Memories of Old Hollywood with Lucille Kennard Part Two - Recorded Feb. 9, 2006 This is part two of a 6,500 word interview with Lucille Kennard. Click here to read part one. In part two, Paula and Lucille talk about their friendship as two young married couples living in Hollywood in the early 1950s. Paula's husband (the interviewer's father) worked for Capitol Records; Lucille's husband was a talent agent. Paula: We were married in February '50 in Chicago and then I remember it was icy and snowy and it was almost Christmas. We drove to Minneapolis for Bill's promotion, which was the manager of the Minneapolis bureau for United Press International, UPI. We lived there two years almost. I remember on my birthday in May, we looked out over Lake Minnetonka and it was still solid ice. You could walk across it. We said, Let's get the hell out of here." So Bill looked on all the maps and climate and everything and decided Los Angeles was the place to go. We had no kids, very little furniture, so we went. It seemed like the spring of '53. Lu: After we left Ann Jeffreys' house, we moved right to Grace Avenue. Paula: And when was that? Lu: He came out in '51, so '52 maybe? Paula: How long had you lived there, not long? Lu: Not long. Nori: The other night we were talking about how the walls were so thin and how there was no air conditioning. Paula: Nobody had air conditioning. Theaters did. Nori: Was there anybody else in the building you knew, or just you two couples? Paula: There was a race car driver. What was his name? He had a girlfriend up there. I think it was his mistress. He used to walk by our window and wave. It was a floozy looking babe. He was probably married, with a big house in Beverly Hills, but put her up in this apartment. Did we know anybody else in the building? We should have. Lu: No, it was just the girls across the way - the stewardesses. Paula: The stewardesses! Should we tell that part? Lu: They used to take a shower up against the window so the boys could see them. Paula: We don't know if they did it on purpose, but the windows, when they showered, you could see through them. Of course, Bill and Art and Ed and Larry Burrell were hanging over the balcony watching. They called it the "shower scene." Lu: That was on Sunday. Nori: So you guys knew Larry Burrell and Eddie. Lu: Oh sure, that was our group, really. Paula: And then Jackie, later on. And Donnie, a girl named Donnie. Lu: And Marion. Paula: Is Marion the one that Ed went out with? Lu: Sure and remember those [human] pyramids we built on the sand? Paula: Sure, she's in those pictures. She was a gorgeous looking blonde. Lu: Gorgeous blond with a long, blonde pony tail. Paula: And remember, her husband had her followed and served her with divorce papers. He was a TV producer. He got a private eye. Oh, we could have had a private eye at the beach with us. Nori: So you were saying that sometimes it got so hot in one apartment . . . Lu: We would barbeque. We would go to the beach Sunday morning and we always went down to Orange County. The beaches here were always so crowded, so we would go down there, spend the day there. You had to find the place where you could go down the steps to the beach, because most places wouldn't, so we had this one place scooped out. When we got through sunning ourselves and making crazy at the beach, we would come home. The boys would all chip in and buy a steak, and cook a steak down on the barbeque, down by the parking lot. Paula and I - if Paula cooked in her house, then we ate in my house. Because no air conditioning. So whoever did the cooking, we ate in the other apartment. We would put on music and Paula would get her pots and pans and Eddie would play music on the pots and pans. In the apartment. Nori: I'll bet the neighbors loved that. Paula: Well, the manager called on us a few times. Lu: Oh yes, and he used to come up with dirty, filthy boots to check the plumbing and I wouldn't let him in the place. What was his name? Paula: I don't remember it. He was an old German guy and he had an accent. "Vat you playing up there? Vat you doing in that apartment?" He didn't like us and . . . well, we were twenty-something, what did we know? Nori: So you were on Grace Avenue, just up from Hollywood? Paula: No, we were just up from Franklin, but we could walk. Your dad walked to Capitol at Sunset and Vine for work. I walked down Hollywood Boulevard to the Broadway down there at the end of the line. It was a beautiful stroll. Nori: So it was safe back then. Paula: Oh yeah, it was safe. There were a lot of tourists. Lu: Except that night when a freak was walking along behind the apartment. I looked outside to see what it was and almost came face to face with him. That scared the heck out of me. I said, "We're moving." It was behind our apartment, but remember they built new apartments behind us? There were strange things going on up there. I remember peeking out the window to see what was going on, because it was really strange. I thought, well I guess that's Hollywood. Paula: Then you bought your house on Camino [de la Cumbre]? Lu: Yes, well you moved out first. Paula: Yes, we did. I remember Art teasing us when we went up, off Dixie Canyon. "What's the matter? Couldn't you find a place in the City?" Nori: