Brushes With Fame

Brushes With Fame

When you grow up in Silver Lake, you are only several degrees away from fame.  Not Kevin Bacon, mind you, but a wide and varied selection of the once and famous. Your high school was a film set for the tv show Mr. Novak, and later, GREASE.  Since then there have been many other productions that featured the brick tower of John Marshall High School.  It’s even more so now as I’ve read that Silver Lake is a hot spot for many young and hip celebs.

None of it rubbed off on me.  I am about as far from being famous as I could be.  My closest experience with being famous is going to the local mall in Honolulu and knowing that, without question, I will bump into a former student or two. Sometimes they were shopping.  Sometimes they were behind a counter.   Once, I had three "hits"  before I got out of the parking lot and into the stores.  That’s ample for me.  The stress of trying to remember the kid’s name or recognizing the parent who approaches is enough. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be stared at while I ate, be tailed as I roamed through a drugstore buying something personal and embarrassing, or have my photo taken on a bad day.  I don’t need Joan Rivers (RIP) commenting on my garb or TMZ  mentioning what was in my shopping cart.  All this be said, I do have a tincture of interest in the famous. 

I went to school with the extras--the little kids--who made up the line of children in the movie THE KING AND I.  And one of them went on to make an Elvis movie about the Seattle World's Fair.  

In elementary school, our class was led to the library where the only television set existed.  There we watched one of our classmates on DIVOCE COURT.

Being raised in Silver Lake meant that you were bound to bump into people who were well-known names.   I had no clue that the kid with the last name of Neutra was related to an amazing architect.  Never did it dawn on me that the judge in the OJ Simpson trial was the kid who wore a tie to school and was the student body president.  Nor that my science teacher who drove a T-Bird with porthole windows and would give me lifts to school was living with the famous writer Anais Nin.  At the time, I didn’t even know what “living in sin” meant.  There were stories about a mob boss named Ice Pick Harry, rumors that Catwoman had attended our high school and later, Leonardo DiCaprio.  All true.  My first boyfriend was an extra on Dragnet and Room 222.  Several of my junior high school English teachers were bit part actors.  My prom date was a star in the Bold and Beautiful--- a long running soap.  Another guy I dated briefly was the producer for The Sopranos and wrote for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and The Incredible Hulk. A childhood friend’s father was an actor. My Girl Scout troop loved it when he was on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. 

There were times when my parents would recognize someone that I didn’t know.  At the Hollywood Bowl, where my mother took us to appreciate the music of Aaron Copeland, Irene Dunn sat a few boxes away.  I had no clue who Irene Dunn was, but my mother was thrilled.  She was equally thrilled when she saw Frederick March sitting outside of I. Magnin on Wilshire Boulevard. My Aunt Cora knew Buster Crabbe.

At church, there were the odd brushes with George Kennedy and Gale Storm.  My mother was once in a wedding party with Ronald Reagan. And she claims that she told him he should get into politics.  (Don’t blame me!)  My grandfather married Ron to Jane Wyman. 

My dad played golf with Aldo Ray. 

While working at The Farmer’s Market camera store as a teen, I sold film to Peter Falk, saw Cary Grant walking to his car and sneaked a look at Agnes Moorehead’s recently developed photos.  I saw Tom Brokaw while on a date to a Burt Bacharach concert at the Greek Theater. It was the same place that I saw Bobby Kennedy shortly before his death.

In 1968 I “covered” for my fictional newspaper the election and witnessed—close-up—Nixon, Eugene McCarthy and Hubert and Muriel Humphrey.  The same “newspaper” got me access to the set of the Dean Martin Show and the Andy Williams Show  where I saw Petula Clark.  I got a press pass for a Sammy Davis Junior concert at The Coconut Grove.  He was one tiny guy.  And interviewed Sonny and Cher before anyone cared.

My girlfriends and I sneaked onto a well-known movie studio lot and watched, un-noticed, while Carol Channing and Julie Andrews filmed Thoroughly Modern Millie.  Bumped into a few stars on the way. 

I have written earlier about the two teen crushes that I had: Warren Beatty and Richard Chamberlain.  Their magazine pictures graced my bedroom wall.  I have seen both in person.  One at the Academy Awards and the other three times in Hawaii. 

And once, I visited the real Lassie (or one of them) at a kennel in a small town outside of Los Angeles.  I took her picture and taped inside my own canine’s doghouse.  She was a Silver Lake dog, after all.