Memories of Old Hollywood with Lucille Kennard Part One - Recorded Feb. 9, 2006 Nori: Here we are at the old desert homestead on Alameda Dr. We're here with my folks, Don and Paula Hassler, and Lucille Kennard, an old family friend my patents have know since about 1953. I was born in 1956, so I've known Lucille all my life. Lu's husband, Arthur Kennard, was a Hollywood agent. To get into that, we're going back half a century. Lu, Please tell me about what you were both doing then. Lu: When I got out of school I worked with John Robert Powers [modeling agency] in New York. That was interesting, and that gave me enough confidence to start working in the theater. I did a lot of theater back there and that's where I met Arthur. He and I were in several shows together. Before that, at the age of twelve or thirteen he had his own orchestra and he used to blow trumpet. He was very big and every time we'd go to a dance, he wasn't interested in dancing with me, he was interested in joining the orchestra. From there we decided to get tied up together, we got married. Nori: What year? Lu: 1950. Nori: Same year as my parents. Lu: Right. Then he was working for an artist in the city but he wasn't that good and Arthur wasn't that happy. Then he had a chance to go on the road with Pearl Primus, which was a dance band. So he had to leave home and travel by bus. They were going stop to stop and when the bus was in California he met an agent for Tyrone Power and Charles Laughton. They were doing readings in a theater, so the agent signed him up to come out and work with them. So after he returned on the bus tour he said "We're moving to California. I'm driving the car. As soon as you can break loose, join me." Okay, so that's what happened. He moved out here and he wrote me and told he had a wonderful place at Ann Jeffreys guesthouse - and what a view. And I thought great, so I come out, and I go up to Ann Jeffreys guesthouse, up in the hills, and the view was of what is now the freeway. Except in those days it was roads and it was cars. I eventually got bored sitting home so I got a job in Hollywood. I had to take the trolley everyday, because he had to take the car. He was now Mister Agent. He went to work for Lester Salkow, who was a big agent at the time. He had a large roster of stars. He was with him for sometime and eventually he opened his own agency. Lester died, so he took over the agency. We were on friendly terms with all the stars and we hob-nobbed with them. We would go to openings and we would visit their homes or they would visit mine. We enjoyed the friendship of a lot of the stars because they were real people, not just stuck up in the air nose thing. He had that agency for quite a long time. I was busy raisin chillen while he was doing that, so I was pretty much at home. Nori: What were his responsibilities? He ran the whole thing? Lu: Yeah, oh yeah well, and he had a staff of people working for him, but he made all the big deals. And he was really good at that. Certain people like Vincent Price, Raymond Burr, Peter Lorie. He had all the spooks. He had the Raymond Burr series Perry Mason and the cast. Nori: Where was the agency located? Lu: It was right on Hollywood Blvd., where Hollywood and Sunset come together. He stayed with that until business was going down and there wasn't much going on at the time. He finally got out of the business. He moved way up in the hills to Tujunga. By that time we were divorced and I had moved first to Encino, then got a place in Winnetka. [When we were married] we had a place on Comino de le Cumbre, which overlooked the whole Valley. This was a beautiful. He did a lot of work there and so did I. Nori: I want to find out a little bit more about the movie stars. What were they like? Can you recall a specific time when you went to one of their houses? Lu: We went to Jonathan Harris' house for dinner. Lost in Space. He was a really nice guy. He was a lot of fun. We had a wonderful time at his house. Raymond Burr had a place on the ocean with a mini-zoo. It was dark. I didn't go down there, so I don't know what he had. It was an elaborate house. In fact the upstairs was one great huge room with a circular bed, as I recall, right in the middle. On one side of the wall were a couple of steps and that's were all the closets were with the bathroom. Then there was a balcony looking out over the ocean. Barbara Hale's husband, Bill, gave me the tour up there. That's as far as I'm going with that conversation. [all laugh] So then Barbara came up and we chit-chatted and then we went back downstairs. The whole cast of Perry Mason was there. And he was a very nice person. Vincent