Oh yeah, because Dixie Canyon is in the San Fernando Valley. Paula: Then they moved out farther than we were. Lu: It wasn't that much further. Paula: A little bit. Lu: But it had to be up in the hills. Paula: Because Hollywood people were disdainful of the Valley - until they moved there. Nori: It was like that even when I was a kid. Paula: But when we got there it was pretty nice. Nori: Yeah, well, that's where the movie stars bought their ranches. It was all open range or orange trees back then. Last night we were talking about your parents, how they got involved in elections. We also had elections at our house when we lived on Longbow. Lu: Well, I come from - not a long line of politicians - but my paternal grandfather was a senator, Marmaduk Burr. My parents weren't really political, but in Pelham they became involved in elections, which were held in the colonial grade school. They made sure they had the roster and made sure people got out to vote. They had people come to the house and if so and so hasn't voted, we'll go get them and make sure to take them down if they can't get there, so they helped run the elections. My mother ran for councilwoman, she was councilwoman at one time. Her name was Lucille F.W. That was the end of the political line. Nori: But that's great. What year was that? Lu: I was still in school, so it was probably 1938. Nori: That was before World War II, so there weren't a lot of women out in public life. Like Osa Johnson, there were a few examples. It was World War II when the women went out of the home. Paula: And guess what happened when the men came back from war? Nori: They all went home. Paula: They all got pregnant and went home again. They had their four years! Lu: My maternal grandfather was a doctor in North Carolina. That was another interesting facet. My mother was a Rebel and my daddy was a damned Yankee, so I had both sides of it. Paula: So the southern belle marries a Yankee. Lu: A damned Yankee. Most of my relatives are from the South. In fact, they're still there. Nori: Did you know Faith and Hal? Lu: Oh yes. When I first moved out here somebody gave me her name because I didn't know many people. So one day I decided I was going to call this woman I did not know. So I called her and we made arrangements to meet and get together and that's how your mother met her. Nori: Yeah, because they live in Phoenix now. And Hal was a musician who played with Capitol for a while, right? Paula and Lu: Stan Kenton. Paula: He played trombone. Nori: And Don [Nori's stepfather, Paula's husband] worked with Kenton too, right? Paula: Yes, but I don't know that it was at the same time. Hal is older than we are. He was at Pearl Harbor. He lived through it. The story is that he was drunk and in town, not on the ship. Lu: Whatever it takes! Nori: So after you met Faith, she became part of your group. Paula and Lu: Oh yeah, both of them. Lu: We used to have parties at our house all the time. We had a huge fireplace that covered the wall. Nori: I might remember that. Did you take me there? Lu: Yes, you were there. But that was the stage. It had a big, wide ledge, which was a seating ledge, until Eddie [Hilliard] came. Then it was a stage. (all laugh) I never had to worry about entertaining my guests as long as he was there. And he would get up on the stage and everybody would say, "Hey Eddie! Tell the story about so and so," and he would say, "Okay!" They he would start telling a joke. His delivery was so great. Everybody knew the jokes, but everybody would still laugh. Paula: We would want to hear them again and again. Lu: This was the way we usually would spend our evenings. It wasn't a question of everybody seeing how drunk you could get, it was just the entertainment. Paula: We had food and we had drink and entertainment. You know that movie called the Aristocrat? That was one of Eddie's jokes. Nori: They stole it from him? Paula: No, it's an old show biz thing. The joke teller says, "Well this guy goes into an agent and says I've got this stage act." It was the filthiest, most horrible stuff. You could make it filthy and long. The punch line is the agent says, "Oh my god, what do you call this act?" "The Aristocrats." Lu: See, I'd forgotten that one. I've heard about the movie but haven't seen it. Paula: I don't want to see it. Ed told it better than any of those people could. It's an old show biz joke because the funnier the comedian, the more awful things they can put into it. Lu: Well talk about comedians. I've been to the Red Skelton rehearsals. That was strictly off the cuff, because what they did at rehearsals they would not do on the air, obviously. Paula: Were they naughty? Lu: Of course, but they were funny. Arthur made sure I got to see some of those because they were really funny. I mean the shows were funny, but the rehearsals were really a crack up. Nori: Looks like we're coming to the end of the tape. Paula: Are you going to transcribe this and get it in order? Nori: I'm not sure what we can do with this. I'll make you copies. Probably what I would do is put it in chronological order. Paula: She did it with that interview we did with Don. Nori: That one about Capitol Records was so easy. The first two thirds of it was perfect. I didn't have to edit