“Sullivan Travels” herein may lie the emerging remembrance, propelling cyber space and social media says Joel McCrea, the actor and husband, his frau Francis Dee of Woodland Hills,California.
They lay claim to several acres of hard worn real estate in the San Fernando Valley.
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Inasmuch the lay of the land is the hen pecking syndrome within a mirage, Murray Randolph,(insurance “exec”) once manufacturer of button down Arrow shirts. Entrepreneur turned insurance programmer
Wilshire Boulevard offices, opposite the Ambassador Hotel (and the strains of Freddy Martin’s piano “Tonight we love”, an eternity ago., post WW2. in the City of Angels.
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Murray was our first link into the hen pecking syndrome, when he tapped one of his associate hucksters , designating his youthful “counterparts” as a titled vice president in their downtown L.A. offices.
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In his penthouse on North Broadway, Los Angeles, he looked out those spacious window.
Lo and behold there was Martha Sota strolling toward the wholesale market, between Third and Fourth Street, theNorman and Dorothy Chandler L.A. Times (“Los Tiempos”) and City Hall beyond..(CPA Fletcher Bowron in that role of leadership)
Martha once of the East Los Angeles barrio, namely Belvedere Gardens…..Tony Quinn, Margo (Eddie Albert’s protectorate) Eva Gabor’s tee- v co star on “Green Acres”
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Martha had evolved into the Murray Randolph turf of the San Fernando Valley.,,, the “habla El Espanol” missionary influences of Fathers Serra, Crispy.
A one armed UCL major in Theater Arts… son of an art director at Universal Studios in North Hollywood, he invited Martha to his pop’s Spanish style hacienda in the Hills.
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But the hen pecking syndrome perpetuated itself, through the undergraduate dictum and the faculty declensions in theAcademic cosmos If human beings delineating inferior spokes on the wheels of undergraduate spokes and churning….furthering the “Lupe Velez Kathy Jurado” roles ofall the “Martha’s on our Planet…….whether from Spain, Baja Mexico, Acapulco, Guadalajara…. Mexico City.
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“What makes Sammy Run” (the “On the Waterfront” screenwriter…Brando’s :I wuz once a contender””, his own padre, the Paramount Pictures “Presidente” of Budd Schullberginterior grasp of Sammy’s guile,his motivations and aggressionsunto the scene.
The hierarchy of social climbing, status seeking humans searching for a panacea to those stepping stones of public acclaim and box office recognition……a man against myth swashbuckling “Sullivan Travels” blast.
The pursuit of realization? Right neighbor@ A place for ‘Te Foreign Correspondent” (Joel McCrea) top hang his hat.
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Therefore Joel McCrea in search of himself, fled the fantasy pretensions of the silver screen cosmos of Martha and Universal Studios, the Murray Randolph Arrow shirt button down collars…to find out where the lay of the land is… in our marketplace demographics.
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Who knew that Martha Sota’s moja, a barrio Lupe Velez Kathy Jurado would carry the party in the hills, opposite Universal Studio in North Hollywood, Lankershim Boulevard, where the starlet from, Italy lived with her m other. No not Anna Magnanior Sophi Loren. But Gia Scala, a brunette starlet in Joyce Selznick’s acting school …...losing yourself to become another persona…a crediublke one, neighbor.
But Martha Sota unlike Margo of Belvedere Gardens Junior High, danced to a different tune. The art director’s son, created “Mission Impossible”, tapped the Senorita’s shoulder.
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In the same breath, Billy Wilder, the columnist from Vienna, was directing Ray Miland (The Lost Weekend”)…. on his weekend, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Joe E. Brown, Marilyn Monroe “Some like it hot”, with Gloria Swanson, Bill Holden “Sunset Boulevrd” in his spare time.,can you bel;ieve it, neighbor.….
“I’m ready for my close up, Mister De Mille”.
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In the meantime back in the hills,the newcomer to the party by the Universal Studio art director’s son was a tall thin GI from Ford Ord, California.
He danced a tango or two with our Martha Soda from the barrio’s Belvedere Gardens, not knowing that Martha’s double back in the Bronx, was to become his wife and mother of his four children.
