Blithe Spirit in Hollywood

Blithe Spirit in Hollywood

I stayed in Hollywood for about seven more years and have many memories that stand out.  I do wish I had kept a journal as I’m sure that much of what I experience has been forgotten and important details were never captured.  I had begun my interest in gardening and alternative healing.  I proceeded to work in many jobs and carried on with my image of being a blithe spirit with long hair and a soft and gentle manner.

I met so many new people and could never remember all their names.  Had I not been so shy I would have taken photographs along the way.

I remember making Mumu dresses for Barbie dolls to be sold as souvenirs in Hawaii for awhile and then I got a job as the welcoming hostess and cashier at a new nightclub on Sunset Strip called the Rainbow Bar and Grill.

It had just opened and was the “hot” club to go to.  Many celebrities were there.  The top level was called “Over the Rainbow” and that’s where most of the exclusive patronage hung out.  I remember having a drink with Warren Beatty.  He made me very nervous because he had such a reputation as being a womanizer.  At least I caught his eye and he showed some interest in this “woman.”

One day Gary and Louis came into the club and were very friendly.  I wound up staying with Louis in a charming cottage above the Sunset Strip on Ozetta Terrace.  I had entered a new world of acting and actors.  Louis was an actor from New York and had made friends with other actors in the films and plays he had been in.

 Louis liked to go “on the rounds” and visit various people and go to several clubs and restaurants to see other actors and get any news on auditions.  We frequented Barney’s Beanery and Dan Tana’s next to the Troubador.  We knew the owner of the Troubador, Doug Weston, and were there when the Smothers Brothers performed a “Comeback” appearance after many years of not performing. 

Doug asked me to be a hostess to them backstage, getting drinks, fending off fans, and I gave Tommy a neck-rub as he was tense and nervous.  I was still up in the balcony looking down to the stage below when they began performing.  There were many notable people in the audience including Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Helen Reddy, Cliff Robertson, Lily Tomlin, Peter Lawford and John Lennon and Harry Nilsson.  John and Harry were very drunk and John kept heckling at the start of the performance and of course Tommy Smothers would answer back.  They’d start over and again John would begin heckling again.  This occurred several times.

All of the sudden there was a huge brawl.  It was an instantaneous combustion with John Lennon in the center.  Louis ran downstairs and told John to collapse onto him and he would lead him out.  

John, Harry and May Pang went back to our house with Louis.  Doug found me in the club and said I’d better call Louis right away.  I did and he said to get home.  I casually went up to a friend eating at Dan Tana’s next door and said “If you’d like to meet John Lennon, can you give me a ride home?”  I never saw someone whip out their credit card and pay for their meal so fast before. 

We spent the rest of the evening playing piano together and eating homemade hamburgers.  Later on Phil Spector arrived in a beautiful silver Rolls Royce to pick the group up.  A few days later we were visited by attorneys asking Louis to sign that John did not hit anyone so that he would not be asked to leave the country.  The criminal charges were dropped but John paid money to the supposed victims to avoid civil charges for his behavior.

We were close friends with Gary Rethmeir and Richard Rust.  They lived near each other and both had an entourage of various actor friends.  We were friends with artist  Brice Wood and his wife Carol and Genie Riley.  Genie’s mom Roberta was a seamstress and I helped her sew expensive custom clothes for people to wear on cruises.  I would bead paisley fabric by the hour. 

 I went to acting classes and helped put on plays at the Actor’s Studio.  Louis’s brother-in-law was Richard Donner who directed the Omen and the first Superman Movie.  We would visit his house high in the Hollywood Hills often.  I would give Richard my massage treatment and he would fall asleep.  Then I would be a hostess for the various people that would also be there.

I gave Jin Shin Do massages to several clients including Fay Dunaway who was a good friend of Hedy Sontag.  I knew Hedy from the Actor’s Studio.  Fay would be exhausted from being in so many films back to back and she had a bad cold from being in a lingerie shot for too long, surrounded by all the cast and crew.  She would also fall asleep and get much needed rest, until the phone rang again.

Louis’s ex-girlfriend was Anitra Ford who was one of the original models on the Price is Right.  She was the Bee lady in “Invasion of the Bee Girls.”  We became friends and she taught me how to know which contestant would be the winner of a game show judging by their attitude.

Owen Orr would come over and collect us to go visit Michael Green down at the Rodeo Grounds in Malibu where there would be a group of musicians and various actors enjoying each other’s company.

The writer of “No Place to Be Somebody,” Charles Gordon was a frequent visitor.  I helped train his crew regarding stage lighting at a current production of the play and got higher credits than Richard Roundtree.  Tyne Daley was one of the actors.   I had learned about lighting at the Strasburg Studio.

Wavy Gravy (Hugh Romney) would stay with us when he was in town.  He always arrived with an entourage of ladies as well as his wife, Bonnie Beecher.  One of them gave me an Emilio Pucci designer dress that I loved to wear.  It looked a lot like this dress:

We went to visit Wavy and Bonnie at the Hog Farm and got to see inside Ken Kesey's famous bus that carried “The Merry Pranksters” which was painted with stars in the interior.

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One thing that Louis did for me that I will always be grateful for is that he built me a huge garden on the side of the hill we lived on.  The garden grew beautifully and I had followed the instructions from an organic gardening book, not even knowing that it was a new concept.  It was just normal for me to use companion planting and use natural compost and bug sprays.  That began a life-long love of gardening for me.

We both helped Roberta Higgins son Michael remodel a new restaurant called Lost on Larrabee.  Louis did a lot of the carpentry work and I watered the many potted plants that were brought to for the décor.  I swept a lot of sawdust up also.  The restaurant was a big hit being frequented by many actors and musicians.

Life with Louis was exciting but also a little bit crazy for me so I eventually moved along.