Broughton Quarterly - Spring 2008 - (Page 25)

THE EVOLUTION OF SANTA MONICA STYLE “The 1930s was the heyday of the amusement piers down in that area, and it was during that time that some of the [odd] characters arrived…Muscle Beach was just totally filled with activity of all different kinds going on at the same time. And probably the main attraction was the young women doing the adagio dancing—you know, where they throw the women up across the platform and they’re caught by somebody else. One of the young women there, one of the really popular ones, I went to high school with. She was the only one I actually knew, but don’t ask me her name. That’s one of the problems at my age: when you ask me for the name of a person, my brain circuits automatically turn off…Originally, Muscle Beach was just on the south side of the pier. Then later it moved down to Venice, where it is now. They do have a sign nowadays at the site of the original Muscle Beach, though, kind of a historical monument.” When was the influx of celebrities? “Well, that was in the 1920s. Santa Monica developed first, and the movie stars bought lots down there on the beach and built homes, and each tried to outdo the other of course, you know, in building a bigger and better house…The most extravagant one was Marion Davies’ house, which was built by Randolph Hearst. But the lots at that time were small— 30 feet wide by 60 feet deep, so they would have to buy two or three lots. Santa Monica became a popular place, and then when it filled up [the celebrities] went to Malibu and built the movie colony up there. But that was more exclusive. They didn’t have the coast highway running in front of their houses.” LOCAL CHARACTERS “The people I admired were artists who lived where I did, in Santa Monica Canyon—sculptors, musicians, writers. And I knew them only because their children went to Canyon School and I played with them. As a boy, I got to meet their parents and see what they did, not knowing that they were famous. And I’ve never forgotten that…There were sculptors, like Merrill Gage, who did the statue at the corner of Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevard. And then there were the Jensens, who lived over on Rustic canyon. They were sculptors who did mainly busts of famous people, presidents of universities and banks and things like that. They even did the gorillas down at the San Diego Zoo. There were movie stars who lived just up the canyon from me: Dolores del Rio was a famous star then, and Leo Carrillo. There was a famous opera singer, and later Anita Loos, the screenwriter who wrote ‘Gentlemen prefer Blondes,’ moved into his house. There were photographers and inventors— Waldo Waterman invented a car that you could put wings on and fly! There were quite a lot of singers and stars and musicians… During WWII, a lot of the people from Germany moved out and went to the Pacific Palisades. Thomas Mann (German writer and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate) and other famous writers moved there and created kind of a colony of writers.” So the evolution of Santa Monica’s character progressed from the ranchos to celebrities to artists… “That’s one of the interesting things about writing the history of the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica. About six different books can be written about that rancho, of all the different periods of it, which makes it so unique and interesting.” Tourism and the funky character that much of the world associates with Santa Monica, and Venice Beach in particular, seem to have followed these other periods. A lot of elements were coming together around the time The Georgian opened, in the early 1930s… “Well, yes, and there were the gambling ships off our coast then, too, from 1927 to 1938…They put a poker table and a roulette wheel on With the amusement pier in full swing, Santa monica of the 1930s boiled with youthful vitality. (opposite) Testing the limits of a strongman’s stomach. www.BroughtonQuarterly.com 25 http://ww.BroughtonQuarterly.com

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Broughton Quarterly - Spring 2008 Contents Contributors Plugged In Notes Destination 1000 Words Calendar Wine & Cuisine Of Gods and Monkeys Santa Monica Beach Chasing the Rain Donald Trump Marketplace Spotlight

Broughton Quarterly - Spring 2008

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