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“Jack the Hack” from the Avenue J subway station, back in Brooklyn, was to make his entrance on the great stage of middle class existence…waiting for riders in the Midwoodsection of Flatbush.
That was his destiny, neighbor. His meta morphosing from FordOrd, in the fall of 1945,WW2 ending, Jack the Hack, not knowing the life was all a stage. That the innocence of the tango with Martha from Belvedere Gardens would b e his saving grace into the future with Harriet 3000 miles away, waiting in the Catskill borscht circuit for the ring on her fourth finger righthand.
But it was that tango with Martha Sota that nabbed Jack the Hack into his livery cab fate role.
The youngest driver of the fleet of cabs (the father, three brothers, searching for their medallion’s thrust at the Avenue J BMT station passenger traffic,waiting to put bread on theirfourth floor apartment, across ‘J’…between Elfenbein’s bakery and Dubin’s before WW2..
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Herein lies his entrance o n the stage.Anh energetic tall basketball center…”I had a left handed hcok shot. I couldn’t miss, “e once said to Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick’s supermarket under the Avenue ‘J’ BMT local subway stop, opposite Jack the hack’s father’s fleet of Yellow cabs.
On the opposite side of ‘J’swho became a chess hustler, and migrated into movie making…”Space Odyssey” in London. TheMGM Culver City studio, (“Mr.Novak”) giving us the Borehamwood studio (outside London) Ayot St. Lawrence and George Bernard Shaw ‘s village bench. Where he sat ruminating about his leaving Ireland for the London music library, British Museum.
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Jck the Hack’s fate may have begun playing basketball at the old Wingate Field (Midwood Field) a block beyond the subway station.
Jack the left handed hook pivot center of the ‘Comets;, a intramural team that played out .their sporting lives while getting an education at Tubby Ross’s Midwood High School on Bedford Anue, across Brooklyn College on Campus Road and Bedford.
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Whether it was this academic scenario, it did the Ford Ord PFC,his calling card to rendezvous at UCLA and a Philosophy classwith Professor Piatt in Royce Hall..the 16th century architecture. In the quad!
Was it all Greek to him? The Hack met the pioneer Far Rockaway of the House of Pancakes.
Originally from the East Coast, Al fought it out: he and his brother, selling coffee to L.A. denizens, passing on some 3 decades later. His brother Jerry, a cofounder, had a disagreement with Al, and left for Australia to start his own entrepreneur career.
But in the bailiwick of Olivia deHaviland and Moe Howard (“Three Stooges”)in Toluca Lake, of the San Fernando Valley.
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Doctor Piatt’s Philosophy thrust was Pragmatism. His assistant was Mr. Meyerhoff whose role was grading the blue book exams. Mr Meyerhoff, a graduate student, was our reader
He later passed on in an accidenmt and those blue book flunking D pluses and F’s thru Subject A rehab course were turned your nrrator around.
Later meeting Doctor Piat on campus,he confessed to a nmarriage that wasn’t at all compatible with his Professorship,lecturing in Pragmatism..
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Two decades afterwards in an all night(Automat) cafeteria on Lexington Avenue off the night traffic …..down a ways from where Peggy Lee was into “My momma done tole me, a man was a two faced….”
Your narrator went for a coffee break,
Sitting at a table was Artie, Jack the Hacks older brother, who we met over their mother’s salad at their “fourth floor hi rise”.On Avenue ‘J’
“Call Jack. He’s married now, raising his family of four Thefamily is living in an elevator hi rise in Brighton Beach.”
Artie, the oldest of the four brothers who drove their yellow cabs through the Big Apple’s traffic, their garage still in Brooklyn, but no longer at Avenue J’s local BMT station and Kubrick’s supermarket.. acrpss the waay..
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A refutation of Thomas Wolfe’s “You can’t go home again”.
In retrospect, Joel McCrea’s “Sullivan Travels” playing out, the reality outweighing the McCrea’s silver screen origins in the Woodland Hills opus of the Fernando Valley.
“I’m ready for my close up, Mr. De Mille.”
August 19, 2015 The City that never sleeps.
