by James Roman
Not all Hollywood romances were the stuff of legends. To some performers, seeking your next date in the studio lot was like being locked in a candy store. Consider this messy scandal that unraveled for decades:
Eddie Fisher was a heartthrob and pop crooner with his own television show at age 25. That’s when he met Debbie Reynolds, whose performance in Singing in the Rain made her a rising star at MGM. The cute couple married in 1955 and starred together in the movie musical Bundle of Joy in 1956, also produced by Fisher. Billed as “their first movie together,” it was also their last. The couple gave birth to Carrie Fisher (Reynolds was pregnant while filming Bundle of Joy) and Todd Fisher, but a seemingly unrelated tragedy suddenly impacted their lives.
Fisher was a best friend to Oscar-winning producer Mike Todd, who was married to actress Elizabeth Taylor, regarded as the most beautiful woman in the world. The two couples were such good friends that the Fishers even named their son in Mike Todd’s honor. Tragically, in 1958, Mike Todd died in a plane crash. Claiming to “console” the bereaved Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Fisher struck up an affair with her while still married to 26-year-old Reynolds, an embarrassment to her that made national headlines. Within 14 months, Fisher managed to romance Taylor, divorce Reynolds, and then marry Taylor. A year after the wedding, Fisher was on the lot at MGM, filming the drama Butterfield 8 with his wife, the performance that earned Taylor her first Oscar. It was their first film together, but once again, it was also their last.
This time, Taylor dumped Fisher. Cast as the lead in Cleopatra, Taylor played love scenes opposite Richard Burton as Mark Antony. While filming in England and Italy, the two began an affair that made international headlines since both were married to others. Production stopped when Taylor fell ill. Fisher flew overseas to his wife’s aid (and every reporter’s delight). Though Taylor professed devotion to her husband, the romance with Burton continued, generating more bad publicity for the troubled production. Even the Vatican weighed in, denouncing the affair as “erotic vagrancy.” While filming the epic sequence in which Cleopatra makes a triumphant entrance into Rome, Taylor genuinely feared for her life, she admitted later. Thousands of Italian extras turned against the couple in moral outrage over their scandalous romance. That didn’t stop the couple though. Cleopatra opened in July 1963. Within months Taylor divorced Fisher, who was now washed-up as a singer and actor. Nine days after the divorce, she married Burton.
Cleopatra, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, 1963
The Long, Hot Summer, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, 1958
Taylor and Burton were married for ten years and appeared in eleven movies together. They were not without their conflicts, and in 1974, they divorced. Their separation lasted 16 months, during which Burton again wooed Taylor; they remarried in 1975 but separated again, and were redivorced in 1976.
Years later, Debbie Reynolds traveled on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth at the same time as Elizabeth Taylor. As Reynolds explained on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011, she invited Taylor to dinner, to aright their former friendship. The two reconciled, and as Reynolds remembers: “… we had a wonderful evening with a lot of laughs.” Reynolds’ daughter Carrie Fisher wrote These Old Broads, a script for television in which Taylor and Reynolds performed together. It was Taylor’s final performance; the show aired just five weeks before her death in 2011.
Perhaps Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward set the best example for love on a studio lot. They were married in Las Vegas in 1958 after filming The Long, Hot Summer at 20th Century Fox. They had three daughters, they performed together in 10 feature films, and Woodward starred in five more films that Newman directed or produced. Their relationship lasted 50 years until Newman’s death from lung cancer in 2008. When asked about the secret of their long, successful marriage, Newman replied candidly: “You don’t fool around with hamburger at the studio when there’s steak for you at home.”
AFTER ELVIS
After kissing Elvis Presley on the big screen, what does a young actress do? She checks in to a convent!
That’s what Dolores Hart did. She was the first girl to be kissed by Elvis in Loving You, in 1957. Hart paired with Elvis again in 1958’s King Creole; then she went to Broadway, where she was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the romantic comedy The Pleasure of His Company in 1959. Her career won the admiration (and the envy) of many.
But Dolores Hart’s heart was not in show biz. During her Broadway run, she visited the Regina Laudis Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut. She said that she left with a “sense of peace.”
