slowed to the curb beside me. It was Roberto Sabines, whose family owned a Culver City restaurant, The Matador Room. He was, of course, an aficionado.
“You fighting this afternoon.” He grinned at the cape. I flipped open the large, stiff cloth. “Had a tear fixed. You can’t see it now.”
“You going Sunday?”
“Como no? Of course. You?”
“No. Big party’s booked the entire restaurant. Bullfights are good for business.”
“Soon you’ll be rich and won’t even know me.”
“Won’t happen. Next weekend then. You know who’s fighting?”
“Jesus Peralta. But someone said Nogales is offering him more lana.” As he drove off, a fellow pedestrian asked, “That a true bull fighting cape.” I nodded briskly.
My desk was stacked. It was Friday and I and four other poets were reading our recent stuff to live jazz at a small club called Cosmo Alley, a location that ran narrowly south from Hollywood toward Sunset.
That had been going well. But too soon actor Theodore Bikel took over the management. He was soon to bring in hilariously bad-mouthed east coast comedian, Lenny Bruce. Bikel, who died July 21, is best known for playing Tevye in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” thousands of times.
Unlike many Hollywood business dealings, Bikel tried to make this one as easy as possible. He pointed out that with a money-maker like Bruce coming to L.A., business reality left him little alternative. To ease the change for both poets and jazz musicians, he gave us all carte blanche regarding the house food and drinks for a kindly undefined time.
This constant Niagra of amazing conjunctions did not only seem exceptional, but life changing. The secretary of KFWB’s top honcho was Lynn Lally, tall, attractive, and not stuck up regarding her position. She was a graduate of the University of Colorado. A sorority sister of hers just moved to Westwood, near UCLA. She was the secretary to a world-renown scientist. And Lynn was looking for someone she “could trust.”
“You need a blind date for a friend and you go to a rock ’n’ roll radio station? What’s the matter, don’t you like her?” She laughed, and I said, “ No.”
She persisted. “Lynn, you don’t know me. I was president of the independent students at my college. I like you. You’re easy to work with, even with tough deadlines. I’m a surfer. And you know the rap on surfers.”
She grinned. Her friend was a top swimmer. She’d love to learn surfing.
“Damn. Okay, I’ll be uncharacteristically polite. But no guarantees for spoiled sorority sisters.”
To the beach we went. The result: I started dating her.