Price had a big, Spanish home with many, many rooms. His kitchen was to die for. He had a butler's pantry and all the pots and pans. He loved cooking. He wrote a book on cooking and his travels, he and is wife Mary, that was his first wife. She was also involved in the movies. He was very charming. We went an opening to Hollywood Boulevard for one of those spook shows. We were all climbing in a car to save parking, you know. So it was Vincent and his wife, Arthur, Mr. Salkow - he was the agent at the time. So we're all crammed in and I had to sit on Vincent's lap because that was the way it was. So I said, "God you've got bony knees." And he laughed, because we were kidding, playing. Then he proceeded to tell me that even though he was tall, he was mostly legs, so when he sat down on the sofa to make love to the co-star in whatever movie he was in, she was always taller than he was. His body was short but his legs were long. She they'd always have to prop him up on pillows to make him appear taller than his co-star, whoever that may be. I thought that was kind of an interesting thing that most people wouldn't even know. These are the things - when real human beings are not impressed with themselves - these are the things that you find. Nori: Were movie stars really rich back then? Lu: Well, he was. Yeah, I would say. The ones that we know. Arthur had a very large roster of people. I never had a copy of the list, but they were very nice people. Very important people, but I didn't know them all. The ones that we did associate with were fun and I enjoyed them. I had them in my house for dinners and we went to various other houses. I can't even remember them all. I remember one New Years, though. We went from house to house, which I didn't enjoy because I like to go to one party and hob-nob with the people at the one party. Not just breeze in and "hello there, we're here" and then goodbye and do it again. And then coming home, there was a terrible accident at Van Nuys Blvd. and Ventura. I'm sure it was a drunk driving thing and that scared me. That was before we had that word "drunk driving." After that I decided I'm not going out on New Years. I'm staying home. I can drink a bottle of champagne at home. I don't have to go out to do it. If anybody wants to come over and join me, welcome. But I'm not hitting the road anymore. Nori: Was it part of being an agent's wife to have people over and entertain them? Lu: Not necessarily. But if you had a good relationship with certain clients, you then became more like friends than just clients. Like Richard Kiley was almost Arthur's best friend. They were very close until he died. They were just like brothers. He's a very nice man. He wasn't impressed. He would come up to Arthur's up in the hills in Tujunga and visit, kick back. He was a big star. He was, but he was pleasant. Nori: Where did Arthur learn about the agent business? Lu: Actually he learned when he worked for Mr. Salkow. He was a natural born salesman. He had a charming personality. He could charm the ears off you. He was a handsome man and people liked him. The women liked him. Nori: It's a disadvantage to be married to a man like that then? Lu: Well, yeah, because they would always flock around him. Especially since he was an agent. Again, the story of the casting couch and all that. Nori: There's probably some truth to that. Lu: I'm sure there was. But it was an exciting life. We'd go out to dinner with various ones. It was always - movie stars would stop at the table and talk to us. You had to go to the right places, because that's where the stars would hang out. Nori: Like on Sunset Strip? Lu: Yeah, but not necessarily just there. There were other class of restaurants. Some of them are not even there anymore: Brown Derby, Ciro's. Nori: So it started in 1951 when he moved out to work with Lester Salkow. When did it end? Lu: There was no one special cut-off day. It was sort of like he sold the office, his secretary moved to Florida, his bookkeeper - I don't know what happened to her. But he was still in touch. He was still making deals, because he made really good deals for those people. He would hold out. He would demand a certain amount of money and if the studios didn't want to pay it, he wouldn't let his star work there. When the studio would want the star bad enough, then they would accept his deal. That's why he was so good ad what he did. Even though it scared some of them if they wanted the job. Nori: Kind of like a roller coaster. Lu: Yeah! But usually he got his way and he knew how to do it. Nori: He must have had a lot of self-confidence. Lu: Oh yes. That was his job and he did a