Hart then starred in MGM’s cult classic Where The Boys Are in 1960. Contract offers poured in, but in 1963, she broke off her wedding engagement and entered the Benedictine Abbey in Connecticut. She has led a cloistered life there ever since.
In 2012, the Reverend Mother Dolores was interviewed for a documentary, God Is The Bigger Elvis, about her path from Hollywood to the convent. When the film was nominated for an Academy Award, she was in the spotlight once more.
At a press briefing prior to the Oscars, the 74-year-old Hart was asked, “What was it like to be kissed by Elvis Presley?” The Reverend Mother replied, “I think the limit for a screen kiss back then was something like 15 seconds. That one has lasted 40 years.”
Loving You, Dolores Hart and Elvis Presley, 1957
CHAPTER 19.
SWITCH HITTERS
THE DODGERS’ HOME RUN AT CHAVEZ RAVINE
1957—1962
The Los Angeles Dodgers are great at setting records. Even before their arrival in LA, the Brooklyn Dodgers were the first team to be broadcast on television, the first team to wear batting helmets and, of course, the first to break the color barrier by including African Americans in their line-up. But, in 1957, when the Dodgers switched from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, they set another kind of record, unleashing fury and disappointment on both coasts.
The Dodgers played at Ebbets Field, a stadium in Brooklyn owned by the City of New York. Originally built in 1913, by the ‘50s, the stadium was crumbling. Even during the heat of a pennant race, New Yorkers wouldn’t fill Ebbets Field. Walter O’Malley, the team’s owner, wanted to build a modern stadium in Brooklyn, but Robert Moses, New York’s hardheaded city planner, crassly dismissed his proposal.
That’s when O’Malley gambled the Dodgers’ future and took a risk. Major League teams once traveled by train to face their opponents, but in 1954, teams started traveling by plane to games away from home. That air travel suddenly turned major western cities into viable alternatives. The first to go were the New York Giants. In May 1957, National League club owners granted permission for the ballclub to depart from the polo grounds in Queens; they became the San Francisco Giants. Likewise, O’Malley met with eager officials in Los Angeles, but his demands were steep; never again would the Dodgers be beholden to the whims of bureaucrats like Robert Moses. The ballclub must own its stadium and the land beneath it.
From left: Dodger manager Walter Alston and owner Walter O’Malley, 1953; The Dodgers assemble at Ebbets Field, 1955
“No problem,” assured the LA officials. Los Angeles had the ideal site, though it came with a murky history: a large tract of vacant land in a central location called Chavez Ravine.
Before statehood, when Los Angeles was still part of Mexico, 36-year-old Julian Chavez petitioned the ayuntamiento (similar to a City Council) for permission to take possession of the unoccupied tract. He was granted title to some hopelessly steep acres that the earliest settlers avoided. A few years later, when California became a state, Chavez was elected to public office, where he remained for decades; he did next to nothing with his undeveloped land. For the next century, impoverished Mexicans built ramshackle houses and fostered a closely-knit, self-sustaining farm community. Goats, sheep, pigs and even peacocks roamed the wild Chavez hills and unpaved roads. Horse-drawn plows tilled the hillsides that were planted with corn and sugar cane. The unpaved commune resembled a rural Mexican village, though it was barely three
miles from urban downtown Los Angeles.
In 1949, President Truman introduced the Fair Deal. As a result, ramshackle housing was to be demolished and replaced with modern public housing for thousands of low-income families. To Los Angeles officials, Chavez Ravine was an eyesore: more than three hundred barely occupied acres that were ripe for demolition, where the government could build 10,000 new public housing units in a central location. With the best intentions, the city planned to clear the site through eminent domain, pave new roads and apply for federal funds to construct public housing. Current residents of the Ravine were granted the first option to return when construction was completed.
The Ravine residents were given a few thousand dollars each for their properties and their moving expenses in 1951. Architect Richard Neutra designed 24 towers and many more low-rise buildings that would provide thousands of subsidized apartments on the site. He incorporated Chavez Ravine’s rugged terrain into the design for garden apartments on terraced slopes, separated by landscaped promenades for privacy.
