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1: Welcome to Hollywood
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
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1 Welcome to Hollywood L ate one afternoon in April of 1946, the aging DC-3 touched down on the runway of Burbank Airport in the San Fernando Valley and taxied toward the terminal. Exiting the plane, I saw white wisps of gently drifting gold-tinged clouds brushed by the fading sunlight. The deepening blue sky was crystal clear. In the distance the Santa Monica mountains guarding Los Angeles seemed aflame in the last glows of sunset. There were no other planes on the runway, and the airport seemed nearly deserted. As the day faded, a gentle silence was settling over the vast desert valley. Inhaling the orange-blossom scented air, seeing the swaying palms, I was sure this was paradise. As much as I had loved the Hawaiian Islands during my year and a half aboard a subchaser operating out of Pearl Harbor and atolls far beyond, this place was going to be even more inviting and seductive—a paradise without the war. I was thrilled by the unpredictability of adventures beyond my imagining that lay ahead. To a kid from Little Rock, Hollywood was Oz. Walking down the metal stairs, overnight bag in hand, I was resplendent in my Navy uniform, proudly wearing my appropriately 10 11 Welcome to Hollywood tarnished Lieutenant (junior grade) gold-braided sleeves. (It was called “salty” to have green-stained gold braid on your uniform, especially your hat; it showed you were a seafaring sailor, not a desk jockey). E. Jack Neuman had promised to meet me at the terminal. Instead I was handed a telegram that read “ . . . . .” This was a play on Amos ’n’ Andy’s famous instructions to their secretary, “Buzz me, Miss Blue.” I had not seen my college roommate since we said farewell at the Columbia, Missouri, train station in June of 1942 when he hopped aboard a train to join the United States Marine Corps. Jack had enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbor, whereas a few weeks earlier I had enlisted in the Navy’s V-7 program, which allowed college juniors and seniors to sign up and get a deferment until they graduated. We would then head for Columbia University’s Naval Officer’s Training Program in New York City the day following graduation. In their haste to accommodate the Navy, the university had forgone graduation ceremonies, dismissing us in early April, several weeks before the end of the semester. But Jack had wanted to see action immediately with no waiting for the niceties of a diploma. Off he went, gung ho, to war. Things didn’t quite work out that way. After a few months in basic training, a subsequent medical exam disclosed scar tissue on his lungs. He was given an immediate medical discharge. Shortly after his release he came down with tuberculosis and ended up spending the rest of the war in VA hospitals. We exchanged letters throughout the war years, culminating with his urging me to take my discharge in Los Angeles, move in with him and his mom, and begin collaborating on radio scripts. A stranger in a strange land, I took a bus to Hollywood, then a cab to Jack’s address on Taft Avenue just off Hollywood Boulevard. The long narrow street was guarded by forty-foot-high pencilthin palms lining both sides of the street like anorexic sentinels. High above the very end of Taft Avenue, anchored into the side of the Santa Monica mountains, were enormous white letters, H O L L Y W O O D, lit by the fading sunlight; they seemed almost aflame in the fading light and much farther away than they actually were. Jack lived in an old, three-story, faded white stucco apartment building next to the parking lot of Ralph’s market on the corner of Taft Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. It was the low-rent end of Hollywood. I walked up the three flights of stairs until I found his apartment at the end of the long narrow hallway. It looked like a building Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe might have lived in; it was of their era. A thin, graying woman in a chenille robe opened the door with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. “Come on in, Billy,” she greeted me. “We’ve been waiting for you. First, give me a hug. I’m Jack’s mom. My name’s Agnes, but Jack calls me Aggie, so you might as well, too.” I hugged this smiling...
