There’s something heady about driving in Hollywood that got even Garbo tagged twice for speeding. One of the wildcat drivers was Luise Rainer. She had won her Great Ziegfeld Oscar and was going into The Good Earth as the sensation of the industry. For the picture’s sake, the studio conspired with minions of the law to frame her. She’d be arrested, plead guilty, and the judge, primed in advance, would lift her license until The Good Earth was completed. So ran the plot. But a snag developed after the police trapped her; she clung to her innocence and vowed to fight the case in court. So the ticket had to be quashed, and the suppress agents had to ’fess up to Luise. She refused to speak to them for weeks.
Since we live in an age of corruption, almost like the declining days of ancient Rome, with the “interests” digging in deeper all the time, I ought not have been surprised at a campaign to build another Las Vegas right in the heart of our community. The plan was to incorporate a separate little city made up of the Sunset Strip, with its night clubs like Dino’s and Jerry Lewis’ new place, and stretching from Santa Monica Boulevard up into the hills. Like Beverly Hills, which is a town unto itself and an extremely well-conducted one, this new Sunset City, or whatever it was to be christened, would have written its own rules and controlled its own life.
The idea was perfectly feasible, however unattractive. The area involves a bit of no man’s land, bounded by the city limits of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, yet attached to neither of them. This is county territory. The promoters’ objective, among other things, was to bring in gambling, making it as legal as Nevada. It was a choice location and could be a perfect haven for mobsters.
Among the unsuspecting citizens of the Strip, petitions were circulated to gather signatures as the first step to take the proposed “city” away from county control. Whether or not he realized the implications, one of the sponsors was Bart Lytton, whose modernistic new savings bank stands on the site of the old Garden of Allah at the hub of the territory. It was he who threw one of the biggest parties in Washington, D.C., on the night of President Kennedy’s inauguration, which drew JFK and other members of the family. Even I received one of the gold-engraved invitations, though I’d never met the host.
Our local Citizen-News, which has since changed management, broke the story of what lay behind the apparently innocent moves to make the Strip independent. I got busy in my column and with some letter writing to throw a monkey wrench into the wheels.
I was amazed at the time that my words were allowed to appear, because some exceedingly powerful individuals stood to gain from “Sunset City.” But it worked. Our community had seen too much of Murder, Inc. muscling in, of gangsters receiving the lead-poisoning treatment on the streets. The petitions died from anemia—but I am sure the backers haven’t given up hope or forgiven me.
There was another time when the businessmen of the Strip weren’t so slow to take up arms. In this other affray they succeeded in putting the object of their attention behind bars, but then she was a woman, or even a lady, and a local celebrity. She was a tall, dignified creature with a back straight as a ramrod, who introduced herself to me one day as we sat under neighboring dryers in a beauty parlor. I was happy to make her acquaintance, having heard a great deal about her.
She was a pioneer in her profession by allowing her patrons, including some super-sized stars, to run up bills for their pleasure, whereas cash in advance is, I gather, the almost invariable procedure elsewhere. She accumulated a load of bad bets as a reward for establishing her informal credit plan, though her establishment gained a certain distinction from the array of several Oscars which stood on her mantelpiece, gifts from satisfied customers.
She conceived the ambition of retiring from her former calling and opening an extremely proper and swank restaurant on the Strip. She had the plans drawn up, which envisaged upstairs dining accommodations for private parties, which are not unusual among caterers. She ordered some somber but becoming gowns to wear as hostess. The restaurateurs along the Strip were outraged. They shuddered at the thought that chez elle could well become the most popular, though innocent, port of call for natives and tourists alike. She was denied a liquor license and later arrested.
She had one stanch supporter to turn to—that friend to all womankind, Louise Fazenda, the zany, pigtailed comedienne of the Mack Sennett era. Mack enjoyed working late at his studio so he could chase pretty girls between takes. Louise found the only means of quieting an empty stomach and finding some fleeting peace was to take a sandwich and hide it, ready for supper, in the women’s lavatory.