really good job at it. He was good. Nori: How long did it go? Lu: You mean his office? Nori: When did it start to wind down? Lu: The whole Hollywood business kinda shut down. I don't know if it was around '70? I'm not good with numbers, but that's when he sold the business. Then he went with his current girlfriend up to Wisconsin and they got married up there. Paula: He got married? Lu: Oh sure, you didn't know that? Nori: Two additional young wives, right Lu? Paula: Any kids? Lu: Not with them. She kicked him out, too. Paula: Was he still drinking? Lu: Oh, sure. Paula: But he quit then, at some point, right? Lu: Not at that point. He was still going heavy. Later, he came to my house when I lived on Winnetka for some reason and I could tell that he was really in bad shape. His face was all flushed and everything. I kicked him out of the house. I told him "get out" and he was so depressed, he told me later, that he got in his car and drove up to the top of Mulholland and was thinking of just driving off. [all gasp, sigh] That's how bad he was. He remembered that one of his friends had wanted to take him to an AA meeting so he decided to try it. And that's when he started with AA. Nori: Let's see if there's anything else we didn't talk about . . . Lu: After we broke up I had difficulty getting child support. He told he me he'd sold his business and everything and didn't have any money, which I found out later wasn't true. Wife number three ran off with quite a bit of stuff. She was smarter than me, I guess, but I believed him. So I had to work for several companies, several jobs at one time. Nori: Now you met my parents when you all lived in that apartment on Grace Avenue, right? Lu: We were in the same apartment - we used to sleep head to head with a wall between us. We had wonderful times getting to know each other in those days. Bill and Paula [Nori's parents] moved out and they built their own home. We decided we were going to get a home too and move out of that crazy apartment, and I do mean crazy. Some time after that we had a lot of people coming and going in our lives so we got divorced. He moved to Wisconsin and married wife number two. That didn't go too well after a while. She used to call. He was coming back to California because he wanted to see the kids, so I always let him come and stay with me so he could visit with the kids and so forth. Then they got divorced. Then he met another girl. She was really too young for him, but she came down and I met her. She was nice, but she was really too young for him. So they got married and that didn't last. Then he decided he was going to move back to California. That's when he lived in Tujunga. Again, it was way up in the hills. He had a thing for living in the hills. It was unique, it needed a lot of work. And it was so uphill it was horrible trying to walk around the place. It's what he liked. It had a view. I would go up there and help him plant flowers and take care of things. Then he became kind of disabled. It was difficult having to drive that far and I was concerned that if he were to fall, we wouldn't know about it. It could be dangerous for him. I tried to get him to wear one of those things around his neck, so in case he falls somebody would know about it. Of course he wouldn't do it. He agreed to move in closer so his family could come in and take care of him. So that's when he moved to Studio City. It was a nice little house with a swimming pool and he liked to swim. But I don't know if he ever stuck his toe in the water because he went downhill from there. I used to have to drive him up to the VA for visits with various doctors. He just didn't do well after that. By this time our kids had grown up and left home and taken on their own lives. He didn't have anybody at that point in his life to help him. I lived nearby, so I went over and schlepped him around. I think that's about the end of it. He finally passed on. Nori: That was about a year ago, right? Lu: A couple years ago. Nori: What did he do in the military? World War II? Lu: Jumped out of airplanes, parachute. He liked daredevil things. When he used to date me he took me to the Huguenot Yacht Club, because my family were members. He would make friends with those guys with the speedboats and I'd see him out there on waterskis just having a ball. Nori: So when you moved to Hollywood, that was 1951? Lu: That was 1951. Nori: And you met my folks in about 1953. Lu: No, because we came out in '51, so it was either '51 or '52. Paula: We must have moved there in December . . . Nori (to her mother): Come say it to the mic. (Paula joins the conversation.) Click here to read part two.