it at all. Just the part about my dad getting fired from Capitol Records, we started it out without explaining to the audience what we were talking about. So I did kinda edit that one. I just switched things around. But basically, I didn't know the whole story of why my father got fired from Capitol. I think the main thing that got him fired was when he suggested the Capitol artists play in the Playboy All Stars Band. He went to the musicians and the old guys thought that was really wrong of him to talk to the musicians about it, like go over their heads. Paula: Well what really did it though was the advertising guy. Nori: Well, then that guy wrote a letter to Glen Wallich, "Bill Muster said that you guys didn't like us because we're like a porn magazine, but we know you like Playboy Magazine." Boom. Paula: Goodbye Bill Muster. Nori: He got canned. Paula: He stepped out of his line. Nori: Yeah, and I don't know why that guy was quoting my dad, because he was just a peon there. Paula: One more thing about Bill's departure from Capitol. Nori was just a little kid then, two. Irv Stern, our friend who was very funny and very sharp - he knew the whole deal - he asked Nori, "Why do you think you daddy got fired from Capitol?" And Nori said, "I think it's because he didn't keep his desk clean." (all laugh) Lu: That's cute. Nori: Later on, when I was about eight, I asked my mom why we had a subscription to Playboy. Because it came every month for as long as I could remember from childhood. She said that was because they got my dad fired and they gave him a free subscription. I never knew the real story. Paula: Well, they gave us a lifetime subscription when we were first dealing with him, trying to go through him to get Capitol to advertise then they just let it run. But when we moved to Sunnyvale it stopped. The change of address, they said, whoops these guys didn't pay. But then we subscribed to it with money. Nori: Yes, that was a subtle twist to the story. I knew at eight that they had given him a free lifetime subscription, but then it expired and they had to pay for it. Lu: Speaking of Playboy, James Gregory, also a well known TV star, he and his wife became my best friends at one point. He was defending Playboy, saying it wasn't just the pictures, they have so many interesting articles. I looked at him and I thought, yeah right. Nori: But it was true. Lu: Well I'm sure, but that wasn't the main point. Nori: Oh, the guys looked at it for the pictures. Lu: I forgot to mention them and they were very close friends of mine. In fact he died, but his wife lives out here. Nori: Please tell the one about my dad embarrassing Art at a party. Lu: Oh, well at one of the parties we had Barton McClain and his wife, among others. Bill walked up to Barton McClain and said, "What do you do?" and Barton looked at him and said, "Well, son, I'm a rancher," which he was, when was not being a big, fat movie star. It's true! Arthur was so embarrassed. When Chris, our son, was born, we had a christening party. Who all was there? Barton McClain, Virginia Grey, who else? Paula: It's only a vague memory. Lu: A lot of the stars were there. Larry Burrell came up to me and wanted to use the phone. I thought, I'm so busy, what do you want to use the phone for? All right, go ahead use the phone, I don't care. I was off doing things. First thing I know, he says, "Can I turn on the radio?" and I thought, What is with this guy? So he turns on the radio and he turns it up full blast, and he was broadcasting this party! I had no clue what he was doing! He was announcing, "I am here at the Kennard residence and we're celebrating the birth of their son, Christopher." All the celebrities, and he's naming them. I couldn't believe what's going on. It was a surprise. I'll never forget that! Nori: Larry Burrell was in radio . . . Lu and Paula: He was very well known. Nori: Tell the one about all the critters you had living on your hill. Lu: Well, Eddie Hilliard used to call Arthur the "Gopher King," because we had so many of them. It was hysterical. Every day you'd come out and there were more gophers. Paula: You could see one of your ivy plants go pffst - the gophers got it down and they were chewing on it. Lu: Then they would stick their head up and look around. Paula: But they were horrible, they infested everybody's yard! They would make holes and the earth would fall down. Lu: And Art was out there putting traps in their holes. That didn't bother them at all, then he would lose the traps. They would pull the traps in their holes. Finally, they came with gas, and you put it in the hole and turn it on 1 - 2 - 3, then turn it off. That eventually got rid of them. We had snakes up there too. The snakes probably ate the gophers. The kids were up visiting, playing in our backyard with the swings and all, and they came into the house screaming. So I go and look, we have one side of the house that was all glass. Here's this big garden snake, like this, squiggling down the side of the house. It goes down the end of the place and turns down the wall, and I watched it go across and down the hill. It was later, when Arthur came home, sometimes he would go in the back door, and I was told there were rattle snakes that coming down. When we had just