Chapter Twenty-Six Shakespeare and Hollywood

Chapter Twenty-Six
Shakespeare and Hollywood

After graduating “cum laude” with a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre in June of 1961, that summer I was part of a Shakespearean repertory group performing in Farnsworth Park in Altadena. We did “Romeo and Juliet”, “Twelfth Night” and “The Taming of the Shrew”. As I remember we would perform on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. We started with one play and when it was ready we would start performing it and rehearsing the next play. When it was ready we would start alternating performances of those two plays and prepare the third play. When it was ready, we then alternated performances of the three plays. I think we had a three month season and was very well received. I had small parts in all three plays. Several of the actors had Playhouse connections but not all. We shared in profits from the show but the profits were meager and shares were proportioned to the size parts you had. It was a great experience if not necessarily a profitable one.

After the summer Matt and I moved to Hollywood to be close to where the action was as the story goes. I think our first apartment there was on N. Ivar just above the Hollywood freeway. We both were a part of a small theatre group; again most with Playhouse connections. It was called "The Cellar Theatre”. It was a small theatre in Hollywood basically in a basement area of a business building on N. Cahuenga. It had seating for about twenty-five people on two sides with the rest of the room our stage. Sid and Charlotte mentioned in the previous chapter were part of the group. Ken Rose who had been an instructor at the Playhouse was the head of the group. I remember when we did “Front Page” a play written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, James MacArthur came to see our production of his father’s play. I believe Charlotte was the connection for his being there. James MacArthur played detective Danny Williams in the TV series “Hawaii Five-O” which ran from 1968 – 1980. Most episodes of Hawaii Five-O ended with the arrest of criminals with McGarrett's (Jack Lord) catch phrase to Williams, "Book 'em, Danno!".

The Cellar theatre was a showcase for struggling actors not a paying job. So, to pay the rent I got a job at Wallich’s Music City located at Sunset and Vine. I worked in the stock room filing new records on the shelves of the stockroom. It was a pretty good job and I worked my way up to some degree. Wallich had a store in Hollywood, another one in Lakewood and a third one in the San Fernando Valley. They’re all three closed and gone by now. When I started working there the NBC studios were right across the street on the northeast corner of Sunset and Vine. At that time the studios were mostly designed for radio shows. When they built their new studios in Burbank at their current location they closed the studios at Sunset and Vine. If I remember correctly, Johnny Carson did a few shows from the studios there in Hollywood.

About the time Barbara Streisand’s movie “Funny Girl” came out, she came in to Wallich’s Music City. The store was all a buzz kind of like in the movie “Selena” when she and her friend was shopping in LA before the Grammys and all the workers were saying “Selena aqui!”

I remember I was at work at Music City the day President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas-Ft. Worth.
Everything came to a stand still and nobody could believe he was actually dead. That was November 22, 1963. Five years later in April Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. Not long after that JFK’s brother Bobby Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles. Again everyone was stunned. Those were very turbulent years.

About this time I went through a period of trying to find my way in the world of boy-girl relations. I was a late bloomer when it came to relating to women and I was shy. I knew and dated some of several different types of women. I even tried at being a Player, but that wasn’t really me. The names of these women have long since become lost in my memories. I do remember this one tall redhead that was a blind date. I don’t remember her name but I do remember what we did on that date. We went to see the bullfights in Tijuana.
The blind date didn’t work for either one of us. She was a nice person and attractive, but the chemistry just wasn’t there. But the chemistry was there for me and bullfighting. I became an aficionado of the ritual. I read up on it and learn many of the names of the great matadors both past and present. I went to see El Cordobes a great matador from Spain fight at the ring by sea at Tijuana. I even created a board game based on bullfighting. The parade of the matadors and their entourage entering the ring to music of the trumpets and in their suit of lights raises the emotions to a fever pitch. At first I bought into the rationale that the bulls were raised for fighting in the ring. That the bulls like to fight, and after all once they die in the ring they’re slaughtered and the meat given to the poor. What could be more noble? I have since accepted the fact that bullfighting is savage not only for bulls but also for the picadors’ horses. But I must admit that the sight of a matador’s suit of lights glittering in the late afternoon sun as he maneuvers the bull with his cape and ballet like movements stirs the emotions. But it comes at too high a price when man abuses his God given control of the animals.

In the next chapter I continue with more of my life in Hollywood.