A bizarre, seemingly unrelated conflict permanently halted public housing construction in Chavez Ravine. The U.S. Congress was on a witch-hunt. In Washington, D.C., Republican Senator Joe McCarthy shrieked that Communists were lurking everywhere, especially in Los Angeles, where he accused filmmakers of manipulating the minds of unsuspecting viewers in a plot to overthrow democracy. Some filmmakers were defiant; others were so scared that they turned against their friends. Los Angeles was at war with itself as Angelenos dodged the accusations from right-wing fanatics to save their careers. Sharpening their focus, a public interest group called Citizens Against Socialist Housing (CASH) exacerbated the Cold War fears. They condemned the housing plan at Chavez Ravine as part of a socialist plot. The city fathers caved. Although construction plans were already approved, the housing authority returned the site to the city, with the caveat that the land must be used for public purposes only. Chavez Ravine sat fallow for years. It was offered to Walt Disney as the site for the original Disneyland, but he turned it down.
Hillside view of Chavez Ravine, 1951
Chavez Ravine eviction, 1959
Some of the displaced residents returned to their old homes, labeling themselves los desterrados (“the uprooted”). More accurately, since they accepted payments for their properties, they were squatters on city-owned land, paying no taxes.
Now it was 1957; with the National League’s blessing, the City of Los Angeles moved aggressively to attract a major league baseball franchise. O’Malley and his Brooklyn Dodgers were offered all 315 acres of Chavez Ravine. The Dodgers would own the land and the stadium just as O’Malley stipulated.
An angry political brawl ensued. The deal with O’Malley violated the city’s agreement to use Chavez Ravine for public purposes. In June 1958, Angelenos went to the ballot box and approved a referendum that transferred the public land to the Dodgers’ private ownership. To los desterrados, the vote was one insulting slap. They sold their way of life to benefit the public, then saw their land sit idle for nearly a decade. They were offered first access to housing that now would not be built. Now the broken promise was sanctioned by voters who chose to welcome a baseball team instead. The California Supreme Court slapped los desterrados again by upholding the agreement.
Back in New York, Robert Moses and Mayor Wagner looked like fools. They had called O’Malley’s bluff and lost (again) to the Left Coast. New York was the only city in America that went from three major league teams to one (the New York Yankees). Robert Moses groveled, offering O’Malley a piece of the World’s Fair Ground in Queens, but since the Dodgers wouldn’t own the fairgrounds or the stadium, his proposal was dead on arrival. New York politicians drove away one of their city’s most lucrative and iconic assets. “Dem Bums!” the Brooklyn fans wailed as the Dodgers boarded a plane and headed for the palm trees.
The City of Los Angeles still needed to evict the final holdouts in Chavez Ravine. When bulldozers and deputies arrived to enforce the eviction orders, television cameras were there to capture the ugly confrontation. Men in uniform dragged the remaining 20 families from the properties. Women kicked and scratched as they were forcibly removed. Public sympathy was aroused but it promptly ebbed when the newspaper reported that one televised family actually owned 11 other residences in LA. Hypocrisy brought an end to the battle of Chavez Ravine.
The earth was graded, and construction began on the hillcrest for one of America’s most beautiful stadiums. Slopes were terraced, canyons filled and new access roads were carved through adjacent neighborhoods. The Dodgers set up temporary headquarters at the Coliseum that was built for the 1934 Summer Olympics. Then something magical happened.
The Los Angeles Dodgers won the 1959 World Series. The city with no baseball franchise suddenly discovered that it had the nation’s biggest winners. As City Councilwoman Roz Wyman recalls, “It was the first time in Los Angeles that this town pulled together for something. The Dodgers brought the city together.”
Groundbreaking for Dodger Stadium on Sept. 16, 1959 as 3,000 fans watched
Angelenos suddenly loved their Dodgers, along with the legitimacy of hosting a major league ballclub. When the stadium opened in 1962, they had even more to celebrate. Dodgers Stadium (one of the oldest in America) is perfect. Built at the top of the tallest hill, it provides shimmering views of downtown LA, plus palm trees bending in the Pacific breeze, in a climate where ballgames almost never get rained out.
The Dodgers are welcomed with a parade, 1958
On May 1, 2012, the Dodgers were sold to the Guggenheim Partners, a group of investors including movie producer Peter Guber (Rain Man, Batman, The Color Purple) and fronted by former LA Lakers star Magic Johnson. The price tag for the Los Angeles Dodgers: $2.15 billion in cash (including the stadium). It was by far the largest purchase price in history for a professional sports team. The Los Angeles Dodgers are great at setting records.