in, he was at work one day, and I had just brought Chris in for a nap, but the dog was still out in the dog yard, because we had covered the place with sand and swings for kids. The dog was barking and I knew by the bark that something was wrong. I went out to investigate because he was barking and backing up, barking and backing up. There was this tarantula bigger than my hand. Well, if I see a little spider on the wall, I panic, so you can imagine how I felt about that. So here's the original pioneer woman. I ran and grabbed a shovel, brought the dog in first, grabbed a big shovel. I went out and I can't bring the shovel down on this thing, it scared me so much, but I knew I had to do it. I had to protect my kids. So I picked the shovel up, turned around and came back, and I went whack, and I hit this thing. And he moved, and I thought oh, and they say that's what murderers do. So I kept hitting him until he stopped moving. My heart was beating so hard. I was alone. There were no neighbors up there to speak of. So I shoved him up and put him on the ledge. About that time the phone rang, so I said, "H-hello?" I mean, I was petrified. Well, it was Arthur. He said, "What's the matter?" I said, "You - you - you won't believe what just happened!" And he says, "Oh yeah, it's nothing." I said, "Fine, I'll show you when you get home." When he came home and I said, "You come here," and I showed him this big thing. He was very impressed. They say when there's one, there's always a mate. So I had to live in fear. I never let any of the kids in the yard unless I was there with them. To this day I can remember my heart beating. So living in the hills was not my favorite thing. When I left, I went down to the ground level. When I hit Encino, I wanted a neighborhood for my kids to play in. Up in the hills I had to import kids to play with. I used to bring your kids up there. Don (leaving for a rehearsal): How's your interview going? Did I show you my big book of genealogy? Nori: He has done a lot of research on the family genealogy. Lu: My grandfather did all that. I have a picture of my family tree going back to the 1200s. It shows the tree and all the branches, all the way up to when my mother and all her siblings were born. That's where it ended. And he's written a couple of books that I have on my genealogy. Nori: The 1200s? What countries? Lu: England. One of the coats is of a tiger with a spear going through it. Also a little French, a little Scotch. Nori: You have the coat of arms? Lu: Oh yeah, I have the several coats of arms. One shows a spear running through it and I think it was my mother's side of the family, because my grandfather has written a couple of books. We didn't trace Art's genealogy because he changed his name. His stepfather was Defosses, but when he was going into show business he changed it to Kennard. I told him to put the two n's in it because with one n it sounded like canard. Originally, he was a Defosses and his mother was a nurse. His father was an attorney. He was a very sweet man. Nori: Would you tell me a little about your life in New York before you met Arthur? In the 40s when I was dating, we would go to Glen Island Casino, which was known as the cradle of the bands. Every big band played Glen Island Casino: Claude Thornhill, the Dorsey Brothers, Glen Miller, all those big ones. If you had a really great date, that's where you would go. The upstairs was the ballroom where the band was. Downstairs they had a peacock alley with a bar, booths, and a jukebox. If a date couldn't afford to go upstairs, then you would go downstairs. I used to date a guy who had a speedboat from the club, so on hot summer nights we would go over to the boat and putt out to cool off over the water. Then we would putt up to the casino and they had French doors all the way down, open. We could sit there in the boat and see all the people dancing to the orchestra and then we could see all the people downstairs walking down peacock alley to the bar room. We would just sit in the boat, nice and cool, and we'd have beer there, that's it. We'd just sit there and it was so pleasant to sit there. It was just like watching a stage show. Then there was a place after you go back on shore called The Barge. It was very popular with the young crowd. That's literally what it was, a barge. That was also on the shore there. There were planks going up to the barge. Everybody would park their car and walk up the planks. There were hardly any lights. The jukebox lit up the dance part in the back and then there was a bar in the front part, but it was always dark. They had little lights on the wall, you could see. It was the place to go. No matter where you were, you had to end up at the barge. Lu: Next time you come to California I'll whip out my photo albums so you can get a better idea of things. Nori: You have pictures? Lu: Yeah! Paula: The great photographer of record. Nori: So you took a lot of pictures. Lu: Yes. Like today. I got the photo of you and your mom at your apartment in front of all your paintings. I want to have memories of the places I've been, that I've enjoyed. Nori: Well, that's the end of the interview. Maybe I can scan some photos later and add them. Thank you so much ladies! Part One | index