ONCE UP A Time” starring Howard “Slim” Hughes of Houston, Texas, his father invented the oil artifice for those gushers and a fortune which enabled Slim to commute to Tinsel town and buy RKO from entrepreneur Joe Kennedy of Boston, putting Dore Schary in charge… the “Boys Town” screen writer to run the Fred Astaire, Ginger Rodgers studio on Melrose Avenue, in West Hollywood.
II
Moving to post Korean War to “We have waited a long time for you Mister Conway” said the High Llama of Shangri-la (Sam Jaffe) a hundred and twenty five years old, his robe sweeping in those Swis Alp inds., greeting (Ronald Coleman)
III
But the winds from those Swiss Alps have changed as the planet hifted gears and Sana Monica, California, had its own Shangri-la apartments with an ocean view, where at eleven , your Flying Philosopher was embelished with his mother Esther, once of Jimmy Cagney’ steno (Pitmanm where at the age of 13 , she got her fist job in Black& Erlinger, a Schubert competitor in vaudeville acts,, Esther a scholarship student (Rhetoric) inorl(speaking.4 languages)from the Bronx’s Morris Evening High School..on a scholarship to Hunter High School, but her older sister argued tht Esther sould go out to work, while she matriculated at Columbia...
IV
So there we were tottering down Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, .from Shangri-la, past the Think Tank, toward the Public Library, and “HELLS ANGELS”, “Slim” produced of a “reel”film, starring Jean Harlow…in the movie bibliographysector...
Passing the Rand think tank, even Betty Rowland, who owned A Main Street strip tease dancer, who oned a a bar on the corner of Pico Boulevard, no to far from where we hustled Sunday’s L:os Angeles Times and Examine on weekends, that “Slim” had no grasp of destiny in casting “Hells Angels” and simply ended his own
His airplane crash …takeoffs and landings, our neighbor at Clover Dale, the air field next to the mte where he had practiced,some two ty years earlier, back of Douglas Aircraft on Pico., two blocks from 22nd and the motel, where we lived down away from McKinley Elementary (Mrs. Washburn) ad the tether ball court where we played…curses, bloody noses!...a Brooklyn New York accent!
IV
Yet in the here and now, “Slim” Mister Hughes not recognizing that destiny was playing out… to the pages of “Hell’s Angels” in the newly built technology “doom” of a room, we nudged our mother Esther, pointing out the passage, where Jean Harlow post credits died abruptly amidst rumors…(hitching a ride on a truck)
V
Thereafter post Korean bloodshed on the 39th parallel, the Chinese ready to charge General Ridgeway’s 39thparallel..General MacArthur in Tokyo, we werehired by principal Harry Staufacher, taching Socal Studies to 7th and 9h graders at Lindbergh Junior High in North Long Bach..
VI
Not knowing that editor Sol Kaufler was a graduate of Brooklyn College, post World War2, and published al our autobiographical tinsel town sketches in the Long Bech Teacer’s Journal. Later a Journalism teacher at Reseda High, a Professor at Pierce Jr.College in Encino..
“Once upon a Moor, How to get a Yes”, the Male Lady Bugg,The Monkey from Mars… submitted to JFK at the White House, his creative “Mission to Moscow” playing out..
VII
In the meantime, “Slim” altered his focus from becoming a golf pr ad his attentions from the eighteen holes, and courting “Jinx”Falkenburg, pursued Richard Nixon’s family “Nixon burger” in Whittier, where the future President grew up, sitting on the bench at the school’s pigskin and TD’s field bench waiting…..
In loaning ****Nixon’s parents $50000 …the direct linear futuro multimillionaire “I never met a man I couldn’t buy.”
VII
Helen Gahagan Douglas’s Congressional two year seat was up for grabs. The Nixon burger crowd tarnished her Democratic fervor with a “Red Communist” brush, Tricky becoming a true believer, the East Los Angeles Whittier LaHabra Fullerton orange grove populace was brainwashed into believing what thepundit’s saliva was dripping.
NBC’s Huntley and Brinkley unable to expose the repetitive and constancy of the bombardment morning noon and night… the constancy of lies and innuendo….stealing the electoral seat from actor Melvin Douglas’s wife. …
A Governor Huey Long scenario playing out. “Tricky”scribbling a Trojan Horse memo to “Duke’ Wayne,
“Dick” admitted to Duke Law School…years later, resigning his Presidency, after being impeached..
IX
“Slim” reminding us ****“I never met a man I couldn’t buy” ****
September 11, 2016. the City that never sleeps