Dodgers Stadium, at 1000 Elysian Park Avenue, is fewer than three miles from Union Station. On game days, take the subway to Union Station, or park there, then hop onto one of the frequent shuttle buses that run before, during and after the game.
IN THE MOVIES:
Dodger Stadium can be seen in Star Trek (2009), Transformers (2007), Superman Returns (2006), The Fast and the Furious (2001), The Naked Gun (1988) and many more.
Aerial view of downtown LA and Dodgers Stadium, built in 1962 on the former Chavez Ravine
CHAPTER 20.
SURF CITY
FREETH, KAHANAMOKU, BLAKE, GIDGET, DORA AND THE BEACH BOYS
1907—1964
A tan, athletic surfer catches a wave as it crests toward the Pacific coast: Is any image of Los Angeles more iconic than that?
Despite all claims to the contrary, surfing was not invented in Los Angeles. However, without the perfect collusion of sun, surf and show business (of course!), surfing might still be just a quaint Hawaiian novelty instead of the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. That’s LA’s contribution.
On an expedition through the South Pacific in 1778, Captain James Cook was apparently the first westerner to witness the phenomenon of humans riding a wooden plank on the crest of a wave. In the South Pacific, surfboard riding was even linked to a place in society. The royals used their prowess on a surfboard to display their cunning in battle; commoners gained fame (or notoriety) by the way they handled the waves. Anthropologists estimate that Polynesians may have surfed for 800 years.
Then the Americans arrived. In 1907, bestselling author Jack London (The Call of the Wild is one of his classics) visited Hawaii, where he met George Freeth, a 23-year-old local who explained the art of surfing. In Royal Sport: Surfing in Waikiki, London wrote of Freeth, “I saw him standing upright with his board carelessly poised, a young god bronzed with sunburn. In his heels is the swiftness of the sea.” Within weeks, the mainland onslaught began.
A sketch of the Polynesians wave riding when Captain Cook arrived on the scene
/> First came Henry Huntington. His Pacific Electric Railway was laying trolley tracks in every direction to connect his real estate offerings. As a gimmick to get buyers to distant Huntington Beach, he brought George Freeth to LA, giving him a train schedule and instructions to mount that surfboard every time a streetcar came into view. As Huntington’s trolleys clacked past the ocean on their way to Huntington Beach, astonished passengers who had never seen such a feat were sold. Freeth was dubbed “the first man to surf in California.”
Again on Waikiki Beach, Jack London wrote of a powerful young swimmer named Duke Kahanamoku, who would soon represent the U.S. at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. Muscular and trim, Kahanamoku was a dazzling surfer, too. On his way to the Olympics, he stopped at the beach in Santa Monica for a surfboard demonstration, creating an even greater sensation than Freeth. When he won Olympic gold, Kahanamoku was touted as “the fastest swimmer alive.” Then he returned to the Olympics in 1920 and won a silver medal beside Johnny Weissmuller’s gold. Hollywood was hooked. They were both offered careers in the movies. Weissmuller became famous as Tarzan (in 12 feature films) and Kahanamoku, always cast as the exotic Aztec chief or Hindu prince, appears in over a dozen feature films, from Lord Jim to Mister Roberts. On the days when he wasn’t filming, Kahanamoku took his board and his Hollywood pals to the LA beaches, where he introduced them to the sport of surfing. Suddenly, there was something to do in the Pacific Ocean besides swim or float! Industries were born: Music, fashion and manufacturing surfboards, of course, were opportunities for American entrepreneurs to serve a new niche market.
Surfing put men’s swimwear in the spotlight. In 1933, Weissmuller was hired to model BVD underwear at about the same time that the American Association of Park Superintendents relaxed its beachwear restrictions. Men went topless at the beach for the very first time, just like Tarzan. Weissmuller and Kahanamoku were willing participants (everyone was topless in Hawaii); the papers were willing advocates as well, giving birth to LA’s iconic surfer boys. By 1940, men bared their chests at every beach and pool in America.